Democrats are counting on Black voters to, once again, be a critical part of their winning coalition. And, once again, they’re relying on Black churches to be the driving force to get “souls to the polls.”
The problem is that the type of Black voters Democrats need to win — young Black voters — aren’t flocking to churches in the same way that their elders did in their youth.
Data from the American Enterprise Institute reported that more than a third of Gen Z identified as religiously unaffiliated in 2021.
The Pew Research Center also reported that almost a third of Black Gen Z and millennials identified as nonreligious that same year, compared to 11% of Baby Boomers. Half of Black Gen Zers attended churches with a predominantly Black clergy, the data noted, compared to two-thirds of the Boomers.
In the past, Democrats could visit a church and leave assured that they would have support from Black voters of all ages. But these days, Democrats aren’t feeling as confident — especially with younger Black voters. And Kamala Harris’ campaign is painfully aware.
“The Black church has become stale,” a person close to Harris’ campaign told NOTUS. “It has to do that much more for Kamala Harris to be successful. It’s no longer the epicenter for political change that it once was in my father’s generation.”
A Democratic state party leader in Michigan noted that the rapid decline in attendance at Black churches during the COVID-19 pandemic defanged a strategy that once made Democrats almost untouchable with young Black voters.
“We have a different path than we used to,” Kevin Tolbert, a state party leader from Michigan, told NOTUS. “The numbers are dramatically lower. And if you ever get young people back in churches, you’re going to need a model that doesn’t have people in the church for two, three hours.”
The Harris campaign has tried to stay current with the most effective methods to reach younger Black voters. It has invested in social media campaigns and on-the-ground outreach to voters at historically Black colleges. The campaign also engages young Black voters in more creative places, such as music festivals, sporting events and bars.
Rep. Jim Clyburn also noted that Democrats have invested in outreach to the “Divine Nine” Black fraternities and sororities. He said the success of the Win With Black Women calls and the group’s male counterpart was proof that Democrats could grab more young Black voters without relying on churches.
“These are young people who may not be in the churches, but they’re in the sororities and they’re in the fraternities,” Clyburn told NOTUS. “I’ve never seen them so energized before. We are going after the ‘Divine Nine.’ We are doing stuff with community organizations where we come to get CEOs and community-based organizations.”
But Black churches remain to be central parts of Black political conversation and Black political power. While they may not be as effective at turning out votes as they once were, Black churches are certainly not irrelevant. Candidates who want to make inroads with Black communities still have to spend time courting voters at churches — they just also have to do more.
“The church is still viable and very important,” Pastor Lonnie Brown from Michigan, who advises both Democratic and Republican candidates at the local, state and national levels, told NOTUS.
“It depends on who the minister is and what the message is,” he added. “I’m not having a problem reaching young people. Many ministers I know are not having that problem.”
Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP, noted that religious Democrats replicating a campaign — “Souls to the Polls” — that “came from my pulpit” over 20 years ago is proof that “the tradition of the Black church speaking to issues like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is still very relevant today.”
He has since created a newer program for younger voters, a spin-off of the classic “Souls to the Polls” called “Soles to the Polls,” complete with customized merchandise.
“I wanted to do something with young people,” he said. “The ones who had their caps turned around, wearing the big shoes, gym shoes and the baggy pants. So we did a design with the cap turned around. We did baggy pants, and we did gym shoes.”
But other Black leaders agreed that political outreach needed to extend beyond the pulpit.
Rev. Stacey Tarlton, a religious leader in South Carolina who volunteers for the state’s Democratic Party, told NOTUS that Black churches have to become “the church without walls.”
“You have to go set up information tables at grocery stores, at Walmart, go to the barber shops, go to the beauty salons, go to the nail salons,” she said. “You have to get out and actually do the meet-and-greet out in public and say, ‘Here’s a little piece of paper. Won’t take you but two minutes to read over. All you have to do is put vote.org, check your status and register to vote there.’”
Even the person close to Harris’ campaign — who added it would be “a bold and hapless political strategy to abandon the Black church and anybody who would advise any candidate to do that probably has never won a race” — concurred that the strategy of using Black churches for voter outreach just “needs reinvigoration.”
“We have to pump those resources and energy and have those visionary leaders at the pulpit — the T.D. Jakeses, the Jamal Bryants of the world,” this person said. “You utilize the church so they can go out and be apostles. The church is a vessel for apostles of hope and so you utilize the church to make sure those people go out and do the work you need them to do.”
Other sources argued that Black churchgoers were already going to vote — and vote Democratic — so trying to mobilize voters through churches wasn’t really a productive use of time.
Joshua Doss, a research manager at HIT Strategies — an official pollster for the Harris campaign — told NOTUS that the company’s data shows that Black pastors are beneath Black business leaders and even local Black politicians on the hierarchy of trusted messengers. Black pastors only score higher with Black seniors, a group Democrats are already dominating.
The Black voters reconsidering their relationship with the civic process, particularly younger Black men, Doss said, are “not really in the churches.”
“This is one of the things we talk a lot of crap about, like Charlamagne Tha God and some other folks? This is one of the areas where I actually give him a decent amount of credit,” he said. “Even though I don’t necessarily agree with his political stance, this is where you meet these young men. It’s not in the church anymore.”
Data backs up Doss’ sentiments. The Brookings Institution reported that churchgoing Black Americans’ affiliation with the Democratic Party has fallen since the 1970s — 68% of Baptists view themselves as Democrats now, compared to 78% almost 50 years ago. Those who left the church also seem to have left the Democratic Party.
Additionally, a study from the Black Voter Project found that favorable views toward Donald Trump had increased in recent years — 26% of Black voters aged 18 to 29 had a “warm” view of Trump, and 12% said they would vote for him. Young Black men particularly held this view, the study found.
In Pastor Dwight McKissic’s world, it’s not the church’s job to proselytize undecided voters.
“I honestly don’t believe it should be the purpose of a church to try to persuade people to vote on any particular candidate,” he told NOTUS. “I plan to vote for Kamala Harris, but I don’t see it as my job to convince my parishioners to vote for Kamala Harris.”
“The church is not a political entity. It is a spiritual entity,” McKissic, who does work with Evangelicals for Harris, added. “Who am I to tell my brothers and sisters who voted Republican they’re wrong? Or the ones who voted Democrat that they’re right? They both are voting in light of what they believe is best for them. And my size fits all when it comes to politics.”
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Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.