On a late October evening in North Carolina's capital city, a massive stage in a dark auditorium is backlit by tall screens, and bass-thumping music and vocals are filling the space.
There's a table of judges in front of the stage. Think American Idol but with a clearly religious focus. It's worship team audition night at Cross Assembly Church inside the congregation's nearly 1,700-seat sanctuary on a sprawling, multi-wing campus that resembles a high school or community college.
This Pentecostal church is led by pastor Chad Harvey, whose sermons — often to weekly crowds of about 3,000 — usually feature on Cross Assembly's social media channels. Harvey says only a small part of his job intersects with politics, but there’s no way to completely avoid political discourse.
“If I thought the fate of history depended on the 2024 election, I'd be as anxious as you and popping as many pills you are. Fortunately, I don't believe that stuff,” he said in a sermon posted to social media over the summer. “My hope is in Jesus, not in the politics.”
These days, Evangelical and Pentecostal conservatives are a powerful force in Republican politics. And they have stuck by former President Donald Trump for three presidential elections in a row. In fact, in the closing weeks of a tight race in North Carolina, Trump has been appealing directly to religious conservatives.
In North Carolina, All Things Considered host Scott Detrow sat down with Harvey and talked about all of this — Trump, religion, politics in general — in a small side prayer room on Cross Assembly's campus.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Scott Detrow: How much does politics come up in day-to-day conversation when you're talking to people here, when you're talking to people in the congregation, when you're doing your pastoral work?
Chad Harvey: You know, it's very interesting. I think an outsider looking into the Evangelical Pentecostal movement would assume that politics plays a huge role in the life of the church. It actually doesn't. I'd say 1-2% of my conversations are about politics. I think a lot of people are just trying to make ends meet. They're trying to live their lives.
Now, I've told our folks this, you know, our church is accused of being a little bit too political, and I said: “You know, the church is not getting more political, politics is getting more spiritual.” And so we're seeing this infiltration into the political realm of things that used to be the church's territory: family, human sexuality. Now politics is starting to tackle those spiritual issues.
Detrow: How do you think about which candidates you are going to support? Is it through the lens of the issues they support? Is it through how they come across as individuals?
Harvey: What I've told our congregation is we look at the platform, not the person. And so you can have some people with some pretty deep moral struggles who are upholding a platform that we support. And I tell our people, don't pay as much attention to the struggles — pay attention to the platform. Because here's what the Bible says: There's none righteous. No, not one. We're all messed-up people. So whether it be some of the accusations that have been lodged at (North Carolina Lieutenant Governor) Mark Robinson recently, whether it be Kamala Harris and Willie Brown, Donald Trump telling Howard Stern the sexual revolution of the 1970s was “my personal Vietnam” — they're all messed-up people. And so that's the one thing we have to keep in mind as a congregation.
Detrow: Let me just ask the direct question about this with Trump. Donald Trump has such a high support from so many Christians around the country, and yet is somebody who lives in a gold tower with his name on it, who crudely insults people and, among other things, is facing criminal charges. And some people just feel like this is not the message, as I understand it, of Christianity, but there's such a strong support. What's the best way you explain it to someone who says, I just don't understand that?
Harvey: So I would say, again, I keep going back to we're all messed up people. Trump is messed up. Kamala Harris is messed up. Joe Biden has had accusations thrown at him. We're all messed-up individuals. And so I think what I keep coming back to is a lot of people seem to think that we're having a continuous, 24/7 Trump rally in the Evangelical Pentecostal circle. We're actually not. We're well aware of his foibles. We're well aware of where he's messed up. I think the reason Trump is resonating with Evangelicals is this mess aside that we all know about, the platform he's supporting, like it or not, is closer aligned to our view of scripture than the other side.
Detrow: Does that create a world, though, where there's never any accountability for anybody personally?
Harvey: I do think that at some point, there will be a line that's crossed. And so at that point, what I said is, sure, that's fine. Let's just make sure we're using that standard across the board. So, “This candidate did this. I can't support him.” That's fine. Don't support him. The only thing I'm asking is to use that same standard.
Detrow: You mentioned the lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson. I want to ask about that because I think one of the first things that drew us was that he's spoken to Cross Assembly in the past, and you've gotten to know him a little bit.
Harvey: Yeah. Yeah.
Detrow: What do you make of him as a candidate and as a man?
Harvey: You know, as a man, very winsome. I think one thing that drew him to a lot of individuals in our congregation is we have somebody in high political office who's talking our language. I've said many times about Mark Robinson, for every strength is a corresponding weakness. His strength is he's not part of the political system. The weakness is sometimes he talks like a man who's not part of the political system, and maybe he phrases things that make people uncomfortable. But as an individual, I really feel like the values that he espoused from the pulpit really resonated with our biblical worldviews.
Detrow: What I'm hearing is that line hasn't been crossed yet.
Harvey: Yeah. ...He did speak at our church, and I think some people see that and say, well, do you view him as a spiritual leader? Well, no, I don't. He's still a political candidate.
Detrow: I think we've talked about this in pieces here and there, but I want to give you a chance just to directly talk about it in one swoop. What do you think more secular listeners, listeners of other religious persuasions, listeners who live in other parts of the country — what do you think it is they misunderstand the most about congregations like yours?
Harvey: Wow. That's a great question. I would say, again, kind of putting my ear to the ground and seeing what's being said about the Evangelical Pentecostal voting bloc, I think one of the biggest misperceptions is that this is what is dominating our mind. This is what's really driving us. I keep hearing this term, Christian nationalism. That's been the big buzzword in 2024. I've not heard of that until this year that we're just trying to impose our Christian beliefs on this nation and make us a Christian nation. That may be true for other congregations. I don't know that that's true for a large segment of Evangelical Pentecostal Christians.
You know, the Bible says, make it your goal to live a peaceful and quiet life. I think a lot of us just want to have a peaceful and quiet life, be able to share the good news of Jesus Christ. I don't think we're driven by this desire to make America a Christian nation, and I don't think politics really occupies as big a part of our brain as people think it does.
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