Evangelicals for Kamala Harris Seek to Shift Faith-Based Support \ Newslooks \ Washington DC \ Mary Sidiqi \ Evening Edition \ A group of evangelical leaders, led by Rev. Lee Scott, has publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president, seeking to shift support away from Donald Trump. Despite Trump’s strong backing from white evangelical voters, grassroots efforts like Evangelicals for Harris aim to reshape the political landscape for faith-based voters by emphasizing Harris’ policies on family, education, and compassionate governance. However, the movement faces strong resistance from pro-Trump evangelicals, making this a pivotal moment in the debate over faith and politics.
Evangelicals Back Kamala Harris: Quick Looks
- Evangelical Endorsement: Rev. Lee Scott publicly endorses Kamala Harris, calling for a shift in evangelical support away from Trump.
- Trump’s Evangelical Stronghold: Despite efforts, Trump maintains deep support among white evangelical voters, who backed him overwhelmingly in 2020.
- Grassroots Movement: Groups like Evangelicals for Harris and Vote Common Good work to challenge the notion that religious identity must align with conservative politics.
- Diverse Evangelical Voices: Faith leaders across the U.S. are calling for a more compassionate, inclusive approach to politics, supporting Harris’ policies on family and education.
- Resistance from the Right: Pro-Trump evangelicals, including prominent figures like Franklin Graham, have pushed back against the movement, framing it as a betrayal of traditional values.
Deep Look:
The political landscape in 2024 is seeing a small but vocal shift among evangelical voters, as grassroots movements like Evangelicals for Harris seek to redirect faith-based support away from Donald Trump and toward Kamala Harris. Rev. Lee Scott, a Presbyterian pastor from Butler, Pennsylvania, became one of the latest evangelical leaders to publicly endorse Harris during an Evangelicals for Harris Zoom call on August 14.
In his endorsement, Scott acknowledged the risk he was taking by speaking out in a community deeply affected by the July assassination attempt on Trump. “The easy thing for us to do would be to keep our heads down,” Scott said, addressing the roughly 3,200 viewers who joined the call. However, he felt compelled to speak out against Trump and the “vitriol” he believes the former president has brought into American politics.
Cracks in Trump’s Evangelical Base
Trump has long held sway over white evangelical voters, with AP VoteCast showing that about 8 in 10 cast their ballots for him in 2020. Yet, as Trump navigates his 2024 campaign, some evangelicals are beginning to distance themselves from his divisive rhetoric and shifting stance on issues like abortion.
The Rev. Dwight McKissic, a Baptist pastor from Texas, also endorsed Harris during the Zoom call, citing his disillusionment with the Republican Party’s wavering stance on abortion and same-sex marriage. McKissic’s endorsement, like Scott’s, signals a growing desire among some evangelicals to reassess their political alignments.
“I am tired of watching meanness, bigotry, and recreational cruelty be the worldly witness of our faith,” Scott told the group, calling for a new direction for evangelicals.
Evangelicals for Harris and the Grassroots Movement
The Evangelicals for Harris movement is part of a larger effort to reframe evangelical political identity. In the 2020 election, a group known as Evangelicals for Biden aimed to pull faith voters away from Trump. Now rebranded for Harris, the organization is expanding its efforts for 2024, with its president, Rev. Jim Ball, stating that they hope to spend $1 million on targeted advertising.
While the white evangelical vote is often seen as a Republican stronghold, AP VoteCast found that 2 in 10 white evangelicals voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Harris’ team, led by Rev. Jen Butler, is now working to expand this base by appealing to a broader range of religious voters, including Black Protestants, Latino evangelicals, and Catholics in swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada.
Butler, a Presbyterian minister and experienced faith-based organizer, said that she has been in touch with grassroots groups like Evangelicals for Harris to harness the power of faith voters ahead of Election Day. “We think we have real potential to reach voters who have voted Republican in the past,” Butler said, emphasizing the campaign’s focus on suburban evangelical women and compassionate policies on immigration and family support.
Political Identity vs. Religious Identity
One of the key messages from Evangelicals for Harris is that religious and political identities do not have to align with a specific party. Vote Common Good, a progressive evangelical group led by Doug Pagitt, has been working to dismantle the idea that being an evangelical automatically means supporting conservative politics. “There’s a whole group who have become uncomfortable voting for Trump,” Pagitt said, adding that their goal is to help people act on their changing political views.
Still, the movement faces significant resistance. Prominent evangelical leaders like Sean Feucht, a Trump-supporting worship leader, mocked the existence of Evangelicals for Harris, calling the group “HERETICS FOR HARRIS.” Likewise, Rev. Franklin Graham, a long-time Trump supporter, condemned the group’s use of footage of his late father, Billy Graham, in an ad supporting Harris, claiming that “liberals are using anything and everything” to promote the vice president.
Changing Evangelicalism
For many in the evangelical community, these efforts are about more than just political endorsements; they represent an attempt to redefine evangelicalism in the modern political landscape. The term evangelical, once used to describe a theologically conservative Christian identity, has become closely associated with Republican politics in recent years.
Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University, argues that the term has become “fraught” and that many Christians who share evangelical beliefs may not claim the label due to its connection to Trump and the religious right.
By supporting Harris, evangelical leaders like Soong-Chan Rah, a professor of evangelism at Fuller Theological Seminary, hope to show that evangelicalism can have a broader, more inclusive identity. Rah, who describes himself as a nonpartisan progressive evangelical, said that although he’s never endorsed a candidate before, the stakes of the 2024 election pushed him to support Harris. “Not only do I find this candidate, Trump, repugnant and repulsive,” Rah said, “but it is to such an extreme that I want to endorse his opposition.”
Conclusion
Despite the challenges, the movement to garner evangelical support for Kamala Harris continues to grow, fueled by a desire to redefine evangelical political engagement and push back against Trump’s dominance among faith voters. As Election Day approaches, groups like Evangelicals for Harris and Vote Common Good are working to remind voters that faith and political identity need not be inseparable.
