Obama and Biden pitched voters on a faith-based vision. How will Harris make the appeal?
On the campaign trail, former President Barack Obama invoked his faith-based community organizing background and President Joe Biden touted his devotion to Catholicism.
Now, America waits for Vice President Kamala Harris to offer a similar preview for faith-based engagement.
The country is becoming familiar with the Democratic presidential nominee’s Baptist faith and the support she’s receiving from various faith voices, including some unexpected ones. But it’s still unclear how her personal religious commitment and support among faith coalitions will translate into a potential Harris administration.
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week is the first major opportunity for the Harris campaign to cast a more concrete vision for a new White House administration. Though it went largely unaddressed in Chicago this week, that vision specifically for faith-based engagement work will likely draw from the Obama and Biden administrations but add new elements.
“She’s only three weeks into this campaign, but I think there’s room for clarity and for vision,” said Michael Wear, president and CEO for Washington D.C.-based think tank The Center for Christianity and Public Life. “We need to hear from Harris of her view of the role of religion in the lives of the American people and in the lives of our communities.”
Wear, who worked for Obama’s campaign and administration focusing on faith-based issues and authored a book on that history, said Obama helped set a new tone for Democratic messaging on the role of religion in the White House.
The watershed moment was a July 2008 speech in Zanesville, Ohio, where Obama announced a proposal for what later became the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, a continuation of an initiative started by former President George W. Bush but with a redirected focus.
A key influence for Obama's pitch to voters on faith-based engagement was his experience as a community organizer with the Catholic-affiliated Campaign for Human Development in the 1980s and 1990s to help combat violence, unemployment and educational disparities on the South Side of Chicago.
"He had a really profound understanding of the civic and social contributions of religious communities, and in particular churches, in the life of cities," Wear said. “So, even before he got into office, he fleshed out some basic parameters and guideposts to help voters think about how he would appreciate faith and social service, and faith and politics.”
New nominees, new faith-focused pitch
Biden similarly drew from his personal encounter with faith to make a concerted appeal to voters’ religious sympathies in 2020, though his message was less procedurally focused.
Wear said it was less necessary for Biden to make the same argument because the Democratic nominee was already well-known for his deep Catholic piety. Instead, campaign ads and public appearances focused on the potential for faith to transcend cultural divides and help unify a deeply divided nation.
Just as the Biden campaign’s rhetoric about religion differed from Obama’s, the Harris campaign will be distinctive. To the Rev. Jim Ball, who founded the group Evangelicals for Harris, Harris has so far displayed a subdued posture toward religion, which Ball said is “profoundly refreshing.”
He referenced Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Monday speech in which she tearfully recounted meeting Harris while feeling uncertain about being a congresswoman. Harris told her “you are exactly where God wants you,” she said.
“To me, that is so much more genuine that Vice President Harris is a person of deep, deep faith, but that she’s not trying to use outward signs and discussion of faith ... to gain political advantage,” Ball said.
But the Democratic Party could further reject the notion that Republicans carry the mantle of religiosity by boosting its public embrace of faith, and faith communities, throughout the campaign and beyond, said Interfaith Alliance President Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush.
The Harris-Walz ticket represents the diverse religious landscape of the country, Raushenbush said, citing a Pew Research Center study finding one in five U.S. adults have an interfaith background. Harris running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz identifies as Lutheran, but Raushenbush said he exemplifies an “interfaith outlook.”
Raushenbush’s organization is one of several participating in Promise 2025, a convention event held Wednesday where faith leaders organized and brainstormed how to foster a more inclusive democracy. “One of the most important things all of us can develop in our religious tradition is, ‘how does my religious tradition help me be a good neighbor to my neighbor of another faith?’” he said.
A Harris gospel: outstanding questions and future hopes
In addition to Harris’ history as a pupil of San Francisco civil rights leader Rev. Amos Brown, some have looked to the Democratic nominee’s tenure as California attorney general to glean insight into her orientation toward religion.
One case in particular has "long been a point of conversation" in the Sikh community, said Harman Singh, executive director of the Sikh Coalition. In 2011, Harris defended the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation following a Sikh man's refusal to shave his beard, a requirement for his hiring as a correctional officer.
"This case existed before Vice President Harris was attorney general and the issue still persists today, long after she was attorney general,” Singh said. “She certainly had a role to play in upholding discriminatory policies, but we need to say there’s a larger systemic issue as well.”
USA TODAY reached out to the Harris campaign for comment.
Singh said Harris’ nomination is nevertheless a “historic moment” for the South Asian and Black communities, as well as for women.
While some faith groups are focused on the state of religious liberty under a potential Harris presidency, other faith groups are concerned about different issues. For the Progressive National Baptist Convention, that includes affordable health care, women's reproductive rights, pay equity and the criminal justice system, said the denomination's president, Rev. David Peoples.
It’s “in our DNA” to mobilize and get involved in such issues as a convention, which was the denominational home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Peoples said. The convention cannot endorse political candidates, but Peoples personally supports the Harris-Walz ticket and is encouraging its members to “vote their conscience.” Peoples describes his convention as “not political” but “prophetic.”
“You can’t just disregard people,” Peoples said. “We have to be a country of laws, but also a country of grace and mercy and order and decency.”
Wear sees the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships as a vehicle for the Harris campaign to give voters a more detailed sense of its position on religion in public life.
Attempting to deliver on his campaign promise, Obama made changes to the office weeks after his inauguration. He expanded the office’s presence in various federal agencies and established an advisory board. Through that coordination between the faith-based office, federal agencies and faith-based groups, the White House was able to support everything from maternal health programs to disaster relief infrastructure to summer food programs, Wear said.
After Obama, the office operated according to a very different mission under former President Donald Trump. Biden then reinstituted the office to operate similarly to how it did under Obama and reappointed as executive director the same person who led the office during Obama’s second term. But the office also directed its work to address new challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
A similar pattern awaits a potential Harris administration, which will see opportunities for faith-based groups to address new challenges.
“What does Harris identify as the challenges and opportunities that she thinks there could be positive religious contribution toward?" Wear said.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Kamala Harris and the faith community: Leaders await pitch
