Evangelicals’ political choices hard to gauge

Published 11:05 pm Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Nate Poetzl knew he would disappoint people in his congregation.

The pastor spent hours preparing for a sermon on politics. He looked at every angle and analyzed the details. But when he spoke from the pulpit at New Life Center in Everett, one of Snohomish County’s largest churches, he stopped short of saying what he thinks many people wanted to hear: a clear endorsement of a presidential candidate.

“People ask me constantly, ‘Who should I vote for?’ ” Poetzl said. “But I’ve purposely never endorsed a candidate. I don’t feel that’s my job.”

Poetzl may not have spoken on politics at all had his congregation not asked him to. The sermon was part of a series based on questions submitted by New Life members, most of which dealt with sex and culture — not what one might expect at a church with conservative religious beliefs.

Evangelical Christians are among the most conservative Protestants. Pollsters usually predict that evangelicals nationwide will form a firm voting block for Republican candidates. That’s especially true this year, as Gov. Sarah Palin, a evangelical from Alaska, energizes many of the country’s most religious voters.

But as the face of evangelical Christianity is changing across the country, political expectations are, too. Nowhere is that more clear than in the Pacific Northwest, where evangelical churches are growing fast, and many people in them don’t fit the mold.

New Life Center is located in what has long been called the “least-churched” region of the country, but Snohomish County is home to a growing number of evangelical churches. A handful of them are mega-churches, with more than 2,000 people in attendance on Sundays.

Put together, those Christians could be enough to swing a state vote. But no one knows for sure how they’ll cast their ballots.

“We have people that would be astonished there are so many Republicans in the church, and we have a bunch of Republicans that would be flabbergasted at how many Democrats there are in the church,” Poetzl said.

Evangelical churches here tend to be younger than churches with the same conservative theological base in other parts of the country. At New Life Center and other mega-churches, Christians are likely to share the code of America’s “moral majority” on issues including abortion and gay marriage, but they’re not necessarily conservative. When it comes to social issues, sometimes they’re downright liberal.

“There’s a growing number of evangelicals who are not in lockstep with the Christian right,” said Barry Hankins, a professor of church-state studies at Baylor University in Texas. “They have growing concerns about poverty and AIDS and issues of war and peace.”

Hankins said they look to Rick Warren, pastor of the 23,000-strong Saddleback Church in California, as a leader. Warren in August hosted a forum at his church with Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, but like Poetzl, didn’t tell his congregation how to vote.

Federal law prohibits leaders of tax-exempt churches from endorsing candidates. Some pastors ignore that law, believing they have a God-given obligation to steer their congregations toward biblically based candidates, but many pastors here say that endorsing any candidate would only result in alienating half the congregation.

“We know that our congregation, just like this nation, is pretty much divided half and half,” said Debbie Willis, spokeswoman for Christian Faith Center.

The church has 9,000 people attending between two campuses in Federal Way and in south Everett. Casey Treat, pastor of Christian Faith Center and known for his televangelism and flying between campuses in a private helicopter, is staunchly opposed to gay marriage, abortion and other issues generally associated with the Democratic party. He preaches on those issues, but never talks about political affiliation, Willis said.

“People in our church are excited regardless of who gets elected because it is so historic,” she said. “We’ll either have the first black man or the first woman in the White House, so the excitement seems to spread both ways.”

Though this region’s pastors are mostly staying out of political debates now, as churches here grow, that could change.

Evangelicals thrive in a culture that’s hostile to them, Hankins said. Evangelicals are also more intensely fervent in their beliefs than people of other Christian denominations, he said. Together, those factors could easily result in a religious shift for regions such as the Pacific Northwest, which religion researchers have long regarded as liberal bastions.

“When evangelicals feel they’re in a secular culture, everywhere they go they’re much more likely to be reminded that they’re supposed to stand up against this or that,” Hankins said.

That means that some churches are vocal in their opposition to political trends they don’t believe jibe with biblical teachings.

Pastors who shy away from political issues that have moral implications are doing a disservice to their congregations, said Joe Fuiten, pastor of Cedar Park Assembly of God in Bothell.

“As a pastor I try to provide moral leadership,” he said. “Hopefully my interests aren’t primarily political, but if my moral statements have political implications, then so be it.”

Fuiten openly discusses politics from the pulpit, but he endorses candidates on his personal Web site, www. pastorspicks.com. His choices are overwhelmingly Republican, from John McCain and Dino Rossi to small-town politicians in the state’s rural regions.

“Politics is just religion externalized,” he said. “Faith is not some purely private thing. The second great commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself, and that’s a profoundly political statement.”

Fuiten, a board member for the conservative Family Policy Institute of Washington, said he believes most Christians vote Republican. That’s how he encourages his church members to vote, even as he carefully navigates the line between church and state.

“I didn’t give up my citizenship when I became a pastor,” he said.

With so much hoopla over elections, and so many people sitting in church pews, it’s easy for pastors to be tempted into making politically charged statements, Poetzl said. Instead of joining those pastors, Poetzl reminds his congregation that this country purposely separates church and state.

“We don’t want to be the type of church that expects the government to do the work of Jesus Christ in the world,” he said. “We aren’t forfeiting our responsibility, but we should remember that governments come and go. The church sticks around.”

Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.