Abdul El-Sayed has campaigned on reaching across the religious divide with an appeal to Christians and Muslims alike, and he boasts that over two dozen Christian leaders back his bid to replace Michigan Senator Gary Peters. Those leaders include a pastor who suggested conservative activist Charlie Kirk deserved to be shot and the senior pastor of a church that hosted a drag event for kids.
El-Sayed, who once hoped to be America’s first Muslim governor, is locked in a competitive primary race with Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens. While many of his positions on topics from abortion to so-called “gender-affirming care” directly conflict with the Bible, that has not deterred some Christians from backing his campaign.
Included among El-Sayed’s supporters is Larry Davis, the pastor of Christian Tabernacle Baptist in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Davis, who believes that President Donald Trump faked the multiple assassination attempts, had no kind words for Charlie Kirk after his murder.
“He is being held as a hero. We shouldn’t be happy that he got killed. But we shall embrace that you REAP what you SOW,” Davis posted on Facebook alongside an anti-Kirk meme the day after the popular conservative activist was gunned down at an event at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.
Larry Davis Facebook.
In another post, Davis shared a clip of Kirk criticizing DEI and asked, “Would you give a racist out of his own mouth the medal of freedom.”
On September 19, the pastor again spread his message that Kirk reaped what he sowed.
“No man should take it on himself to take the life of another. But the scriptures says be not deceived God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man show [sic] that shall he also reap,” Davis said alongside an AI-generated image of Kirk and Jesus Christ.
The Daily Wire sent a message to Davis to ask about his support for El-Sayed. His church, which has no listed email address, did not answer multiple phone calls.
Pastor Terrance Johnson, another religious leader who endorsed El-Sayed, shared a similar animus toward Kirk. He suggested that he was not sad about Kirk’s assassination because he was a “racist bigot.”
“You will accept a black man refusing to mourn his own father but you wil [sic] not accept a black man refusing to mourn a racist bigot because….. We all know why,” Johnson posted in a long screed quoting Tupac song lyrics a day after Kirk’s killing.
When someone commented on his post, “is this the heart of Christ,” Johnson responded by saying, “what is the heart of Christ.”
In another post, Johnson claimed that ICE was equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan.
“So ICE is the KKK rebranded. Still wearing mask it’s just that the badges are now out instead of being hid under the sheets,” he said.
Johnson’s Church, Second Missionary Baptist Church in Monroe, Michigan, recently hosted El-Sayed for an event. In a Facebook post, the church said the event was for the Democrat to share “why he’s running for office.”
During the appearance, El-Sayed claimed to attendees that he was the only candidate who could “guarantee you healthcare” and attacked America’s history as “sordid,” according to a video posted by the church.
“We just commemorated 250 years. And I know there’s a lot of sordid history in those 250 years, but I also know what my life would have been had I been born in a place that I was supposed to be born. But for an accident of history, I get born here,” El-Sayed said. “Are we willing to put ourselves back in to correct that system so that the next 250 look a lot better than the last ones did?”
“It is the many versus their money. We got a choice. Do we want them to come in and buy an election?,” he added.
Facebook: Second Missionary Baptist Church.
“Second Missionary Baptist Church of Monroe does not endorse or oppose any political candidate or party,” the church posted on July 17. “Our prayer is that every voter takes time to seek wisdom, research the candidates, and make an informed decision at the ballot box.”
Another pastor backing El-Sayed’s campaign is the ultra-woke Nathan Dannison of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, which recently hosted a “queer prom” for adults and youth that featured “12 drag performances.”
Dannison, who recently said that psychedelics have been part of his “spiritual discipline” for the last twenty years, said that abolishing ICE is a baseline position any candidate supported by him needs to take. In recent Facebook posts, Dannison has defended El-Sayed over his strong anti-Israel positions.
Dannison said that he’s “pretty horrified by a lot of the anti-Abdul posts I’m seeing from center-left Michigan voters that are obviously mashing the ‘fwd:fwd:fwd’ button or the copy-pasting ad copy from astro-turfed emails/sms/etc from defense lobbyists.”
“Dr. El-Sayed is not antisemitic. To the contrary, one of the reasons I support him is because he understands the real and present dangers facing Jewish Americans who are being blamed for foreign policies and wars that have absolutely nothing to do with their religion and history in this country,” he added.
Fountain Street Church raises funds for women to end the lives of their unborn children and says it is “proud to be the State’s longest standing abortion fund.”
Other pastors backing El-Sayed’s campaign included Detroit Rev. Horace Sheffield III of New Destiny Christian Fellowship and Rev. Keith Whitney of Sanctuary Fellowship Baptist Church.
Sheffield, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2014 and appeared in the anti-white documentary “White With Fear,” sells anti-Trump t-shirts on his ministry website that say “I will take Biden in a wheel chair over Trump standing up.”
Whitney is the president of Moses Action, an advocacy group that pushes for left-wing criminal justice reform and supported a ballot initiative to make the right to end the life of your unborn child a constitutional right.
“Throughout black history, government officials — most of them white men — have made decisions about black women’s bodies and health that have been harmful, traumatizing, and often deadly. Granting our current lawmakers the ability to dictate personal health decisions feels like a dangerous step backwards,” the group said in a statement.
Several of the pastors listed on El-Sayed’s campaign website, including Bishop Alan Evans and Pastor Parris McMurray, appear to be affiliated with the Church of God In Christ, Inc. The denomination adopted a “sanctity of life” resolution in 2019 that “abortion is the killing of the innocent” and describes abortion as “genocide.”
The denomination did not respond to questions about its pastors endorsing the pro-abortion El-Sayed.
El-Sayed wants to codify the right to an abortion in federal law and suggested he will fight back on efforts to crackdown on abortion pills.
“Everyone has the right to make personal decisions about their healthcare,” his campaign website says. “That includes reproductive and gender-affirming care. I’ll fight to codify the rights once protected by Roe v. Wade into federal law.”
Earlier this month, El-Sayed earned the endorsement of the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity, which said it supported his emphasis on “affordability” and “human dignity.” It did not respond to questions about El-Sayed leftist advocacy on social issues.
“Pastors attend to their communities in the best and worst of times, and their support is about trusting me to show up in those moments with them,” El-Sayed said. “Together, we’re building a Michigan that brings people together across faiths, regions, and backgrounds in the work of offering dignity, opportunity, and respect for every Michigander.”
The Democratic primary is on August 4.
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