(Daily Signal)—More than 125 Virginia pastors have signed an open letter urging voters to reject two proposed constitutional amendments on abortion and marriage. The letter adds a broad coalition of Protestant voices to the growing faith-based opposition ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
“We believe these two amendments must be rejected for the Commonwealth of Virginia because they will harm our state as they are opposed to human flourishing and contrary to the Word of God,” the pastors write.
The signers are from congregations across the commonwealth, from Arlington and Alexandria to Lynchburg, Roanoke, Virginia Beach, and Tazewell. They include Jesse Johnson of Immanuel Bible Church in Springfield, Ryan Helfenbein of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Brian Autry of Grove Avenue Baptist Church in Henrico, Benjamin Purves of Occoquan Bible Church in Woodbridge, and Courtney McBath of Calvary Alliance of Churches in Norfolk.
Virginia Pastors Unite
A pastor who helped coordinate the letter told the Daily Signal that about 90 churches are currently represented, reaching an estimated 50,000 parishioners across Virginia.
Early voting began Sept. 18. The ballot measures reached voters after winning approval in two consecutive sessions of the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, as Virginia requires for constitutional amendments.
The pastors’ letter follows a high-profile “Catholics Vote No” campaign by Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington. He had priests in 70 parishes across Northern Virginia read a letter at Mass opposing the amendments. That effort built on a joint statement he issued in August with Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout.
‘Let Your Baby Live’
Ballot Question 1 would amend Virginia’s constitution to expand abortion access throughout pregnancy and eliminate the need for parental consent. The pastors expressed strong opposition to the amendment and its fatal consequences for the unborn.
“Abortion is the killing of a pre-born child in the womb,” they write. “It is moral distortion to present this violation of the sixth commandment as a moral good or as a fundamental right, and it is deceptive framing to present abortion’s destruction of life as healthcare.”
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The letter speaks directly to women facing an unexpected pregnancy: “To the mother considering abortion, we implore you, let your baby live.”
It also rejects the idea of abortion as a parental right. “There is never a parental right to take the life of a child,” the pastors write.
‘What God Has Defined’
Question 2 would strike the constitution’s 2006 definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and replace it with language guaranteeing two adults the right to marry regardless of sex.
The pastors argue that marriage “has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman into a single, exclusive union.” They cite Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:6: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
“It is likewise true to say what God has defined, let not man seek to redefine,” the letter says.
The pastors also warn that the amendment carries other implications.
“Denying reality only brings a ripple effect of harm to society that is acutely felt by individuals, families, schools, and sports teams,” they write.
‘We Disagree With You for Your Good’
Like the letter from Burbidge to Catholics, the Protestant pastors speak directly to Virginians and implore them to vote against the amendments.
“If you support these amendments, know that we disagree with you for your good, and for the good of Virginia,” they write. “Love will communicate truth and speak for the good of others, and it does not go silent when the need is great.”
The pastors also “repudiate hateful and harassing behavior or attitudes directed toward any individual.” They close by inviting readers to pick up a Bible, read the Gospel of John, and visit one of the signers’ churches on a Sunday.
The pastor who spoke to the Daily Signal said additional signatures are still being added. Any Virginia pastor who affirms the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Five Solas of the Protestant Reformation may sign the letter. Organizers review names before posting them, and they encourage pastors to share the letter with their congregations.
Read the full letter at VirginiaPastors.org.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
