Tennessee church thrives by leaning into hardline politics as attendance falls nationwide

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• Geoff Bennett:

  We turn now to religion in America and the political divide.

  In her last story, Judy Woodruff reported on the decline among white Christian churches and the influence of politics. Tonight, she visits an evangelical church in Tennessee that's bucking that trend, seeing strong growth as its leaned into hard-line politics.

  It's part of her ongoing series on divisions, America at a Crossroads.

• Judy Woodruff:

  In a country where many pews increasingly sit empty, twice a week in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, hundreds gather to sing, worship, and find community in the converted tent of Global Vision Bible Church.

  They're led by Pastor Greg Locke, a one-time fundamentalist Baptist who gained fame and followers over the past decade while taking hard-line positions on issues like gender-neutral bathrooms in Target stores.

• Pastor Greg Locke, Global Vision Bible Church:

  What you are targeting are perverts, pedophiles, people who are going to harm our children.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Calling COVID-19 a hoax.

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  If they go through round two and you start showing up in all these masks and all this nonsense, I will ask you to leave.

  (Cheering and applause)

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  I will ask you to leave.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Claiming that Democrats could not be Christians.

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  You cannot be a Christian and vote Democrat in this nation! They are God-denying demons that butcher babies!

• Judy Woodruff:

  And spreading election fraud claims.

• Man:

  Global Vision Bible Pastor Greg Locke told me he was at the U.S. Capitol getting to the steps, praying and preaching while the insurrection went on behind him.

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  There was a time, I think, that maybe I felt it was my responsibility to play to the division a little bit more maybe than I do now.

  I'm very demonstrative. I'm very conservative, very well-known and outspoken for my political and religious beliefs. But I think we're at a place that if we don't figure out now how to bridge the chasm, we're never going to.

• Judy Woodruff:

  You consider yourself an evangelical?

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  Yes, although that is a hijacked term, I think, in the day and age in which we live, because there was a time that if you said you were an evangelical, it really meant a handful of things. You believed in the inerrancy of Scripture, the second coming of Christ, Jesus Christ as the only way to heaven, and you shared your faith.

  But now if you say you're an evangelical, well, then that means you vote a certain way, you dress a certain way, you're a certain denomination. And so I think it's been hijacked by a political agenda in some ways.

• Judy Woodruff:

  That political agenda dates back decades, to the late 1970s and the rise of Baptist Minister Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority.

  In 1980, white evangelicals abandoned fellow evangelical Democrat Jimmy Carter and voted for Ronald Reagan, who embraced Falwell and his culturally conservative agenda, starting a trend that has only grown.

  Three-quarters of white evangelicals voted for George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney for president, and eight in 10 voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.

• Ryan Burge, Eastern Illinois University:

  So the church had about 100 people by 1996.

• Judy Woodruff:

  American Baptist pastor and political scientist Ryan Burge.

• Ryan Burge:

  Today, churches have become so homogeneous. You know, white evangelicalism is 80 percent Republican today. If you go to a white evangelical church, you're probably not going to find a single Democrat in the congregation.

  And the pastor is probably also a strong Republican as well. So you're going to hear one message and one understanding of the world.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And that trend, he says, was only accelerated by COVID-19 and the way the pandemic response was politicized.

• Ryan Burge:

  Pastors have always sort of, like, dodged land mines during their sermons because they don't want to wade into these issues. The problem with COVID was, you couldn't dodge the land mines anymore. You had to make a decision, mask or no mask, distancing or no distancing, all online, all in person. What do we do?

• Judy Woodruff:

  Pastor Locke refused to close down his church during the pandemic, defying state authorities, and warned his members not to wear masks, nor to get vaccinated.

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  The fact that without the grace of God, we would all be in hell.

  But I think COVID showed us there's a lot of people that are not willing to say anything when the government stands up and says, this is the way that it should be. Well, we became very quickly well-known for, no, no, no, that's not the way it's going to be. We're going to put our feet in the ground and we're going to draw a line in the sand and say, no, no, no, this is what the Bible teaches. And come hell or high water, we're going to believe the Bible.

• Andrew Flessa, Member, Global Vision Bible Church:

  There's a lot of fake in the world today.

• Judy Woodruff:

  That was a message that strongly resonated with some of his members, like Boston native Andrew Flessa, who first came to this church in 2022 through the Reawaken America Tour, a right-wing religious revival. He then moved from Texas to Tennessee to join Greg Locke.

• Andrew Flessa:

  There's a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of confusion. So, when you find a voice that you can tell has a lot of truth coming out of them, then you do start to realize, OK, this is a move of God. He's a mouthpiece of God. So I want to be a part of this.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Billie Kennedy started coming to Global Vision more than a decade ago, and found a personal connection with Pastor Locke.

• Billie Kennedy, Member, Global Vision Bible Church:

  He explains everything from top to bottom, line by line. He just makes it so easy, and the freedom just flows.

• Tracy Wells, Member, Global Vision Bible Church:

  We moved here in 2022.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Tracy Wells also moved to join this church, in her case, all the way from Oregon with her husband.

• Tracy Wells:

  At that time, we had been looking in Oregon for a church, and, with COVID, everything just closed up. So, there were no churches. And we started following online every Sunday and every Wednesday.

  And, finally, we said, why do we want to be in Oregon, when we really want to be in the church? So, we sold everything and we moved here, and we have not looked back.

• Milo Wright, Member, Global Vision Bible Church:

  There's so much divisiveness in this country right now.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Milo Wright is a lifelong Tennessean who found this church nearly 15 years and found a community too.

• Milo Wright:

  Whether it be political, whether it be religious, there's just too much lukewarmness in the church, where people aren't firm in their beliefs, they are not firm believers of the Bible, because they allow things to creep into the church that shouldn't be there.

• Judy Woodruff:

  For this group, their church and their faith greatly inform the way they view politics and their choices in this year's presidential election.

• Andrew Flessa:

  It's whoever stands with Israel. And at least in President Trump's last go-around, he was much more close with Israel, much more pro-Israel. And Biden has not been very strong in terms of Israel.

  And that's one of the commandments in the Bible. You know, whoever blesses Israel, whoever protects Israel will also receive my blessing, will also receive my protection.

• Tracy Wells:

  There are many issues in the church that we look at biblically. We don't look at them politically. Abortion is one. God says in the Bible it is life. It begins at conception. That is righteous. And if someone is going to stand for that, I'm going to be with that person.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Pick up on that, Milo, on this question of what former President Trump believes about reproductive rights. If one believes abortion is wrong, his view is that it should be up to the state to decide. Is that a position you're comfortable with?

• Milo Wright:

  I'm very comfortable with that, because each state contains a different demographic. So each state should be controlled by their demographic. That's the way our government works.

• Judy Woodruff:

  At the same time, they pushed back against the idea that someone who supports reproductive rights, as President Biden does, could be considered a Christian.

• Milo Wright:

  Does his practicing Catholicism line up with his pro-abortion stance? I ask you that. It doesn't really pass the smell test in my book.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Their support of former President Trump was also qualified, a question of choosing between the better of two imperfect choices.

• Billie Kennedy:

  There was a time that there was no doubt. It was all Trump. It was Trump, Trump. Well, I feel that Trump — I don't know who will be president, but at least he loved the country.

• Andrew Flessa:

  There's no magic bullet. Trump's not a magic bullet whatsoever. So it just kind of depends on how much faith you put in the Bible or how much faith you put in a man, a politician.

• Milo Wright:

  I don't think either man could be held to a high Christian standard.

• Judy Woodruff:

  For Milo Wright, the critique is broader than religion.

• Milo Wright:

  Border was pretty tight when Trump was in. The economy was pretty good pre-COVID when Trump was in. The stock market was way up. With Biden, I don't see any results.

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  I'm not nearly as Trumpian in some ways as I used to be. But is he better for the nation than Joe Biden? Oh, 10000 percent. Joe Biden's ruined the nation. He has destroyed the economy. He can talk about how much the economy is doing better. The economy is worse now than it has been in the history of any of our lifetimes.

  And it's only going to get worse.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Despite evidence showing a strong U.S. economy, Greg Locke says many in his congregation are suffering. And yet he's also dismayed by Trump's unwillingness to support a national ban on abortion.

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  Biblically, I believe there is never a time that we should opt for abortion. Adoption over abortion 1,000 times every single time.

• Judy Woodruff:

  How much do you plan to advocate for him this year from now until the election?

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  I don't plan to advocate for him at all, except going to the voting booth.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So, it's different from 2020?

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  A hundred percent different. I'm bored with politics, because politics is not going to save this nation. Politics are going to be corrupt until Jesus comes. And so I thought, you know what? I have wasted a lot of energy on tying to change something that I'm not going to change.

• Judy Woodruff:

  How do you see the country working its way through this divide right now? Do you see people coming together? Do you see one side weakening?

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  I don't know that either side is weakening. I think both sides are emboldening themselves, and I think that is going to be dangerous. I don't know what that looks like.

  Inevitably, I know I don't want some kind of conflict. I don't want some kind of civil war. I don't want secessionism people break out. I don't want all that. But, at the end of the day, I'm not sure that we can fully bridge the gap that we've created. I mean, we are more divided now than we have ever been.

  If Donald Trump gets in the White House, is that going to change? Probably not. And I have been part of that problem in the past, that it's either Democrat or it's either Republican. No, I am pretty messed up about both of them at this point.

• Judy Woodruff:

  What caused you to rethink that?

• Pastor Greg Locke:

  I tell people, I used to fight Democrats. Now I fight demons, right? I used to fight the left. And I'm like, you know want? I want to see people set free, and I don't care what side of the aisle they're on.

  And so I had to get to a place where I was like, you know what? Republicans aren't going to save us. Democrats aren't going to save us. As far as I'm concerned, they're two heads of the same snake. They both have their problems.

• Ryan Burge:

  I think that's interesting. I always wonder, as a political scientist, how many decisions are made strategically and how many are made spiritually?

• Judy Woodruff:

  For Pastor and political scientist Ryan Burge, Greg Locke's journey raises some familiar questions about faith and following.

• Ryan Burge:

  You have seen a lot of people do this. They have really gone hard in one direction and then backed off over time. Even if you looked at Billy Graham, for instance, he used to preach a pretty fire-and-brimstone message, but near the end of his life, you got a lot softer on a lot of Gospel issues.

  I think a lot of people realize, like, you can build up an audience, but what's it worth long term for the health of my soul and me as a person?

• Judy Woodruff:

  So you're saying its hard to believe that he's sincere? Is that what you're saying, or…

• Ryan Burge:

  Any time a public figure changes their direction, it's always a question of, what's guiding — what's directing the ship? What's guiding the show?

  I can't see into Greg Locke's heart. I hope to God that he finds a Gospel that's redemptive, that's salvific, that brings people together, not pushes people apart, that realizes that Christianity is a religion that builds bigger tables, not taller walls.

  Unfortunately, the message of taller walls and keeping people out tends to do really well in America.

• Judy Woodruff:

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Mount Juliet, Tennessee.