RALEIGH, N.C. _ Black voters are a major Democratic voting bloc, and a few months before the presidential primaries, candidates are courting the African American community.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg will visit North Carolina on Dec. 1 and attend the church led by the Rev. William Barber II, former state NAACP president and founder of Moral Mondays.
In South Carolina, one of the first states to vote and one where Buttigieg hasn't been polling well among black voters, the candidate spoke in October at a Rock Hill church.
It's a good strategy, as long as it's not his campaign's only outreach to African Americans, theologian J. Kameron Carter said.
"I still think the general black church is still probably the place to go to find a concentrated presence of black people, and concentrated presence of black people who are reliable to show up at the polls, so it's wise to do that. But you need to go beyond. The black church is not the only place to find people," Carter said. He noted that younger African Americans are more ambivalent about church.
"How is Buttigieg going to appeal to the Black Lives Matter generation of voters?" Carter asked.
Barber and his church, Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, announced Buttigieg would visit on Dec. 1. The campaign has not so far announced Buttigieg's visit. Barber wrote in a tweet that Greenleaf Christian Church, where he is senior pastor, is happy to welcome Buttigieg and "anyone else who wants to worship the God of love & justice." He also shared a video of the announcement he made during that day's church service.
Barber told the congregation that presidential candidates often ask him if they can come by, and he said "the church is open to everybody. You can come. You can always come and worship. I wish Trump would come. I'd love to preach with him sitting right there, yes, I would," Barber said.
Barber said that Buttigieg asked to come, but won't speak during the service. Instead, since he missed an event Barber's group Repairers of the Breach held about poverty that other Democratic candidates attended, they'll discuss poverty on Dec. 1 after the service.
The mayor of South Bend, Ind., Buttigieg is also a veteran who served in Afghanistan. Among the current Democratic candidate field, he follows visits to North Carolina this year by former Vice President Joe Biden, former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. North Carolina's primary is March 3.
Carter is a scholar in African and African American studies. Now a religious studies professor at Indiana University-Bloomington, he previously spent many years at Duke University Divinity School as an associate professor.
In a phone interview with The News & Observer on Monday, Carter said that there is a long tradition of the black church being involved in politics. However, he said one visit to a church won't make a candidate successful. If a candidate expects to show up to a black church at election time and wave their hand for a photo op, that's "using black people, and it's ridiculous."
When Biden visited Durham in October, he also courted black voters. Biden spoke at Hillside High School, where African Americans make up the vast majority of the student population.
Biden has polled better than his opponents among black voters, and during the Durham event led his speech with the African American legacy of Durham, including historic Black Wall Street downtown and a sit-in at Royal Ice Cream a few years before the wave of sit-ins started in Greensboro as part of the civil rights movement.
Carter said that black voters give Biden "more space" because he has a track record.
"He was Obama's vice president. His record isn't perfect, far from it. Along with imperfections, you can look at his track record, and it has shown he has a record of responding to black (needs) and lower class needs," Carter said.
A South Carolina poll of black voters showed Biden coming in first in the Democratic field, followed by Harris, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Cory Booker and Beto O'Rourke, respectively, The State previously reported. O'Rourke dropped out of the race about a month ago.
Carter said that Harris and Booker "don't get a free pass" from black voters just because they're black. Candidates need to make their case through issues important to black voters, he said.
"The issue of policing is vital," he said, as well as gun violence, health care, the uneven distribution of wealth, and anxiety because of lack of access to resources. Carter said those issues, as well as jobs and the economy, aren't just issues important to black voters, either.
Federal law prohibits churches, as nonprofit 501(c)3 organizations, from campaigning for candidates.
Harris attended church during her weekend visit to Durham in late August. Harris gave a short speech during a Sunday worship service at St. Joseph AME Church in Durham. It was also a service recognizing historically black fraternities and sororities, including hers, which is Alpha Kappa Alpha.
Just as with all faiths and Christian denominations, black churches and members differ on theological positions about people who are LGBT.
Carter said the notion that black voters don't support Buttigieg _ who is gay and married to a man _ because of his sexuality and are too conservative "is just nonsense."
"That's ridiculous. It's not there any more than any other population in this country. African American attitudes toward sexuality (are) not out of keeping with the way in which sexuality shows up in all kinds of populations," Carter said. He said discussion of black voters and Buttigieg being gay is part of the long history of the "pathologization" of black people.
"Black folk are much more sophisticated than that. ... I don't buy that black voters are more conservative," he said.
The Rev. Jerome J. Washington is pastor of Mt. Vernon Baptist Church in Durham. While no presidential candidates have asked to visit, elected officials and candidates can occasionally be found in the pews. Mt. Vernon has hosted political candidate forums for statewide office and local NAACP meetings.
Washington said he thinks it's still too early to tell who black voters will support. Biden is familiar to the black community, but other candidates need to make their platforms known to that community, too, he said.
"I think that the African American community is very cautiously watching and listening to all candidates, and I don't know if the polls really express what we will really do as the numbers will become smaller (after the primary)," Washington said.
"I think (Buttigieg) is very wise, in that his poll numbers are so low, to take his voice and his message and his presence to the African American church, which has inherently a very large bloc of votes," Washington said in a phone interview with The News & Observer on Monday.
Buttigieg's South Bend council colleague, the longest serving African American on the board, endorsed Biden, Politico reported.
Barber said the guest preacher on Dec. 1 would be the Rev. Renita Weems, a Biblical scholar and pastor in Nashville, Tenn. After the service, Greenleaf will host a session about poverty either in the church building or across the street depending on the crowd, Barber told his congregation.
