In divisive times, Minnesota faith leaders are wary of politics

This story was reported by Reid Forgrave in Minneapolis, Jenny Berg in St. Cloud, Jp Lawrence in Mankato, Trey Mewes in Dundas, Sean Baker in Rochester, Jana Hollingsworth in Duluth, Kim Hyatt in Lake George, Minn., and written by Reid Forgrave.

ST. CLOUD — Congregants filed into Jubilee Worship Center, an evangelical church just off Highway 15 here, on a recent Sunday. All around were indications of election season.

On church property, visible from the busy highway, were political signs: A Republican candidate for Minnesota House, a nonpartisan candidate for St. Cloud mayor. (Any candidate may pay the church to place signs there.) On a table inside, a sign read, “1 in 3 Christians doesn’t vote. That’s about 25 million people.”

A voter guide detailed policy differences between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on immigration, inflation, guns and abortion. A church member handed out instructions for a letter-writing campaign asking Christians in Michigan, a crucial swing state, to “vote for the candidates who stand for biblical values.” The script mentioned “transgender ideology,” high grocery bills and criminals crossing America’s borders.

“All we do is encourage people to vote and do their research so they know what the positions are, seek the Lord and vote accordingly,” Rev. Mark Johnson, senior pastor at Jubilee, said after the service. “We don’t promote any candidate.”

Some 70 miles away in southwest Minneapolis, Mayflower Community Congregational United Church of Christ took a very different tone. “PROTECT MULTIRACIAL DEMOCRACY,” read a big sign facing Interstate 35W. Other signs proclaimed progressive values: protecting queer kids, the environment, immigrants and refugees.

From the pulpit, the Rev. Susie Hayward talked about humans building walls: In Palestine and Israel, along our southern border. A couple weeks before, the church’s senior pastor, the Rev. Sarah Campbell, discussed this election in stark terms, drawing on the analogy to German resentment and grievance that led to Adolf Hitler. She spoke of two types of churches, those that enable fascism versus those that resist it.

Neither the church in St. Cloud nor the church in Minneapolis endorsed a candidate. But it was plain where they stood.

The Johnson Amendment, a 1950s-era provision in federal tax code, prohibits religious institutions or other charitable nonprofits from campaigning on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.

When Minnesota Star Tribune reporters fanned out to churches, mosques and synagogues across Minnesota a month before the presidential election, plenty of religious leaders felt called to discuss politics from the pulpit — just in ways that didn’t risk their tax-exempt status.

Hayward said it isn’t hard to steer clear of a violation. Just don’t endorse candidates, she said, and faith leaders have carte blanche. “There’s no way to not talk politically,” she said in an interview, calling Jesus a political figure.

“Religions should be holding all political parties to account,” Hayward said. “On Nov. 5 we’re electing a pharaoh; we’re not electing a savior. And all the political parties fall short of the ideals of Jesus.”

While some Minnesota faith leaders directly spoke to congregants about the election, others sermonized about important issues without mention of electoral politics.

At the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary, the largest Catholic church in Duluth, the priest spoke not of politics but of divorce and the importance of annulments. At New Creation World Outreach Church in Mankato, the pastor spoke of a crisis of manhood in America. At First Unitarian Universalist Church in Rochester, the pastor spoke of how Christians mustn’t wait for miracles — they must make their own.

At Shiloh Temple International Ministries, a historic Black church in Minneapolis, the Sunday was unique: It marked the opening of Shiloh Cares Food Shelf, a $2 million space with funding from federal, state and local governments. A parade of Democrat-affiliated elected officials offered congratulations from the pulpit, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar. There was no talk of elections.

At Canvas Church inside a Dundas, Minn., strip mall, pastor Jeb McGuire spoke of treating others well and Christians’ responsibility to preach the Bible.

“How many of you know there’s an election happening in a month?” he said. “How many of you know that life goes on?”

In the lobby next to the coffee was a table with voter guides from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life and the Family Research Council, two conservative groups.

At the Mankato Islamic Center, an imam did not directly criticize presidential candidates’ stances on Israel but decried Israel’s actions in Palestine and Lebanon. “They are killing little children,” Sheikh Salahadin Wazir said. “If that’s not barbarity, what is?”

At Rosh Hashanah services at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park, neither Harris nor Trump was named by Rabbi Alexander Davis. But he did not shy away from how the Hamas attack upended his community. He said that while no politician is above reproach, and while Jews hate war, this is a just war.

“We can’t speak of brokenness without acknowledging the massive destruction in Gaza, which is also being held captive by Hamas, and in Lebanon held captive by Hezbollah,” he added.

There is a difference between partisan talk and political talk, said Marie Ellis, public policy director at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.

“We’re growing to expect that everything has a partisan angle,” Ellis said. “When you see a church or other charitable nonprofit take a position on an issue of public policy that’s impacting their community, the public is primed to view it as partisan.”

Though Trump has asserted he “got rid of” the Johnson Amendment, and though some conservatives have promised to do so, the provision remains on the books.

While the IRS opens tax inquiries or sends letters to religious organizations accused of crossing the line, it’s extremely rare for their tax-exempt status to be revoked. A report in the early 2000s indicated only two churches had ever had their tax-exempt status revoked over Johnson Amendment violations, said Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a professor at Notre Dame Law School and an expert in election tax law.

“For the IRS it’s the smell test — I know it when I see it,” Mayer said. “But we really don’t know how widespread it is and if the current partisan divide is increasing political activity by churches or nonchurch charities. I get impression it’s increasing.”

At a recent service at Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, pastor David Lose acknowledged the difficulties confronting society: war, civil unrest, ugly politics. The church, he told his congregation, must rise above.

“Political discourse fraught with anger and tension across ideological differences that run like fault lines across friend groups, families and even some congregations,” he said. “We’re trying to be a place where love, God’s love — for you, for me, for all of us and everyone, is our theme.”

But not all religious leaders believe in staying above the fray. In fact, plenty believe America’s political fray needs more religion.

Dale Witherington, a conservative pastor who leads the Minnesota Legislative Prayer Caucus and provides counsel to lawmakers, said pastors ought not fear politics from the pulpit. It’s not that churches should become more political, Witherington said; it’s that churches ought to use the Bible to better guide their politics.

“Most pastors operate on fear rather than faith when it comes to dealing with government and political issues,” Witherington, who runs Restore Minnesota, an organization that promotes “Biblical citizenship,” wrote in an emailed response to questions from the Star Tribune. “They should be more concerned about offending God by withholding or manipulating Biblical truth than some individual who thinks they own the pastor because of the checks they write.”

At River Valley Church, a multisite megachurch headquartered in Burnsville, pastor Rob Ketterling’s sermon, titled “Cast Votes, Not Stones,” confronted the election directly. He displayed a slide of nine congregants running for local and state offices.

“When people say, ‘Don’t talk about politics and religion,’ I really think that’s just a way to keep Christians out of politics,” Ketterling preached. “We can’t let that happen.”

Ketterling spoke about Christianity’s history of political involvement: In outlawing infanticide and abortion in the Roman Empire, in outlawing slavery in England, in founding the United States. While he said he’s independent, there was no mistaking his Republican leanings. He criticized states like Minnesota that curtailed freedoms during the pandemic: “It was like, ‘What happened? I’m behind the Iron Curtain!’” He denounced how Democrats treated their one-vote majority in the Minnesota Legislature as if it were a supermajority.

But he also was certain to tell his congregants that only Jesus, and never a political party, is the answer.

In 2020, Ketterling was invited to the White House for Trump’s acceptance of the Republican nomination. He declined. It felt too partisan, he said in an interview, and that so publicly siding with a political party would hurt his ministry.

“It feels like politics has become religious, not that religion has become political,” Ketterling said. “Pastors’ deeply held values cause them to struggle with when they need to speak up on this issue and not remain silent in order to get to a long-term peace versus a peace for now. That’s a struggle pastors have right now. Many want to speak out, but they also want to be peacekeepers. There’s a tension there.”