'God gives us guidance in who to elect' in Exodus: NHCLC speaker
WASHINGTON — Several Christian leaders are encouraging the Latino Evangelical community to fully participate in the 2024 presidential election, contending that they have a mandate from God to help ensure the election of leaders who support biblical values.
The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which represents thousands of churches throughout the United States and the Spanish-speaking world, hosted its 2024 Latino Evangelical Leadership Summit at the Museum of the Bible on Tuesday. The annual gathering, which hundreds of people attended, took place three weeks before the 2024 presidential election this year.
Several of the speakers encouraged members of the audience to take a direct role in the upcoming election. “God gives us guidance in who to elect,” said Debbie Wuthrow of iVoterGuide, citing Exodus 18:21, which instructs people to “select capable men from all the people — men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain — and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.”
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Wuthrow identified iVoterGuide as a tool created by God “to equip you to identify those candidates at all [levels] of office.” She outlined its key feature as being “an election resource in all 50 states” where “you and your congregation enter your address” and get a personalized ballot that includes candidates ranging from “president down to school board with an evaluation of where they land politically.”
Wuthrow stressed that while information about federal candidates is available for all 50 states, 32 states have facts about state legislative candidates, and 12 have profiles of “select school board candidates.” She plugged iVoterGuide as being “a free tool for the church” that has information about “13,000 candidates.”
Another speaker, Mary Thomas, works with the Job Creators Network, an organization that partners with the NHCLC. She told those assembled that “the Latino Christian community” has “the power to determine the outcome of this election.”
Thomas insisted that the Latino Christian community “must get our families, our friends, our churches out to vote” in support of “biblical values.” She maintained that the election amounted to a choice between “leaders who support freedom and biblical values” or “leaders who will continue to attack the principles that we believe in.”
Thomas also highlighted several of the issues she thought Christian voters should keep in the back of their minds on Election Day, specifically lamenting that “children being taught things that are against our biblical values in schools” such as the idea “that boys can be girls instead of being taught how to read, write and do math.”
Thomas also expressed outrage about “our daughters being attacked in bathrooms” by trans-identified men and “elected leaders who push the murder of innocent babies even after they are born,” referring to politicians who oppose providing life-saving care to babies who survive botched abortions.
“Our elected leaders who are determining the laws and the future of our nation do not reflect our values,” she proclaimed. “But we, as people of strong faith, know that in the end, the Kingdom of God will always prevail. And we know that we must now take action to defend our faith and our biblical values.”
Thomas maintained that “we must let our Father speak through us to save our nation.” She reiterated that, “With God’s guidance and strength, God has given us the power to determine the future of this nation, to return it to what it used to be and what it must be: One nation under God.”
“These last 21 days, we need all of you to step up, and please speak to your church members, your communities, your friends and your families,” she added.
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, NHCLC president, invited the Rev. Johnnie Moore to offer a prayer for “this election and for the sovereignty of God” and that “every Latino Christian will vote.” Moore leads the Congress of Christian Leaders, an organization established to unify Christian movements worldwide, and previously served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.
“What a travesty it would be for us to have inherited so much and to pass down so little to the next generation,” Moore remarked. “We entrust the future of our nation to you.”
Highlighting the role of the U.S. as a beacon of religious liberty for those around the world, Moore stressed the obligation to “keep the light held high” and “to defend our own religious freedom” to ensure that persecuted Christians around the world “have any hope of it whatsoever.”
Moore said in is prayer to God, “We are asking you to intervene in every way for the good of our country.”
He also pushed back on the claims that the Evangelical community wants a “weird theocracy,” asserting, “We just want to be left alone to preach the Gospel to the ends of the Earth.”
The pleas for Latino Christians to make their voices heard in the 2024 presidential election come amid concerns that many faith-based voters are planning to abstain from voting. A recently released report from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University estimates that 32 million self-identified Christians who regularly attend church services are slated to sit out the election.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
