Chad Connelly - How Faith Wins is Educating, Activating and Mobilizing Churches Across America

Christianity and politics have a love hate relationship in the US.
Despite the separation of church and state, many churches are highly engaged in the political process but they are not always well informed of the issues.
Chad Connelly’s work as chairman of his state Replication Party was recognised by the White House and he became the first ever Faith Envoy for the Republican National Committee (RNC).
Through this role he built up church engagement to another level and has continued this endeavour through Faith Wins.
Chad joins us to discuss the importance of voter registration, providing leaders with resources, identifying church liaisons and connecting with political thought leaders.

Founder Chad Connelly was the Republican National Committee’s first-ever National Director of Faith Engagement, a key position that influenced the elections of 2016. Having been elected to two terms as the Chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, Chad set new fundraising records for the party, hosted two nationally televised debates that brought over $50 million in revenue and advertising exposure to the state, and held the largest Presidential Preference Primary at that time in South Carolina’s history with over 607,000 voting in the election. Since 2013, he’s traveled to 43 states and spoke to more than 82,000 pastors and faith leaders about the importance of pastoral leadership in the public arena. His work has led to trusted relationships with a wide variety of denominational and organizational ministry leaders across the nation and resulted in the highest evangelical turnout and vote in modern American political history in the 2016 elections.
He has appeared on numerous national television shows and has been a featured commentator on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC and others. Chad is well known in political and religious circles around the nation as an effective speaker, relationship builder and prolific fundraiser and is in demand as an inspirational speaker on a variety of topics. Chad is passionate about his home state of South Carolina, America and her true history but is most passionate about his family: his wife Dana and their four children.
Chad is a life-long South Carolinian and he and his family live in Prosperity, SC.

Faith Wins is dedicated to educating, activating and mobilizing faith leaders, helping them leverage their influence and impact within the governmental and political arena.
https://faithwins.org/

Interview recorded 24.2.23

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[0:22] Hello, Hearts of Oak and welcome to another interview coming up in a moment with Chad Connelly. Chad Connelly heads up Faith Wins, an organization in America that engages churches and politics. I met him a couple of weeks ago at a conference in Miami and was intrigued and excited by hearing his background story. So in this interview, we talk about how he got involved in politics and how he became the first national director of faith engagement in the Republican Party, a position which here in the UK we would be desperate for. Over in the US you've had this, and that was during 2016 during Trump's presidency, his first presidency. So we talk about how that happened, how he ruled that across the country, got engaged with churches, got them connected with politics and got them voting, got them inspired and got their congregations understanding what political engagement was about.
Now we go into Faith Wins, the organization he started post that.
So I know you'll enjoy this conversation with Chad Connelly.

[1:34] It is absolutely wonderful to have Chad Connelly with us today. Chad, thank you for your time today.

Honoured to be here with you. I really am, Peter, and I appreciate the opportunity, brother.

Not at all. I had the absolute honour and privilege of meeting Chad over in Miami a few weeks ago, sitting at the table together and also listening to you speak. So I'm looking forward to unpacking a little bit about your story and what you do and to our viewers and listeners, faithwins.org is where you can find more of Chad. We'll get into that a little bit more.
The links are in the description. If you're listening on any podcasting apps, Podbean, any podcasting apps, all the links are there so you can keep in touch. But just to our UK viewers, our non-US viewers, Chad served as chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, the first ever national director of faith engagement for the RNC or the Republican National Committee, for those of us not on stateside, and founder and president of Faith Wins. Now before we get into some of that Chad, you were literally born in Prosperity. I've never come across this. A town in South Carolina is called Prosperity. I thought it was a typo, but no, you're born in Prosperity.

Yes, you know prosperity is a really small town, Peter. It's probably, you know, you probably heard me make the joke.
There are four or five hundred people counting the dogs and cats.
[3:03] So it's a small little town, a great slice of rural America.
But I grew up here and actually built a home here.
My mom and dad, my mom's passed now, but my mom dad's house is behind me and my grandparents house is behind them.
And I never really thought I'd come back to little town, but I travel so much.
I really enjoyed the little town feel.

[3:25] It's always good to come back home. Always good to come back home.
Chad, your background is in business, but maybe you can tell us how you moved from being involved in business to being involved in politics.

[3:41] Yeah. You know, Peter, I went to college, got my degree in engineering, got into the corporate world.
I was doing design and engineering testing. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it.
I did, but I watched my dad lose a career in downsizing in the late 80s and my career was going up, and his was ending and it just, it changed my life.
I decided I wanted to be on my own.
And at about that time I had been in the army, I'd served in the army and I think that my military service made me come to grips with what's this thing called freedom?
Why do we have it? What's it about?
And I think it wasn't that I disrespected the idea of freedom, it was, I didn't really grasp it.
You know how it is when you're 16 or 18 or 20, you have all the answers, none of the questions, but you have the answers.
And life has a way of making you think through stuff. And so I was in the army and I started thinking, man, people died for this thing called freedom.
And it started me really on a journey to examine my freedom, what the gifts we've been given, the blessings of liberty, and then that, It made me deeper in my faith.
It made me realize God's had his hand on me
[4:55] my whole life and where people can deny that or ignore it or act like it's not true, they can't deny the things going on in their lives and they see around them. And so I was a Christian, I'd give my heart to Christ in my teen years, of course wasn't very serious about it. Married my college sweetheart and I got more serious about my faith. And I think the army was big in that Peter because you know, you start thinking about why would somebody die for something and Jesus died for all of us. And so I started reading biblical worldview books and those books really are what got me in my own business. It got me speaking for a living, got me coaching other people to get in their own business, and it really gave me an appreciation for the whole idea of America and for freedom. That's the short version, but then God just moved me into politics. And I'll give you more of it, but I'll let you talk and ask any other questions on that part.

 

It's always interesting now people get involved in politics. I mean, I love politics. I lived and read politics for years, work in the House of Lords, all of that. But I always loved to find out how anyone made that leap because when we talk to people on the street, people generally seem disengaged with the political process. So what attracted you to begin to get involved in politics?

[6:13] Well, you know, it was really reading the biblical worldview books and biblical worldview is we all have a worldview, right? We all have a way, a foundation, how we think, what we believe.
And to me, it all boils down to one question, and that is, who says?
There are only two answers. Man says, where there's no standard but me and you, which seems very haphazard to me, or God says.
And if God says there's a standard, and if our standard is God and the Bible and the Holy Word, then that begins to inform our decision-making.
And so when I was studying biblical worldview, I started realizing, oh boy, this,
[6:49] here's why people turn from the faith or don't get involved in religion or relationship with Jesus.
They don't want accountability. A lot of people, a lot of my friends, and they think, well, I don't want to be accountable to anybody. And I started realizing I am accountable. I am my brother's keeper. I'm responsible for myself and my family, my children, the people around me, my sphere of influence. I've been given this great blessing of being born in this free land.
And that started to motivate me to, boy, there ought to be more like-minded people involved in this political thing, not just as a president or a congressman or woman, but school boards, city council.
And so the more I read in those areas, I said, boy, I think God's telling me I better be involved in this.
If I'm unhappy about something going on politically, it's really not political, Peter.
It's spiritual. all our lives in a biblical worldview, my God's big enough to be in everything, everywhere, all the time.
And while there's no question that people, I say the media and the left.
[7:54] And I think that applies everywhere, have kind of taught us Christians out of being involved.
You know, they say, ooh, you Christians shouldn't be involved in it.
You're gonna offend somebody. And we're the very ones who don't wanna offend somebody.
And so we put on our turn the other cheek Jesus, when really we might oughta find turn the tables over Jesus.
And so the first thing I did in politics is, I did door knocking to get people to vote for a friend of mine for Congress in Charlotte, North Carolina, a great lady named Sue Myrick.
After that, I actually went to Boston, Massachusetts and helped a guy named Mitt Romney run against Ted Kennedy.
I had read about Senator Kennedy and the whole Chappaquiddick thing, and I couldn't believe anybody would vote for the guy.
And so here's this little lost Southern boy, Peter, knocking on doors, you ought to vote for Mitt Romney.
And of course, I didn't get a great response, but I felt compelled to do it.
And I kind of had the bug. My boys came along,
[8:51] CJ who's now 25, I was born in 97, Bennett was born in 2000, and we started doing political campaigns. They would sippy cup in a hand, a pacifier to mouth and a vote for somebody signed.
That was how they grew up. And I got involved in the school choice movement.
I got involved in the pro-life movement.
I got on some boards. In 02, I actually wrote my first book called Freedom Time, where I was just explaining to people, you should be involved, get involved in the process.
Don't sit over here on the side-lines and complain and whine and fuss and cuss.
Get involved, make a difference.
And after that, in 05, my wife Michelle, I met in college, her mom died, spun her into a deep depression.
In July of 06, she took her own life, committed suicide, left me a single dad with two little boys who saw something nobody should ever see.
But God used this too, Peter. It's a deep, raw part of my story and God's been good.
I'm remarried, but I had spoken at Chick-fil-A the week before that.
I said something I never remembered saying. I probably didn't say this when you saw me speak in Miami.
[10:00] I said something I'd never remembered saying all the times I ever spoken.
And I so didn't trust how bad Michelle was.
I left her at her dad's home nearby and I went to Chick-fil-A headquarters in Atlanta.
And I was doing a marriage and family talk, very humbling.
Nobody in the audience knew my wife was home with deep depression, much less would put a gun in her mouth a week later. The boys were five and nine,
they were sitting in the corner of the room, Peter, and I said, you know, I've messed up, I've made mistakes, but before God, man, I'm not going to be a failure with my wife and my boys. And I remember looking at the boys over there in the corner and going, hey, Lord, that was good. I'm going to I'm going to use that again.
The next Sunday, we come in to find her. And I knew she was bad,
I didn't I didn't know she had had some blues more than more like not really depression, more like deep blues throughout our marriage, but not that bad.
And I knew it was bad, but I never thought she'd do that. Anyway, we get in from church to find her.
The boys are on my heels.
[11:06] I pick her up to cover, I didn't want them to see, right? And so I go to your room, go to your room, go to your room.
I pull her close to me, I lay her back down.
And in my spirit, I feel the devil say, ha ha, you failed. Immediately I feel the Lord put his arm around me and say this wasn't my plan but I have a plan for Satan's disruption. And as I'm laying my wife of 18 and a half years back down on the ground on the floor, Romans 8 28, now you probably know the scripture, I wasn't studying it, I wasn't reading it at that point but I had put it in my heart and the scripture says, and we know that all, things work together for good of those who love God and are called according purpose. And I'd read that scripture over and over again, and I don't know if anybody out there reads the Bible, there's times you read it and you're not sure what you read.
Other times it leaps up off the pages and punch you and just really grabs you. And so Romans 8 28, I laid her back down and it came to mind. And I said, really Lord, all things?
All things? All things? My wife's in a pool of blood. All things, Lord? Really? And he, And he said to me, did you believe it yesterday?
Yes, Lord, I did.
So I need you to trust me and believe it today. And I told him I would. Now, I was a mess.
I had three or four months. I couldn't get off the mat, Peter. The boys, I sobbed.
Michelle's my best friend.
[12:31] I went back to my pro-life board several months later, and there's a guy in there who's in heaven now.
He passed away a few months ago.
And he just, three meetings in a row kept coming at me. Chad, you gotta meet this girl.
You gotta meet this girl.
I'm like, "JD, I love you, leave me alone. Get out my face",
[12:47] I don't have time for any girl. I got two little boys that saw their mom come in. I mean, it's awful.
It's awful. I don't wish it on anybody." He said, "you ought to meet this girl". And he got in my face at the second meeting. He said, "Chad, you're Mr. Positive. I've been watching you speak for years.
This is not going to beat you". He said, "you know that talk you do about counting your blessings?"
And I said, "yeah, JD, I wrote it". He said, "read your notes". And you know how a Christian brother, sometimes has to hold us accountable. And literally, I prayed for accountability and responsibility partners. And I went home that day and I read my notes and the Lord gave me three very specific prayers. I wrote down 103 blessings. I go to the next meeting. He says, "you got to meet this girl". And I finally said, "what's her name?" He said, "Dana". And I said, "JD, big question. How did she become single?"
And he hung his head and he said, "man, I'm sorry to tell you, but same way you did". Turns out her husband committed suicide, Peter, almost two years to the the day before my wife.
And she had two little girls, I had two little boys, and long story made short, six months later we were married, and today the kids are 25, 23, 22, and 21. We're blessed and highly favoured.
That's been 15 years ago.
It's the most monumental thing in my life though, to watch God work that way.
And when people tell me there's no God, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, I just don't.
[14:07] It takes a lot of faith to think that we have the answers, that all this came because of an accident, that's beyond common sense.
And I've watched God work in my life.
And it doesn't mean he works the same way with people and he's got a purpose to fulfil.
That scripture, Romans 8.28, if your audience hasn't read it, You ought to go read it.
And we know all things work together for good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
Now at the time, I had felt called into politics, Peter. I didn't know how, I didn't know what.
I didn't know if it was elected or work behind the scenes.
I was very involved in the school choice movement, the pro-life movement, and I thought it was that way.
When Dana came along, I got back involved. As you said, I ran for state party chairman, and anybody who's familiar with American politics knows our state of South Carolina, you will be here a lot. You know, it picks presidents.
[15:02] Ten out of the last 11 Republican nominees were whoever won in South Carolina. And we have what we call carve out states. There's Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. So I did every political show on television. It was a big bright spotlight on our state. And on one of those shows, a guy named Reince Priebus, and if you're political folks that are watching, have paid attention. He was Trump's, President Trump's first chief of staff. He saw me on television, and I was basically beating up the party for leaving out the faith vote. That was the long and short of my talk that day on that TV show. And Reince, I knew him, I voted for him, but I didn't have any kind of relationship with the guy. And so he texted me. He said, 'hey, I'm a believer too.'
I'd like to talk to you. You're right. We should be involved more. Let's talk about it. That's how That's how I got to be the first ever national director of faith engagement.
Of course, I helped Trump in 16. I actually went to 43 states and spoke to 80-something thousand pastors just telling them, you got to get involved.
How can you have a Matthew 5, salt and light, biblical worldview and not engage?
How are you going to be salt and light if you're not engaged?
And just imploring them to get involved.
And then of course I left the RNC,
[16:11] I didn't go work in the White House. I think I was probably Reince Priebus's only senior staffer not to go work in the Trump White House.
And that's when I started Faith Wins. But man, we exist to just get Christians involved and let your voices be heard, not just your votes.
And that's the short version. Look, I'm so honoured, Peter, I've gotten to watch God work in my life.
He didn't always choose to do it that way. And that's where faith comes in.
But the fact that a man named Jesus hung on a tree for me and for you is just amazing.
[16:42] And what is it? Some 67,000 historical references by non-biblical figures that prove the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And to get to watch him working life, it's humbling, brother.

Chad, I love when you say that when you talk to atheists, I have the same conversation that I couldn't possibly have their faith to look at the complexity of the universe of the world, to think of simply the human body, never mind the universe, and to come to believe that actually there's no greater designer, figure body out there that actually is luck and chance.
I said, well, you've got a lot more faith than I have, so I don't know how you come.
So I agree completely. But I, National Director of Faith Engagement, that for a new role, you're the first person in that, that's quite intriguing because you get an opportunity to make that your own.
You're not coming in a job description, but actually you get this and you think, wow, how can I take this right across the country?
Tell me about those early days with something brand new, how you actually built that out.

Yeah, that's a great question. You know what, nobody ever asked me.
I do a bunch of TV and radio and podcasts.
[18:06] Very few people ask that. I literally told Priebus, Reince, we got to do this right.
Let's don't do a political approach.
Let's do a spiritual approach. Let's talk to them about their biblical responsibilities.
I told him, I said, Reince, I'm not going to push a candidate.
I'm not going to push the party. I'll work for the party, but I really think God let me do something to go to all these different, because you know there are different groups of denominations and all the segments of Christians and churches.
I really think working for the party, the blessing was I got to wade through all of that and say, look, I'm not here to split doctrinal hairs.
I'm not here to discuss our differences.
But if we don't unify over things like the defence of Israel, that's biblical, life, it's biblical.
[18:53] Traditional marriage, it's biblical, religious liberty. Man, I can say sovereignty of states and borders.
It's biblical. Those are biblical spiritual issues, not political.
Now they've been politicized, but that doesn't remove my responsibility as a Christian, a dad, a husband, a Sunday school teacher.
I got to tell the truth.
And so when Reince and I sat down, that's exactly what I told him.
That's the exact conversation I had with him.
And I said, I need your assurance. You'll give me the latitude to do this the right way.
And I said, Reince, it's no offense, but there are very few people in this political world who've done politics at the level I've done it, been a state party chairman, run a bunch of races, but also are Christian first.
It's like they separate, right? It's like you described, and I think it happens everywhere.
Some of it's intentional, some of it's fear driven. Some of it's just, I don't wanna deal with it.
It's an ugly mess. I can't tell you Peter how many people say well we shouldn't get involved in politics. It's it's a dirty business. I'm like
[19:56] if you're been to a meeting, I'm not deep in meetings can be political I know what that's exactly why we as Christians should be involved. It's a dirty mess, We should permeate society in every way and let's face it. This is where we failed So this conversation of you asking me that Reince Priebus and I to his great credit and he's a great friend and mentor.
We sat down and had this very talk, fleshing this out. What's it look like?
And I said, well, first Reince.
You can't contact my pastor buddies. You can't ask them for money. You can't ping them about you must vote this way You cannot irritate them and and I'll tell you the truth when I first built my list I said you can't ping them. You can't hit them up with emails and all that junk. I
[20:43] salted the list y'all probably use that term, I put fake names in the email list to make sure that he communicated with his data people. We're not doing this and it was about ten days somebody in the data department, hit up my pastors and one of my fake emails got the email.
So I called Reince and said, hey man, we're not doing this. We're not gonna bug these pastors.
And again, to his great credit, he made sure there was a firewall.
And then I started keeping my own list and I didn't give it to him.
I just said, I gotta have my word and integrity.
So I quit giving cell phone numbers and emails to the party, which of course was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But I want it to be authentic relationships, Peter. I think that relationships matter.
I think our world right now is going through a time it doesn't value relationships like it, but I think it will again.
I think we're gonna get back to a very high touch personal relationship driven society again, in your country and mine.
If they value the ideas of liberty and freedom, we're gonna get back to where that person to person relationship matters far more than a digital ad or a television ad or whatever.
And so when we started the program, I'm telling you, the people in the RMC building, the political people, it was, it was, they didn't get it.
Quite frankly, a lot of them still don't. And they don't want to deal with pastors.
They want to be able to say, hey, we control this or we've got the data or we can contact them.
[22:12] And I was like, no, no, no, no, we're not doing it that way.

About that because you look at one, first question is how did this position only start at that point?
Secondly, how you kind of from over here, maybe in the UK, we look at the Republican Party as as a party that many Christians, we look at America's Christianity is not something to be ashamed or afraid about and people wear it on their sleeves passionately. So how did the RNC not really get it at the beginning.

[22:47] Well, it's interesting. Part of this is the denominational differences. Part of it is, they're in political mode first, and you and I are Christians first. I tell people all the time I'm a Christian, that I'm a conservative, I happen to be a Republican because their belief system lines up most closely. And I also tell pastors, you're not going to find perfect. There are no perfect candidates. Only Jesus was perfect. He's the only one.
And therefore, since there are no perfect candidates, there are no perfect parties either.
And goodness, Peter, I'm married with four kids.
We can't get our kids to agree on a Whopper or a Big Mac. That's normal.
And Reagan said that, right? Reagan said, if you're 80% of my friend, it doesn't make you 20% of my enemy.
And so we try to teach those lessons that you're looking for the person that most closely aligns.
And I told them, don't vote on the party, don't vote on the candidate, don't vote on a personality, vote on policies and principles. So when we were building this, it was a complete oddity to the people inside the political structure. No doubt about it.
And I think, let's face it, a lot of the political types will check a box.
Okay, I'm covering the Hispanics, I'm covering the black vote, I'm covering the faith vote, whatever.
And I think what Priebus did that set apart the RNC, and they've not done since to my my knowledge is he had a very specific plan for every segment of that.
[24:10] And he had authentic people connecting with people of like mind and talking to them.
Even if they didn't agree on issues, he really was intentional about authentic evangelicals talking to evangelicals and Hispanics talking to Hispanics down the line trying to really
[24:27] go back to a basic relationship model. And let's face it, it worked.
In 2014, we flipped nine US Senate seats, hadn't been done in 150 years.
In 2016, a guy named Donald Trump hit a record.
You know, and probably not the most evangelical guy to run, right?
And again, we didn't tell him who to vote for.
Romney, in 2012, had hit 78%. 78% of the self-identified evangelicals voted for the Republican candidate in 2012. And I told Reince at the time, I said, Reince, if you ever hit 80%, the left can't win. I don't care if they're running for dog catcher or president and Trump hit 81%. And I believe it was because we were very intentional about going into areas and running up the score. We found that there were a lot of people sitting in churches who thought, my vote doesn't count. I don't care about this. I don't want to go to go vote. And our deal was, I'm going to get to know the pastor. And hey, Pastor Peter.
[25:26] Listen, let's talk about this and I'll tell you to vote for, but can you do two things?
Can you make sure they're registered to vote? And can you teach them to vote by the Bible?
That's it. You don't have to say Republican. You don't have to say a candidate like a Trump or a particular Senator, but can you register to vote? And can you teach them to vote biblical values and use voter guides and so forth.
I tell people, look, I'm not trying to get you to charge the beach at D-Day.
Can you register everybody?
And can you give them the vote biblical values? Those are our asks.
And that's not difficult.
And listen, you've read scripture, Matthew five. Jesus says, if you're not salt, I know you're probably familiar with this, then you are good for nothing to be thrown in the street and trodden under the feet of men.
Not about you, Peter, or any other believers out there. I don't wanna be standing before the Father because we will all stand before the Father and be told I was good for nothing.
That seems like a really bad life to me. And let's face it,
[26:27] I think our world's hurting for purpose. You know, suicide's a big deal to me, obviously. We live through it.
My wife and her girls lived through it. The girls lived through it.
My boys live through it. It's horrible. You don't wish on anybody.
When you see suicide rates like our world sees, you realize we're missing purpose.
[26:47] They're missing purpose. And some people are retrievable. There are things going on.
Michelle's depression was real.
I don't doubt that it's real, but it goes back to purpose. and she felt like she lost purpose.
And I know that from my experience. And so I think the political world is a great purpose for people.
Go out and make a difference. You know, I was a Little League baseball coach because I wanted to make a difference.
I'm a Sunday school teacher because I want to make a difference.
I'm involved in my local community because I want to make a difference.
You know, we had a family friend, his wife's got an incurable disease.
My wife and I organized the Sunday school class to take a meal, just to take a little burden off because I want to make a difference.
And there's so many unfilled needs out there that government is fulfilling wrongly in my opinion, that people like me and you, because scripture says the church and the individual should take care of people.
There's not a jot, tittle or phrase about the government doing it, especially through coercion like we're seeing now.
You must, and we're gonna tax you super high. So my whole message is get involved, Christian, get involved, find purpose. God's got a plan in your life, he doesn't make accidents, and so figure out what that is and spend the rest of your life doing it.

[27:59] I want to ask you about your church engagement because I for this conversation with my church about abortion and pro-life, there is an absolute fear to engage that no, no, we need to be very careful what we say because we would offend people and there's an inability to come out and say this is what we believe but we will love those who have failed.
And that's quite different from, I remember the one time was over in the States, quite a few four years ago in Houston, Second Baptist Church Houston, Reverend Ed Young, at Phenomenal Church and Tucker Carlson happened to be speaking that evening on a Saturday.
I just was blown away by the....
Intentionality, I think, of bringing your faith into any realm of public life.
In the UK there's that mass of separation.
I mean, talk to us about that because that is quite exciting, that engagement generally with churches, in not only politics but across the board in public life.

[29:12] Yeah, you know, I think as a Christian, the more you read the Word, the closer you get to God, the more, you know, my prayer is, Lord, I need wisdom today, every day, 15 minutes.
I want to be more Christ-like.
I want to have a better walk.
And when you say those prayers, kind of dangerous prayers, if you will, right?
Then what do you have for me, Lord?
Then there's a response. You know, faith without works is dead.
We don't get to heaven by our works, but our works are a response to what He's done for us. He died for our sins. So how do I say thank you?
I believe it's by engaging, by activating, by doing my part.
And part of that's the justice the Bible talks about. God is justice. God is just.
The Bible doesn't talk about fairness, except with the weather and fair ladies, I believe, but justice is God.
[30:05] And how do I let the murder of innocent babies go without me speaking up if I'm a Christian?
And there are two victims, right? a girl and there's a baby that we take a life and I think they've been lied to.
Listen, this is deeply personal to me. I know so many friends who've, and they didn't see a way out.
My wife's involved in a local crisis pregnancy centre.
[30:30] We've marched, we've counselled, my son and his fiancé started a pro-life group on their college campus at Clemson.
It's deeply personal and I don't want to condemn people because, yep, with the grace of God, lie, right? And so we're all sinners saved by grace. We've all fallen short of The Glory
[30:47] Of God. None of us is righteous, no, not one. We go right down the Roman road scriptures and we realize, you know, none of us is perfect. And so I don't want to condemn somebody who's made a horrible mistake. But I also want to reach out to them and I want to make sure they don't make that second mistake. And I told my kids, listen, mistakes aren't fatal for you. What you got to do is take them as learning experiences. I don't want you to be scared of making a mistake and I don't want to minimize the death of a baby as a mistake but in a bigger sense you want to think about it was I did something I can't undo. You know Michelle did something we can't undo. It's a horrible thing. I believe she got to heaven and she figured that out. But also understand that people do things every day they're influenced by their people around them or,
mass media or whatever else. And we got to reach out to them and love on them and tell them there's a different way and tell them that there's a thing called forgiveness. And you know, he removes your sin as far as the east is from the west. So there's nothing that you or I do or have done that Jesus isn't willing to forgive us for except denying Him and the Holy Spirit, obviously. And so he is about forgiveness. That's why he died.
He knew what we were going to do before he hung on the tree.
And so my response to that knowledge, the more I read the Bible, the more I understand
[32:10] that, is I got to get involved.
And part of that is loving on people who've been through stuff relating to them, but also in a political sense, standing up for truth.
And truth is, God made every single one of us with His perfect design.
We messed it up, but He had a plan. He had a purpose.
And Peter, if he had a plan and a purpose through the decision my wife made to commit suicide, then he's got a plan and a purpose. And far be it from me to question that.
I don't understand it.
It's beyond my capability to understand. But I do know God's got a plan and a purpose for me and for you and for everybody else watching and listening.
What's up to for me is to find out when he strikes us with this thing about abortion, You know, our nation alone, we've taken what, some 65 million babies' lives.
And who did we kill in the name of choice? Who did we kill in the name of convenience?
Who did we snuff out a life far too soon because it didn't fit our plans?
And so I've got a friend who was conceived by rape.
[33:15] And I have a pastor whose granddaughter was conceived by rape.
And I dare you, when somebody says, yeah, but rape, whatever, incest, why don't you tell Ryan, or that, and I won't mention her name, why don't you tell those two people their lives don't matter?
And I think people don't think through that sometimes. And let's face it, we're in a society now where emotions and feelings count more than facts and that'll recentre. We'll get back to truth.

Not completely and no one is too far, whatever they've done, whatever has happened is too far from God's ability to reach out as he is all powerful. Can I ask you about
[33:59] Faith Wins. Faith Wins is all about engaging Christians and helping them understand that Christians have a responsibility to vote according to their values. Tell us about that journey. Why did you start it? You'd finish your time in the White House with that responsibility. You started Faith Wins. Tell us why and give us that journey.

 

You know, I really, I think that when I left the the RNC and I just thought I should do this through a ministry side as opposed to through a political side.
I think that pastors do respond better to the ministry angle than they do to a political angle and it just, it was a God thing.
It really was a God thing. I was driving along one night and Faith Wins came in my mind.
It was a prayer result. I believe God answered prayer.
You know, what do you call this? If I do this on my own? Of course, now the responsibility is mine.
Go raise money. Go tell people about what we're doing.
But our laser focus is building relationships with pastors to get them to engage the culture.
[35:06] I mean, Peter, we're living in a time when, I don't know if it's like this in your country, this whole, if a boy feels like a girl, he should swim or race or wrestle or whatever else against a biological girl. And that's pure insanity.
And it defies common sense. How about those girls that have been working their whole lives?
And I'll tell you what it tells me. I told a pastor yesterday and I with this.
[35:31] The first time somebody said, if a boy feels like a girl, he should go to a girl's bathroom. Here's what I know.
There wasn't a Christian in the room with a backbone.
[35:39] Because if my mama, who's in heaven now, had been in the room when somebody said something that stupid, she would have picked up a chair and whopped somebody upside the head.
It defies common sense. And so we're told, oh, you can't talk like that.
And that's offensive. Listen, let's get people like that help.
You know, that's not healthy for them. And this whole sexualization of children and genital mutilate, I mean, that's,
[36:05] that's evil. That's demonic. That's not doing them a favour. But, you know, I live with somebody who had mental illness.
I get it. Let's get them help. And some people you can't help.
I'm the first to say it. We did everything we knew to do with her.
But when you look at all the things going on around that movement and the the apologists who are pushing for it, it shows me that there are not enough Christians around. And all that's a big reason I started Faith Wins. Just go get involved, Christian.
Don't sit on the side-lines. You will be held accountable for what you do and don't do.

Part of Faith Wins is about providing leaders with resources.
Tell us how you do that.

Yeah, you know what we do is we teach them how to do voter registration.
We hand out voter guides. We distribute them digitally and printed.
We make sure they know about who's running. We get involved in judges races.
We get involved on anti gambling, pro life, pro traditional marriage.
We'd get involved in all sorts of things like that and we just educate them.
We provide them the tools. Most states that means voter guides.
It means how to conduct voter registration. It probably means having a pastor come in to train their people.
It kind of runs the full slate of whatever it takes.
We make an assessment of what do they need in that area and we go at it.

When you engage with churches, what are the conversations? I guess you meet some people who are engaged politically.
[37:32] But I guess, as I've known for many of my conversations, you meet many people who are completely disengaged.
Tell us about that and how those conversations go.

[37:44] I remember the first time I got a pushback from a pastor. I was in a town in Colorado in 2013.
And I knew it was coming, but I'd never really heard it framed.
And I already felt like some people hide behind the pulpit, some people just don't want to deal with it.
Some people, they think I'm gonna make somebody mad. So this pastor said, "Chad, we just, you know, I appreciate what you're doing. I just, we don't get political."
And I didn't know what to say.
And it kind of, you know, took me aback. And so when I don't know what to say, I always whisper a quick prayer. "Okay, Lord, you better give me something."
And then I ask a question, what do you mean? And it gives me a chance to think.
And he said, "well, you know, we don't talk about controversial stuff."
And here's what the Lord gave me.
"Well, do y'all talk about the Bible? He preached the whole council of God, as scripture says."
He said, "what do you mean?" I said, "well, I don't believe life is a political issue.
It's a spiritual issue.
Traditional marriage, religious liberty, defensive visual, I can go down the line.
Those are biblical issues.
And yes, pastor, they've been politicized, but how does that remove our responsibility to be salt and light?" He said, "nobody's ever told me that." And then last fall, I had a pastor, I was in the state of Wisconsin.
[38:53] This pastor got saved late in life, tattooed, full-arm tattoos.
Pretty big church in a medium-sized town in Wisconsin.
He came up to me and he hosted our meeting because my pastor that works on my team had asked him to be the host. He said, "Chad, I wanted to host because your pastor's a long-time buddy. He's been a mentor.
But I just gotta tell you, I'm pretty sceptical."
I said, "pastor, what are you sceptical about?" He said, "well, I just guessed the whole political thing."
I said, "do you think I want you to be political?"
He said, "yeah, I thought so." I said, "no, no, I want you to be biblical."
[39:28] He said, "I don't think I understand". I said, "you should stick around for my talk."
So I did, he said, "I can't, I'm too busy."
I looked out, I did my 15 minute talk.
He was out there.
David Barton did his 40 minute talk. He was out there. When we got done, our conversation and our avenue, our approach to explaining it, he comes over, he grabs you by the arm firmly.
And he said, "Chad, I've never heard anybody explain it this way.
And I got to tell you, I want to be ground zero for everything you're doing in our state."
And Peter, I can tell a story like that from virtually every state, because we're going out into the nooks and crannies.
Faith Wins had 132 meetings in 24 states between February and November last year, so if someone has got a better pulse on Christian America in the nooks and crannies, I'd love to meet them.
Save me some time. I'd like to meet them and ask them their experiences, but we had 24 different denominations host our meetings.
We have over 40 different denominations attend our meetings.
We had 27,000 people in those meetings in very specific areas, and we had over 4,100 pastors in those 132 meetings.
And so we got a pretty good take on what people are thinking and feeling.
And you're seeing what's happening in Asbury. I think God's moving.
I think God's moving in our nation and the world.
I think that he's tapping us on the shoulder. Hey, hey, who shall I send?
Here I am, send me, said the prophet. So I think the onus is upon us.

[40:52] Or perhaps I was reading about Asprey today and feeling that excitement within me, reading about what was happening and wanting God to continue doing that and to spread out.
My prayer was, well, as I'm going to CPAC, maybe a little bit of Asprey and CPAC would be wonderful.
Just mess up the agenda. But can I say, obviously connecting with churches is about connecting, I guess, with political thought leaders.
And many, I assume you come across pastors, I come across many people and they say, well, you know, I just need to stay in my lane and to what I've been called to do.
And I'm thinking, well, your lane is the world, your lane is everything.
Why live yourself? How do you kind of encourage, I guess, encourage those maybe within churches that feel, well, I need to constrain myself to what God's given me and their worldview is quite small and you're trying to enlarge that worldview?

[41:53] I think the way that works is, and you're exactly right, because I don't ever wanna disrupt what a pastor's main thing is, right?
I believe it is preaching the gospel to tell the truth. And so, I'll give you this analogy that our friend Bob McKeown uses.
If you and I walk in your office there, and you say, well, it's 40 feet wide.
And I say, well, Peter, I think it's 35 feet wide.
And those are just opinions. until we pull a tape measure out and we have the truth.
[42:23] And truth reveals error and error hates truth. And that's why you see so much truth being confronted these days.
Well, that's not my truth. No, no, no. You get to have your experience.
You don't get to create truth.
Truth is his, not ours.
You know, we can have an experience and that's our experience.
But we got the bugs view of the windshield. God's got the helicopter.
And so we don't get to decide what truth is. And when truth reveals error, that's why you see all this error going absolutely nuts.
If they ask you to go down to the local university and say a prayer, they're going to say, Peter, what are you going to pray about? You're going to say, well, I'm going to pray in the wind or goat's breath or eagle's feathers.
Ooh, that's wonderful.
But if you say you're going to pray in the name of Jesus, all hell breaks loose because truth reveals error.
And so I think that when they think I got to stay in my lane and just preach the gospel, we are. And every time you tell the truth, that is preaching the gospel. You know, I've got a buddy named Bill Feddory says two things. He says, number one, we got to get everybody to heaven we can, and number two, make sure it keeps it legal. And I think that part of what a lot of these pastors that won't engage, they think they're going to lose a tether in the church, or they think they're going to lose, you know, respect. And the truth is, the churches that preach the truth, the unfettered,
[43:45] unfiltered, absolute Word of God. They don't change it for their own needs or wants or feelings. They're growing. The mainline churches in America, they're hurting. Some of them are dying. And the reason they're dying, I've got five new couples in my Sunday school class in my little town. And every one of them came from a mainline denomination that's capitulated on the truth.
They've watered it down. They've apologized for it. They won't jump into into the culture wars and tell the truth.
And our pastor's preaching truth, and I'm sure trying to in my Sunday school class every Sunday.

[44:19] I want to end on the truth, let me ask you one question before we end on that. It seems to be what you're doing has gone past the party limitations. I mean, it's what you're talking about has taken on a life of its own, you're engaging churches irrespective of whether the RNC is happy or not, irrespective of who is running or not. Actually, what you're doing
[44:44] has passed that point of, I guess, control and ownership.
Tell us about that because it's then irrelevant what the ideas or policy or campaign is of any particular party. What you're doing is now separate and much bigger than that.

Yeah we think so and we think it's been a God thing. Thank you for for saying that. That's awful nice and it's certainly been a prayer and a heartfelt desire that Christians not just give votes but voices.
And, you know, there's too many candidates, too many staffs that don't acknowledge a biblical worldview. They don't understand it. They see it from their own worldview, which is, as I said, who says only one question, only two answers, man or God.
Man's always going to have a standard that moves all over the place, different based on the different people, and God's going to have a standard that doesn't move, whether it's inconvenient or not.
I think it's gotten bigger because we've been able to tell candidates and party people, Love you, proud of you, but no, you're not gonna hire us. I've had presidential candidates already.
We wanna hire your network. That is not how we work.
[45:49] And we're gonna get pastors out to maximize the Christian vote.
But if you're not talking their issues and you're not standing for truth, they're probably not gonna be with you, just quite frankly.
And so I raise money through donors who believe in this. And I talked to them, you met some of them, probably in Miami, who just have bought into what we're doing and they realized we gotta get our nation and the world back to a foundational truth that doesn't move with the changing winds.
And we gotta be able to identify liberty as, true freedom is freedom in Christ.
That's true freedom. Bondage, releasing the bondage and the chains of sin.
That's true freedom.
And we gotta get people back to understanding truth instead of all this haphazard, all over the map, ricochet rabbit stuff that we see today. So we think it has, we just thank the Lord for it, and we're humbled, we're excited where we're at and where we're going.

[46:40] Can I end off on a paradox that I see? America's traditional culture of Christians being engaged in politics, even though you have a separation of church and state, you have huge Christian engagement.
Well, we in the UK, we have an established church, we have that connection and yet we are seeing traditionally that has been very much one with our education system, with our health service, all of that came from faith, came from the church.
But now we have a huge disconnect and it's curious that over in the States where you have that separation, you seem to have churches being engaged where over here in the UK we have that connection in theory in our constitution, but we have a separation.
I mean, speaking to that on the end and how kind of that works.

[47:39] Well, in America, that whole idea of separation of church and state has been mislabelled.
That was in a private letter by Thomas Jefferson in 1802.
Thomas Jefferson wasn't there when the US Constitution was written. It was just hearsay.
But it was taken out of context over 150 years later in a Supreme Court case.
It was used by the up-and-coming modern progressive left to say, oh, you can't be involved.
And see, our First Amendment assures freedom of speech just because you're a Christian or you're behind a pulpit.
You don't lose that. And I think the more you see judges that are committed to our constitutional, they're constitutional conservatives, they're not trying to rewrite laws.
You're seeing a rebalancing of that in America right now. You know, you probably watched, you are probably familiar with that coach out in the state of Washington, Peter, who was fired for doing a silent prayer at a football game.
He had done it for years, never promoted it, never made people do it, but people came out of the stands after the game. The kids on the teams came out and it became a big deal.
The school district punished him, they fired him, the guy was mocked and lied about, he lost his job. I think he lost his house.
[48:50] And a Christian attorney that was at that meeting, Kelly Shackelford at First Liberty Institute took it up and they finally won last June, the right to pray in public like that.
And that's a big reversal for America. So coach Kennedy, they had to pay him back pay, they hired him.
And I'm sure you remember when that football player on Monday night football about six weeks ago, when he went down, do you know what those football players did and everybody in the stand?
They took a knee. There was not a Supreme Court ruling.
There was not a school district punishing them. There wasn't a newspaper reporter saying, no, you can't do that. So when people are in dire straits, you know what they do?
They pray. They may not know to God. They may not know how. They may not know why.
And so this whole idea of separation of church and state has been a misnomer, it's been mislabelled, it's been misapplied.
And in America, when you read America's founding documents, those words don't appear in any American founding document.
It's been so misinformed to people people are miseducated about it. We've been trying to re-educate them and teach them about the truth and going back to America's original history.

 

Just to end, Faith Wins for probably a quarter of our viewers or state side, a quarter of our listeners or state side, how can they get involved? Can they register? Can they donate? How can they get involved on the website?

[50:13] Absolutely. That's faithwins.org .org you've got on your screen. We'd love to have you involved.
We'd love to know where you are. We'd love to invite you to our meetings. We were in Iowa yesterday We got meetings in South Carolina this week coming up. We were in 24 states last year. I know we're gonna add Oregon, Washington,
[50:31] Minnesota Maine, I know we're adding those four states this year, but if you go on that website You'll see where our meetings are. We'd love to have you come they're free. They're open to people, We want to help educate people we want to have those dialogues and conversation And so faith wins, F-A-I-T-H-W-I-N-S, faithwins.org.
We'd love to have you involved.

 

Chad, thank you for coming on.
The story of what you're doing with Faith Wins and your story with RNC is exciting and inspiring.
So thank you for joining us and sharing your story with us.

Thank you, brother. God bless you. Thanks for what you're doing.
I hate to won't see you at CPAC, but I know I'll see you soon.

 

I'll see you soon.
Thank you so much, Chad. And thank you to our viewers, listeners for watching, for tuning in, for being part of the conversation and look forward to seeing you on our next interview.
So thank you so much and good evening to you all.