The 2024 presidential election is less than a month away, and most would agree there’s a lot at stake. Among the many pressing issues facing voters is that of abortion. Pro-lifers are sounding the alarm on the 10 states that will be voting on abortion-related ballot initiatives, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota. On Sunday night, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins was in one of those states, taking time to warn the people of Missouri about their state’s dangerous Amendment 3 initiative and encouraging them and to get out and vote against it.

“It is time for the church to come unapologetically in alignment with the Word of God by living it and declaring it,” Perkins said at the Abundant Life in Lee’s Summit for Founded in Faith. In a time of “moral anarchy,” it’s crucial to understand what Missouri’s Amendment 3 entails and why it must be defeated, Perkins explained. Amendment 3, he warned, “will unleash an unprecedented attack on the unborn, the rights of parents, and the well-being of children.” According to Perkins, this is “the most far-reaching of all of the amendments that are in the 10 states in this election.”

But “this is not just about abortion,” he continued. “This is attacking the fundamental relationship between a parent and a child. And it is also opening the door to the transgender ideology that wants to rob us of our children and rob them of their future.” And ultimately, he told the crowd, “This is not just another issue that we wrestle with in the public policy world, but this is at the very heart of the purpose for government.”

As Perkins emphasized, “[I]f we want justice in our nation again, meaning a foundation that we can trust, we have to acknowledge God.” Christians “have to choose to walk according to the Word of God. … We have a right and an obligation to influence this country with biblical truth,” and “we cannot claim to acknowledge … Jesus as Lord of our lives and ignore His instruction.”

Above all, Perkins called for Christians to pray. “What are you asking God for?” he wanted to know. “Are you praying for our nation? Are you believing that God can move on the hearts of the voters in Missouri to protect the unborn? Are you believing that God can turn this nation … back to Him again?”

In addition to prayer, Perkins called for Christians to use their vote as a means of promoting biblical values in government. While “we’re not going to vote our way out of this situation,” he noted, and “this election will not save America,” it could “destroy it.” And so, while a hope in government is a “misplaced” hope, Christians do “have to be involved.” If nothing else, “We are the hope of this nation,” Perkins insisted, because “we need God in America. We need God to move on the hearts of our children, our grandchildren, on our own hearts.”

The church must proclaim God in the public square, because the second “a society … pushes God out of its institutions, such as the banning of prayer and Bible in our schools, [it] will see the rise of wickedness, a lack of justice, the erosion of our liberties, and the targeting of the unborn.” Perkins contended, “You cannot eliminate morality and expect to have moral order,” but we also “cannot have morality and social order without biblical truth.”

Perkins went on to say that, while we pray and when we vote, it’s necessary to “remember God’s faithfulness.” He “has been faithful when we have not been,” he added, “and our failure to acknowledge God [only] leads to chaos.” Especially in difficult times, when states like Missouri are attempting to enshrine abortion into their constitution through ballot initiatives, “We need to pray, we need to vote, and we need to stand for biblical truth.”

Perkins concluded:

“Eighty years from now, how will our tolerance of abortion be viewed? What about the perverse and destructive gender ideologies being promoted today? Ideologies that confuse our children and lead to them being scarred and mutilated, both their body, mind, and souls.

“If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, you have been given a great commission. And that commission is to go and to share the gospel and to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them all things that [He taught]. And Jesus has taught us to love the children. He has taught us that life is precious. He has taught us that we were created by His Father, male and female. We are commissioned to go and share that truth. God has entrusted this moment and the history of mankind where truth is under attack like never before. He’s entrusted this moment to us. Will we be found faithful?”