5 (More) Facts about ‘Evangelicals for Harris’

A little-known group called “Evangelicals for Harris” hosted a virtual rally over Zoom on Wednesday. The organization made headlines simply for its surprising title; in 2016 and 2020, evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. A progressive newspaper said the organization “has sought to offer a counter narrative” by showing Vice President Kamala Harris, the democratic presidential nominee, gaining momentum among evangelicals. But a deeper dive into the organization suggests that not much has changed.

1. Evangelicals for Harris was created by pop-up nonprofit and is linked to Evangelicals for Biden.

“Evangelicals for Harris is a project of Faith Voters, a 501(c)4 organization,” according to their website. The IRS approved Faith Voters for Good as a tax-exempt 501(c)4 organization on January 18 of this year.

According to the organization’s tax exemption approval letter, it was in the care of a “Rachel Johnson” (too common a name to pursue further). The letter was addressed to an office building in Great Falls, Va., a census-designated place which most northern Virginians know as a single stoplight on their commute, if they know about it all. Because the organization was created in January, with a fiscal year ending in December (after the election), no financial paperwork is available on the IRS website.

Interestingly, Faith Voters for Good was incorporated the week before the first Democratic presidential primary. This was more than six months before Harris became the democratic nominee for president and long before the incumbent president Joe Biden, who won the most delegates, unexpectedly dropped out of the race. This suggests that Faith Voters for Good was created to reach Christian voters, on behalf of whomever would become the Democratic nominee.

Evangelicals for Harris is also linked to a 2020 movement, Evangelicals for Biden. 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.”

Evangelicals for Harris lists as its leader Rev. Jim Ball, Ph.D., a Christian environmental activist for 20 years, who helped to launch Evangelicals for Biden. In addition, the “Evangelicals for Biden” website now redirects visitors to the “Evangelicals for Harris” website, indicating a strong connection between the organizations.

2. Evangelicals for Harris/Faith Voters for Good broadcast standard Democratic talking points.

In keeping with its seeming support for any generic Democrat, Faith Voters for Good repeats the standard Democratic talking points against Republicans.

One lengthy page on their website sets forth what they title a “Christian Response to Project 2025.” Project 2025 was an attempt by the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative policy think tank since the Reagan administration, to organize personnel and policy proposals for “the next Republican administration,” until the Trump campaign publicly disavowed the effort. Thus, criticism of Project 2025 is not so much criticism of former president Trump but criticism of conservative and Republican policy goals.

Faith Voters for Good also attacksSenator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican vice presidential nominee, over the issue of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). “Vance is one of 52 Senators, including 47 Republicans, who killed the Right to IVF Act in the Senate,” they state.

What they do not state is that the Right to IVF Act did a lot more than simply protecting IVF. “In the name of protecting IVF, this bill could legalize human cloning, gene editing and the creation of three-parent embryos, the creation of animal-human hybrids called chimeras, commercial gestational surrogacy … [and] the buying, selling, and destruction of human embryos nationwide,” explained Quena Gonzalez, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council. The bill also poses a “danger to religious employers.” As their statement implies, the bill lost the support of five Senate Democrats; abolishing the filibuster has more support.

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.

3. Evangelicals for Harris argues that she is a pro-family Christian.

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 [sic] 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.

4. Evangelicals for Harris prioritizes Christian love,but downplays other doctrines.

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).

5. Evangelicals for Harris maintains a hyper-active social media account that comes off as holier-than-thou rather than loving.

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.