- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- [Announcer 2] Right now in WEDU in this election season, we'll discuss the intersection of religion and politics.

How do faith leaders view issues like abortion, immigration, and healthcare?

And we'll look at the rise of Christian nationalism.

All in a special edition of "Florida This Week."

(dramatic music) Welcome back.

This election, as they have been doing for many years, political candidates are referring to their faith as a way to convince voters that they share their values and deserve their support.

Some candidates cite scripture and talk about the importance that religion plays in their lives.

- For so many of us, church is a place of belonging, of community and fellowship.

Church is a place where together we find and share our faith.

As it says in Luke chapter one, verse 79, "faith has the power to shine a light on those living in darkness, to guide our feet in the path of peace."

- [Rob] Other candidates have used their religion to warn about the dangers that the other political party poses.

- But they're bad people.

The chains are already tightening around all of us.

I mean, if you think about it, ultimately the radical left is coming after all of us because they know that our allegiance is not to them.

Our allegiance is to our country and our allegiance is to our creator.

They don't want to hear that.

They don't wanna hear that.

How any Christian can vote for a Democrat, Christian, or person of faith.

Person of faith, how you could vote for a Democrat is crazy.

- [Rob] According to a new study, only about 47% of Floridians are church members.

Utah had the highest rate of membership at 76% and New Hampshire the lowest at 27%.

One of the most important counties in Florida when it comes to statewide or national elections, is Miami-Dade, which has been trending away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans.

Miami-Dade used to have a smaller percentage of religious believers than the statewide average.

Now that number is on the rise, going from 40 to 51%.

Much of that rise is fueled by the increasing number of Hispanic Catholics, moving to Miami-Dade.

Another strong group in Florida, Christian Nationalists, this group believes that the government should declare the US a Christian nation, that US law should be based on Christian values.

They believe that if the US moves away from those values, we will not have a country anymore.

That being Christian is part of being truly American, and God has called on Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 33% of Floridians support these views.

Joining us on the panel this week, Reverend J.C. Pritchett II is the president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Florida.

Bill Bunkly is the host of "Faith Talk" on 570 and 910 AM on Salem Radio.

Reverend Kim Wells is the pastor at the Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg.

Reverend Russell, Reverend Dr. Russell Meyer, is the Executive Director of the Florida Council of Churches.

And Reverend Andy Oliver is the pastor at the Allendale United Methodist in St. Petersburg.

And thank you all for coming, great to see you.

- Thanks for inviting us.

- Well, in that setup, we heard former President Trump admonish Christians to not vote for Democrats.

Two weeks ago, he said this to Jewish voters.

He said, "any Jewish person that voted for Vice President Kamala Harris or President Joe Biden should have their head examined.

Trump told conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg in a live interview, if you love Israel or if you're Jewish, because a lot of Jewish people do not like Israel, if you're Jewish, if you do vote for a Democrat, you're a fool, an absolute fool."

So Bill, lemme start with you.

What do you think of the message that Christians and Jews should support former President Trump?

- Well, first of all, I want to thank you for almost 10 years of having this show on the air.

And not only the producers, but your board here at WEDU and thank you going all the way back to (indistinct) I just want to acknowledge that I'm here, thank you so much that this show is so important for the community.

You know, when I grew up, my dad told me two things, don't ever get involved with religion and politics.

So somehow I've been called to both.

And so it's been a remarkable ride.

As you know, I've been involved with legislature about 28 years, 18 years on the radio.

So your question is this, we are in an election year, just like clickbait on the internet.

You know, one-liners in both sides are trying to grasp their base.

And so what I would say is this, yes, I would say for Orthodox Christians, when we understand, the Bible calls us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

And the Bible teaches us that God, that the Jews are God's chosen people.

Not to be set apart, to be a special group.

They were set apart to be able to bring the message of God to other tribes, if you will.

So what I would say is, and I say this a lot on my radio, forget the personalities involved.

There are two different value sets involved between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party.

And for Christians, when you get into issues like life, and especially now that we've got Amendment Four, which is deceptive, and this could bring partial birth abortions in the final trimester, it is very difficult to not be able to have that issue being a driving force.

So I say stick to the issues and especially with the amendment, read it for exactly what it says 'cause you could drive a bus through that amendment.

- All right, Russell, let me get you to respond to that.

What would you say?

- Well, first of all, Christianity is a very large waterfront and it's really difficult when one person says, here's my perspective on Christianity and now I'm gonna generalize it.

If you don't agree with it, then you're not a Christian.

That is anti Jesus as you can get, right?

You just look at the disciples, they would've never been in the room together on their own if Jesus hadn't called them to be in the room together.

So the idea that we would say to one another, even if we have very different perspectives, you are not really Christian unless you do it my way.

That's not the one who died on the cross for us all.

And so we just have to sort of pause there and understand across the waterfront, Christianity is one of the most diverse religions in the world.

And you have people who will give their lives to stop nuclear armament and those who will push the button.

Now the breadth there is astounding.

What what we are taught is the power to love our enemies so we can live in community together.

- So I think it's fair to say though on Bill's point, that if you look at the majority of Floridians who are religious, and Andy, I want to toss this to you, most of them tend to be conservative when it comes to religious issues.

- Yeah, well, faith and politics aren't somehow two separate things.

I mean, they really are getting at the same question, how do we best do life together?

And I follow Jesus, whose politics always placed him on the margins and always named the evil that were harming the people on the margins.

And so as a pastor, I have to do the same thing in the naming of evil, of bigotry and homophobia and transphobia and racism and white supremacy and all the rest.

Jesus organized his community around a politics of love your neighbor.

And he said, if you do that and do it well, you can truly build up a new world.

- Bill, what about that?

You know, your faith is centered on Jesus, and Jesus ministered to people who are on the margins, as Andy said, what did he say?

- Well, first of all, scripture is very specific.

And I think as a conservative Christian, if we're gonna label me as such, I would say the Bible is very specific about certain issues.

And see, today we have many who exercise the cafeteria style of Christianity.

I'll take that verse, we're not gonna deal with that verse.

Or maybe verse A, verse B.

So what I would say is most of what we're dealing with, the Bible speaks to just about every issue.

Now whether we wanna adopt that or not, that's up to the individual.

And I'm the first to say, though I have my faith beliefs and I believe in inerrancy of the scriptures.

Yes, I believe in the miracles, but I also believe that I will fight for the right of everybody in this country and around the world, just like Jesus gave people the option to either believe and follow or not.

I will fight for everyone to have their own convictions on their religion, but I'm still gonna stick to my guns and what I believe is the truth.

- So Bill, if I hear you right, you're saying that you embrace the whole Bible, not a cafeteria approach to that?

- [Bill] That's correct.

- Kim, what would you say to that?

- Well to me, one of the primary teachings that we can historically attribute to Jesus is love your enemy.

So that is one of the most important things to our congregation to address ourselves too.

Love your neighbor, that's fine.

Yes and your neighbor is everyone and love your enemy.

So that is one of the core values and teachings of Jesus that we use as a lens to look at all these issues.

- But if Bill says, look, you guys who are more liberal, religiously, are picking and choosing the verses of the Bible that you follow, what would you say back to Bill?

- Well, we disagree because I think everyone is picking and choosing and there are a lot of contradictory things within the Bible.

I agree with what Russell said, it's a broad, broad situation with what you can find in the Bible to buoy your own beliefs or your own values so you can find whatever you want in the Bible.

And there are many contradictory things.

So you have to pick, you do have to pick.

- Along the same lines, some supporters of the former president have even compared him to Jesus.

There's a book comparing him to Jesus.

It's not just backers of former President Trump who say that they were chosen by God.

Other Republican candidates do it too.

Here's Governor Ron DeSantis two years ago.

- [Ron] And on the eighth day God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a protector.

So God made a fighter.

God said, I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, kiss his family goodbye, travel thousands of miles for no other reason than to serve the people, to save their jobs, their livelihoods, their liberty, their happiness.

So God made a fighter.

- J.C., what do you think about politicians who say that they were chosen by God?

- There are many in this country who get great support and relief in a white God and a white savior.

None of that is historically true.

It's also disgusting images of the former president as a savior.

There's nothing similar to the gentleman and Jesus.

This is a gentleman who has said it's okay for men of power to grab women by their private parts.

This is a man who said it's okay to ban Muslims.

This is a man who says that there are asshole countries.

This is a man who let a million people die because of COVID.

Because he kept it a secret, he didn't tell anyone.

And he said, you should drink bleach.

So I'm offended and I'm offended that there are white folks who continue to find comfort that this white savior in a white hat, on a white horse saving them from the other.

And the other obviously is trans, in brown or black and very different.

- Bill, what do you think about politicians who say that they were chosen by God?

- Well, first of all, we don't know exactly the mind of God in terms of his decisions.

And we don't know why he does certain things.

Sometimes challenges are brought into our life and sometimes we're challenged by other things.

But let me say this, I believe that God does select people and I believe he blesses people.

But for anyone, and I will just say this across the board, for anyone to say, to actually speak on behalf of God and say person A or B is chosen by God, that's unscriptural.

Lemme be very clear, after visiting Jerusalem on multiple multiplications.

I can assure you that Jesus was a Jew and he was probably a dark skinned individual.

And so I wanna make it very clear that, see what we're doing here is there's a lot of misconceptions in the culture.

And so I just want to make at least a few statements about my core beliefs.

So I assure you I appreciate my Jewish Jesus.

- All right, so let's talk about immigration for a second.

Former President Trump says he's going to deport millions of undocumented immigrants if he's elected.

He says that there are 20 million undocumented people in the US, fact checkers say that's not true.

But let's go back, say, let's move on and say that Governor DeSantis has spent more than 15 million state dollars, state tax dollars to fly immigrants from Texas to sanctuary cities.

From a faith perspective, how should we treat immigrants, and Russell, let me start with you on that one.

- Well, we should treat them like they're the brothers and sisters of our family 'cause they are, the brothers and sisters of our human family.

The immigration issue that we have on the southwest border, Rob, is driven by a long, long history of US economic and foreign policy.

And we could solve the problem tomorrow by correcting our policies in Central America and Latin America.

A million Cubans since Donald Trump's administration and President Biden continued many of the same policies.

A million Cubans left Cuba alone, 800,000 have come over the southwest border because we created an economic situation in which they cannot feed their children.

They just walked away from their own homes.

That's true in Venezuela, it's true in Nicaragua, you can just go across Latin America.

So people are following where the money has flowed.

We have economically raped Central and South America, major corporations and et cetera.

We broke NAFTA, et cetera, along the way.

And these people are just going, it's a natural flow.

We let money flow anywhere in the world, but then we say, oh no, you people can't come.

People are just trying to feed their families.

Most people would stay home where they were born, if they could make a living there, if they could make it happen.

We broke those countries through our policies.

We can solve the border problem tomorrow by helping those countries keep their people at home and enrich them instead of take wealth out of those countries.

And so the problem is on us, we broke it.

You know, you go into the China shop, the sign says, don't touch.

If you break it, you bought it.

Well, you know what, that's what we've done.

We've broke it, we bought it, and we should show as much human capacity as we can.

We should not throw a single child into the sea and turn our back away.

- Bill, from a faith perspective, how do you view the immigration situation on the border?

- Well, first of all, two things.

Number one, Jesus said when he was presented with a coin in the Bible, render under Caesar, what is Caesar.

Render unto me, the faith aspect.

So there's two parts to this.

Number one, as far as the border situation is, the Bible is very clear when it comes to helping foreigners, when it comes to helping those that are disadvantaged.

There are no borders, there are no borders.

And so the churches have a separate role than the government and especially the great work of the churches on the southern border.

And I'm glad you mentioned going to other nations that helped them because I belong to a denomination that's the leading denomination in sending foreign missionaries, tilapia ponds and all sorts of things.

But when you get to the government, let's face it, look at biblical history.

Walls are very important, a famous story, probably everyone knows the story of Jericho, may not believe they marched seven times and it fell down.

There's a wall, I can tell you I've prayed at the western wall in Jerusalem.

So walls to protect and to control and to understand who's in and who's not, who's out.

It's biblical because it is in the Bible.

So what we have here is our own FBI director has told us at great risk because we've not done what we've done for years, always welcome immigrants.

We're all immigrants, but we also had a vetting process.

And that is a sham right now because basically we're so overloaded at the border, the government has not done the proper checks.

And we're finding out every day more and more people who might be a threat by being on a terrorist list.

And so the government and the church has two different responsibilities.

- Okay, so to Bill's.

- Let me just quick.

- Russell, go ahead.

- One sentence, we cannot build a wall to protect us from our own injustice.

- Okay, so to Bill's point about what the Bible says about foreigners, there are hundreds of places in the Bible where it says to not mistreat aliens, foreigners, or what we sometimes call sojourners.

So let's put up one of those quotes from Exodus.

"You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt."

So Andy, how do you interpret what the Bible says about sojourners and foreigners and others?

- Well, I just want to quickly say to Bill, I'm also for walls, but maybe not the same one you're referring to.

I'm for the one that's running for vice president.

But our immigrant neighbors here in Florida have been repeatedly dehumanized by Governor DeSantis' politics of fear.

This is all about him maintaining control.

And so as Christians, if we don't boldly love and fight in solidarity for our collective liberation, for those that are undocumented, for those that are the most vulnerable, then we are betraying the God that we claim to follow.

And the savior that we claim to follow.

Salvation in the free state of Florida requires a politics of love and solidarity, not a politics of fear.

- Let's move on to another topic.

I want to ask you about abortion.

Abortion is a big issue this year because there's an abortion rights amendment on the ballot.

We in Florida have a pretty strict anti-abortion statute that says after six weeks you cannot have, most people cannot have an abortion.

Kim, I want to ask you, from your faith-based perspective, how do you view the issue of abortion?

- Okay, first of all, from my faith-based perspective, every human being is equal, loved and sacred.

And this means women and men and others should have the same dignity and rights, and every woman should have complete decision-making rights over her own body.

Every woman deserves a full range of reproductive healthcare in whatever she feels is appropriate for her.

And there are no laws controlling the male's reproductive healthcare.

There should be no laws that restrict a woman's reproductive healthcare.

If a woman, because of her moral underpinnings and her faith believes she should not have an abortion, she should not have an abortion.

It should be individual.

- I wanna ask you about abortion.

I mean, the conservatives always believe in the government should not interfere in people's lives.

So tell us, what does your faith tell you about abortion?

- Well, the first question is, which is the ongoing debate is when does life begin?

Some will say at conception.

I believe life begins at conception.

We have a point very early in the pregnancy where a heart begins beating.

And we also have, you can just see it on ultrasounds.

And I know we, in my family, we unfortunately had a series of miscarriages.

And so I know the pain not only from a male, because men do somewhat participate in the pain, not like a woman.

But I will tell you this, if you believe that life begins at conception and you believe that that unborn baby is a person, it may not be the type of position that is widely acceptable in our culture, but it's one that's defensible in the Bible.

Because the Bible tells us when there's an innocent person about to be taken to death, you need to be standing in the gap for that person.

And I'm not gonna, because of our wide audience, I'm not quoting chapter and verse, I'm just quoting what's in the Bible so anybody can challenge me 'cause that's there.

So that forms the basis of protecting children in the womb from a conservative, orthodox sort of interpretation.

Theological of the scriptures.

- J.C., not all religions agree on when life begins or when personhood begins.

Tell us what, from your faith perspective, you know, when does that life begin?

- Well, I wish that there was more concern for lives once they arrive here, talking about immigration.

Do you realize that our country literally took babies from those mother's arms and separated them and that our government took families and put 'em on planes and buses and separated those families.

And then on Sunday we're the great Christian.

And so I care about life that's here, I care about that.

Two weeks ago, a woman in her own home was shot down.

I care about a man in Minnesota who laid on the ground, grasping for air, crying for his mother.

I care about the bodies once they get here.

And so I wish that our conservative friends cared as much about life once it was here.

A woman's body is her body.

It is creepy and weird and sick for grown white men to wanna track women and girls' menstrual cycles, their sexual activities and what they discuss with their doctor.

- Russell, we only have about 30 seconds left, but what's your perspective, faith-based on abortion?

- My church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America passed a statement churchwide in 1990 recognizing the point of viability and the right of a woman to seek an abortion.

A question between her god, her doctor, her pastor, if she so wished or whatever.

So my church has been on board with women's reproductive healthcare from its beginning, from its beginning.

And so I'm with Kim on this.

Nobody has told me what I can do with my genitals and I shouldn't be telling a woman what she could do with her genitals.

The other thing I wanna say, the Bible's very clear that God breathed the breath of life into us and we became a living, breathing person at that time.

That's the biblical definition.

Genesis three of when life begins is when God puts the breath of life into you.

- You know, we're out of time.

I wish we could have four hours to discuss this 'cause you guys have all been great.

And I thank you for taking part, I wish we had more time.

We don't, but thank you for a civil conversation.

I really appreciate it, thank you.

Our panelists have been J.C. Pritchett, Bill Bunkly, Reverend Kim Wells, Reverend Dr. Russell Meyer, and Reverend Andy Oliver.

Thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at ftw@wedu.org and like us on Facebook, you can view this and past shows online at wedu.org or on the PBS app.

And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend.

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