Value and Faith Voters Cannot Be Ignored and Expected to Vote for GOP Candidates

By Chad Connelly, CP Op-Ed Contributor Friday, June 27, 2014

Since Ronald Reagan's sweeping victory in the 1980 presidential election, conservatives and people of faith have been the largest and most reliable voting block for the Republican Party. The GOP's longtime commitment to traditional values with a platform that doesn't mind placing those values front and center has made it the natural political home for people of faith.

In the last two elections however, faith voters haven't voted for the Republican candidate in the numbers or percentages that were typical in prior election cycles. As a result, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus made a commitment last year not only engage non-traditional voters for our party, but also to re-engage our party's base. In the Chairman's words, "we can't just parachute in a few months before an election and expect to win the vote."

Currently there are an estimated eighty-nine million evangelicals who are eligible to vote in the US, but only about one-third of them cast a vote in the average election due to frustration with the direction of our country; and those numbers don't take into account millions of other faith-minded conservatives.

Even many pastors and faith leaders that I've met with have expressed that they don't think that their votes or their engagement makes any difference. I've repeated in dozens of meetings in each of the 21 states that I've visited so far as the RNC's Director of Faith Outreach that we must let our votes and presence be spiritual reflections of our beliefs.

Registering to vote and preaching about Biblical values in the pulpit aren't "political talk" at all. They are imperatives that help ensure that the spiritual values that built our country live on in the political institutions that give us the laws that we live by.

America will decide whether this experiment in freedom lives on or goes the way of the central planners who have ruined so many countries throughout history. If interesting, I encourage you to check out our movement at www.GOPFaith.com and register to re-engage our culture and our political system.

Chad Connelly is the Faith Engagement Director at the RNC. Prior to joining the National Party Chad was the Chairman of the South Carolina State Republican Party.