By Special to The New Tri-State Defender
NASHVILLE – Determined to get its members to the voting booths on Nov. 8, the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship has started Fellowship Unite, a PAC aiming to register and turn out millennial and minority voters in the 2016 election and beyond.
The organization is moving to unite church congregations with a common goal: energize 100,000 unengaged voters to get out to the voting booth. Making use of a provocative online video, Fellowship Unite is focused on turning community “outrage to action.”
“It’s time to turn our anger about discrimination, police violence, and other issues of the day into meaningful, political action,” said Bishop Joseph W. Walker III, one of the group’s leaders. “Fellowship Unite is organized to shift us from protest to power, to shift us from apathy to action. This election is too important to stay home.”
Walker, based in Nashville at Mount Zion Baptist Church, is the Presiding Bishop in the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship International, a global network of Baptist pastors and churches. Walker graduated with a Ph.D. in Theology from Princeton University and has grown the Mount Zion congregation from 175 members to more than 30,000 since taking over in 1992.
“I believe that part of developing your own destiny is engaging in civic responsibility. Too many people have paid too high of a price for us to sit home and do nothing. The stakes are too high. I want people to join us as we encourage all churches nationwide to register to vote and get folks to the polls,” said Walker. “We’ve got to do it. We’ve got to make it happen. Let’s be a part of our own destiny.”
Another driving force of the organization is Bishop K. Edwin Bryant, who began working under Walker in 1992 at Mount Zion and eventually worked his way up to chief operating officer. Bryant now presides over Mount Pisgah Church in Dayton, Ohio.
“Our country is at a critical point in our history, and it would be a shame for the black community to shy away from its obligation to become engaged in the political process,” said Bryant. “We must let our voices be heard in deciding the direction of this country.”
The Fellowship Unite effort dovetails with multi-front pushes to get more African Americans registered. The National Newspaper Publishers Association recently launched Project Black Voter Turnout 2016: 20 Million Black Voters to the Polls. NNPA President and CEO Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. said that initiative would involve working with several national civic, civil rights and activist-minded organizations, along with the National Baptist Convention, Progressive National Baptist Convention, AME, AME Zion, COGIC, UCC and the National Council of Churches.
Through its “Trinity Pledge” commitment, Fellowship Unite is asking its churches’ members to pledge to register to vote, vote early and get three other non-registered people to register and vote.
Events such as “Faith Day at the Polls,” a national day where churchgoers meet their pastor at polling locations, and “Souls to the Polls,” a program providing rides in church buses to the polls, will be used by the PAC to ensure members get to the ballot box.
Fellowship Unite is focusing its GOTV efforts in swing states such as Tennessee, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. The organization is non-partisan and does not promote a particular candidate or ideology.
To view the video: http://bit.ly/2cnNo0C.
(For more information, visit FellowshipUnite.com. Email Amanda Washington at washington@fletcherrowley.com; call 615-329-9559 or 615-478-3308.)
