Following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will no longer seek re-election in November, the 2024 presidential race juxtaposes two very different versions of Christianity: Donald Trump brandishes a performative rendition of the Christian faith as a political prop to advance authoritarian theocracy, while Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden has endorsed to take his place as the Democratic nominee, practices the Christian faith she was raised in, while embracing her interfaith family.
In doing so, Harris embodies our nation’s founding ideal of religious freedom and models a Christian commitment to religious pluralism.
Although he has reportedly mocked his conservative Christian leaders behind their backs, was not active in church before running for president and says he’s never asked God for forgiveness, Trump has manufactured mass far-right devotion among his base through moves like overturning Roe v. Wade. Surviving an assassination attempt will only heighten MAGA zealotry, as we saw with the surge of Christian nationalist narrative claiming Trump survived only by the will of God.
Harris roots her personal Christian faith in the prophetic tradition of the Black Church.
Harris grew up attending 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. “I was raised to live my faith,” she said at the National Baptist Convention, USA, Annual Meeting in 2022. “Marching for civil rights, my parents pushed me in a stroller. That was faith in action.” I’ve witnessed her put her faith in action on the national stage. Four days after Biden picked her to be his running mate in 2020, I was invited by the Biden-Harris campaign to attend a meeting between her and national faith leaders. We heard directly from the Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, her pastor at Third Baptist Church in San Francisco. It was clear from the very beginning of her national political career that she would not shy away from talking about her Baptist convictions. Harris once served as Rev. Brown’s campaign manager when he ran for re-election to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. “She is an encourager; she encourages all people regardless of their social station in life,” Rev. Brown shared with Baptist news outlet Word&Way. “She is a role model for womanhood, and just human decency and dignity at its best.”
Harris roots her personal Christian faith in the prophetic tradition of the Black Church. “Just think, after slavery was outlawed in our country, the founders of this very convention came together to protect the freedom of worship,” she said at the National Baptist Convention. “As Black people in our nation battled racist laws and ideologies, men and women of the cloth were the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in America. And they, then, following the teachings of Christ, built coalitions of people of all faiths and races and walks of life, because they understood and knew the importance of the collective.”
“I can trace my belief in the importance of public service back to learning the parable of the good Samaritan and other biblical teachings about looking out for our neighbors,” she said in a Religion News Service interview in 2020.
“Ever since I was a girl, church has not only been a place where I draw strength, it’s been a place for reflection, a place to study the teachings of the Lord and to feel grounded in a complex world,” she told RNS. “Church still plays that role for me. And I also draw something else from it as well: a sense of community and belonging where we can build lasting relationships and be there for one another in times of need.”
Harris grew up in an interfaith family and chose to form an interfaith family as an adult. Her mother, an immigrant from India, took her to visit Hindu temples growing up. Harris has said this teaches her “to see that all faiths teach us to pursue justice.” If elected, Harris’ husband Douglas Emhoff wouldn’t just be the first person to hold the title of first gentleman. He’d also the first Jewish spouse of a president.
“From all of these traditions and teachings, I’ve learned that faith is not only something we express in church and prayerful reflection, but also in the way we live our lives, do our work and pursue our respective callings,” Harris said about the Hindu and Jewish influences in her life.
Emhoff has also been a leader in the Biden-Harris administration at fostering interfaith dialogue and collaboration. I heard him speak at an interfaith iftar at the U.S. Institute of Peace in 2022 during Ramadan. Harris and Emhoff hosted an Eid al-Adha celebration in 2023, the first Eid celebration at the vice president’s residence.
One of the most exciting aspects of Harris’ potential candidacy is that she doesn’t shy away from making the religious case for abortion rights, meeting head on Trump’s alliance of Christian nationalist groups pushing to outlaw abortion on so-called religious claims.
Harris spoke on this matter at the National Baptist Convention:
“As extremists work to take away the freedom of women to make decisions about their own bodies, faith leaders are taking a stand, knowing one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held religious beliefs to agree that a woman should have the ability to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do. And she will choose, in consultation with her pastor or her priest, or a doctor and her loved ones. But the government should not be making that decision.”
Harris’ boldness is representative, as most Christians in the United States support abortion rights.
In 2021, Rev. Lauren Jones Mayfield was invited to the White House to participate in a roundtable discussion on reproductive health care with Harris. “Harris honored my religious voice as I intended for her to hear it, a deep valuing of American religious liberty and reproductive freedoms,” Jones Mayfield told me. “The vice president made clear her own support for reproductive health for all Americans alongside her ongoing commitments to religious liberty. For those of us who engage in reproductive rights activism of our faith, not in spite of it, Harris honored our collective, clerical voice that celebrates the American right for a patient to choose their best course of medical treatment with their doctor, family and faith leader if it’s so desired.”
Rooted in the Black Church tradition, deeply informed and inspired by her interfaith family, and a trailblazer for reproductive freedom, Kamala Harris’ Christian faith is the antithesis of Donald Trump’s Christian nationalism, in which the Christian faith is wielded as a tool to oppress, exclude and limit basic rights of people who believe or pray differently.
If elected president, she would make history on multiple fronts: the first female president, the second Black president, and the first president of South Asian descent. She’ll also be a role model for confidently living out your faith in public while respecting others’ religious values.
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is vice president of programs and strategy at Interfaith Alliance and the author of "Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity."