The stories that shaped Americans’ lives in 2020—the pandemic, the presidential election, and the reckoning over racial violence—also made their way into a majority of sermons last fall, according to Pew Research Center analysis of 12,832 messages posted on church websites.
But whether your pastor preached about praying for the president or registering to vote, or the sermon referred to “racial tensions” or “white supremacy,” depended on the kind of church you attended.
Overall, Protestants were significantly more likely than Catholics to address current events from the pulpit. And the spiritual framing differed between evangelical Protestants and Protestants from historically Black traditions, though the majority of Black Protestants share evangelical beliefs.
Over 80 percent of evangelical and Black Protestant churches heard sermons around COVID-19, while 71 percent of evangelical and 63 percent of Black Protestant churches addressed the election, and 41 percent of evangelical and 52 percent of Black Protestant pastors preached on racism.
Like many pastors across the country, R. Derrick Parks at Epiphany Church in Wilmington, Delaware, spent 15 months delivering his Sunday messages to a camera while his 100-person church paused in-person services during the pandemic.
An African American and the executive coordinator of Acts 29’s urban church planting, Parks said that during this time, he heard responses from congregants who were “encouraged when we directly spoke to issues of justice”—a regular theme in his preaching and in Scripture.
Months after the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd stirred protests in major cities, racism continued to come up in 44 percent of the sermons analyzed by Pew in a roughly two-month period last fall.
In a rare gesture by an American president, Ronald Reagan has authored a ten-page essay for the spring issue of Human Life Review in which he urges Americans to oppose abortion on demand. In his essay, Reagan emphasizes the value of human life. He writes, “Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns every one of us.”Citing the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which denied full humanity to black Americans, Reagan draws a parallel between pro-abortion mentality and racial discrimination.Reagan’s avid belief in legislation to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion, is well known, and his essay repeats his support of all the proposed solutions in Congress. At the same time, perhaps to a greater degree than before, he emphasizes the medical evidence that indicates unborn life is truly human, and he calls for a return to a “sanctity of human life” ethic rather than the “quality of life” ethic now in vogue.“We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain. But how many Americans are aware that abortion techniques are allowed today in all 50 states that burn the skin of a baby with a salt solution, in an agonizing death that can last for hours?”Reagan praises the work of Christian groups that have developed alternatives to abortion and have given care to unwed mothers. He suggests adoption as a major alternative.His essay has provided a welcome boost to a prolife movement whose legislative endeavors are receiving scant attention in Congress and the media. The editor of the Review, J. P. McFadden, said it is the most significant essay his eight-year-old quarterly journal has ever published. The Review is published by the Human Life Foundation, a nonprofit organization that financially supports efforts to protect and care for infants who would otherwise have been aborted.McFadden floated the idea of a presidential essay among Washington prolife advocates last year. After the January 22 March for Life, the suggestion was passed along to Reagan during a meeting with prolife leaders. “A week or so later, I heard he had approved the idea,” McFadden said. By the end of March, the manuscript arrived. The article was actually a team effort of White House staff people, with personal contributions from the President.Entitled “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation,” the article ends with a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s statement that America would not be truly free as long as slave owning persisted. “Likewise,” Reagan writes, “we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide.”Black Protestant churches were more likely than any other tradition to preach on racism. Both in sermons addressing race and addressing the election, they were also more likely to address voting rights.
Sermons from Black Protestants in the Pew analysis were twice as likely to encouraging voting when talking about the election (43% vs. 20% overall), while evangelicals were more likely than other traditions to speak on issues, candidates, or parties (48%).
“I just see it as a Christian responsibility for us to engage the needs of our communities. It’s always been about the community as a whole. Churches exist to proclaim the name of Jesus to those who are lost and at the same time to leave his imprint in whatever community they end up in,” said Parks. “The Black church has been a beacon of that. If that meant we’re going to rally people to a voting booth, we’re going to do that.”
Previous research from Pew found that Black Protestants and evangelicals are the only major religious traditions that want their churches to “express their views” on social and political issues. The majority of Black Protestants want to see faith have a greater influence on politics, but different churches have different approaches.
“African American Protestant churches have varied orientations towards politics in the pulpit,” said Lerone A. Martin, associate professor in religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis. “Some are very politically engaged while others, especially those in the holiness and Pentecostal traditions often stay away from politics, instead choosing to focus on individual holiness and piety.”
“The blatant racism of the Trump administration was the final straw for some Black Christians,” Martin said, “pushing some Black faith committed towards more explicit political engagement and even departing majority white denominations and churches.”
Preparing for a decision next November on a homosexual church’s eligibility for membership in the National Council of Churches, the council’s 260-member governing board aired sharply divergent views during a four-day meeting in San Francisco last month.The membership in question was that of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC), a 27,000-member denomination founded in 1968 by homosexuals as a haven for gay Christians. Oscar McCloud, a United Presbyterian official who chairs the NCC’S constituent membership committee, called the discussion “the most serious theological debate” that the governing board has engaged in in his 11 years with the council.United Methodist Bishop James Armstrong, NCC president, said the study engaged in by the council since the fellowship’s initial application in September 1981 has been “a responsible process.” Paul Fries, a Reformed Church in America theologian, indicated that a study by the Faith and Order Commission found no agreement on whether on ecclesiological and theological grounds the UFMCC qualifies for membership. Some members, he said, “do not believe it is a church; others believe it meets the council’s criteria; still others said, ‘until we have lived longer with them, we cannot know whether it is a church.’ ”The NCC’S Faith and Order Commission earlier recommended that each church decide the issue on the basis of its own ecclesiology (doctrine of the nature of the church). Barbara Brown Zikmund, a church historian ordained in the United Church of Christ, said that as a woman associated with a liberal interdenominational seminary, she had initially been concerned with the UFMCC application as a “justice issue” but had come to “believe that it must be looked at in a deeper way.”The UFMCC, said Zikmund, “is challenging the church’s basic understanding of human nature, unquestioned for centuries”—that is, its ideas about how the image of God is reflected in its wholeness only through humanity in male and female gender expressed in heterosexual bonding. Zikmund said the UFMCC’s application raised the question of “the limits of legitimate diversity.… The authority of the Bible and tradition in the church is not just pragmatic,” she said. “What authority do we rely on to determine the perimeters of our membership?”The Reverend Alexander Doumouras of the Greek Orthodox Archidiocese declared that “the Orthodox could not find it possible to enter into ecclesial fellowship with the Metropolitan Community Churches” if the group became a member of the NCC. “For the Orthodox it could not even be a debatable issue,” he added. “The Orthodox church cannot accept the UFMCC as a church on the basis it has been formed.”A Methodist view came from Roy Sano, a faculty member at Pacific School of Religion, who cited the “Wesley Quadrilateral” of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience recommended by Methodism’s eighteenth-century founder, John Wesley, as a basis for decision making. Sano contended that governing board members needed “personal interaction” with a UFMCC congregation in order to answer the question of whether it is a church. He suggested that if NCC members experience the question of UFMCC eligibility “as a problem and are not captivated by the potential for deepening unity, I respectfully raise questions about the state of your souls.”But a black Methodist—the Reverend Cecil Murray, pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal church in Los Angeles—had an opposing view. Declaring that he represented a consensus of his church, the oldest black denomination in North America, Murray said, “Our church is not against homosexual persons, but is against homosexual practices.” He said he has been asked whether, as a member of an oppressed minority, he should not stand in solidarity with homosexuals. “We do not think the experience of homosexuality can be effectively compared with that of being black.” Further, he said, “We view homosexuality as another force militating against black families. Any attack on the black family is an attack on the very survival of our posterity.… To embrace a philosophy of homosexuality would simply be a luxury we could not afford.”“Is the UFMCC a biblically valid church body?” asked the Reverend Mark Heim of the American Baptist Churches. He said that is the question as far as American Baptists are concerned. “The vast majority of American Baptists believe that the practice of homosexuality is against Scripture.” Although the congregational ecclesiology of the American Baptist Churches precludes arriving at a consensus on the question, he said that the “main body of opinion” would find the UFMCC basing its existence on “a biblically invalid position.”The next action on the application of the gay church is expected in November, when NCC board members will vote on whether the UFMCC is eligible for membership. If the board determines it is eligible, NCC member churches will vote on the application next year.Protestants at historically Black churches were seven times more likely to hear a sermon reference voter suppression, early voting, and registering to vote, according to Pew.
Evangelical churches, by contrast, spoke more regularly of prayer for the election and for the president. The Pew report noted, “evangelical pastors tended to employ language related to evil and punishment at a greater rate, using words and phrases such as ‘Satan’ or ‘hell’ at least twice as often as other clergy did.”
When addressing racism, evangelical pastors were more likely to refer to “racial tension” or mention the role of the police, while Black and mainline Christians spoke more often of “white supremacy.”
Other surveys found that Protestant pastors overall became more reluctant to preach on race in recent years. Lifeway Research reported earlier this year that while the majority of pastors are open to preaching on racial reconciliation and had done so in the past two years, higher numbers have received significant pushback for their messages on race.
For years, pastors have sensed a growing expectation that they address current events from the pulpit, especially as certain news stories dominate social media feeds.
Most pastors see the purpose of their preaching as proclamation of the gospel above all, but also recognize the opportunity to equip their flock to think biblically about the world around them.
“A faithful preacher is always addressing events that are current. They’re always seeking to speak in manner that allows the Word of God to apply to people’s everyday lives,” said Delaware pastor R. Derrick Parks.
“I believe that in moments of crisis you should respond and not react… We responded to the issue of justice with thoughtful care and used the one tool that is the primary tool for us, and that’s the Word of God.”
