'Evangelicals For Harris' - What You Need To Know

A newly-minted political group hosted a recent "Zoom-style rally," as MSNBC put it, touting evangelical support for Harris. "Evangelicals for Harris has sought to offer a counter-narrative to evangelicals' overwhelming support for Trump," proclaimed The Tennessean, a progressive paper in Nashville. 

The narrative, as it uncritically repeated it, is that "Harris' campaign has drawn out more direct support from those who may have sympathized with Democrat ideals but might not have gone out of their way to endorse Biden's former candidacy."

Is this true? Here are a few facts to know about "Evangelicals for Harris."

A pledge on the Evangelicals for Harris website to support the Harris-Walz ticket in 2024 has already received over 200,000 signatures. The organization claimed on X that "over 200,000 evangelicals joined an effort called 'Evangelicals for Biden'" in 2020, and "that same group is growing and is throwing its support behind @KamalaHarris."

However, this evidence does not show that a growing number of evangelicals are throwing their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. So far, the evidence shows that a group of approximately 200,000 evangelicals support Democratic nominees for president, whether President Joe Biden in 2020 or Harris in 2024.

The Evangelicals for Harris Zoom rally reached 40,000 listeners, according to MSNBC. This total is about 20% of those who already signed the pledge to vote for a Harris-Walz ticket. While this number may sound large in isolation, it does not necessarily show that the Evangelicals for Harris is reaching large numbers of new hearers.

A 2022 Gallup poll found that 32% of American adults self-identify as "born-again" or evangelical, a little more than 80 million people (numbers vary widely between polling outfits because people define "evangelical" in different ways, but a broad definition seems most appropriate here for an apples-to-apples comparison). Various exit polls conducted in 2020 showed that 76% to 81% of "white evangelicals" (skin color shouldn't matter, but that's how pollsters classify people, unfortunately) voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden.

It's theoretically possible that some evangelical votes have changed their politics in the past four years. But if Evangelicals for Harris wants to demonstrate that such a change has occurred broadly, they'll have to expand their reach by orders of magnitude. Their website currently boasts that one-quarter of one percent of self-identified evangelicals have pledged to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket.

To back up the narrative that evangelicals have broadly deserted Trump, Evangelicals for Harris needs to gain millions, even tens of millions, more adherents.

Pro-Harris activists have organized a series of identity-based Zoom calls, featuring White Dudes for Harris, Black Men for Harris, and White Women for Harris. "Black queer men, South Asian women, Latinas, Native women," will also hold gatherings, reported a Time piece, which celebrated this "admirable attempt to be inclusive."

These calls are part of an effort to boost Harris's candidacy for online audiences by leaning into the theories of identity politics: look at all the different groups of people who support her!

Ironically, the sheer number of identity group rallies for Harris, while the nation remains split roughly 50-50 (or perhaps 45-45) between her and Trump, accidentally demonstrates that no identity group is monolithic. No one must vote a certain way simply because they belong to a certain arbitrary group. Even evangelicals have some political diversity; not everyone who repents and believes in Jesus Christ makes the same logical connections between Scripture and politics.

The Evangelicals for Harris event featured 18 speakers plus a moderator, with significant diversity among the participants.

Moderator Ekemini Uwan set the overall tone. At a Christian conference in 2019, Uwan declared, "Whiteness is wicked. It is wicked. It's rooted in violence. It's rooted in theft. It's rooted in plunder. It's rooted in power, in privilege." She has called for defunding the police, reparations, a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and an end to the Electoral College, according to Fox News.

When asked about these past comments, Uwan responded that she "told the truth about the wickedness of whiteness." She explained, "I preached the gospel and told them there is grace and that the blood covers. I am an anti-racist Public Theologian. I hold up a mirror, make people face the racist reflection staring back at them, and give them hope found in the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Other speakers are known for previous progressive activism within evangelical churches. Among many, Burk highlights Bishop Claude Alexander, chairman of the board of directors at Christianity Today, Rev. Dwight McKissic, "a well-known activist for women pastors within the Southern Baptist Convention," and Jemar Tisby, an anti-racist author and former assistant director at Ibram X. Kendi's Center for Antiracist Research.

Some speakers appear to focus their political engagement on fighting anti-Asian racism. This includes Russell Jeung, Soong-Chan Rah, and Raymond Chang.

Other speakers are not in pastoral ministry, such as Billy Graham's granddaughter, Jerushah Duford, an "LGBTQ+ friendly" therapist. Another speaker was Christian rapper Derek Minor, whose up-and-down faith journey "doesn't fit the mold anymore."

Some speakers did not even seem to fit the standard definition of evangelical. Matt Tebbe is a priest in the Episcopal Church -- by definition a mainline denomination, as distinct from an evangelical one. Lee Scott, of the Coalition for Christian Outreach is ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., another mainline denomination.

The hodgepodge of speakers provides an answer to readers who may be wondering how an "Evangelicals for Harris" group could even form in the first place. How could Bible-believing Christians, who submit their lives to the word of God, support one of the most pro-abortion, pro-LGBT politicians of our time? The answer is that there isn't one answer, but many.

The reasons some evangelicals have for supporting Harris aren't necessarily good ones -- and a majority of evangelicals seem to disagree with their reasoning -- but differences of thinking will always result where there is genuine freedom of thought. In an era when governments increasingly seek to crack down on "misinformation" and other thought crimes, the existence of a minority position like "Evangelicals for Harris" is proof that freedom of thought is still alive in American churches.

Some staunch anti-Trumpers oppose him for some Trump-specific factors: his tweets, his personal conduct, etc. By contrast, Evangelicals for Harris and their parent organization, Faith Voters for Good, clearly support Harris for a different reason: they prefer the policy agenda offered by Democrats to that offered by Republicans.

Relatedly, Evangelicals for Harris argues that the Biden-Harris agenda is "pro-family." They list 12 policy items, including ObamaCare expansion, universal pre-K, gun control, student loan forgiveness, and environmental protections. One could argue that these are pro-family policies, and also that they are not. What is not debatable is that these are standard-issue Democratic policy positions.

One item stands out from the list of Harris's pro-family policy positions. The first item on the list claims that Harris "will continue to work hard to keep the state out of these private family matters," following four paragraphs about supposed threats to IVF. Apart from one oblique reference to threats to IVF rising "since the overturning of Roe," Evangelicals for Harris makes no mention of Harris's support for taxpayer-funded abortion until birth, her efforts to force pro-life pregnancy resource centers to advertise for abortion, or her opposition to doctors' having the right to not participate in abortion -- all of which involve the state inserting itself into private family matters.

Also notably absent from the list of Harris's pro-family policy positions is a concern for parental rights in education or health care, protections for minors from gender transition procedures or indoctrination, protections for women's private spaces and sports, age verification laws for pornography sites, or opposition to drug legalization. The reason these items are absent from the list is because none of these are positions that Harris espouses.

Evangelicals for Harris devotes another lengthy web page to Kamala Harris's faith story. Pastor Denny Burk granted that the page about Harris's faith "is, in fact, a story, although not a Christian one. It includes no mention at all of Jesus Christ or of His death and resurrection for sinners."

The organization describes how Harris's inspiration for public service can be traced back to "the parable of the good Samaritan and other biblical teachings about looking out for our neighbors." Harris's favorite Bible verse is 2 Corinthians 5:7, "We walk by faith and not by sight," because it "recognizes that we don't have all the answers, but also that we do not face life's challenges alone. Our loving God is with us." The page also mentions Harris's pastor, the Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, who testified against Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court and condemned Americans after 9/11.

However, the paragraph that concerned Burk the most was a description of Harris's faith that approximated syncretism:

"While a deeply committed and faithful Christian, Vice President Harris has great respect for other faith traditions. Her mother Shyamala Gopalan and relatives in India took her to Hindu temples. She joins her husband, Doug Emhoff, in Jewish traditions and celebrations. This respect syncs with her baptist tradition, which has a long and distinguished legacy of support and activism for religious liberty and the separation of Church and State."

Harris has an unusual interpretation of the Baptist tradition of advocating for religious liberty. During her time as a senator, Harris cosponsored the Equality Act, a radical overhaul of U.S. civil rights law that would prioritize LGBT identities and "gut religious liberty," according to an analysis by Family Research Council. 

During her time as attorney general of California, Harris tried to force faith-based, pro-life pregnancy centers to violate their religious beliefs and help pregnant women obtain abortions; the ensuing litigation (NIFLA v. Harris, which became NIFLA v. Becerra under her successor) went all the way to the Supreme Court, where California lost in a 5-4 ruling.

On its Evangelicals for Harris page, Faith Voters for Good explained, "as Evangelicals it is our calling from God to love our neighbors, to serve those less fortunate than us, and to stand up in defense of the weak." This is a common emphasis of left-leaning groups like Red Letter Christians, whose co-founder, Shane Claiborne, apparently joined the call.

On social media, Evangelicals for Harris extended this emphasis on love of neighbor into a rationale for its opposition to former president Donald Trump, "We believe Christ is best worshipped through loving others, not kicking dirt in their face as Mr. Trump does. That is not the Gospel. We cannot pretend this man loves others when he so openly hates them. That is not Christ's love." In another reply, it repeated, "Christ should bring us together in His teachings and what He taught is clear. Love others. Do not spit upon them. Do not throw them into the gutter. Love them."

However, bringing people together in love is not the only thing Jesus taught, nor is it the only thing the Bible teaches. Jesus also said, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34).

Evangelicals for Harris seemed less enthusiastic about other points of Christian theology. In another post, they seemed to downplay God's sovereignty. "The claim that God saved Trump by killing an innocent bystander is incredibly corrupt theology." Jesus once spoke to unexplained, tragic deaths, "unless you repent, you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:5).

Evangelicals for Harris also seemed to downplay the authority of all Scripture, particularly the Old Testament, when they enmeshed themselves in a debate over praying the imprecatory psalms, saying, "Whether or not we should pray the imprecatory psalms has long been a theological debate. But here's what we think -- Jesus said to love your enemies and so ... let's try that. Love over hate, friend." 

When someone pointed out that Paul instructed believers to one another in psalms (Ephesians 5:19), they appealed to that verse's context. Yet Jesus himself set his ministry in context of "all the Scriptures" (Luke 24:27) and declared that "not an iota, not a dot" would pass away "until all is accomplished (Matthew 7:18).

Evangelicals for Harris also derided calls to repentance. In response to a Christian podcaster who said, "I love you by telling you to repent of supporting the wickedness of the left," the group responded, "A lot to unpack here but for now, Josh, I hope you feel the love of Jesus embrace you. God loves you so much and He wants to free you from the burden of your anger and rage. God bless you!" 

Unless they were claiming supernatural knowledge of the state of his heart, this statement implies that all such calls to repentance express anger and rage. Yet this is how Jesus began his ministry (Matthew 4:17), and he later "began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent" (Matthew 11:20).

Given their emphasis on Christian love, the social media account for Evangelicals for Harris adopts a strikingly dissonant tone. Unusually for an organization of its character, the X account for Evangelicals for Harris engages in lengthy exchanges with other individuals on the platform about tangential topics (such as the imprecatory psalms). In these exchanges, they frequently have recourse to spiritual-sounding put-downs, which do not help "the body grow so that it builds itself up in love" (Ephesians 4:16).

To one user, Evangelicals for Harris responded, "We exist in the context y'all -- Steven, scroll up in your Bible app and you'll see that the context of the verse you just threw at us is about abandoning sin, walking in love, and rejecting the use of crude and foolish talk. Make a joyful noise, buddy. We know scripture can be tough, but we have your back!"

To another they replied, "We will be praying for you as we pray for everyone. We see you overcome with hurt and resentment. There is a path out of the darkness, and it's never too late to walk with us. When Kamala Harris is justly elected president, don't forget that God loves you."

Much of this tone is likely due to the inherent dangers of online social media debates, where it is often difficult to remember that another image-bearer lies behind the words on the screen. "When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent" (Proverbs 10:19). The parable of the Pharisee and tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) is a sobering warning to anyone who "thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue" (James 1:26).

However, some of it may also be provoked by the frustration of partisan politics. Evangelicals who have declared themselves for the Harris-Walz ticket are perplexed about other evangelicals who decline to join their cause. Meanwhile, the majority of evangelicals are shocked that anyone who shares their core beliefs could vote for Harris's policies on abortion and religious freedom.

Yet here we are, and neither side is likely to persuade the other. At times like these, it's encouraging to remember that our primary agenda is not to advance any particular political party, but to proclaim God's glory as the kingdom of God advances.

Originally published at The Washington Stand