With the 2024 presidential election less than two months away, a new survey shows Protestant pastors are increasingly uncomfortable discussing their political views. The poll of the nation’s clergy also reveals that pastors have downgraded the issue of abortion in 2024 but have heightened concerns about the state of religious liberty in the next four years.

Lifeway Research shared the information in its “Pastors’ Views on 2024 Presidential Election” poll, after conducting a phone survey of 1,003 Protestant pastors from August 8 to September 3. Researchers then tried to discern differences between leaders of various denominations, sexes, and ethnicities.

A total of 23% of pastors say they refuse to discuss who they will vote for in the 2024 election, up from just 4% in 2020 and 3% in 2016. “It is no secret that we live in hyper-politicized times,” David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “The recent Lifeway survey that indicates close to a quarter of American pastors are reluctant to talk about who they will vote for underscores the divisiveness of politics, but particularly the 2024 presidential election.”

“This study indicates that pastors are much less comfortable sharing who they are voting for than they have been in the past. The six-fold increase is significant,” Brent Keilen, vice president for Strategic Initiatives at FRC, told TWS. “It also shows that as pastors watch the presidential landscape character, pro-life policies, and religious freedom policies are the individual factors they’re most concerned about.”

Half of pastors said they plan to vote for the Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, while 23% back the incumbent Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris. Nearly one in four pastors (23%) described themselves as “undecided.” One percent planned to vote for Constitution Party candidate Randall Terry, former leader of Operation Rescue. No other active third-party candidate received one percent support.

Those numbers moved slightly in favor of the Democratic candidate since 2020, when 53% of pastors backed Trump and 21% supported Joe Biden, who had a checkered voting history on abortion and had voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. Harris has promised to expand abortion nationwide, force taxpayers to fund abortion and transgender procedures, and eliminate conscience protections for Christians who refuse to take part in abortions or transgender surgeries — even if it violates their religious faith.

There were similarly modest changes in pastors’ likelihood to identify with a political party. Half of pastors surveyed identified as Republicans, roughly the same as 2020. The number calling themselves Independents (25%) and Democrats (18%) ticked up by two points over the last four years. The last four years saw a concomitant fall in the small number of pastors identifying with another party, or saying they are “not sure” about their views. The changes fall within the poll’s 3.3% margin of error.

“Pastors age 65+ (23%) are more likely to select ‘Democratic’ than pastors age 18-44 (15%) and 45-54 (15%),” Lifeway found.

Female pastors were more than three times as likely to identify as members of the Democratic Party than males (41% v. 13%). Mainline pastors are more than four times as likely to select “Democratic” than evangelical pastors (35% v. 8%). An overwhelming two-thirds supermajority of African American pastors (62%) belong to the Democratic Party, more than three times the level of white (16%) or Hispanic (12%) pastors.

The way the nation’s clergy view the issue of abortion also changed following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision. In 2020, those who shepherd souls ranked a candidate’s position as the most definitive criteria for whether to support a candidate: 70% of pastors ranked protecting innocent life as their top issue. In 2024, 80% of pastors say abortion is their defining issue — but the right to life ranks as pastors’ sixth most important issue, behind national security, religious freedom, foreign policy, the economy, and immigration. “Research that FRC conducted last year shows that an alarming number of evangelicals have not heard a sermon on abortion or other pressing moral issues,” Closson told TWS.

The poll showed ministers aged 55-64 were significantly more likely to choose the right to life as their most important voting criterion than those aged 18-44. Twice as many male pastors chose protecting life as their most significant policy position than female pastors. Only 4% of pastors voting for Kamala Harris picked her stance on abortion as their main criterion.

Pastors may downgrade abortion, because former President Donald Trump has seemed to say national pro-life legislation would not advance under his presidency. The Trump campaign foisted a new platform on the Republican National Convention that abandoned the party’s 40-year commitment to passing a Human Life Amendment. Trump has said he regards abortion exclusively as a state issue, and his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), has said Trump would veto any national pro-life protections that cross his desk during his second term.

“The fact that abortion is below the economy likely has something to do with Trump’s move left on the issue. It’s difficult to prioritize that issue when there’s no clearly pro-life option,” Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at FRC, told TWS. “But we have also seen social pressure from the Left to minimize the seriousness of the abortion issue. There’s no doubt it has been effective within the church on some level.”

Roughly one-third (38%) cited “climate change” as their pivotal election issue. The issue proved more important to the youngest pastors (under the age of 45) and oldest pastors (over 65) than those in the middle. Female pastors were twice as likely to invoke climate change in explaining their vote than male pastors (66% vs. 33%).

Pastors may place a greater premium on national security this election cycle as they see the United States drifting into a potential nuclear war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pressured the United States and other NATO powers to allow Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range weapons, including U.S. ATACMS and British Storm Shadows. If Biden authorized that, “it would mean that NATO countries, the U.S., European countries, are at war with Russia,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin. He signed an order to overtake the United States as the second largest army, increasing the size of his army by 180,000 soldiers. A majority of Americans (55%) said the United States should curtail aid to Ukraine and focus on needs at home — a year ago.

Reverend Franklin Graham implored the president to reverse course on weapons and seek a peace agreement, noting that Biden’s “advisors are urging him to remove restrictions on American-funded weapons being used inside Russia. Mr. President, the weapons aren’t the answer. I urge you to appoint a special diplomatic envoy to travel to Kyiv and Moscow and urgently negotiate for peace. There needs to be a compromise, not more blood. Let your presidency end by seeking peace, not escalating a war. That would be a lasting legacy. I pray God will give you wisdom.”

The nation’s porous southern border may also raise alarm bells over the state of homeland security. Experts confirm terrorists have already penetrated the border. Videos have shown members of the Venezuela-based transnational criminal gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) take control of apartment buildings in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado. During the Biden-Harris administration, there have been an estimated 10 million illegal border crossings, mostly by young men of military age.

The survey found pastors living in the southern region of the country, including border states, were significantly more likely to select immigration as their top issue than those in the Midwest which, until recently, bore less of the brunt of immigration. The Ohio city of Springfield — and Pennsylvania’s Charleroi — have experienced enormous influxes of foreign-born citizens who take jobs, raise housing prices, and change the culture of the city. A ponderous majority (89%) of pastors who cited border security as a vote-deciding topic said they planned to vote for Donald Trump.

More than nine in 10 Baptists, Pentecostals, and non-denominational pastors expressed their concern over the state of religious liberty after this election. Kamala Harris backs the Equality Act, which would compel Christians to take part in transgender procedures and LGBTQ ceremonies that violate their religious faith — or face a federal civil rights lawsuit. States which have similar laws have subjected believers to years-long litigation that has bankrupted them and driven them out of business. Colorado “human rights” officials have pressed Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop into a year-long court battle.

Evangelical pastors — who, on average, tend to have a lower church salary and benefits package than mainline, denominational Protestants — are 10 points more likely to consider the state of the economy in their vote.

An overwhelming 93% of Democrats, including 92% of Kamala Harris voters, said their most important issue is a candidate’s “ability to address racial injustice.” Female pastors were 11 points more likely than males to select this topic (80% vs. 69%).

Foreign policy may be a proxy for the topic of Israel. President Donald Trump built a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and negotiated the Abraham Accords to galvanize the Middle East against imperialistic Iranian hegemony. Those who selected foreign policy as a defining position tended to be partisans already supporting one candidate or another, not undecideds.

“The fact that female pastors are more likely to support Harris and prioritize progressive priorities tracks with cultural trends where women, especially single women, are more likely to be on the political Left. It forces us to acknowledge that there are many instances in which the culture is evangelizing the church more effectively than the church is evangelizing the culture. We know the culture is a mess, so if women inside the church are tracking the culture, especially within leadership, that’s a sign that things aren’t going well in the church,” Backholm told TWS.

Experts say pastors must shepherd their flocks when it comes to moral and ethical issues, which often crop up during election years, as they do any other ethical matter dealt with in the Bible.

“I don’t think pastors should endorse candidates from the pulpit, but they should be willing to talk about the pressing moral and cultural issues of our time. They should also be willing to candidly discuss where candidates and party platforms stand on issues where there is clear biblical warrant, such as what the Bible teaches on abortion and human sexuality,” Closson told TWS. “Pastors should be willing to preach exegetically through passages that address these issues. These would be very helpful for congregations, as the barrage of misinformation and disinformation continues to confuse some of the most basic issues.”