Is the Evangelical Vote the Key to the 2016 Election?

The Republican Party is focusing on getting more Christians to the polls in an effort to win the presidency in 2016.

Forty to 50 million Christians, many of them evangelicals, failed to vote in the last elections, according to a study done by Barna Group. There are 82 million practicing Christians in the country, meaning almost half didn't practice their right to vote.

CBN News recently interviewed Chad Connelly, the Republican National Committee director of faith engagement, to find out what the GOP is doing to get more Christians to vote their values in the 2016 presidential race.

According to Connelly, the reason why so many evangelical voters in particular did not participate in the last election is because of the discouraging message the left-leaning media has sent them.

"I think the Left in the media have been really good at telling us, 'You Christians are really good at evangelism and missions, but you shouldn't be involved in politics,'" Connelly said.

However, he disagrees with their message, saying "It's time we get involved."

Watch CBN News' Lorie Johnson's interview with the GOP's Chad Connelly.

Connelly believes the key to engaging believers is by building a relationship with their leaders. He has spent the last two years travelling to 40 states to speak to approximately 56,000 pastors, priests, and rabbis to champion his efforts.

"You have to give them the resources they need to run a voter registration drive and overcome some of the hurdles they see to getting that done," Connelly said.

However, many pastors are concerned that discussing politics inside their churches will eliminate their non-profit status.

"I don't believe voter registration or encouraging your people to vote biblical values is political at all. I think it's spiritual," Connelly responded.

"It's not really about the party or about the candidate, but about engaging people and getting them to vote biblical values," he added.

Connelly's challenge to America's pastors is threefold: register, educate, and vote. He challenged pastors to first strive to register "100 percent of the people in the pews."

His second call to action is to "connect the dots" for their congregations on how the political issues "really relate to a biblical worldview."

The final step is to "make sure they go vote those biblical values," Connelly said.

Looking toward the future, religious freedom has become a hot button issue for evangelical Christian Millennials.

A 2015 Barna group study found that the percentage of evangelical Millennials who believe "religious freedom in the U.S. has grown worse in the past year" is larger than the percentage of Christian Boomers.

Also, the percentage of evangelical Millennials who are "very concerned" about restrictions on religious freedoms has tripled since 2012.

However, Connelly debunked the perception that evangelicals only care about life, marriage, religious freedoms, and Israel.

"Evangelicals care about everything. They are concerned about the debt. They are concerned about the rising cost of government. They are concerned about the intrusion of government in their lives," he said.

Connelly believes that "if we simply get people out voting on biblical values, we won't lose many elections."

God "expects us to be salt and light. That means we need to permeate the culture," he said.

"We are responsible for the state of the nation and with so many of us not voting, my encouragement to pastors is 'this is your obligation and your duty as a pastor," Connelly concluded.