It is a typical Sunday morning at Word of Life Grand Ledge, a church in a small suburb west of Lansing, and Pastor Frank Roman is preaching on the importance of spreading the gospel
“If we want to see revival we must evangelize," Roman said to a congregation of around one hundred people. "What is evangelism? Its to convert somebody to Christianity," he said.
Carlos Roman Jr. is nodding from his seat. He said he has spent every Sunday for the last five years listening to his brother preach.
Lately, the focus of the sermons has been on the upcoming election and how it serves as an opportunity to elect a leader who will encourage Christians to spread the gospel.
“God's coming soon," Carlos said "So the direction of this election is going to be vital to America, to Christianity, to all of us, because God is coming.”
The Evangelical church preaches the end times, as prophesied in the book of Revelation, will be signaled by an increased persecution of Christians.
Carlos said he worries if Trump doesn't win, his religious freedom will be taken away and he won't be able to safely stand up against abortion or same sex marriage. He said the Democrats are pushing an ideology that goes against his own Christian values and he considers it a threat.
“We can't share our faith, our Gospel, our God, because now we're considered hate crime, because we don't believe in what, what they're doing," he said.
Michigan has more than 400,000 eligible Latino voters, more than three times the margin of President Joe Bidens’ victory over Trump in 2020.
While Latinos in Michigan have consistently voted for the Democratic party, in the last two presidential elections, exit poll data show nearly 25% of Latino voters in the state have supported Trump. That means even a small portion of Michigan’s Latino voters could be pivotal in what’s predicted to be a close election between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Like Carlos Roman Jr. fellow church member Tony Magana said top of mind as he heads to the polls is immigration. He repeats the unfounded claim that the migrant situation at the border is leading to more crime, and Trump has promised to fix it.
“I want a better check and balance of immigration than what it is right now, you just can't have an open border and say everything's okay, everything's safe, because it's not," Magana added.
Magana is not alone in his beliefs. According to recent data from the Pew Research Center nearly half of all Hispanics believe the current situation at the border is causing an increase in crime in the US.
Despite that, research shows immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than those born in the U.S. In a recent study from Northwestern University analyzing 150 years of U.S census data, researchers found that immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. born citizens.
While Magana said he doesn't think all immigrants at the southern border are criminals, he said many of them don't have good intentions.
At the end of the day, Magana, like Carlos Roman Jr., says his Christian values are informing his vote for Trump.
“We consider ourselves Christians first, and at least I do, and I'm sure Carlos feels the same way," Magana. "We are Christian Latinos, not Latino-Cristianos. We're we put God first in our life.”
Evangelical support for the Republican party is not new – for decades the religious demographic has been part of the electoral base of the GOP. What is new, New York University Political Scientist Cristina Beltran said, is the growing number of Latinos in the U.S. who are identifying as evangelicals.
“Latinos are one of the fastest growing groups of evangelicals, and they are leaving the Catholic church and converting to evangelical Protestantism in increasing numbers," Beltran said.
In 2022, 43% of Hispanic adults identified as Catholic, down more than 20% from 2010 according to data from the Pew Research Center.
"The evangelical church has been turning more and more towards Trump and that means that more Latinos are in church spaces that are more likely to be oriented towards Trump and Trumpism," Beltran explained.
While a certain segment of the Latino electorate now supports Trump, Beltran says it doesn't mean a large chunk of Latinos are supporting the Republican Party.
"That's not what's happening. These have been modest but significant shifts," Beltran said.
Despite the growing political power Latino voters hold, Beltran says both major parties continue to make assumptions about the group.
“The fact that they're Cuban American, or they're Colombian American is part of the story, but it may be more important that they are unemployed, or they're a mother or they belong to a really conservative evangelical church, or their husband is a cop," she said.
Even though more Latinos in Michigan are voting Republican, its yet to be seen whether the values of the evangelical party can help the GOP court a large enough swath of this voting block to flip the state.
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