Former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers has been visiting churches across Michigan during his Senate campaign, and has found that people of faith in the battleground state are worried about one issue above the rest: the economy.
Rogers has visited around a dozen places of worship, traveling from the urban centers of Detroit and Pontiac to the towns of Traverse City in northwest Michigan and Marquette in the Upper Peninsula. Rogers told The Daily Wire that the church visits allow him to worship with Michiganders of diverse faith backgrounds, and then hear their perspective after services.
During his conversations with Christians and church leaders, Rogers said that kitchen table issues are the concerns most often discussed.
“A big part of it is what you would hear everywhere else: the cost of groceries, the cost of energy bills, their ability to try to make their paycheck last until the end of the month,” Rogers told The Daily Wire. “So many people are literally living paycheck-to-paycheck. That is always front-and-center.”
Rogers said that moral issues — such as men competing in women’s sports — remain important topics for Christians in Michigan, but because “things have gotten so hard” financially over the past three-and-a-half years, people of faith are focusing on economic problems.
“People of faith are like every other person who’s worried about their cost of goods and services, and they’re also worried about the moral aspect of the environment their kids are growing up in,” Rogers continued.
Rogers is currently trailing Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin by five points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. The Michigan race, which was blown wide open after Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow announced last year that she would retire at the end of her term, is one of the numerous races Republicans are hoping to win to gain back control of the Senate. Republicans have not won a Senate race in Michigan since 1995.
The Senate candidate argued that Evangelicals and Catholics “feel very disconnected” from Slotkin, who Rogers slammed for voting “100% for the Biden-Harris agenda.” He added that the pastors and priests he’s talked to are trying to help address their congregants’ financial needs while also “making sure they don’t step away from faith when times get really hard.”
Pastor Lorenzo Sewell of Detroit’s 180 Church, one of the places of worship Rogers recently visited, told The Daily Wire that his roughly 300 congregants are mainly concerned about the economy and immigration.
“People know that the rhetoric isn’t real as it pertains to the Harris and Walz ticket. They know the rhetoric isn’t real as it pertains to wages going up,” Sewell said. “Just because the median income goes up on paper, that doesn’t mean I have enough money to meet the end of the month.”
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Sewell, who addressed the Republican National Convention in July, added that the people in his majority-black community know the economy “bleeds over into the immigration issue.”
“We’re hearing people say that it would be better to take a three-day journey and leave the country and try to come back in because immigrants in our community are being treated better than those who are legally there,” he said. “These are real pain points for people in poverty today.”
Former President Donald Trump also visited 180 Church in Detroit for a roundtable discussion in June. Sewell said that Trump and Rogers coming into the black community and visiting his church “set a new trajectory” for the Republican Party in Michigan. He argued that the Democratic Party has enjoyed most of the support from black voters while “pillaging” the black community for decades.
“You need a guy like Mike to fight for us,” Sewell said, adding. “I don’t have any personal problems with Elissa Slotkin, but her policies are not real as it pertains to people in poverty.”
Rogers’s focus on connecting with people of faith hasn’t been limited to Christians. The Senate candidate also said he has visited a Buddhist temple and has met with Muslim leaders.
“Set aside the Israel-Palestine issue for a minute, and Muslim voters line up with Republicans,” Rogers said. “They’re very conservative. They’re socially conservative. They’re fiscally conservative. They’re worried about the future of the country that they have come to live in and enjoy. And they’re worried about the state of education for their kids.”
“They’re small business owners,” he added. “They worry about the economic environment and what this heavy regulatory regime coming out of the Democrat Party is doing to them, not for them.”
