Giovanna Dell’Orto of the Associated Press writes that conservative faith leaders in Florida are weighing the policy differences between former US President Donald Trump and the state’s governor Ron DeSantis. Most political analysts feel both are likely to face off in the upcoming GOP nomination race for the 2024 Presidential election.
DeSantis gained national attention with what he called “anti-woke” laws focusing on the issue of gender and sexuality in public schools. Trump generally focused more on immigration; an issue relevant to Florida’s large Hispanic population.
Dell’Orto continues:
Several of Florida’s conservative faith leaders have the ear of two early frontrunners for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – former President Donald Trump, who lives in Palm Beach, and Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The clergy’s top political priorities are thus likely to resonate in the national campaign for the religious vote, even as both men’s agendas are still being weighed from the pulpit.
Several pastors, particularly in heavily Latino South Florida, argue for reforming immigration policy. They want a more orderly process at a time of historically high illegal border crossings, but also more help to regularize and integrate undocumented migrants who are contributing economically and socially in United States communities.
But for pastors like Frank López of Jesus Worship Center in Doral, a Miami suburb, exposing children to certain types of sexually explicit materials in schools without their parents’ knowledge is a form of political indoctrination that “brings conflict to a family.”
“We don’t want any government ever to go above a father and mother,” said López, whose church has grown to more than 3,000 members from over 40 different nationalities since it was founded two decades ago with barely three dozen worshippers.
He cited as a counterweight a bill DeSantis signed last year to give parents a say in what books are available in school libraries, targeting the presence of sexually explicit volumes.
“I think that the government should not get involved in any religion, but yes I believe that religion should get involved in governing,” said López, whose church has hosted visits by Trump, DeSantis and other conservative politicians.
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