On an October evening in North Carolina’s capital, a massive stage in a darkened auditorium is backlit by tall screens and bass-pounding music and vocals fill the space.

There is a jury table in front of the stage. To think American Idol but with a clearly religious focus. It’s the night for the congregation to choose a worship team at Cross Assembly Church, inside a sanctuary of about 1,700 people on a sprawling, multi-winged campus that resembles a high school or community college.

This Pentecostal church is led by pastor Chad Harvey; his sermons – typically to crowds of around 3,000 people a week – are often featured on Cross Assembly’s social media channels. Harvey says only a small part of his job intersects with politics, but it’s not possible to avoid political discourse entirely.

“If I thought that the fate of history depended on the 2024 elections, I would be as worried as you and I would swallow as many pills as you. “Fortunately, I don’t believe in those things,” he said in a sermon posted on social media over the summer. “My hope is not in politics, but in Jesus.”

These days, evangelical and Pentecostal conservatives are a powerful force in Republican politics. And they remained loyal to former President Donald Trump through three consecutive presidential elections. In fact, in the final weeks of the tight race in North Carolina, Trump has been appealing directly to religious conservatives.

in North Carolina, Everything Considered Host Scott Detrow sat down with Harvey in a small side prayer room on the Cross Assembly campus and talked about all of this—Trump, religion, politics in general.

Andrea Ellen Reed / for NPR

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Scott Detrow: How much do politics come up in your daily conversations 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, this is very interesting. I think anyone looking at the Evangelical Pentecostal movement from the outside would assume that politics plays a huge role in the life of the church. Actually it is not. I would say 1-2 percent of my conversations are about politics. I think a lot of people are just trying to make a living. They are trying to continue their lives.

Now, I said to our nation, you know, our church has been accused of being a little bit too political, and I said, “You know, the church isn’t getting more political, the politics is getting more spiritual.” And so we see this infiltration into the political sphere of things that used to be the domain of the church: the family, human sexuality. Now politics is beginning to address these moral issues.

detrow: How do you decide which candidates to support? Does it look through the lens of the issues they support? Through how they emerge as individuals?

Harvey: What I tell our community is to look at the platform, not the person. And so you can have some people with some pretty deep moral struggles who support a platform that we support. And I say to our people: Don’t pay too much attention to the struggles, pay attention to the platform. Because the Bible says: There is no one righteous. No, not one. We are all terrible people. So whether it’s some of the recent accusations against Mark Robinson (Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina) or Kamala Harris and Willie Brown, Donald Trump telling Howard Stern that the sexual revolution of the 1970s was “my personal Vietnam” — they all suck people. That’s the one thing we need to keep in mind as a congregation.

detrow: Let me ask Trump the direct question on this issue. Donald Trump is someone who, despite having very high support from many Christians across the country, lives in a golden tower with his name on it, rudely insults people, and faces criminal charges, among other things. And some people, from what I understand, think that’s not the message of Christianity, but there is very strong support. What’s the best way to explain this to someone who says they don’t understand?

Andrea Ellen Reed / for NPR

Harvey: So again, I’m going back to the whole we’re all terrible people thing. Trump is confused. Kamala Harris is in terrible shape. Accusations were leveled against Joe Biden. We are all terrible individuals. And I think what keeps coming back to me is that a lot of people in the evangelical Pentecostal community think we’re having a constant Trump rally 24/7. Actually we are not. We are well aware of its weaknesses. We know very well where he made a mistake. I think the reason Trump resonates with evangelicals is that, aside from the confusion we all know, the platform he supports, like it or not, is closer to our view of scripture than the other way around.

detrow: So does this create a world where no one is personally accountable?

Harvey: I think at some point a line will be crossed. And at that point I said, of course that’s okay. Let’s make sure we use this standard everywhere. In other words, “This candidate did this. I can’t support him.” That’s okay. Don’t support him. All I want is the same standard to be used.

detrow: You mentioned lieutenant governor Mark Robinson. I want to ask about that because I think one of the first things that attracted us was that you had talked to Cross Assembly in the past and got to know him a little bit.

Harvey: Yes. Yes.

detrow: What do you say to him, as a candidate and as a man?

Harvey: You know, he’s very cute as a man. I think one of the things that attracted him to so many people in our congregation was having someone in high political office who spoke our language. I’ve mentioned Mark Robinson many times, because for every strength there is a corresponding weakness. Its strength is that it is not part of the political system. His weakness is that he sometimes talks like a man who is not part of the political system and perhaps says things that make people uncomfortable. But as an individual, I think the values ​​he espouses in the pulpit really resonate with our biblical worldviews.

Detrow: From what I hear, this line has not been crossed yet.

Harvey: Yes. …He spoke at our church and I think some people see that and say, do you see him as a spiritual leader? No, I don’t want to. He is currently a political candidate.

detrow: I think we’ve talked about this in bits and pieces here and there, but I want to give you a chance to talk directly about it in one fell swoop. What do you think about more secular audiences, listeners of other religious faiths, listeners who live in other parts of the country? What do you think they misunderstand most about congregations like yours?

Harvey: Wow. This is a great question. Again, when I put my ear to the ground and see what’s being said about the Evangelical Pentecostal voting bloc, I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that this is what dominates our minds. This is what really drives us. I hear this term all the time: Christian nationalism. This was the buzzword of 2024. Until this year, I had never heard of us trying to impose our Christian beliefs on this nation and make us a Christian nation. This may also be true for other congregations. I don’t know that this is true for the majority of evangelical Pentecostal Christians.

You know, the Bible says that your goal should be to live a peaceful and quiet life. I think most of us just want to live a peaceful and quiet life and be able to share the good news of Jesus Christ. I don’t think we’re driven by a desire to make America a Christian nation, and I don’t think politics really occupies as much of our brains as people think.

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