‘Vote Christian’: Churches key in getting voters to the polls in Georgia runoff
Rev. Josh Saefkow walked across the stage before his congregation at Flat Creek Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, holding up the front page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The pastor, an avid news reader, had been saving the paper through 2020, to urge reflection in his final Sunday sermon of the year.
“What a devastating year this has been,” he said, then turned to 2021.
“We got a little election coming up,” said Saefkow, referring to the January 5 Senate runoffs. Quiet laughter rippled through the pews, as few have been unable to escape the more than $500 million in political advertising blanketing the state.
In Georgia Senate runoffs, faith emerges front and center
Democratic Senate candidate the Rev. Raphael Warnock, center, greets the Rev. Ralph Huling at St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Columbus, Ga., at a Dec. 13 rally.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
FAYETTEVILLE, Ga.
The Rev. Josh Saefkow plopped down on his office couch between services, facing a TV tuned to Fox News. He skimmed sermon notes, glancing up as an ad aired in support of the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Atlanta preacher running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate, and shook his head.
“He’s a gifted orator but not a good student of Scripture,” said the 36-year-old white evangelical minister and lifelong Republican, who had hosted a get-out-the-vote rally days before at the Flat Creek Baptist Church hall. “I don’t understand how a pastor can stand up there and say he’s for allowing abortion.”