NC Family Staff | September 28, 2024 | SHARE: 
Did you know that there are an estimated 210 million Christians in the United States? Can you imagine what would happen if all of them started engaging in the political arena? Chances are we would see some drastic changes for the better.
This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Bunni Pounds, President and Founder of Christians Engaged, to discuss why Christians should be involved in politics and three ways for Christians to start engaging.
Learn more about Christians Engaged and take the pledge to Pray, Vote, and Engage!
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TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. Election season is in full swing, and once again, North Carolina is one of the targeted swing states that will have an oversized role in determining who wins the presidency and which parties control Congress. A big question: How should we as Christians approach election season? This one in particular. NC Family is partnered with Christians Engaged, an organization that encourages Christians to pray, vote and engage. Bunni Pounds is here to talk about this. She is Vice President of Civic and Church Engagement for the Family Policy Alliance, an organization launched in 2004 by Focus on the Family. Bunni Pounds, welcome to Family Policy Matters.
BUNNI POUNDS: Well, it’s great to be with you and Christians Engaged is honored to be a part of the Family Policy Alliance family and partner with North Carolina Family. It’s such a blessing.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right. Well, tell us about your organization, and as you mentioned, there was just some merging happening. So, tell us what your status is, as far as with the North Carolina Family Policy Council in particular.
BUNNI POUNDS: Yeah, well, we just partnered up with you guys to help do voter mobilization with Christians to pray, vote, and engage. We started our ministry four and a half years ago around the idea that if we could get a million Christians in a system and create a standing army of believers that would start voting in every election, we could build a movement that could actually impact the country. And so we built a Get Out the Vote system where we send four texts and four emails around every election in the country and get people out to vote, but also teach them about the Bible, about prayer, about civics, about biblical worldview, so it’s kind of a discipleship method while we get Christians that are apathetic to the polls. It’s been really exciting. We’ve built up to 200,000 Christians and over 2000 believers that have gone through one of our long form classes. And then in July, we merged with Family Policy Alliance, and we just started partnering with North Carolina Family, and we’re so excited. It’s critical right now that we get every Christian out to vote in North Carolina.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Right. So, you mentioned voter apathy, and I’m assuming that that’s not just a problem with Christians, but is it a particular problem with Christians? And why is that important?
BUNNI POUNDS: It’s important because people that are believers, that have accepted the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, we are seeking after the life of God, through the word of God, through prayer, through worship, and we come to life with a little bit more understanding and discernment because of what God’s done in our life, in that we get to operate within America in this generation for such a time as this. And when we get to elect our representatives, we have an opportunity as believers to choose people that can impact all of our neighbors, all of our communities. I really say we love our neighbors well by electing righteous leaders, and if we put people in that are seeking after God, that have more of a biblical worldview than others, even though they’re not perfect, we can really see an impact on our city, our county, and our state, and our nation.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, you have three pillars. Of course, they are, pray, vote and engage. So, starting with prayer, let’s go through each one. As you know, Christians often get mocked by some people when they know that our first response is to pray during a tragedy or any other kind of struggles, but talk a little bit about why it’s vital that prayer be our first move, even regarding political involvement.
BUNNI POUNDS: Well, I do say prayer is the beginning and the end of everything. If we don’t talk to God, if we don’t start there, prayer, in essence, is talking to God, communicating with him. How many of us just shout at the TV or the news and we don’t really consider having a conversation about God about what He thinks about those things. So, talking to him about our city, our county, our state and nation is important, about our geographical region. We pray for our church. Why don’t we pray for our state officials? 1 Timothy 2, the apostle Paul exhorts us to pray or have intercessions and giving a thanks for all kings, specifically those who are in authority over us and for the purpose of having a peaceful life. It’s really in our good interest to pray for our elected officials and our leaders, because, frankly, they don’t know what they’re doing, and they need God to intervene in their life, and it’s helpful for us if our liberty is protected and our families are protected by those elected officials serving well.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: How does prayer change our attitudes, do you think, toward this whole political process?
BUNNI POUNDS: Oh, I absolutely believe everything about prayer changes us. You know, as a former political consultant, having run congressional campaigns for 16 years, I come to politics in the flesh, like everybody else, with anger, fear, pride and staying before the Lord in the place of prayer has literally changed me from the inside out, and we have an opportunity as believers, when we’re activating in politics or government to either respond like the world will respond or respond as Christ. And going to prayer every day, seeking Him, loving Him, and letting Him transform us, is how we operate in this with a pure conscience.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Yeah, good points there. Thank you so much. Well, let’s talk about the second pillar now, voting. So how should we as Christians view this very solemn responsibility, as you already mentioned, that we are given, I guess, the privilege of living in a nation that allows us to have some say in who represents us. So, talk a little bit about how we approach this task of voting in a way that would honor Christ.
BUNNI POUNDS: Most of us in America, as American Christians, will thank God every day we don’t live in North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, places that hinder our families or hinder our religious freedoms. But yet, when you talk about voting and electing people that would keep America free, a lot of pastors are afraid that they’re going to lose one tithing member and split their church. But we need to start talking about our civic engagement as believers. As I said earlier, we love our neighbors well by electing righteous leaders. Proverbs 29:2 says, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice. When the wicked man rules, the people groan.” It affects everybody in our communities or in our nation. I remember in 2020, I live in Dallas County, Texas, our county was completely shut down, but churches in Collin County were free, just right up the road, were free to worship just because of who was in authority as the county judge in our area. So electing people makes a difference. And I’ll say lastly, the latest report from Barna came out from Arizona Christian University that only two thirds of evangelicals are participating in elections. So that’s 1/3 of evangelical Christians are not even participating in the process. This cannot be, we have to change that.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: But it can be difficult sometimes to choose who those righteous leaders are. You know, sometimes we pick somebody, they get into office, they’re not as righteous as we thought. I think people sometimes can get a little disillusioned. Do you have some suggestions for how to think about that?
BUNNI POUNDS: Well, absolutely, and that’s what we do every day. Not only do we send people prayer reminders, voting reminders, but we give you a five-step guide to print off your ballot, research your ballot. We refer people to North Carolina Family. You guys have some great insight being on the ground in that state, but also our friends at iVoter Guide and other resources that you can look up. Transparency USA, where people get their money from, and how they’re using their money. So, we have some research tools to help you, but I believe every Christian, if they would print off their ballot, research their ballot for 30 minutes, would go in more ready than anybody else. We also built a biblical platform comparison document. People can get it at ChristiansEngaged.org. But it goes through 16 different issues, what the Bible says on the issue, what Marxism says about the issue, with the Democratic platform and the Republican platform in all quotes, not adding or taking away from what those platforms say about that issue. So, Christians can research and discover which political party most aligns with their values, and then looking at the individual candidates’ websites, will color that even more.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Okay, so the third pillar of your organization is engagement. So, talk about that. What do you mean by engagement, and what do you envision or encourage Christians to undertake, as far as that’s concerned?
BUNNI POUNDS: Well, we help Christians get outside the walls of the church and make a difference. First of all, how can we carry the gospel and love our neighbors if we’re not in the community, if we’re not at the art festival, if we’re not joining the Rotary Club or the Chamber of Commerce. I would love to see every Christian become the president of their home owners’ association, run for city council, run for school board, but there’s so many things we can do on our local community, but beyond that, we really encourage Christians to get involved in campaigns, activate, adopt a candidate, somebody, one person on your ballot, but get involved. You know, give them money, help them, block walk with them, volunteer. Just help get righteous people elected. Secondly, advocacy, helping them connect to you guys there at North Carolina Family, doing the hard work of going to the legislature, working on bills, pushing back against bad legislation, passing good legislation. Every believer in every church should be involved in doing that, and it’s something we should be able to do, and can do within our 501(c)(3) statuses. Thirdly, if people are like, Oh my gosh, I can’t do either one of those. Those are just too mudslinging. I can’t do campaigns or advocacy. Well, can you register more Christian voters? Can you activate your network through our pledge to pray, vote, and engage and get more Christians to start voting in every election? Everybody can do something, Traci.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: I want to explore one other thought as far as why people may not be engaging. Sometimes we hear our friends who are more liberal than us, perhaps saying, Oh, the separation of church and state. You know, people don’t need to be bringing their Christian principles or the Bible into the public realm. Answer that objection, if you would.
BUNNI POUNDS: There’s a lot of misunderstanding on that. Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist in reference to a letter that they wrote him. And he talked about, you know, how there’s all these different colonies had different religious beliefs. You had the Quakers, you had the Baptists, you had the Catholics. And he was making the point that government should not be pushing against the rights of the church. The church should have ultimate authority to govern as they see fit. So, he was saying there was a wall of separation between church and state. Well, people on the other side have actually used that to keep pastors and churches quiet, and it should be the other way around, was what the original meaning was. So, I just really encourage people, yes, there’s two different entities. You have the church and you have the state. These are two different institutions, but the church should be absolutely influencing the state every day.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: You mentioned so many great ways to get involved, on the local level, state level. Why are those races as important, and maybe in some ways, more important than some of these national races?
BUNNI POUNDS: We really don’t think about how these races affect our families. But you know, when you look at what’s happening in our communities, school boards, on the local level and on the state level, shifting all curriculum projects around, against the Bible, against a biblical worldview. Not even allowing creation to be mentioned, you know, to really promulgate this idea that there’s multiple genders, that we’re not born male or female. You know, we need to have people in the room when those discussions are happening. That’s the problem is, we’ve relinquished, out of our apathy, some of these places, and we’re not in the room when those discussions are happening. And we need to be pushing back on some of that stuff. There’s a lot of things that we can weigh in as believers, that we can make a difference and really treat people as human. All of us are equal in the eyes of God. We’re one human race. So, I just encourage people. I’ve seen huge testimonies of pastors running for office, people getting on school boards, people getting on city council and shifting the whole city council. One person can make a difference, and we can help. You guys do that so well, also, at North Carolina Family. We need to be Christians that are not afraid to speak the truth in love, but we have to do it in a winsome, calm way. We have to communicate our points with integrity. We need to be getting our news from valid news sources and making sure that we’re speaking what we can verify. There’s so many things in that realm, but man, believers, if we’re strong leaders and we know who we are in God, can stand up in these places and really make an impact.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, we’re just about out of time, but I feel like those people who are listening are going to want to learn more. So, Bunni Pounds, tell us how we can learn more about your organization, Christians Engaged, and possibly join your efforts and be inspired more by you.
BUNNI POUNDS: Well, you can go to ChristiansEngaged.org or go to North Carolina Family’s website. They should have the pledge to pray, vote, and engage up on the website. But take the pledge to pray, vote, and engage, make a commitment for your own self and your own discipleship, to commit to pray every week with us. On Mondays, we send a video out, a scripture, to vote in every election and to start getting educated. We’ve also built $200,000 worth of on-demand video curriculum to help Christians get involved in civics and local government and Bible studies around justice, economics, biblical worldview. And my book, Traci, just came out this year. It’s called Jesus in Politics: One Woman’s Walk with God in a Mudslinging Profession, and that’s a fun resource. We’re on the third printing already of the book. And you know, God’s been using it to inspire people that an ordinary mom can make a difference. Well, they can too.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Great. Bunni Pounds, president of Christians Engaged. Thank you for your good work, and thank you very much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.
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