People of Faith Are Preparing to Get Out the Vote
As the 88th Texas Legislature marches on, a group of Texas Impact advocates in the Greater Houston area met this week to set their sights beyond the session and start considering how to focus their energy after sine die. On Thursday, more than a dozen Houston-based members of Texas Impact’s Legislative Engagement Groups gathered on the leafy grounds of First Congregational Church of Houston to discuss how they will mobilize people of faith to engage in Texas Impact’s Houston Faith Votes campaign– part of our broader Texas Faith Votes program–during the electoral seasons of 2023 and 2024.
Launched just before the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, Texas Impact’s Legislative Engagement Groups– LEGs for short– are geographically-based teams of clergy members and lay people who work together to establish relationships with legislative offices and serve as connectors between elected officials and Texas Impact. Throughout this spring, LEG members have participated in weekly briefings with Texas Impact lobbyists to receive real-time information about policy development and define specific actions they need to take to ensure that the prophetic voice of Texas Impact’s membership is heard in the legislative process.
There are 40 active LEG members in Harris and Fort Bend Counties, with 17 house districts and 7 senate districts represented among them. On Thursday, these advocates deviated from their regular conversations about which elected officials to call regarding their opposition to Operation Lonestar or anti-LGBTQIA+ bills. Instead, they focused their attention on what role faith communities in Greater Houston will play during the next 18 months in garnering more voter turnout in a region that has seen a decline in voter participation in recent elections.
The LEG members, who hail from diverse faith traditions, traversed a spectrum of concerns and ideas about how faith communities can encourage, inspire, and organize their own membership and adjacent communities to show up at the polls. Initially, they expressed uncertainty and frustration about some faith communities’ reluctance to participate in dialogue about electoral processes and brainstormed how to communicate why and how people of faith are called to express their beliefs through their vote. One participant cited a quote by Nish Weiseth that she often returns to as she explains her faith-based call to this work: “Politics is the single largest systemic tool that we have at our disposal with which we can love our neighbor. Simply put, politics for the Christian should be institutional neighborliness.”
LEG members spent most of the time talking through strategies for organizing their fellow congregants and other nearby communities. From establishing voter information booths at a church’s weekly farmers market, to collaborating with nearby service providers to provide voter education to program beneficiaries, to forging neighborhood-based interfaith alliances to amplify faith communities’ efforts in specific locales, the LEG members offered innovative ways to leverage organic and mission-oriented connections for greater voter turnout. People of faith are on the move.
Have comments, questions, or ideas about our Houston Faith Votes campaign? Contact Katie Wang at katie@texasimpact.org.