'Souls to the Polls': Black Churches Mobilize as New Maps Redraw the South

When Tennessee lawmakers redrew the state's voting maps earlier this year, splitting Shelby County — home to majority-Black Memphis — into three congressional districts and eliminating a Democratic, Black-majority district, one Nashville congregation felt the change close to home.

Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church, a predominantly Black church in Nashville, has long woven civic education into congregational life. It runs year-round courses on voting and civics, hosts weekday workshops on ballot measures and proposed amendments to the state constitution, and hands every new member a voter registration application in a welcome packet. Prospective leaders must be registered voters before taking up their roles.

After the May redistricting, that work went into high gear. Senior Pastor Aaron Marble said the mood among the people he serves is one of alarm and deep concern about what is happening.

The Tennessee change followed a Supreme Court decision that limited how much state lawmakers may take race into account when drawing districts designed to help nonwhite voters elect their preferred candidates — a practice used for decades to boost minority representation in Washington. According to Christianity Today, the ruling weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and set off a fresh wave of redistricting across the South, including in Alabama and Louisiana, where predominantly Black districts were eliminated or split.

Black churches, which historically served as gathering places for civil rights activism, remain among the most politically active congregations in the United States. Across the region, church leaders have set up teams to register and encourage voters, invited candidates to speak to congregants, and launched a national index where voters can assess candidates through the lens of social justice.

On election day, Jefferson Street will serve as a gathering point for vans, buses, and taxis carrying voters who need rides to polling sites. Members will also make last-minute calls to unlikely voters in Nashville, urging them to cast a ballot. Marble said the church has doubled down on giving candidates time during Sunday services this year, noting that face time on Sunday morning remains meaningful engagement, especially for younger people who may miss ads and mail.

Not every Christian leader is comfortable with all of these practices. Justin Giboney, president of the And Campaign, a nonpartisan Christian civic organization, said he supports church-led voter registration drives and the Black church's historic “Souls to the Polls” efforts, but he warned that churches should not become an arm or agent of a particular party. “That compromises our moral authority,” he said, urging churches to discuss issues such as equality, justice, poverty, and health care with Bible stories and themes anchoring the message, rather than partisan language.

Other Black church leaders take a different emphasis. Patrick Wooden Sr., a Church of God in Christ bishop who pastors in Raleigh, North Carolina, has urged people to “vote your values,” telling viewers on his YouTube channel, “Never be the person who prays one way and votes another.” The Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the country, launched a national project in October requiring local churches to establish committees that maximize voter registration and mobilize congregants.

In Memphis, Citadel of Deliverance COGIC, a congregation of about 1,000 Sunday attendees, has been registering voters and hosting weekly civics workshops. Because of redistricting, its members now belong to districts stretching 200 miles across poor, rich, urban, and rural counties. Bishop Linwood Dillard II, who leads the church, said that mix of communities “causes major issues in terms of compatibility” and will require whoever wins to be “very creative to adequately represent the interests of the entire area.”

Across the South, other historically Black denominations are running similar efforts. The African Methodist Episcopal Church has encouraged congregants in Louisiana and Mississippi to vote early and arrive with a photo ID, partnered in Mississippi with VoteRiders to help would-be voters secure picture IDs, and urged members to bring four other people with them to vote as part of an “Arrive with Five” initiative. The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, which claims 1.2 million members, runs a “1,000 Marches to the Polls” effort, counting each congregant vehicle carrying five voters as one march, and will bus locals to the polls on election day.

Bishop Clarence K. Heath, who oversees CME churches across Alabama and Florida, said congregations under his watch have tried to energize apathetic registered voters through personal, one-on-one interaction. The church must “make sure that we sound the alarm and encourage people without having the spirit of anger [and] hostility,” he said, adding that Christians should participate “believing that our presence, our voice, does count and it does matter.”

In Memphis, Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church has spent recent months sending nonpartisan mailers, hosting weekly phone banks, knocking on doors, and holding five candidate forums that drew 1,000 attendees. Its senior pastor, Lawrence Turner, said the goal is to make sure many people are informed and are activating their right to vote.

Behind the civic work sits a pressing human need. Turner and Dillard both run church food pantries that now provide up to two weeks of food each month to more than 1,500 households — nearly double the demand of February 2025. Affordability, the pastors said, is high on the list of issues they hope winning candidates will actually address.

Nationally, the debate continues over federal rules that prohibit churches from endorsing political candidates, with the Trump administration and some conservative Christian groups fighting in court to change those rules — a move supported by some Black pastors and opposed by others, according to Christianity Today.