Time for An Experiment
From falwell.com:

Falwell Confidential
Date: September 24, 2004
From: Jerry Falwell

THE VOTING CHURCH

During the past few weeks at Thomas Road Baptist Church, the church I founded in 1956, we have been conducting a voter registration outreach. We have subsequently enrolled hundreds of new central Virginia and other voters.

I believe this is the action of a responsible church, that we are biblically compelled to elect to office those people who uphold the traditional values of our nation’s founding. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people,” Proverbs 14:34 tells us. It is therefore the duty of Christians to ensure that our leaders are those people who best reflect our values and core beliefs.

The voter registration effort at TRBC is typical of what is taking place in churches across the country, as Christians continue in their role of being an informed and effective voting bloc.

In the past ten days, I have spoken in 15 events in Florida, Ohio, Missouri and Kansas that we call “Pastors Policy Briefings,” as I join with other Christian leaders in teaching pastors how to energize their constituencies to be active participants in the voting process. We urge pastors to compel their members to vote for candidates — whether Democrat, Republican or otherwise — who reflect the biblical values we hold dear. I will be continuing these briefings in most of the “battleground” states in the next 39 days.

More than 2,000 pastors have made firm commitments to me in the last ten days to hold voter registration drives in their churches over the next two Sundays. I have also spent the past several months urging about 100,000 pastors to do the same. The results have been exciting. I literally have not seen evangelicals this energized in years.

Following these meetings, I have met with many pastors and church leaders who relay virtually the same message to me: their congregations are wholeheartedly planning to go to the polls to vote for pro-life and pro-family candidates.

These types of voter registration efforts began with the 1980 election of President Reagan. Evangelicals were largely responsible for his victory and we continue to be major participants in the political process. We must ensure that the evangelical church remains a vigorous political force in the years to come. And, evangelical numbers are exploding as our churches, broadcasters, writers, publishers, musicians and Christian workers are winning thousands to faith in Christ every week. As “salt and light,” we are winning souls to Christ, baptizing them, discipling them to serve Christ, registering them to vote and sending them to the polls.

Furthermore, the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council recently announced that about two million new evangelical voters have been recently registered as part of a series of live nationwide simulcasts that were designed to motivate Christians to get involved in the political process. The organization has worked with churches and other national ministries across the country to register this vast new flock of evangelical voters.

“All this is perfectly legal for churches to do,” the organization states. And it is, even though some members of the radical left have been routinely attempting to convince pastors that they must shy away from such activity at the risk of losing their church’s tax-exempt status. Nothing could be further from the truth!

American Christians should endeavor to live their lives so that God can and will bless them and our nation, as described in Ephesians 5:1-11. It is our right and our responsibility to vote on November 2.

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