{"version":"1.9","identifier":"47e5229d-e8be-4063-b82e-b0eac4b7b1f0","language":"en-US","title":"A pastor told his church '255 Muslims' won on Election Day. CAIR's own numbers say something different","layout":{"columns":7,"width":1024,"margin":32,"gutter":20},"componentLayouts":{"text":{"columnStart":0,"columnSpan":7,"maximumContentWidth":720,"margin":{"top":12,"bottom":12}},"photo":{"columnStart":0,"columnSpan":7,"margin":{"top":20,"bottom":20}}},"componentTextStyles":{"default":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":18,"lineHeight":29,"textColor":"#171717"},"headline":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue-Bold","fontSize":36,"lineHeight":42,"conditional":[{"conditions":{"maxViewportWidth":480},"fontSize":28,"lineHeight":34}]},"intro":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":20,"lineHeight":28,"textColor":"#555555"},"caption":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":13,"lineHeight":19,"textColor":"#666666"},"byline":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":13,"lineHeight":20,"textColor":"#666666"},"body":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":18,"lineHeight":29,"paragraphSpacingAfter":14,"linkStyle":{"textColor":"#00704a"}}},"metadata":{"canonicalURL":"https://567politics.com/news/jack-hibbs-255-muslims-sermon-cair-figures-oath-constitution-november-2026","datePublished":"2026-11-11T14:15:50.729333Z","dateModified":"2026-11-11T14:17:01.880702Z","authors":["Patrick Karsh"],"excerpt":"Jack Hibbs's viral sermon says Muslim officials can't swear allegiance to the Constitution. Here's what the 255 figure counts and how the oath works.","thumbnailURL":"https://pub-fac99da959e344fe99d810d309cef7df.r2.dev/photos/article/47e5229d-e8be-4063-b82e-b0eac4b7b1f0/bde9ffb6415dd65fdcb0567235d6af11.jpg","keywords":["elections"],"generatorName":"Frog News","generatorVersion":"1.0"},"components":[{"role":"title","text":"A pastor told his church '255 Muslims' won on Election Day. CAIR's own numbers say something different","textStyle":"headline","layout":"text"},{"role":"intro","text":"Jack Hibbs's viral sermon says Muslim officials can't swear allegiance to the Constitution. Here's what the 255 figure counts and how the oath works.","textStyle":"intro","layout":"text"},{"role":"byline","text":"By Patrick Karsh · Published November 11, 2026","textStyle":"byline","layout":"text"},{"role":"photo","URL":"https://pub-fac99da959e344fe99d810d309cef7df.r2.dev/photos/article/47e5229d-e8be-4063-b82e-b0eac4b7b1f0/bde9ffb6415dd65fdcb0567235d6af11.jpg","caption":"Pastor Jack Hibbs speaking at the 2021 AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/). · Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0","accessibilityCaption":"Pastor Jack Hibbs speaking at the 2021 AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/).","layout":"photo"},{"role":"caption","text":"Pastor Jack Hibbs speaking at the 2021 AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/). · Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0","textStyle":"caption","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"Jack Hibbs, the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California, told his congregation after the Nov. 3 midterms that \"255 Muslims were elected to office in the United States of America on Tuesday\" and that those officials \"cannot swear allegiance to the Constitution.\" A clip of the remarks became one of the most shared right-of-center videos on X this week, and Hibbs reposted it himself late Tuesday under a four-word caption: \"The Republic is over.\"\n\nThe figures behind the sermon come from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), but they do not say what Hibbs said they say. CAIR's count of 255 is a directory of Muslim officials and judges already serving before the election, published in August. Its election-night tally found at least 97 Muslim candidates won or were reelected on Nov. 3. The claim that Muslims cannot take the constitutional oath runs into Article VI of the Constitution, which requires every federal and state officeholder to swear or affirm support for the Constitution and bars any religious test for office.\n\nThe sermon has drawn sharp responses from CAIR's Los Angeles office, which called it \"hateful and irresponsible,\" and from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which cited the ban on religious tests. Supporters, including some of the largest pro-Trump accounts on X, say Hibbs voiced a warning most pastors avoid: that Christians who stayed home handed political ground to others. A third group of conservative Christians agrees that churches should vote but rejects his blame and his despair.\n\nThis article sets out what Hibbs said, what the numbers show, how the oath of office actually works, and how his supporters and critics answer one another.\n\n## What Hibbs said\n\nThe clip comes from a service Hibbs held after the election. His church's sermon archive lists a [special \"Post Election Communion\" service on Nov. 4, 2026](https://calvarycch.org/post-election-communion/), and the [church's sermon page](https://calvarycch.org/sermons/) lists further special services on Nov. 8. The video does not state its date, and 567politics could not confirm which of those services it was recorded at.\n\nHibbs posted a 2-minute, 24-second version of the clip on X at 11:40 p.m. Eastern time on Nov. 10. By Wednesday morning it had been viewed more than 125,000 times, according to the post's public metrics.\n\n\n\nIn the clip, Hibbs tells the congregation that \"the republic ended on Tuesday\" because \"we the people decided to embrace no longer a constitutional republic.\" He then invokes the Old Testament governor Nehemiah, saying he would like \"to find every Christian who didn't vote, grab them by the beard, throw them out into the street like Nehemiah did and beat them up. That's what Nehemiah did. It's biblical.\" The reference is to [Nehemiah 13:25](https://bible-api.com/nehemiah%2013:25?translation=kjv), in which Nehemiah says of Jews who had married outside the community, \"I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair.\"\n\nThe central passage follows. \"255 Muslims were elected to office in the United States of America on Tuesday. Ladies and gentlemen, those of you who didn't vote, you voted. 255 Muslims who cannot swear allegiance to the Constitution. It is forbidden in Islam. They must swear allegiance to Sharia law, which is a completely different government. On Tuesday, the United States of America said no to the republic, and yes to the very government and military and religion that hit us on September 11th, 2001. We have surrendered. It's their party now.\"\n\nHe also says that \"if Texas goes down, Islam knows the nation falls,\" and urges listeners to \"prepare your children, prepare your hearts, prepare your faith.\" He closes by saying the newly elected officials \"will swear on the Quran, not the Bible,\" calling it the \"first time in American history, in this scale.\"\n\nThe quotations in this article come from a 567politics transcription of the video Hibbs posted. A few words in the clip are hard to make out, and those passages are not quoted here. The core passage matches the wording that [CAIR's Los Angeles office quoted in its statement](https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-la-condemns-southern-california-pastors-hateful-and-irresponsible-remarks-targeting-muslim-elected-officials/) and that the conservative site [yourNEWS published on Nov. 10](https://yournews.com/2026/11/10/7260818/california-pastor-jack-hibbs-warns-of-growing-muslim-political-influence/).\n\n## How the clip spread\n\nThe video reached a large audience before Hibbs posted it himself. The account Wall Street Apes, which has about 1.4 million followers, posted an edited version on the evening of Nov. 9 under the headline \"American Pastor warns his church of the Islamic Takeover of America after what happened during Midterms.\" That post had drawn more than 940,000 views and 20,000 reposts by Wednesday morning.\n\n\n\nThe caption under that post blends Hibbs's words with the account's own commentary, including the lines \"It's time to use churches as voting bases just like Muslims do with mosques\" and \"If we don't get serious about this, we will fall to Islam.\" The edited video also contains narration about CAIR's website and Muslim judicial candidates that does not appear in the version Hibbs posted. yourNEWS noted the same problem, writing that the passage it published \"did not clearly establish that those particular remarks were spoken by Hibbs rather than offered as commentary.\" 567politics attributes to Hibbs only the words heard in his own post.\n\nGunther Eagleman, a pro-Trump commentator with about 1.8 million followers, quoted the clip on Nov. 10. \"THIS PASTOR SAID WHAT MOST WON'T,\" he wrote. \"His message to every Christian who stayed home: 'Those of you who didn't vote, you voted.' He's RIGHT. Every seat you didn't fight for, someone else took. Churches can't sit out elections anymore. Neither can you.\"\n\n\n\nX's own trending summary of the story on Wednesday described reactions as ranging \"from agreement on church inaction to defenses of Muslim Americans' loyalty.\" That summary is generated from posts and is not a measure of opinion. No representative poll of reactions to the sermon exists, and the posts quoted here show what particular accounts said, not what Christians, conservatives or Americans in general think.\n\n## What the 255 figure actually counts\n\nThe number 255 comes from CAIR and its political arm, CAIR Action. On Aug. 20, 2026, the groups released a [2026 Directory of Elected Muslim Officials](https://www.cair.com/press_releases/record-breaking-cair-cair-action-identify-255-muslim-elected-officials-in-new-2026-directory/) that identified 255 Muslim elected officials and judges serving in 26 states. That count was compiled roughly 11 weeks before the midterms. It describes people already in office, not people elected on Nov. 3.\n\nThe directory's own breakdown shows how local most of those offices are. Nearly two-thirds of the officials sit on city councils or school boards.\n\nBy CAIR's figures, council members make up 38.4% of the directory, education officials 24.7%, state legislators 18%, judges 7.1%, mayors 4.3% and members of Congress 1.6%. The \"other\" category of 15 officials, which CAIR says includes law enforcement, municipal and transportation offices, is not given a share in the announcement. CAIR says the directory is incomplete and grew as community members reported officials it had missed. [The Center Square](https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_6a60ac2c-5b50-4e14-bc1c-a2502fdcdf31.html) reported that New Jersey had the most Muslim officials in the directory, with 46, followed by Michigan with 40 and California with 24.\n\n**Muslim elected officials by office type, August 2026**\n\nOfficials serving before the Nov. 3, 2026 election; CAIR says the count is incomplete","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"},{"role":"htmltable","html":"
OfficeOfficials
City council members98
Education posts63
State legislators46
Judges18
Other elected posts15
Mayors11
U.S. House members4
","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"Source: [CAIR and CAIR Action, 2026 Directory of Elected Muslim Officials](https://www.cair.com/press_releases/record-breaking-cair-cair-action-identify-255-muslim-elected-officials-in-new-2026-directory/)\n\n## What happened on Nov. 3\n\nCAIR's [preliminary midterm tally, released Nov. 5](https://www.cair.com/press_releases/breaking-cair-cair-action-report-record-97-muslims-and-counting-elected-nationwide/), found at least 97 confirmed Muslim winners in federal, state and local races across 21 states, including 38 state legislative seats. The groups tracked 168 Muslim candidates who made it past their primaries. Of those, 97 had won, 50 had lost, 15 were leading in uncalled races and six were in contests too close to call. Many of the winners were incumbents, so the 97 is not the number of new Muslim officeholders.\n\nCAIR called the 97 a midterm record in its own tracking, up from 82 wins it counted in 2022. On Nov. 9 the group [said on X](https://x.com/CAIRNational/status/2119799703499931660) that it expected the final number to pass 100. Its Nov. 5 release said a final count would follow and that an updated directory would come out in January.\n\n**Muslim candidates tracked by CAIR in the 2026 general election, by result**\n\nPreliminary figures as of Nov. 5, 2026; 168 candidates tracked","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"},{"role":"htmltable","html":"
ResultCandidates
Won97
Lost50
Leading, uncalled15
Too close to call6
","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"Source: [CAIR and CAIR Action, Nov. 5, 2026 preliminary tally](https://www.cair.com/press_releases/breaking-cair-cair-action-report-record-97-muslims-and-counting-elected-nationwide/)\n\nAt the federal level, CAIR listed seven confirmed winners and an eighth, a California House member who first won the seat in an August special election and had declared victory with a lead in unofficial returns. The best-known result was in Michigan, where [Abdul El-Sayed](https://567politics.com/politicians/abdul-el-sayed), the Democratic senator-elect, became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. 567politics covered that race in its report on [El-Sayed's win in Michigan](https://567politics.com/news/michigan-senate-el-sayed-defeats-rogers-first-muslim-senator-november-2026). Minnesota Attorney General [Keith Ellison](https://567politics.com/politicians/keith-ellison), a Democrat, also won reelection, according to CAIR's list.\n\nFor scale, the [Pew Research Center found](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/01/02/faith-on-the-hill-2025/) that Christians made up 87% of the voting members of the current 119th Congress, which began in January 2025, and that the four Muslim members were all House Democrats. If CAIR's federal count holds, the 120th Congress will have eight Muslim members out of 535.\n\nHibbs's figure of 255 newly elected Muslims therefore merges two different numbers: a pre-election directory of officials already serving and a post-election tally of winners, many of whom were already on that list.\n\n## The oath of office and the Quran\n\nHibbs's claim that Muslims \"cannot swear allegiance to the Constitution\" is a statement about Islamic belief. As yourNEWS noted, \"Islamic beliefs and interpretations of Sharia vary among Muslim communities.\" What can be checked is the legal requirement. [Article VI of the Constitution](https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript) says that members of Congress, state legislators and \"all executive and judicial Officers\" of the federal and state governments \"shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.\" Every Muslim elected on Nov. 3 must take that oath or affirmation to serve, as every other officeholder must. yourNEWS made the same point in its report, noting that Muslim officeholders \"are subject to the same constitutional oath requirements.\"\n\nHis statement that the new officials \"will swear on the Quran, not the Bible\" also does not match how the House swears in its members. The House administers the oath to members as a group on the floor, and members do not place a hand on any book. [Snopes](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/congressional-swearing-quran/) quoted former Senate historian Don Ritchie and a House deputy historian on that practice in 2007. Members may hold a religious text, or none, at a separate ceremonial photo with the speaker afterward.\n\nNor would it be the first time a Muslim officeholder used the Quran in that ceremony. When Ellison entered the House in January 2007 as the first Muslim elected to Congress, he used a two-volume Quran that had belonged to Thomas Jefferson for his ceremonial photo, according to the [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-07-001/use-of-thomas-jeffersons-koran-for-congressional-swearing-in-ceremony/2007-01-03/), which lent the book. [Minnesota Public Radio reported at the time](https://www.mprnews.org/story/2007/01/04/klobuchar) that the official swearing-in \"did not require representatives to use any religious book.\" The choice drew criticism then too, including from a Virginia Republican congressman, MPR reported.\n\n## The case Hibbs and his supporters make\n\nRead charitably, the sermon makes two separate arguments. The first is about turnout. Hibbs says Christians who skipped the election bear responsibility for its outcome: \"Those of you who didn't vote, you voted.\" yourNEWS described Hibbs as a pastor who \"has frequently urged Christians to participate in elections,\" and reported that he made a similar case on the Family Research Council's \"Washington Watch\" program on Nov. 4, telling Christians to respond to setbacks with more civic involvement rather than less.\n\nSupporters on X have focused on that point. Eagleman's post framed it as a call for churches to organize. Other users sharing the clip called him \"bold\" and said they wished more pastors would speak the same way. To these supporters, the growth of Muslim officeholders shows what a community can win when its religious institutions mobilize voters, and they argue evangelical churches should do the same.\n\nThe second argument is about Islam itself. Hibbs says Islam requires allegiance to Sharia law above the Constitution, and he links the Muslim officials who won to \"the very government and military and religion that hit us on September 11th, 2001.\" That claim treats the religious beliefs of all Muslim officials as a single position, and it connects them as a group to an attack carried out by al-Qaida. The clip does not cite any statement by an individual official to support that claim.\n\n567politics found no published evidence for Hibbs's turnout claim either. He said that \"millions\" of evangelical Christians failed to vote, but no representative survey of religious turnout in the 2026 midterms had been released as of Nov. 11. Exit polls and voter file studies typically take weeks to months to produce that kind of estimate.\n\n## The case his critics make\n\nCAIR's Los Angeles office issued its statement on Nov. 10. Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said Hibbs was \"contributing to a broader climate of fear and prejudice, encouraging his congregation to view their Muslim neighbors with suspicion and hostility.\" He added: \"Such rhetoric is rooted in bigotry and perpetuates the false notion that Muslims are somehow less American or less deserving of a voice in our democracy.\" Ayloush also spoke to Hibbs as a fellow believer: \"As Muslims, we're taught to respect people of all faiths. We honor Jesus, peace be upon him, and all the prophets of God by upholding love, mercy, and tolerance toward all people.\"\n\nIn its Nov. 5 release, CAIR said the election results were \"a powerful rebuke to the anti-Muslim smears directed at candidates and their communities throughout this campaign\" and called on the winners \"to serve every constituent, defend civil rights for all.\" CAIR is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that says it does not endorse candidates. CAIR Action, a separate 501(c)(4), does political advocacy.\n\nThe Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group that advocates separation of church and state, answered from a different direction. \"The Constitution prohibits religious tests for office. Muslim Americans have every right to serve,\" the group posted on Nov. 10, adding that those candidates \"appear more committed\" to respecting everyone's rights \"than the Christian nationalists Hibbs supports.\"\n\n\n\n## Conservative Christians who object\n\nSome of the sharpest replies came from people who share Hibbs's faith and politics. An X user who posts as AThinksAloud, whose profile describes her as a \"Bible thumper\" and says \"US Constitution or bust,\" wrote that \"a pastor blaming evangelical Christians for the midterms is not statistically defensible.\" She said Republican vote totals in Texas rose compared with 2024 even as their share fell, and that the larger change was a rise in Democratic votes. 567politics has not verified her Texas figures, and they are her own reading of the returns.\n\n\"Blaming Christians and saying you want to beat them up is over the top and not a logical response to what happened,\" she wrote. She also objected to the tone of the sermon as \"hopeless,\" saying it left no room for the belief that God still acts in events.\n\n\n\nOther replies took a similar line in fewer words. One X user wrote that his pastor \"preached about Jesus Christ on Sunday,\" not about Muslims taking over the country. The range of responses fits a wider argument on the right since the midterms over who is to blame for Republican losses, which 567politics described in its look at [how the right split on X after the defeat](https://567politics.com/news/right-wing-x-midterm-reactions-mccain-mace-mtg-fuentes-2026).\n\n## Where the arguments stand\n\nSeveral of Hibbs's factual statements can be tested, and they do not hold up as stated. The 255 figure counts officials serving before the election, not winners on Nov. 3. The House does not swear members in on any book, and a Muslim member used a Quran at the ceremonial photo nearly 20 years ago. The Constitution requires the same oath or affirmation of every officeholder and forbids a religious test.\n\nHis argument that Muslims cannot honestly take that oath is a claim about belief that the records cannot settle on their own. It applies one interpretation of Islamic law to every Muslim official, a hasty generalization from a religion to the individuals who practice it. Critics such as CAIR say the claim treats a whole community as suspect. Supporters say it is a warning about political Islam that pastors should be free to give.\n\nHis turnout argument stands on different ground. Whether evangelical Christians stayed home in 2026 is an empirical question that representative data have not yet answered. The call for churches to get their members to the polls is a familiar one across American religious life, and several of his critics on the right share it while rejecting the rest of the sermon.\n\nDebates over religious minorities and civic life are not limited to the United States. 567politics has reported on a similar argument in Japan, where [protests against new mosques test religious freedom and neighborhood trust](https://567politics.com/news/japan-anti-mosque-protests-fujisawa-religious-freedom-neighborhood-rules).\n\n567politics did not reach Calvary Chapel Chino Hills for comment before publication. The church's website lists the Nov. 4 service but does not post a transcript of the remarks.","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"}]}