Georgia Evangelical Couple: 'Our Conscience Won't Allow Us To Vote For Trump Again'

Mary Papenfuss
Updated ·2 min read

An evangelical couple from Georgia revealed in an impassioned op-ed Monday that they’re not voting for President Donald Trump again because “our conscience won’t allow us to.”

“Having witnessed the negative effects that the administration has had on vulnerable people — particularly refugees and other immigrants — we are among the significant number of evangelical Christians who will not vote for the president again,” Ryan and Katharine Hurlburt wrote in The Hill.

The Hurlberts called Trump’s immigration policies “cruel, undermining his pledges to life and religious freedom.”

They also cited a recent Fox News poll that Trump is ahead of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by 38 points among white evangelicals — but that’s down significantly from his 61-point margin over Hillary Clinton in 2016. “Evangelicals are having second thoughts,” the Hurlberts wrote.

Voting for Trump the first time around was a challenge, the couple said, given “credible reports of his marital infidelities, his bullying tone, and disparaging comments on immigrants.” They ended up voting for him because of his stance against abortion and his comments supporting freedom of religion.

Describing themselves as “committed to upholding the dignity and value of all human life,” they emphasized: “We also value the lives of thousands of children who were separated from their mothers or fathers by the ‘zero tolerance’ policies of the administration at the Mexican border in 2018.”

The couple added: “Denying asylum to those fleeing persecution is not a commitment to life.” And, since many immigrants are “fleeing persecution on account of their faith, it [also] undercuts the pledge of the president on religious freedom,” they noted.

“This is not what the president promised to evangelical voters.”

Read the Hurlberts’ entire op-ed in The Hill.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.