Nearly a thousand pastors and churchgoers rallied outside the Georgia State Capitol Friday despite rainy weather.

Just a few weeks after Gov. Nathan Deal’s veto of a controversial religious exemptions bill, religious leaders from around the state appeared to be digging political trenches for a drawn-out battle over whether lawmakers should pass new legal protections for people opposed to same-sex marriage.

“We are at war,” said Garland Hunt, pastor of Father’s House in Norcross. “We refuse to let the governor lead us; we refuse to let anybody lead the church. The church will not be led by politics. The church will lead the political system.”

Many of the people Garland was speaking to had arrived at the capitol in buses from all parts of the state, carrying Bibles with them.

Mike Qualls, a pastor at Lakeland Baptist Church had nearly a four-hour drive from the southern part of the state.

Qualls spoke much softer than Hunt, but his message was only slightly less pointed.

“They’re starting to persecute the church enough to where we cannot preach … what the word of God tells us, on any subject — homosexuality, and things of that nature,” said Qualls.

The group that organized the rally, called “We Stand With God” on its website, held similar events in South Carolina and North Carolina last year, with speakers like Ted Cruz and Hank Huckabee. The website says those events drew thousands.

The primary message was that conservative Christians need to become more politically involved in this election, and beyond.

At the end of the event, all pastors were called to the front and given cards to fill out and return.

“I believe in God, the supreme creator, whose ways are above the laws of every nation and every court. As part of that faith, I believe in Biblical truth,” said the portion of the card that pastors were instructed to keep in their Bibles. “Today, I stand with God and for the religious liberties promised by the founders of this nation and will do my best to help preserve those liberties for future generations.”

The other section – to be returned – had checkboxes including “I will work for 100% voter registration in my church,” and “I will contact public officials to defend faith, family and freedom.”

Pastors can be politically influential within Georgia’s Republican party, and the original version of the religious exemptions bill vetoed by Deal was known as the “Pastor Protection Act.”

To Qualls, seeing new legal protections for his and his church’s objection to same-sex marriage is so important, he’d ask lawmakers to block Deal’s plans for education funding reform as a negotiating tactic.

“The Bible says the fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge and so it all goes back to that,” said Qualls, “If you lose the foundation everything just crumbles around it, anyway.”

Deal earlier this week challenged critics of his veto to show him examples of situations where new legal protections of religious exemptions would have made any difference.

He said he hopes legislators will be “big enough” to get over any grudges they might hold thanks to his veto.