A Pew finding puts Black pastors who teach the sanctity of unborn life at the center of an old tension: how to teach conviction without dictating a vote.
By EEW Magazine Online Faith & Culture Editors
(EEW Magazine Online file photo)
In a January 2026 Pew Research Center survey, 68% of Black Protestants said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. For Black pastors whose churches teach the sanctity of unborn life, that finding describes many of the people in their pews. The survey measured views on the law, not personal moral judgments, so a church member can oppose abortion morally and still hold a different view of what the law should require.
That gap between moral conviction and legal policy sits at the heart of what pastors carry into the pulpit every election season. One candidate on the ballot supports expanding abortion access and campaigns on affordable housing, health care and help for struggling families. Another promises to restrict abortion and campaigns on policies that some Christians see as protecting families and others believe would harm immigrants and the poor. In congregations that hold strong convictions about the sanctity of unborn life, members often want to know where the church stands.
Atlanta pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell offered his own answer in a 2023 sermon that drew wide attention online, as EEW reported. “I’m not just pulling a lever for blue just because I’m Black,” Mitchell, founder of 2819 Church, told his congregation. Drawing on Matthew 5:13, where Jesus calls His followers the salt of the earth, he described the believer’s vote as part of salt’s preserving work. “I pull the lever to keep back decay,” he said. He named his opposition to abortion as a conviction that shapes his vote, even when it sets him apart from many other Black voters. He stopped short of endorsing a candidate or party.
Pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell preaches at 2819 Church on Nov. 16, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
For churches, that boundary is written into federal law. Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code, which covers churches, bars tax-exempt organizations from intervening in campaigns for or against candidates, a provision known as the Johnson Amendment. Churches may still teach on moral issues, address public policy and offer nonpartisan voter education.
In July 2025, in a Texas lawsuit brought by the National Religious Broadcasters and two churches, the IRS said the ban does not apply when a house of worship speaks to its congregation about electoral politics “viewed through the lens of religious faith.” In March 2026, a federal judge rejected that settlement and dismissed the case, ruling that the court lacked authority to approve it. The plaintiffs said they planned to appeal, and the Treasury Department said it would issue new guidance for houses of worship. As of publication, the prohibition remains in force.
Even if the law changed, it would not resolve whether endorsing a candidate fits a church’s spiritual calling. That question begins with what a congregation believes about unborn life.
Many Christians who oppose abortion start with Psalm 139:13–16, which describes God forming the psalmist in the womb, and Jeremiah 1:5, where God tells the prophet He knew him before forming him. Neither passage was written as a statement on abortion law. Read alongside Scripture’s prohibitions against shedding innocent blood, they have shaped Christian teaching that unborn life carries God-given worth. Other Christians affirm that worth while disagreeing about what it requires of the law, particularly when a mother’s life is at risk or a pregnancy results from sexual violence.
Denominations draw those lines differently. The United Methodist Church’s Social Principles state that its “commitment to the sanctity of human life makes us reluctant to condone abortion” and reject abortion as a means of birth control, while recognizing “tragic conflicts of life with life” that may justify ending a pregnancy. The Catholic Church teaches that direct abortion is always gravely wrong.
Many Christians also distinguish between a vote and an endorsement. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ guide, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, teaches that a Catholic may never vote for a candidate in order to advance a position like legal abortion, which it calls intrinsically evil. It also says a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s “unacceptable position” may vote for that candidate “for other morally grave reasons,” a bar the bishops set high.
A church endorsement carries different weight. When a congregation speaks as an institution, members and outsiders alike can read its words as the church’s moral approval, even when members disagree.
(EEW Magazine Online file photo)
Scripture warns against letting political loyalty reshape conviction. When Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah to kill newborn boys, they refused because they “feared God” (Exodus 1:17, KJV). The Hebrew verb yare can mean fear or reverence, and here it describes a reverence for God strong enough to govern what they did. The prophets confronted kings, John the Baptist rebuked Herod, and the apostles told the authorities, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29, KJV).
Paul teaches respect for governing authorities in Romans 13, yet Scripture never treats a ruler as beyond moral accountability.
That principle cuts across party lines. Agreement with Christians on one issue does not exempt a candidate from scrutiny on others. Pastors who speak about public policy face the test of applying the same standard to allies and opponents.
Christians also disagree about how to weigh unborn life alongside other obligations.For many abortion opponents, deliberately ending an unborn life is a uniquely grave wrong. Others argue that a consistent commitment to human dignity must also address poverty, racial discrimination, maternal mortality and access to health care. Scripture speaks to the vulnerable throughout. Proverbs 31:8–9 calls God’s people to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves and to defend the poor and needy.
James 1:27 calls care for orphans and widows pure religion, and in Matthew 25 Jesus counts service to the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner as service to Him. Christians differ over which policies best answer those commands, and a candidate’s promises are only as reliable as the policies and record behind them.
Many churches that oppose abortion express that conviction most directly outside the voting booth. They support expectant mothers facing financial hardship, strengthen adoption and foster-care ministries and advocate for better maternal health care.
For pastors leading congregations like those reflected in the Pew survey, that means two things: teaching what the church believes about life with clarity and recognizing that members who share that conviction may weigh their votes differently. A church can hold firmly to its doctrine and teach it with conviction while leaving the ballot to each member’s conscience.
The 68% figure measures how Black Protestants answer a question about the law. What pastors teach shapes what comes before that answer: what believers hold about unborn life, and how that conviction travels with them into the voting booth.
