The Evangelical Church claims its decisive role after the elections in Honduras

The general elections held Sunday in Honduras were accompanied by an intense mobilization of the Evangelical community, which proposed to vote early and massively.

In exclusive interviews with Diario Cristiano, Gerardo Irías, president of the EvangelicalConfraternity of Honduras (CEH), and Mario Banegas, president of the Association of Pastors of Tegucigalpa, agreed that the process marked a turning point for civic and spiritual participation in the country.

At the time of publication of this article, the National Electoral Council of Honduras announced the halt of the Transmission of Preliminary Electoral Results, while the count was at 57% and showed a technical tie between Nasry Asfura (39.91%) and Salvador Nasralla (39.89%), separated by just 515 votes.

For Gerardo Irías, election day already represented a triumph for the Church. "The Church played one of the most important roles in history as ever before. At this moment we have already won because the purpose was for Honduras to be free of a left," he said.

He said about 90% of congregations closed their churches on Sunday to prioritize voting. This decision, coupled with weeks of spiritual preparation, would have directly influenced the close outcome between the presidential candidates. Irías maintains that any of the finalist candidates represents afavorable scenario as long as religious freedom and biblical values are respected.

Asked about the impact of external actors – especially former US President Donald Trump's public support for one of the candidates – the evangelical leader did not hesitate: "The numbers were given, the Church was convinced, safe, it did not have a shred of doubt." According to his assessment, international messages "only inject hope," but do not determine the spiritual and civic criteria of Honduran voters.

From a similar perspective, but with an emphasis on spiritual preparation, Mario Banegas described the electoral contest as the culmination of months of prayer and community work.

"We understood that it was a very strong spiritual struggle," he said. He said that hundreds of congregations organized themselves to pray from two in the morning, hold vigils, fasts and coordinate support networks. According to his estimates, the Church deployed about 36,000collaborators in voting centers, combining official accreditation and volunteer observers.

Banegas explained that the motivation was clear: to mobilize the faithful to exercise the democratic right. "We sent a call to all churches to close and go out early to vote. 90% of the church left," he said.

In his opinion, evangelicals represent some 2.3 million voters, a flow that, added to the previous organization, would have had a decisive impact on the electoral trend.

Both evangelical leaders were cautious about the final definition of the vote, but they agreed on a horizon of reconciliation.

Irías anticipated that, after the official result, they will seek to publicly bless the new president "as we did with both candidates before the elections."

Banegas, meanwhile, called for a gesture of unity: that the defeated candidate "raise his hand to the winner for democracy, for the peace of the country."

In an in-depth analysis of the recent electoral process in Honduras, Pastor Roy Santos, leader of the Manantial de la Mies Ministry, also offered exclusive remarks to Diario Cristiano Internacional, describing the preliminary results not only as an administrative change, but as a supernatural intervention to rescue the nation.

For the evangelical leader, what the Central American nation is experiencing is not simply a change of government, but "the great work of the hand of God saving Honduras from the evil clutches of communism."

Santos, an influential voice within Honduran evangelical Christianity, said that the country had been immersed in a "perverse maneuver" by leftist systems that, according to him, camouflaged themselves in 2021 through an electoral alliance to come to power.

According to the pastor's analysis, the outgoing government of Libertad y Refundación (Libre) made serious spiritual mistakes that provoked divine judgment and rejection by society.

The next few hours and days will determine who will lead Honduras in the new presidential term. However, for the evangelical leaders interviewed, the election has already left a historic toll: the faith left the temples and placed itself at the center of the democratic process, with the conviction that the destiny of the nation is also defined at the ballot box.

The National Electoral Council has by law up to 30 days to make an official pronouncement with the final results.

This article was originally published at Christian Daily International