Pastor Thurmond Tillman has never taken the right to vote for granted. He grew up hearing stories about poll taxes and literacy tests, barriers designed to keep Black voters away from the ballot box during Jim Crow.
"Voting and politics and all of this affects our everyday life," he said. "It all comes down to the voting."
Tillman is a member of Faith Works, a voting rights campaign organized by a network of senior officials in Georgia's Black churches.
After forming during the passage of Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021, the group set out to get as many people as possible to the polls. And that starts where many of Georgia’s most impactful political movements began: the church.
National ramifications
The campaign is in its inaugural year, but Rev. Lee May and Taos Wynn of Atlanta have long worked together on voting rights. Their network of faith leaders first came together unofficially to fight against the passage of the Election Integrity Act of 2021 (SB 202), a law which introduced controversial restrictions on voting. Later, that same group worked to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a federal bill intended to strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
May, who is the lead pastor at Transforming Faith Church, accepts some initial struggles. "But we're still hopeful and we're still fighting."
SB 202's new regulations, which include a ban on providing food and water to those waiting in long lines, an ID requirement for absentee ballots, and a limit on dropbox availability, will come into play for the first time this election season. May and Wynn worried that these regulations would disproportionately impact Black voter turnout, particularly among elderly, working class and disabled voters.
So, a few months in advance of the 2022 elections, they decided to make their unofficial network official. Faith Works hit the ground running.
"Our goal is to get as many people to turn out as possible," Wynn said, who is the CEO of Perfect Love Foundation.
The campaign plans to do that by providing resources, individual guides and support meetings to church groups interested in getting their congregations to the polls. Faith Works plans to organize 1,000 churches throughout Georgia ahead of Election Day on Nov. 8.
"We just believe this is a critical element of making our democracy better, making our communities better and making our government better as well," said May.
Continuing the legacy of civil rights
Black churches in the South have long been major sites for political organizing. First African Baptist Church, founded in 1777 in Savannah is no exception.
The church, once a stop on the Underground Railroad, later served as a hub for civil rights activists in the 1950s and 60s. There, former pastor Ralph Mark Gilbert counseled Martin Luther King Jr. and led the Georgia Conference of the NAACP.
"We see [activism] as part of what we're called to do," said Tillman, the current pastor. "We have a responsibility to the community. We have this responsibility to the least and the last."
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
First African Baptist Church was one of the first churches to join Faith Works' voting campaign. Tillman sees it as a way to continue the social justice legacy of First African as well as overcome what he sees as barriers to voting.
"We don't need those challenges," he said. "We don't need a lot of confusion because our God is not the author of confusion."
In fact, he intends to get his entire congregation, which numbers to about 1,000, eligible to vote out to the polls.
"If you care about yourself, if you care about your family, if you care about the generations coming behind you, care enough to vote," he said.
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
Credit: Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News
“Faith without works is dead”
Wynn pointed out that the name of this campaign is derived from the Bible - specifically, James 2:14 through 17: “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
"This is us practically showing faith in action," said Wynn. "We're not just talking about helping people. We're actually doing the work."
If this year goes well, Faith Works hopes to open up their playbook to other faiths and other states.
"We're all Christians, but our arms are wide open to anyone. We've had interfaith meetings, we've had meetings with non-black Christians as well, to just encourage them to do that," he said. "Other people round the country have given us recognition, too. We've gotten calls from North Carolina from Michigan from Florida, from all around Pennsylvania and Ohio of people calling and saying, 'Hey, we want a chapter in our state!'"
It gives them hope that people of faith can come together for all kinds of social good.
"The election is in front of us, but that's the lowest hanging fruit," said Rev. May. "Can you imagine 1,000 churches that come together to do anything? What kind of impact could we make?"
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Georgia-based Faith Works seeks to bring Black Christian voters to the polls
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