Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz

I’m not sure Americans really understand what this nation will look like in a few short months if Donald Trump wins this election. I do.

I’ve spent most of the last twenty-eight years as a local church pastor, much of that in megachurches in the Bible Belt. I’ve been shoulder to shoulder in ministry and in life with white Evangelicals, I’ve sat in Bible studies with them, served alongside them in staff meetings, attended hundreds of pastoral gatherings and heard how they think and what drives them.

I need you to understand something:

Conservative white Evangelicals need to be stopped.

They need to be defeated.

They need to be voted into oblivion.

You might agree with me as a simple emotional reflex but I want you to know precisely why: to comprehend the specific danger they present and the historic urgency of the moment.

In vast numbers, in churches all over the country, these people have lost the plot to the point that they now pose a human rights emergency to the rest of us. This not hyperbole or exaggeration, it’s the sobering, grim reality about what they believe and what they’re capable of doing, now that they have this unprecedented opportunity. As far as religious extremists go, they’re unmatched in their fervor, ferocity, and organization.

The wholesale moral failure white Evangelicals have been guilty of over the past decades has been alarming—but you haven’t seen anything yet. It will get exponentially worse if the next election falls in their favor. Project 2025 lays it all out in terrifying detail, and if you can’t or won’t take the time to read all 900 pages of it, Andra Watkins writes about aspects of it weekly on Substack.

If the coming elections allow Republicans to gain control of Congress and further poison the Supreme Court, Conservative Christians will render this nation unrecognizable. LGBTQ people, Muslims, women, people of color, immigrants, and non-Christians will never have equality under the law again. This is not alarmist, sky-is-falling histrionics, it is the clear and sober forecast from someone who knows these people better than anyone because he’s been on the inside.

Full-blown theocracy is the plan, and trust me when I tell you that we won’t recover from it if they are given the power the coming election will provide. If we fail in November, they will have a political power that will render every election null and void and we will never have a voice again in our lifetimes.

Women will lose autonomy over their own bodies.

LGBTQ people will have the rights to marry and adopt taken away.

People of color will be fully squeezed out of the electoral process.

Immigrants will be denied access to opportunity and refuge here.

These are not creative projections.

They are precisely what Evangelicals have repeatedly stated as their intentions, and they’re closer than they’ve ever been to having a rubber stamp.

We can still stop it, though.

We just need a unity and coordination that transcends theirs.

We need a sustained, passionate, dedicated defense of humanity that rivals their relentless assaults on it.

The sole option we have to save ourselves and generations of diverse, decent, vital human beings is for all of us: Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, progressive Christians and humanists and Muslims and Atheists and Jews and Agnostics to vote in November; in vast numbers, in unwavering unity, and unreservedly for Kamala Harris and Democrats across the ticket.

You might feel a knee-jerk response to that statement, a bristling at the notion that you might have to vote in a way you might never have before.

Respectfully, get over it.

This is about the country we leave our children. It’s about our Constitution. It’s about the health of the planet. It’s about every cause you hold dear. It’s about the most elemental freedoms we have and deserve to keep.

Your discomfort, your pride, and your moral quandaries aren’t what is most critical right now.

What is most critical right now, is using the only weapon at our disposal in the only time left we have to use it—and we have to use it.

A couple special mentions:

• To third-party voters: I fully believe in votes of conscience and there will be plenty of time for you to create an alternative to the system we currently have in place—but now isn’t that time. A protest vote now isn’t a protest, it’s reckless and wasteful and it will cost you any future opportunity you’re hoping for. You will lose the voice you have.
• To young voters and non-voters: We need you. We need you to step out of whatever laziness or apathy or pessimism has kept you disengaged—and into the voting booth. Your voice could be the difference in the day. The hour it will take you to make your voice heard, will be far worth the decades you help define.

This is a pivot point in our history and the Religious Right cannot be allowed to determine the path we take forward.

These cultists are sold-out for their hateful messiah of imagined grievance. Evangelicals are experts at consolidating their power. They will all show up at the polls and they will be singular in their voice.

As a former pastor and a father and a Christian and a citizen of the planet and a lover of humanity, I can’t make this any clearer:

If you want the beautiful, expansive diverse humanity of this world to be equally protected and respected and cared for, Conservative white Evangelicals need to be stopped.

And we can stop them, together.