How a Pastor Should Talk About 2024
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Hey everybody, why aren't more pastors speaking about this election? Johnny Artavanis joins us. You're going to love this if you are a believer and text this to your pastor. Say, why don't you speak out like this guy? Confront your pastor. Ask them the question. If your pastor is not speaking out like Johnny, find a new church. Confront your pastor today. Become a member today. Members.CharlieKirk.com. That is members.CharlieKirk.com. Get involved with Turning Point USA at TPUSA.com. That is TPUSA.com. Rich Barris also joins us with the latest news out of Michigan and whether or not

Pennsylvania is still in play. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here.

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Okay, everybody, right now we are chasing ballots. We have our team out in the streets and you guys should go vote early, vote now. And then once you vote, your job is not done. That is step one. Go find 10 other people.

Go find your neighbor, your nephew, especially the one that is not a high prop voter. The one that's like, I don't know about it. You got to dive into that relationship. Do that work. And especially, especially with an exponent on it. If you live in Arizona, if you live in Georgia, if you live in North Carolina, if you live in Pennsylvania, if you live in Michigan, if you live in Wisconsin, those and Nevada, those seven states, those seven states.

Are the ones where you really got to lean in and do the work. Face-to-face conversations. Get your friends out. Okay, joining us now is Rich Barris from the Public Polling Project and founder of Big Data Poll. Rich, welcome to the program. Rich, before we get into your breaking Michigan news, give our audience a sense of the state of the race. Where do things stand right now?

Look, if you're a supporter of Donald Trump, you're positive. If you're a supporter of Kamala Harris, you're concerned. And there's a reason for that. The race is trending in Donald Trump's favor. Is it over yet? Absolutely not. But it is trending in his direction. And I think people should think of the race like this.

For a year and a half, Donald Trump had a lead on Joe Biden. We also would pull her as a, and others as an alternative in case there was some kind of switcheroo like they pulled. And he led Mala Harris for the fat forever for that entire time. Uh, there was no point in which she led and Joe Biden didn't. Uh,

And then the media did what they did, which was help the Democrats remove Joe Biden and create this like, you know, artificial enthusiasm for her and try to give her an image makeover. And the question is whether or not that runs out because it has deflated and now it is on its last legs. There's no way to recreate it. Will it deflate before the election? And, you know, will it? Obviously, we have more than an election day. And the answer is it's happening very quickly.

So three weeks out, it's trending in your direction. That's what you want to win an election. Donald Trump is starting to surge earlier than he has in the past. Yes. So Kamala Harris has peaked and it will be very hard for her to get back to the high point that she enjoyed in mid-August.

Donald Trump has not yet peaked. In fact, he is just beginning an uptick. Is that a fair and objective and impartial analysis, Rich? It is. You know, I look back at the memo that Tony Fabrizio and he's took Trump's pollster. So you always take these things with a grain of salt.

But I think back to the memo when Tony sent to the campaign, which obviously the media got he wanted them to get. And it said that we're going to see, you know, a response bias and an artificial fluff that that bolsters Harris's numbers because of the media, whatever you want to call it, Charlie propaganda, support, push, right, whatever you want to call it. And then that will fade as we get to election. That is he saying.

Come Wednesday, Thursday after the election, we may look back and say what Tony said is exactly what happened because we have gone through these phases now. And that is not – it's impartial whether he's Trump's pollster or he's Harris' pollster. And it's important to note that both sides see the race in the same way. They just spin it in a different direction. Okay, so let's get into your Michigan data. You just come out of the field there. What did you learn? What did you see? Okay.

So Michigan's a very interesting state. When we talk about national numbers with the working class, when we talk about these different margins that different candidates enjoy, Michigan's interesting because it's still very white, yet there are some stubbornly Democratic ancestral voting groups, even among whites and older voters that are much more Democratic than some of the other Great Lakes states and certainly nationwide overall.

And there's a couple of things that Trump has to do in order to win that state. And one of them is break into that group. And he is. So that's that that's one of the there's a lot of stories in this poll, Charlie, but that's one of them. And the reason why it took my caught my eye is because I remember Michigan in twenty sixteen. And we did have Trump plus one in Michigan in twenty sixteen.

It was Hillary plus two, plus three, until that final week when those undecided older white Democratic voters decided, they would call them, remember, Reagan Democrats, people used to refer to them as back then, when they were undecided and they decided, fine, I'm going with Trump. That, coupled with a group that supported Bernie actually backing Trump, put him over and put him over barely.

But now it's that plus some other things that are going on. The biggest movement in Michigan and our poll is occurring in southeastern Michigan. It's like we know what's going to happen and the only question is whether or not there's high turnout. No, right. And I mean, the Upper Peninsula for folks who aren't.

familiar with the state. We know he's going to win Southwest Michigan. We know he's going to, you know, route the areas in the central part of the state. It's the Southeastern part of the state where we have the Macomb Oakland combination. And then of course, how well is he doing in Monroe? How well is he doing in Macomb? And then Wayne County, look at the numbers in Wayne County, Charlie, I went back in our poll in 2020, which was Biden plus two. And that's basically what he won by in our final poll in Michigan,

Trump was in the 20s in Wayne County. He wound up getting about 30%. He's in the 30s before you lean undecided voters. What's driving that? It's the same story that we've heard for a long time now. Lower propensity voters that are voting that did not vote in 20, and then also young black men. And I mean, there are other groups, but young black men are more than two in, or I'm sorry, but black men in general,

period, no matter what age, combined are more than two in 10 for Donald Trump. So what you see in other polls in Michigan, the Quinnipiac poll, which I think was a little too bullish, Charlie, this is much closer, this poll, but it's still a Trump advantage. But Epic MRA, Mitchell Research, you know, these guys have been polling state for years. They see it. And I was wondering whether or not our numbers would be that high with some of these groups. They are.

They are. So would you say then, just kind of to square that, Michigan is very much in play and we're seeing a October surge that the Kamala campaign was not expecting from Donald Trump. They thought that Michigan would be wrapped up with a bow on it and they could focus all their resources on advancing in the Sun Belt or closing up Pennsylvania. Is that a fair summary? Yeah, it is. I got to tell you, Michigan looks like Pennsylvania did a month ago, a month and a half ago, which is, you know what?

trending towards Trump but still close now Pennsylvania just kind of looks we're in Pennsylvania as well it kind of looks ugly at this point for her I'm not saying she cannot turn it around but it looks ugly and Michigan is starting to look like Pennsylvania did a month ago so uh you know Michigan is historically the harder of the three Rust Belt or the Great Lakes states for any Republican to carry even Trump who once carried all three it was still the one that was the closest and

And then in 20, when he lost them and he narrowly lost all three of them, it was the state that gave Joe Biden the largest margin. So that's why we're really focusing on those two states, because we feel like

And honestly, if he buttons up both of those states, it's very difficult to see how he loses. Right. So I got to tell you, even in 2016, when he finally took a lead at the very end, it didn't look like this. And let me let me if I don't know how much time we got, but let me give people like the simple equation on how a Republican needs to win.

A Republican needs to do well enough or basically needs to do well enough in Macomb County to almost make Oakland a wash because you're going to lose Oakland. And then you have to take your margin in Monroe, which is to the south around all around the Detroit area. And Trump will do very well there and combine with Macomb, make Oakland County a wash.

And then the rest of the state you need to use to offset the margin that Wayne County is going to give the Democrat. But Democrats are supposed to hold Republicans at 30 percent of the vote in some of these areas. And that's not going on. So even a small shift in the black vote like we are seeing is having a pretty dramatic impact. Kamala is gaining in Oakland.

any more so than Joe Biden did. And she's definitely not making up any ground whatsoever with the working class in McComb and Monroe, Saginaw and Genesee, all those areas, the Obama-Trump areas, folks, very important. Biden did well, pulled some of those voters back. She's struggling.

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Get relief at andrewandtodd.com today. Let me read you some good stuff here. This is a really good sign. So in a county that Donald Trump won 68% to 29%. So pretty remarkable margin there. Yeah, that's by 39 points where he got a net.

Wow, he received a net 57,000 votes in 2020. Let me read an email from a listener here. First day of voting in Georgia. Charlie, I just early voted in Cherokee County. I stood in line for two and a half hours.

Some of my neighbors are now reporting three hours to vote. Massive, massive turnout today. Was worried there would be political burnout. That is a phenomenal sign, everybody, in Georgia. Let me just tell you right now, that means that there is such pent-up demand. You have three-hour waiting lines on the first day of early voting in a county that Donald Trump won by 39 points. Good, good sign. That means that organically, people are ready to take their country back.

Rich, I want to ask a very direct question here that might be a little bit of a sidestep detour. Are you seeing in any of your data in being in the field that Donald Trump is doing significantly worse with evangelical Christians or that they will not show up in the same numbers? Please tell me the truth, good or bad.

Yeah, no, not yet. We haven't seen anything like that. I've heard this chatter, but if you look at our poll in Michigan, for instance, which isn't like – in truth, there aren't as many in Michigan as there is in Wisconsin or Iowa. And actually, there's quite a few in Ohio. People don't realize it often gets overlooked.

But, you know, 78% certain to vote right now. We're looking at in the sample evangelicals are 82.3. He's winning them like 76 to 20. So and he typically wins them by an even greater margin. But if you look back, Biden was at 26, 27% in our polling in 2020. That didn't materialize. Subgroups, you know, sampling errors for subgroups are higher. So it looks like a fairly normal margin there.

that we have seen in the past. And they're always more Protestants. The religious in general tend to tell pollsters that they're more certain to vote than those that were secular. So I've not seen anything out of the norm, but I'll let you know if I do. But so far, I don't see that. I just don't. That's promising to hear, truly, because there's a lot of chatter more than data about Christians that very well might not show up. I think we have sore loser syndrome, Charlie.

I think there's sore losers. Yeah, there might be. We heard that there might be some of them. Rich, let's just talk about what in closing here, Pennsylvania. What are we looking at here? If Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania, the chances go upwards, as you well know, 95 percent. What do you how are we? Should we think about Pennsylvania? What are we seeing? What are we hearing? Pennsylvania rich break it down for us.

for us. Pennsylvania is next. We're in the field in Pennsylvania right now. Let me just give people a little preview of what I think is huge in both Pennsylvania and in Michigan. In the northern Great Lakes states and in mid-Atlantic, Catholics still have a lot of sway. They are truly a swing voting group. Trump won them against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden won them by low single digits and in some exit polls, even a single point.

And that is a huge deal when you're looking at a state like Pennsylvania, Bucks County, Central and Southern Bucks, wards in Philadelphia. There's lots of places around the state. We can get Allegheny has pockets of Irish and Italian ethnicities and even German Catholics and Germans are the biggest single ethnic subgroup voting bloc in the state of Pennsylvania.

So, uh, we could very much see that Joe Biden was doing well with Catholics in 2020 because he wins, uh, you know, an Irish vote that Hillary Clinton didn't win a working class Italian vote that Hillary Clinton didn't win. And Trump is leading with Catholics right now. And he's leading them by slightly a little bit more than he was leading Hillary Clinton with, uh, now I'm comparing and people should always try to be as, uh, transparent as possible here. Uh,

With that number, I'm comparing my poll to the exit polls, which is kind of apples to oranges. But even from my poll to my poll from now to 2020, Joe Biden and Donald Trump were basically tied with Catholics going to 2020. And Trump here has a basically 10 point lead with Catholics in Pennsylvania. That is very difficult to.

I mean, polls are polls and we get it. But, you know, internally, when we look at some of these subgroups in a state like Pennsylvania, Catholics are huge. Also, Biden won union votes in Pennsylvania 60-40 basically, you know, or in Michigan, excuse me. He won them 60-40. You can look at the poll, Charlie, that we just sent over to you. It's very tight.

now. And that is reflective. You'll see the same thing in Pennsylvania. That margin, of course, public sector unions are still going to back Democrats, which keeps the overall union household margin favorable to Democrats. But it's the margin that matters. And that margin is Joe Biden's margin has evaporated.

And I honestly don't know why people are surprised. When they first pulled this switcheroo, you and I talked about this on your show. And I kind of hypothesized that she'll do better in some areas, but worse in others. That's what's happening now. Very good. Rich Barris, thank you so much. Check out Big Data Poll. Let me know what you find out in Pennsylvania. Thank you so much. Anytime, brother. See you soon.

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Okay, I want to play a piece of tape here. I saw this over the weekend. It was texted to me by a friend of mine, and I loved it. I said, let's get this guy on the show if we can. This guy puts Jesus first, as every pastor should, and every Christian should, and also has the moral clarity to say that we as Christians should fight for what God demands out of us.

The moral clarity was phenomenal. Let's play cut 55 and then we'll welcome our next guest, Johnny Artadenis. Play cut 55. I saw a pastor this week, very well-known pastor, that said – he tweeted or something. Never Trump, this year Harris, always Jesus. I just want you to understand that that is one of the most foolish things I've ever seen. And here's why –

People have asked me this week if I have opinions politically. I have opinions, a lot of them. I'm not a political commentator. I am a preacher of the Bible. But certain things politically are more theological than they used to be. The Democratic Party is a demonic death cult under the power and influence of Satan. To vote for the Democrats is to vote for...

a platform that is building their platform upon everything God hates. Mutilation of bodies, the annihilation of babies in the womb, and the sexualization of your children. That is their calling card. That is what they want to do. They don't hide that. Johnny Artavanis joins us now. Johnny's a senior pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church. Johnny, welcome to the program.

Hey, thanks for having me on, Charlie. Great to be here. And I want to make sure everyone is clear. You should listen to the entire message because that was only a portion of it. And Johnny went deeper and deeper into saying what the most important thing, of course, is not just voting, but glorifying God and all that we do. Johnny, introduce yourself to our audience. Explain the message that you gave. And I'm curious the response you received.

Yeah, well, once again, thanks for having me on. Introducing myself, I'm the lead pastor of Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, Tennessee. I'm a husband and I'm a father. And obviously, I didn't anticipate this with the clip going kind of bonkers like it has. But I think as far as what I've been asked often is what is the role of a Christian? What is the role of the church as it relates to politics?

And people in my church are asking me for clarity. And one of my chief functions as a pastor is to preach the word of God. That's the Bible, which is the revelation of reality. It's the ultimate authority in our life. And my main objective week after week is to go verse by verse through the scripture because I believe the Bible is living and active.

Now, with that being said, I think there are certain times and certain moments and certain topics where as a shepherd, I want to help my people think through things with a biblical worldview so that they're able to look at the world around them and understand things as they should through a biblical perspective. I'd like to just for a moment maybe mention this.

That one of the chief responsibilities of a Christian, Jesus says in Matthew, you are the salt of the earth. He doesn't say you should be salt or you could be salt or you can be salt. He says you are. And we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean when Jesus says you are the salt and light of the earth?

Well, one of the things that SALT does is prevent corruption. And we live in a world that is on a fast track of damning corruption. And one of the things that I want to do as a pastor is with a level of conviction, but also with a level of compassion and tenderness, be able to expose that corruption so that people might begin to understand really the world in which we're living. I could go on, but I want to give you an opportunity to interject.

No, no, this is I'm not interrupting for a reason because I agree with everything that you're saying. And salt and light are two things that also change the environment that they come in contact with. And I love how you say that salt prevents corruption from the erosion of sin, which is unfortunately the post fall what we're living through.

So, Johnny, let's let's break this forward piece by piece. You said that the Democrat Party has become a death cult, which, of course, I totally agree. Abortions outside of the DNC, mutilation of children, the glorification of the slaughter of the unborn, amongst many other things. Go into further detail about that. And how how what was the response you got when you said that from the pulpit?

Yeah, as far as going to greater detail, I think, first of all, we're living in a world that is reaping the worldview they have sown. You can't get past the first sentence of the Bible to be confronted with the reality that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth. That's the Bible. That's the most foundational reality in existence, and it's the most foundational reality in the scripture. And because of that, it's the most

It's the truth that's most attacked. Now, in regards to helping people think through it, because our culture has all but eliminated the reality of a creator, we now live in a world where there is no such thing as truth. You know, it's in Toronto, it's an act of covert racism to teach a child that two plus two equals four. And so you've eliminated truth. And this is what the left wants to do more and more is to eliminate that idea. Oprah says, speak your truth.

But that contradicts the Christian's mindset because Jesus says he is the truth, not a truth. He's the truth. And he came in John 18 to bear witness about the truth. And so just starting to think through how we got here, there's no truth. And if there's no truth, there's no level of morality to discern right or wrong. So that's why we're living in a world

That seems to be hell bent on growing increasingly evil. You mentioned abortion. You know, I could throw out the stats, but this is a, an egregious reality in our culture for one main reason. Babies are not cosmic accidents. They're not grown up germs. They're not just,

the product of one sexual encounter babies are loved by god therefore god hates the murder of those precious babies and i always want to add charlie that there are people listening that may have had an abortion and god is a great forgiver of sin that's why we fall down on our knees before jesus christ who paid for sin but abortion is egregious um people were also asking in my own congregation what's the role of government the role of government

Romans 13 is to punish evildoers and protect those who do good. But we're now living in a society and the leftist agenda is to punish those who do good and protect criminals. And so that no longer is fulfilling God's function for government because he made them. And I wanted to help people think through these things because these are not political issues. They're biblical issues.

Even if you are going to talk about borders, borders are God's idea in Genesis 11. You know, the people come out of exile and the first thing that Nehemiah does is rebuild the wall. And he does so with people that have swords strapped to their legs because borders are not unbiblical. They're not unkind. They're God's idea. The leftist agenda is to, you know,

move in further and further towards socialism but the Bible says he who doesn't work should not eat and sooner or later I think it was Margaret Thatcher that says you're gonna run out of other people's money to give away and so all of these different realities are biblical issues and I want to Charlie and I hope my heart is heard right in it I'm not like mr. soundbite I wasn't dropping trying to drop a bomb I called it demonic and

because Satan hates what God loves and God loves the family. And the leftist agenda is to dismantle and destroy the nuclear family with a father, a wife, a father and a wife and a baby's husband, wife, and wants to dismantle that. And so also the murder of kids you've talked about babies now full term, it is so evil that, you know, part of the pushback I received was, man, this is shocking.

And I understand that. And I'm not saying that every person that's ever voted Democrat is demon possessed. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying if you are a Christian and you are informed of the Democratic agenda, you cannot align yourself with a platform that wants to bring drag story hour into the preschool and where you can change your sex life.

um, behind your back at an elementary school. And so I wanted to call it for what it is because Satan disguises himself as an angel of light and they take terms like reproductive freedom and use that in lieu of baby slaughter. Um, they use distribution of wealth instead of robbery. Um, that's what Satan does. Um, and so I was trying to

use that definition, a demonic death cult in its proper sense, not because I'm trying to be bombastic,

but because I don't know what else you would call the relentless, eager slaughter of children, which breaks the heart of God. Proverbs says he hates hands that shed innocent blood. No, and I want to just compliment you, Johnny. Nothing about you comes across as bombastic. In fact, you have a beautiful way about you that I want to try to embody more, which is you could tell your heart, and I want to make sure this is very clear,

that for Christians, you said something in your speech. As a Christian, if you're better known for your political ideology than your faith, you're also doing it wrong.

Can you please speak to that? Because I want to make sure both sides of your message are adequately represented on this discussion. Yeah, all I mean by that, Charlie, is that our ultimate allegiance is to King Jesus and not to a political party. And I think there's ditches on either side. I would say that the ditch on the left side is the Grand Canyon.

But the ditch on the other side is that we've become more of a proponent for, you know, a certain political party than we are for people knowing that we belong ultimately to Jesus. There's only hope in Jesus Christ. He can forgive your sins. He can cleanse you from your sin. He offers you hope. And when you die, you can be welcomed into the glory of heaven, not because of what you've done, but because Jesus paid it all. He died for your sin on a cross and you rose from the grave. And so that should be the message here.

that ultimately Christians are most excited about, not to the degree that they're passive about politics, but that that's their ultimate reality is that my citizenship is in heaven, Philippians 3.20. Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here. A large retail store just canceled a huge order leaving my pillow with a ton of extra pillows.

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So, Johnny, you opened your remarks in the clip that we played by gently criticizing another pastor who was saying the fault, you know, the silly thing that he said. Help me understand why so many pastors are falling for that line of thinking. Where does that come from? How did we get here? First of all, I wouldn't have...

My initial gut reaction to say I have no idea. But then I do have an idea. I think it's first of all, because there's a level where people have a misconception of even what voting means. You know, they might not have a favorable viewpoint on Donald Trump. So it's anything but Trump. And that's.

Clearly what he said in his tweet, never Trump. And they think Trump is, you know, a bad man and he's done this. But I think it's also from a failure to understand that ultimately what you're voting for is a figurehead that represents a coalition of 5000 people that are going to be in public office.

And you're not just voting for a personality, you're voting for these policies that best represent the worldview of the scripture. And so I think, and part of the reason, Charlie, I was so motivated to say something is I think a lot of pastors...

Um, they understand their God given commission to preach the Bible, but as it relates to politics, there might be not necessarily an understanding. And at times I'm probably growing in my fluency there, but he doesn't like Trump. And so he's voting for the opposite of Trump, which would be Kamala. And I think sometimes it's because maybe they think that's more compassionate to the immigrant, which would come from a flawed understanding of God's commission to individuals in the church and contrast to the state. Um,

So I think people misunderstand a few of those realities. Yeah, I think that's really well said. So you spoke clearly about it. Let's now talk about the other component. Why is it that a vast majority of Christians and pastors, a vast majority of pastors and churches will not speak out at all, will not instruct their congregation with a biblical worldview?

To your great credit, you had the courage to step on the pulpit and say things that were biblical, that pleased God but might not have pleased man. What drove you to do that? And why is it that so many other pastors are silent?

You know, Charlie, it's been an interesting week for me because I've gotten messages from all over the world and people were thanking me for my boldness. I didn't even know I was being bold. I thought this was just calling a spade a spade. I think, though, because pastors have written me since then, and I think even then, like, I obviously I wanted to call it what it is, but I

I think that there's a hesitancy because people want to not divide their flock. I think that there's a hesitancy because sometimes people don't want to forfeit influence with maybe people that view things differently. And my rebuttal to that would be is that some people are so afraid of losing influence that they don't influence anybody because they try to toe a line for so long.

I think sometimes guys aren't articulate or necessarily they're not equipped to be able to handle the political conversation. And I would just encourage them saying, hey, you don't have to talk politics. You just need to preach the Bible. And where there's that intersection of the political and the spiritual and theological, you need to stand firm on where God has drawn the line in the sand in his precious and authoritative word. And I think they just need to be encouraged. And to be honest, I think.

The people in their church need to encourage them saying, hey, we want to be able to think and view. We want to be able to think and view the world through a biblical lens. So please teach us the Bible. I referenced Nehemiah in my sermon on Sunday. And it says in Nehemiah 8.1 that the people came to Ezra and said, teach us the Bible. Preach us the word.

And I think people are starving for a biblical perspective on the reality that we're currently facing. And I think that's why they should encourage pastors who may be hesitant and fearful.

Johnny, thank you for your clarity and your moral courage. I wish more pastors were like you. If we had 5,000 pastors like you, the country would be in a much better place. Johnny, thank you so much. Hey, grateful to be here. Thanks, Charlie. Email us freedom at charliekirk.com. I gotta be honest, guys. If your pastor isn't speaking out like Johnny, you have to confront your pastor. Say, what's this all about? Why don't you say what he says? He puts Jesus first. He talks about the Democrats being a death cult. You should not go to churches that are not speaking out like how Johnny did.

Johnny kept the main thing, the main thing. That's the baseline. But if you go to a church that is not doing what Johnny just did, you are being failed. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

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