As the rhetoric of the Republican Party becomes increasingly divisive, they are looking to their faith to help them decide where they fall on the political spectrum.  

“I grew up under the guise of thinking that the Republican Party was just right about everything because it took the “Christian stance,” said Naomi Jackson. “But the key question for me has become: what is God doing?”

Jackson attends Vox Veniae, a non-denominational and notably progressive church in Austin, Texas. Like any other church, the ambience of the service was set by dimmed lights, bowed heads, and soulful, heartfelt music, but when it was over, Jackson discussed the way the atmosphere of southern religion is changing with her friend, Gina Bastone. The change is particularly focused around influential religious figures like Jen Hatmaker and Beth Moore.

“These white, suburban, middle-class women, evangelicals, are suddenly realizing ‘Trump does not represent me, he does not represent my values,’” said Bastone. “I think that’s a really interesting, shifting demographic that is not what you see in the mainstream media.”

Jason Igkpatt speaks with another member of the congregation during the service at Vox Veniae. Photo by Samantha Springer.

Jason Ikpatt is also a member of the congregation at Vox. For him, the current state of politics in America has made his position abundantly clear and completely absolute. Because he doesn’t want “companies releasing toxins into the air” or for “children detained at the border to have to represent themselves,” he said there is “not much room for nuance to reflect my actual opinion.”

“For me, because things have become so binary in the political sphere, there is really only one option,” said Ikpatt.

Not all southern Christians have always had a liberal inclination, and some still struggle with issues that conflict with their beliefs. Roxanne Van Brown grew up Baptist and attended a Baptist church for almost her entire adult life. She considers herself a radical prayer warrior and has been a staunch Republican for many years, but a paralyzing fear for the future has swayed her political affiliation.

“He is a bully [Trump].” said Van Brown. “He is putting our lives, our national security, in danger, and I can’t support that.”

Van Brown is a member of a Facebook group named “Christians for Beto.” Though she vehemently opposes abortion, gay marriage, and the legalization of marijuana, she will no longer vote Republican.

“For me, the breaking point was when that shooting [Parkland] happened down in Florida.” said Van Brown. “I’m going to vote the way those kids tell me to vote.”

Jillian Myles works for a Texas state Senator. She also finds herself torn when it comes to the issues she cares about, specifically abortion and immigration.

“I have some non-citizen friends,” said Myles. “I care about their well-being, and their status, and their path to citizenship. But on the line of abortion, I have always cared about the unborn, because scripture says God knits us together in our mother’s womb.”

She had not decided who she was voting for yet, but her obligation to her faith plays a bigger role in the way she votes than her occupation does.

“Honestly,” said Myles, “I have just been praying a lot, and trying to look at the big picture… what candidates care about, what they are pushing and hoping for, in line with what scripture says.”

Like Jackson, she is looking to where she sees God and to what will advance his kingdom.

“And that is hard,” she said. “Because I think that both sides of the aisle have good ideas for doing that, so it’s hard to say that one party is going to accomplish it.”

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Thomas McCormick holds two photos of himself, one taken during the early years of his priesthood, the other taken more than 20 years later on his wedding day. McCormick is one of 200 priests of Celibacy is the Issue Ministries who continue to minister even after leaving the Roman Catholic Church to marry. Photo by Chelsia Rose Marcius.

Thomas McCormick opened his leather wallet and pulled out an old photo of a young bearded man in priestly garb. He paused, looking down at the picture before reopening the wallet to jimmy out a second portrait of the same size and of the same smiling face. But the man’s cheeks were now bare, his brown hair faded. A black tux and white bow tie replaced the religious vestments, and now the man was wrapped in the arms of a woman.

The photographs of McCormick —the first taken in 1981 when he entered the Roman Catholic priesthood, the second snapped on his wedding day more than two decades later —are daily reminders of his commitment to both marriage and ministry. Yet McCormick, 60, of St. James, N.Y., and other Catholic “married priests” are considered both outsiders and at odds with the church.

More than 200 ordained married men in “Celibacy is the Issue” or CITI Ministries preform religious rites for disfranchised Catholics who want the blessing of a priest.

A shortage of new priests has left older clergymen without successors and parishioners without guides to keep them within the Catholic community. According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, 288 parishes in New York and hundreds more nationwide closed between 2000 and 2010. The Pew Research Center study Faith in Flux, updated in February 2011, found that one in 10 Americans raised Catholic have now left the church as adults, and nearly one in four cite “the rule that priests cannot marry” as a reason for leaving.

“Parishes are closing all over and a lot of that is due to the decline in the number of priests,” said Thomas Reese, a Roman Catholic priest and Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center. “With fewer priests in the parish, many Catholics say, ‘Why don’t you do something about this, why don’t you ordain some married men so we can have mass, so that we don’t have to drive 100 miles to the next church.”

Thomas McCormick on entering the priesthood and his decision to leave

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McCormick said his decision to enter the priesthood shocked old classmates. As a kid in Brooklyn, he did “the Catholic thing,” attending mass every Sunday and serving as an altar boy at the local parish. But teenage friends knew him as the guy who sported a leather coat and drank beer on the Brooklyn Belt Parkway – and the seminary was the last place anyone expected McCormick to wind up after a four-year stint with the U.S. Air Force.

“The only reason I went to church while in the military was because I was afraid God was going to strike me dead,” he said. “And then I was invited to go to a little prayer meeting in 1972 in a little town outside of Oxford, England. It was during that weekend that I saw for the first time Catholics who were deeply in love with the lord. But not because of the rules and regulations of the church. They had a personal relationship with God. I wanted that.”

He entered the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, N.Y. at age 27, and was ordained within three years. But McCormick said he did not quite fit in. He wore sandals and kept a beard. He stood on the pews to preach. And he often challenged church leaders.

“They saw me as radical, they saw me as different,” he said. “But I would not be afraid to speak off the altar on ethical and moral issues.”

More than 20 years passed before McCormick left the priesthood; he said it was, for the most part, because of loneliness. But afterward McCormick felt something was missing, and spent the next seven months questioning his decision.

Louise Hagget, founder of CITI Ministries and its website Rent-A-Priest, said there are church laws that validate the ministry of a married priest – an interpretation of Roman Catholic doctrine not recognized by the Vatican.

Still, the group’s online directory – dubbed “God’s Yellow Pages” – lists 200 ordained married men in 42 U.S. states. Hagget said members rarely get together, but she called for a meeting in 2002 to discuss clerical celibacy and the state of the church. McCormick, who left the clergy that year, decided to attend.

“I remember standing up and saying, ‘Hi, I’m Tom, I’m on leave and I’m lost,” McCormick said. One priest approached him after the meeting. “‘I remember him coming up to me and saying I know your pain,’ He looked into my soul and said, “Remember, you are a priest forever. Nobody can take that away from you.’”

The expression, “Once a priest, always a priest” is common among CITI members, including Richard Hasselbach, who left the priesthood in 1990.

Richard Hasselbach talks with parishioners at the Clarkstown Reformed Church in West Nyack, N.Y. Hasselbach left the Roman Catholic priesthood to marry yet still continues to preside over weddings for Catholic couples.

“I don’t think the Pope would be too thrilled with me if he were to join the conversation,” said Hasselbach, 60, of Carmel, N.Y. “But the word ‘catholic’ means universal, and I believe that my baptism and my ordination is a universally Christian one. So I feel like I have the key to every church door. And I should be able to walk into any church in Christianity because I am a universal Christian.”

Yet this understanding may be lost on recently ordained Catholic clerics. Reese said younger priests appear to adopt a more traditional approach to ministry and “are not agitating to change the rule” on clerical celibacy.

“These guys who have entered the priesthood in the last 20 years tend to be more conservative and, more importantly, much fewer in numbers then the classes the 50s and 60s,” he said. “They’re not going to be able to replace the current crop of priests facing retirement, illness and death.”

According to Hagget, more than 75 percent of the married priests in CITI Ministries were ordained between 1950 and 1979, when Catholic reform groups began popping up across the country.

Many groups have since dissolved. Stuart O’Brien, 74, of Boston, a married priest and a part of the reform group Corpus, said members continue to meet with church leaders on the issue of celibacy.

He said most of their efforts “fall on the deaf ears of Rome.”

“There are no young priests, no middle-aged priests, just old priests,” O’Brien said. “You cannot make these people come alive with a 75-year-old priest. The church talks about getting young people to come back, but come back to what? What do they have come back to?”

McCormick oversees about 100 Catholic weddings a year, and he said marriage has allowed him to connect with parishioners in a way traditional priesthood could not.

“If the church were to change the rule on celibacy, I would go back tomorrow—and so would most of the priests I know,” he said. “There’s a fear that it would restructure the entire world understanding of Catholicism. But I know more now from being married, and my preaching would be more effective because of the life experience I have.”

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Yet religion was not a requirement to come out and celebrate.

“I’m not Catholic,” said Jill Macklem of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, who wore a straw hat trimmed in tulips. “It’s a day of community and everyone’s coming out and being part of it.”

Beth Tallman of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, represented her borough by sporting locally inspired headgear. “Our neighbors raise chickens, so we decided that we’d take the chicken theme to a whole new level and be the Bed Stuy Peeps,” she said.

Parade goers put on hats to promote a number of causes, including animal cruelty, same sex marriage and workers’ rights.

Moved by a recent wave of protests in the Midwest, Brian Griffin of Astoria, Queens, decorated his tall, vertical creation with labor speak slogans.

“In support of unions in Wisconsin, I made a hat that said New York is pro-collective bunnying,” he said. “United we bargain, divided we beg.”

Still, most came out to embrace the wacky, the quirky and a sense of camaraderie.

“I stumbled on the Easter parade several years ago,” said Mike Revenaugh of Astoria, Queens, who wore a motorized Ferris wheel head dress he built out of K’Nex toys and glue. “I saw it was a bunch of people making their own silly hats and that’s kind of right up my alley.”

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Jemima King, 28, of Lancaster County, Pa., stands in front of her family's Amish produce stand at Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. Despite a recent increase in the worldwide Amish population, some like King choose to leave the religious community. Photo by Jessica Bell

PHILADELPHIA — Bagging crisp, white rice cakes and churning honey roasted nuts into a buttery spread, Jemima King has worked alongside her father at Reading Terminal Market for 17 years, selling everything from produce and preserves to jams and jellies.

She said the business partnership has strengthened their bond both personally and professionally. But today, King is not welcome at his home for Thanksgiving dinner. Nor is she invited to celebrate with him on Christmas day. That all changed the moment she stopped being Amish.

For 25 years, King, 28, belonged to an Amish church in southern Lancaster County, Penn., a tight-knit Christian community that rejects many modern day conveniences and adheres to a strict code of social conduct.

But after years of following church rule, King said she had enough. In 2007, she packed her things and parted ways with her family, her husband and the Amish way of life.

“I respect where I came from,” King said. “I respect the conservative, simple way. But I thought that there has to be something more, and I came to the understanding that there’s more to life than being Amish.”

Despite a significant increase in their numbers this year, the Lancaster Amish — who live just one hour outside Philadelphia and bring much business to the city — must still fight to keep members.

According to 2010 reports from The Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, the number of Amish, now 250,000 worldwide, grew 10 percent since 2009. Lancaster County boasts more than 29,000 — the oldest and one of the largest Amish settlements in North America.

Stephen Scott, a research associate at the Young Center, said Lancaster is one of the more successful groups, with a retention rate of 90 percent. Yet he said increased land costs have forced many to take up non-agricultural work in urban areas, where they inevitably interact with “the outside world.”

“This is a relatively recent development that could very well have a strong influence on people leaving, especially young girls who are away from home long hours with a lot of outside contact,” Scott said.

David Weaver-Zercher, professor of American Religious History at Messiah College and author of “The Amish Way,” added that settlements close to big cities are more likely to struggle for members.

“Going to market has been looked down upon; it provides young people socialization,” he said. “Families that mix with the larger world, that instead of farming or have businesses in town go to market in a city, will see a lower retention rate.”

Jemima King sells jam, peanut butter and other goods at her family's Amish produce stand. Photo by Jessica Bell

From helping her father stack jam jars to selling goods at the bargain store Bent and Dent, King interacted with non-Amish folk since before age of 11, but never thought of leaving the community. And even after completing Rumspringa — a period of self-exploration when Amish adolescents decide to either join or leave the church — King never questioned the rules of her religious upbringing.

It was not until after three of her six sisters left southern Lancaster that King began to consider other options.

After she moved out, her parents never asked her to visit the five-bedroom house of her childhood; they disapproved of her choice to leave and separate from her husband, who has since left the Amish to join King and their 4-year-old daughter.

“When my first sister left, she wasn’t allowed to come over; they had to mourn,” she said. “Now they’ve learned to accept us at where we are. We’re not a part of their Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners — the ones that left are not invited. But we’ve just learned to accept it. I’m very grateful and thankful that my parents are still talking to me.”

According to Zercher, “Some parents are angry and believe the best thing to do is make that process as painful as possible, which can be difficult and alienating.”

But he added that, like King, many who choose to leave for religious reasons do not abandon their Christian faith.

“It wasn’t materialism that I left the Amish for,” she said. “I don’t have to be Amish to go to Heaven. I was living under a lot a of bondage being Amish.”

Raised in the private, patriarchal and “more plain” part of Lancaster, King –- who now wears rhinestone studs and black leggings rather than white bonnets and calf-length dresses — said fellow churchgoers faced retribution for everything from having a “fancy bathroom” to taking phone calls on the Sabbath.

“The Bishop would go over all the rules of the church, all of the dos and don’ts, down to the nitty-gritty,” she said. “Through all my growing up years, I knew about this God, but the dos and don’ts did not make sense. That stuff really gets me going. It’s what led me to search, to find out what is right and what is wrong.”

Brad Igou, president of the Amish Experience tours and publisher of Amish Country News in Lancaster County, said flexible or rigid church rule has a significant impact on the rate of retention.

“The Amish and the English here are neighbors,” he said of some parts of Lancaster, adding that Amish call all non-Amish people “English.” “As young people grow up, they’re pretty familiar with the outside world that they’re not as enticed by English living. Those communities that are more strict have the most problems, where some members want to rebel.”

But Zercher said children from more separatist groups also have a “bigger jump” to make from being Amish to “English.”

“Even if a girl grows up with an old order, if she’s having a lot of contact with the outside world, she’s gaining the skills to do well if she leaves Amish life,” he said of women like King.

Among the assortment of photos covering her refrigerator door hung a picture her daughter in a blue dress and braided pigtails. The little girl sat smiling atop the knee of her “doddy” — the Amish word for grandfather — who wore a collared shirt and stiff straw hat.

King said she also had a good childhood. She remembered walking one mile to a one-room schoolhouse for class, selling produce at a roadside stand and running through strawberry patches to pick fresh fruit “before the sun got hot.”

“There’s been times I miss just driving down the road in a buggy,” she said. “I miss the little grocery shops and I still look at my daughter’s Amish baby dresses — they’re so cute.”

Still, King said she does not regret her decision.

“It’s drilled into our heads to stay with the church,” she said. “Some people think it’s a heaven or hell issue if you leave. Not all, but some. And they’d definitely take you back — as long as they can see you’re making an effort. They so strongly believe to stay in what you were taught. But I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and once I made up my mind, there was no going back.”

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The Catholic image Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Mexican depiction of the Virgin Mary, is painted on many glass candles at the religious shrine of El Tiradito in downtown Tucson. Both English and Spanish-speaking visitors come here to pray, despite heightened tensions within the Catholic community regarding illegal immigrants. Photo by Chelsia Marcius

TUCSON, Ariz. — As Father Bill Remmel addressed parishioners recently at St. Frances Cabrini, Kris folded his arms and stared squarely at the priest behind the podium.

He leaned back, eyes fixed straight ahead, as Remmel described the landless migrants of the Old Testament, and he gave a slight nod of approval when the priest said Christians ought to show hospitality toward strangers. Yet when Remmel said God now calls upon Americans to open their borders and embrace migrants, Kris began to rub his temples as if to alleviate a nagging headache.

“But what happens if the sojourner lives in a country and does not follow its laws?” he called out, referring to the Biblical term for strangers. “What happens to the sojourner if they don’t live up to that responsibility?”

Kris, a Tucson resident who declined to give his full name for fear of losing his job, is a Catholic. He married a Mexican woman, learned Spanish and has not missed a Sunday mass in four years. And like many parishioners, he disagrees with the church on one major issue: illegal immigration.

Tensions heightened within the Catholic community after July 28, when federal Judge Susan Bolton blocked Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070. And while the Roman Catholic Church publically supports migrants, it now grapples with uniting parishioners with differing beliefs.

“The scripture does not carry a blueprint for our actions,” Remmel said. “It’s not going to tell us how to deal with the gangs, how do deal with people who are smuggling drugs across our borders. What it will help us do is form our own attitudes as we struggle to find the answers.”

According to Joanne Welter, director of the Office of Human Life and Dignity in the Diocese of Tucson, the church has a long history of working to bridge the gap between Catholics on both sides of the border.

Yet it wasn’t until 1996 when Mexican and American bishops wrote “Strangers No Longer,” a call for immigration reform, that the church took a firm and public stance on the issue.

“It was the first time we really began to focus on the plight of the migrant,” Welter said. “It was to say the church doesn’t stop at the border, that we stand in solidarity.”

Casa San Juan of St. John the Evangelist in Tucson offers a number of services to migrants, including English classes, some medical care and boxes of non-perishable foodstuffs such as canned beans, bowls of cereal and bags of white rice.

These services, which fall under the umbrella of humanitarian aid, are not illegal said Beth Ann Johnson, who works at Casa San Juan. She said the money comes from private donations and grants, not from public dollars.

But Johnson said this does not stop some parishioners from misunderstanding the purpose of Casa San Juan or her own efforts to help fellow Christians.

“People have told me, ‘You’re not a real Catholic,’ and, ‘What part of illegal don’t you understand?'” she said. “People don’t really understand what social justice means.”

Kris said that while he does not support illegal immigration or free borders, he’s not against helping people.

“I equate it to finding a stranger at your door looking for a meal,” he said. “You give him breakfast, and everything’s fine. But a few days later, his wife and kids and his cousin Bob are there and you say that’s fine, too. But then he puts a T-valve on your water spigot and he needs meds for his sick kid and then he’s on your couch, watching your TV, using your shower, eating your food. There’s this slower and slower intrusion, and even when you say enough is enough, he just does not leave.”

Franciscan nun Sister Elizabeth Ohmann said some have accused her of “inviting illegals to come north” because of her work with Humane Borders, a faith-based organization providing humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the Arizona desert.

To Ohmann, such comments show that while the church has made some progress, it still has a long way to go before all American Catholics embrace migrants.

“We’ve introduced Spanish-speaking masses and sing as many Spanish songs as we do English ones, which is one way to start,” she said, referring to the 7 a.m. mass she attends each Sunday at St. Cyril of Alexandria in Tuscon. “But some won’t come around if they know it’s a bilingual mass. And I still hear Catholics saying, ‘Why don’t they know our language or our customs?’ But the real question is how are we going to bring the Catholics who’ve lived here their whole lives together with the ones coming now. I don’t know what the next step will be.”

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