07 October 2025
by Ben Kreiter | 7 October 2025 |
The Countdown to the End summer evangelistic meetings in Brooklyn, New York, provided a very peculiar event, even for a peculiar people. The meetings, hosted by the Brooklyn Faith Seventh-day Adventist Church in partnership with the Northeastern Conference, ran nightly from July 19 through August 16th. The topics were what you would expect of an Adventist evangelistic series. There were teachings on health, marriage, and financial wellness. There was singing and baptisms. The primary speaker Dr. Shion O’Conner, shared messages on Adventist doctrine, with an emphasis on the end-time prophecies of Daniel and Revelation and the gospel of Jesus Christ, died and resurrected.
However, on the last day of the meetings, during one of the Sabbath services, something took place which I wager has never happened in an Adventist evangelistic series before. Zohran Mamdani, running for New York City mayor, stood at the pulpit and gave a campaign speech, while New York Attorney General Letitia James watched from the audience.
Mamdani praised the Adventist health message. He said he had observed a “sickness across our city,” marked by inequality and cruelty, a sickness felt when the price of bread rises faster than wages, when hospital patients get denied equal treatment, when prices rise but amenities suffer, and when “the president and his Republican Congress in Washington pass legislation that makes it even harder than it was to afford groceries.”
Mamdani quoted Lamentations 4 about Israel’s heartlessness towards the destitute, whom they leave thirsting like an infant whose mother withholds nursing, and called for the spirit of the city to become “the spirit of our politics,” so that city hall may “quench the parched lips of the thirsty.” He promised that if elected as mayor he would lead from the front and set the example, while praising Letitia James for setting the example from her position. He promised fast and free buses, and affordable childcare and groceries, standing up for those who had Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps) benefits cut, and to stand up against “Trump’s authoritarianism.”
After Mamdani finished his promises of what he would do “as your mayor,” the clergy in the room laid hands on him in a dedicatory prayer. Their words affirmed they understood it was a campaign speech: they thanked God for the blessings of hearing scriptures quoted by “our new mayor to be,” and that God would give Mamdani and James divine power to keep “the promises that they have made” when elected.
by Ben Kreiter | 7 October 2025 |
The Countdown to the End summer evangelistic meetings in Brooklyn, New York, provided a very peculiar event, even for a peculiar people. The meetings, hosted by the Brooklyn Faith Seventh-day Adventist Church in partnership with the Northeastern Conference, ran nightly from July 19 through August 16th. The topics were what you would expect of an Adventist evangelistic series. There were teachings on health, marriage, and financial wellness. There was singing and baptisms. The primary speaker Dr. Shion O’Conner, shared messages on Adventist doctrine, with an emphasis on the end-time prophecies of Daniel and Revelation and the gospel of Jesus Christ, died and resurrected.
However, on the last day of the meetings, during one of the Sabbath services, something took place which I wager has never happened in an Adventist evangelistic series before. Zohran Mamdani, running for New York City mayor, stood at the pulpit and gave a campaign speech, while New York Attorney General Letitia James watched from the audience.
Mamdani praised the Adventist health message. He said he had observed a “sickness across our city,” marked by inequality and cruelty, a sickness felt when the price of bread rises faster than wages, when hospital patients get denied equal treatment, when prices rise but amenities suffer, and when “the president and his Republican Congress in Washington pass legislation that makes it even harder than it was to afford groceries.”
Mamdani quoted Lamentations 4 about Israel’s heartlessness towards the destitute, whom they leave thirsting like an infant whose mother withholds nursing, and called for the spirit of the city to become “the spirit of our politics,” so that city hall may “quench the parched lips of the thirsty.” He promised that if elected as mayor he would lead from the front and set the example, while praising Letitia James for setting the example from her position. He promised fast and free buses, and affordable childcare and groceries, standing up for those who had Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps) benefits cut, and to stand up against “Trump’s authoritarianism.”
After Mamdani finished his promises of what he would do “as your mayor,” the clergy in the room laid hands on him in a dedicatory prayer. Their words affirmed they understood it was a campaign speech: they thanked God for the blessings of hearing scriptures quoted by “our new mayor to be,” and that God would give Mamdani and James divine power to keep “the promises that they have made” when elected.
How did we get here?
If you’ve been an Adventist for any length of time, you know the denomination’s teachings about Earth’s final moments, when it is predicted that religious and political powers from across the ideological spectrum will come together to try and enforce a system of false worship on God’s faithful believers.
Historically, Adventists have not shied away from some forms of political engagement, such as identifying the United States as the second beast of Revelation 13, and calling for prohibition and abolition of slavery. Despite this, our stances have almost always been taken on issues themselves rather than specific political parties, lawmakers, or candidates.
Not long ago, the idea that a politician could campaign from the pulpit during a prophecy evangelism series would have been downright scandalous in just about any Adventist community in America. The politician being Muslim would have made it even more so.
This behavior isn’t just surprising, though; up until recently campaigning from the pulpit would have been illegal—and posed a great risk to the church.
The evangelicals started it
So what exactly happened to get us to this point? To understand that, we need to look at another campaign promise to Christian believers, this one between Mamdani’s ideological opponent Donald Trump and a collection of predominantly evangelical faith leaders.
In the year leading up to Trump’s first term, one of his campaign promises was that he would repeal the Johnson Amendment, a tax code provision which prohibits 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations such as churches from endorsing or opposing political candidates. According to a story Trump told a large group of conservative Christian businessmen at a White House Faith Office luncheon, when he asked for the evangelicals’ endorsement he was told it wasn’t possible because they could lose their tax-exempt status. In Trump’s words, “If you lose your tax-exempt status, in your world, you might as well close up your church.”
In May of 2017 Trump signed “Executive Order 13798—Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty,” which directed the Department of the Treasury not to take “adverse action” against houses of worship and religious organizations speaking on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate. The Johnson Amendment still existed, but the people in charge of enforcing it were directed not to do so. Over the next few years, stories of churches holding campaign rallies and stumping for candidates began to increase.
In Trump’s second term, a group of conservative and evangelical groups filed a lawsuit claiming that the Johnson Amendment was an infringement of their First Amendment rights. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filed a statement in the lawsuit which stated that the plaintiff’s interpretation of the Johnson Amendment was a correct one, that already matched the IRS’s enforcement practices. They affirmed an exemption allowing houses of worship to freely discuss political candidates, which would no longer be viewed as a violation of the law but instead as a “family discussion concerning candidates.”
What had been a general practice of looking the other way had become official policy.
Both sides now
While conservative evangelical Christians had been engaged in the practice for a number of years following Trump’s executive order, the IRS’s making it official has widened the doors for previously cautious liberal Christians to return fire.
Beyond Mamdani and James, Rev. Jonathan Barker of Grace Lutheran Church began planning an endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the pulpit as soon as he heard restrictions had been lifted. When leaders from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America forbade him from making an endorsement, Barker chose to resign from his pastorate so he could make it anyway.
One has to wonder why the Lutheran church was quick to hold the line with their clergy, while a segment of the Adventist church—which has long been one of the staunchest denominational proponents of separation of church and state in America—not only allowed a pastoral endorsement, but allowed the candidate himself to take to the pulpit in an evangelistic meeting. Brooklyn Faith isn’t alone. Just two years ago, an Ontario church invited the controversial conservative politician Pierre Poilievre into their pulpit for a Sabbath morning campaign speech.
A sickness in the city of God
I’m not here to evaluate Mamdani’s political policies, though I think any follower of Jesus can empathize with his goals of fighting against inequality and corruption. Certainly the world would be a better place if politicians cared deeply about inequalities.
However, Daniel and Revelation teach us that the empires of the world are downright beastly in character. They promise great things that are denied by their actions. While we should encourage societal reform in the here and now by exercising our public voice and our democratic rights when they exist, prophecy gives us a message that evil empires are replaced by more evil empires. There will always be a Babylon, until God’s eternal kingdom crushes it and establishes itself forever on Earth.
Until that day comes, our pulpits should not be dedicated to campaign speeches, but instead to proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is both at hand through the work of the Holy Spirit in God’s people and that it will arrive fully realized at the return of Jesus. Instead of politicians, our laying on of hands should be to dedicate faithful disciples who will carry the witness of the love of Christ and his sacrifice on the cross.
The more that Christians on one side of the political aisle grasp for political power, the more they pave the way for their brethren on the other side of the political aisle to do likewise. If we trade our Great Commission for political campaigning, we are no better than Esau trading his birthright for a bowl of lentils.
Ben Kreiter is an educator who teaches Christian and Adventist history, as well as prophecy, to students all over the world. He is involved in international Bible curriculum development and teacher training, and through that work has come to greatly appreciate America’s religious liberty values and wants to see them preserved.
© Adventist Today 2025
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