What is the most important issue facing evangelical Christians today? The Obama administration has given Christians plenty to be concerned about, but one item outranks every other, according to a senior evangelical leader. “I was in a closed-door session with six of these candidates in D.C.” recently, Pastor Robert Jeffress The O’Reilly Factor last week. Several other evangelicals joined him in a Q-and-A session. “The number one question of people like myself is: What are you going to do to protect the religious liberties of Americans that are under assault from ISIS…but also from the secular Left,” Jeffress said. “And I’m not going to vote for anybody who doesn’t have a clear plan to deal with both ISIS and the secular Left.” The Obama administration admitted before the Supreme Court in April that whether the government will move to strip religious institutions that do not believe in gay “marriage” of their tax-exempt status will “be an issue.” “It’s not going to stop with religious colleges,” Jeffress said. “Anybody who believes, ‘Well, they’ll take away the tax-exempt status of religious colleges or schools, but they’ll leave churches alone,’ that’s extremely naive.” Stripping the church of its ability to speak and driving Christians back into the catacombs are “the intended consequences of the Left.” A presidential candidate who wants evangelical Christian support, he said, must be willing to defend “religious liberties for those of us who believe in traditional marriage.” O’Reilly also asked whether evangelicals would vote for a Republican who supports abortion, like New York Governor George Pataki. “Not gonna happen,” Jeffress said flatly. “If it was a choice between a pro-choice Republican and a pro-life Democrat, I’d vote for the Democrat.” Watch his interview below:
