As the 2024 presidential election draws closer, more Americans tune in for information about the major candidates. For spiritually active, governance engaged conservatives (SAGE Cons), who know firsthand the formative role a church can play, a candidate’s church background is an important issue that often receives little coverage in the mainstream media. To fill that void, here are eight facts about Vice President Kamala Harris’s church, Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, Calif.
- On first impression, Third Baptist Church comes across as a traditional black Baptist church with a heavy focus on social engagement.
Third Baptist Church retains the look and feel that have come to be associated with black Baptist churches. At its most recent service, a church choir and organ led a lively time of worship, and a talented male soloist presented a prepared song. The pastor wore a suit and tie, delivering his remarks in the classic, sing-song style and eliciting the classic exclamations of encouragement from his hearers.
Third Baptist also provides a wide-ranging array of social programs. The church provides a low-cost weekly lunch for seniors, a free weekly lunch for the homeless and needy, a six-week K-12 summer school, and a music academy for inner-city youth. It also hosts a Narcotics Anonymous night and has sponsored more than 1,000 resettled refugees from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Haiti.
- Third Baptist’s longtime lead pastor is the Reverend Amos Brown, Sr.
Third Baptist Church of San Francisco called the Reverend Amos Cleophus Brown, Sr. as its pastor in June 1976, and he remains active there 48 years later. As its pastor, Brown has shaped the church’s social aspect, its community outreach, and its political engagement for nearly five decades.
Brown’s wife Jane is known as the church’s First Lady and “is widely hailed as the best fundraiser. … Whatever committee she joins or task she assumes will achieve excellence.” Mrs. Brown chaired the committee for the church’s 150th anniversary gala in 2001, at which President Bill Clinton was the keynote speaker.
Brown graduated with a B.A. from Morehouse College in 1964 and with an M.Div. from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1968. He later earned a Doctor of Ministry from United Theological Seminary in 1990.
As a young man, Brown was deeply shaped by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. He grew up in Mississippi only an hour away from Emmett Till, a black teenager about Brown’s age who was lynched and murdered in 1955 after he was accused of offending a white woman. Brown “served as National Chairman of the Youth and College Division of the NAACP” in 1959 and as “Youth Field Secretary for the NAACP in the South” from 1962-1964. “In 1962, he led a ‘kneeling’ demonstration which resulted in the desegregation of First Baptist Church of Atlanta, Georgia,” according to Third Baptist’s website. During the Civil Rights movement, Brown interacted with Martin Luther King, Jr., Clarence Mitchell, Medgar Evers, and Jesse Jackson.
Brown’s experience with racial segregation and civil rights activism still influences him today. Just this past Sunday, while preaching about Paul’s Macedonian call and Lydia’s conversion from Acts 16, Brown spoke at length about how his great-great-grandfather endured the evils of slavery in America and then later told the story of a KKK ambush against a young black pastor.
“I know America. America is a racist country,” Brown complained in a 2021 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. He accused San Francisco of ongoing racism, saying the city “does not deserve the brand and image that it has of being liberal and progressive.” He said black people are being “pushed out” of the city, declaring that a decline in the city’s black population from 16% in the 1970s to 4% today “didn’t happen by accident and it wasn’t just economics. It happened because of public policy.”
Brown’s perspective on contemporary political issues has been shaped for decades by his Civil-Rights-Era experiences.
- Brown opposed the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.
In 1991, Brown served as chair of the Social Justice Commission of the National Baptist Convention. According to the church’s website, he “was successful … in unifying” the entire black Baptist convention against Thomas’ nomination.
Brown testified against Thomas before the Senate Judiciary Committee. His testimony criticized Thomas’s stances against minimum wage laws and welfare, which were based on Thomas’s convictions that these policies hindered black advancement more than they helped. “At best,” Brown said, “what he has produced is a barrage of speeches and writings in support of the right-wing conservative ideology.”
When Brown finished his remarks, the committee chairman replied, “Reverend Brown, I must say that is the most concise, explicit, and damning bill of particulars against Judge Thomas I have heard, and somewhat convincing,” a fact repeated in his church biography. That chairman was then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden.
- Brown criticized U.S. for leaving an anti-Semitic conference.
In September 2001, Brown represented the NAACP at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, where apartheid ended only 11 years earlier. When the conference devolved into attacks against Israel, the American and Israeli delegations left in protest. “South Africa rushed tonight to convene emergency meetings to redraft the declaration and program of action in the hope of averting other walkouts,” The New York Times reported. The Canadian delegation stayed only to register a complaint.
Later that month, after the 9/11 terror attacks, Brown criticized the U.S. walkout while speaking at a memorial service for 9/11 victims, implying that the U.S. bore moral culpability for provoking the attacks. “America, America, what did you do — either intentionally or unintentionally — in the world order, in Central America, in Africa where bombs are still blasting?” he said. “America, what did you do in the global warming conference when you did not embrace the smaller nations? America, what did you do two weeks ago when I stood at the world conference on racism, when you wouldn’t show up?”
According to the San Francisco Gate, Brown’s remarks pleased the crowd but shocked the politicians in attendance. The late Senartor Dianne Feinstein and California Governor Gray Davis both got up and walked out. Then-Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who spoke later in the service, rebuked Brown, “With all due respect to some of the sentiments that were earlier expressed — some of which I agree with — make no mistake (about it) ... the act of terrorism on September 11 put those people outside the order of civilized behavior, and we will not take responsibility for that.”
Far from being embarrassed by the dust-up, Third Baptist still proudly records this speech in Rev. Brown’s biography.
- Brown opposed Proposition 8 and actively promotes same-sex marriage.
In 2008, California voters passed Proposition 8, a ballot measure that defined marriage as a union of one man and one woman. Rev. Brown was a leading opponent of the ballot measure, even to the point of publicly breaking with other black ministers who participated in the San Francisco branch of the NAACP.
Same-sex marriage “was coming,” said Brown, “and I was one of the persons who for years have pushed for us to face this matter. He explained his reasoning, “it would’ve been hypocritical for us in the face of these debates … to have, in the past, stood for the rights and equality of opportunity for blacks … and then to turn around and [not stood with] other people who are marginalized for whatever reason.”
In response to those who based their objections to same-sex marriage on the Bible, Brown responded, “Even though Jesus did, out of his faith tradition, say that the man, you know, should forsake his father and mother and cleave to his wife and all that … people need to look at in context that … Jesus did not say anything about gays, did not say anything negative about people who had different social orientation.”
In a 2021 interview, Brown said, “There should be no restrictions on persons on how they express their sexuality.”
When Proposition 8 was challenged in court, then-Attorney General Jerry Brown refused to defend it. The case dragged on in court for years. In 2011, Jerry Brown became governor, and he was succeeded as attorney general by Kamala Harris, who also refused to defend Proposition 8.
- Brown endorsed monetary reparations for black Americans.
Brown served on San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee, which last summer issued a report calling on the city “to provide any adult who has identified as black or African American on public documents for at least 10 years and has lived in San Francisco for at least 10 years with reparations,” The Christian Post’s Ryan Foley reported. The Committee demanded $5 million from the city, as well as financial services, debt forgiveness, guaranteed insurance, business discounts, and tuition assistance for eligible residents.
- Brown introduced a pulpit exchange program with rabbis.
“Rev. Brown introduced a pulpit exchange program,” the church website states, “bringing Rabbis to speak at Third Baptist and Black Pastors to speak in synagogues.” As part of the pulpit exchange program, which has continued annually since 1987, Jewish rabbis would preach at Third Baptist, and a Third Baptist preacher would preach at Congregation Emanu-el.
“This is what the world needs to see. There’s too much division, too much hate, too much war,” said Brown. “This dichotomous thinking of them against us and us against them has to stop. And we need to master that little pronoun ‘We.’ This is a ‘we’ thing tonight.”
The Jewish apostle John wrote, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”
- Brown supports Harris’s candidacy for president.
During his August 4 sermon, Rev. Brown alluded to the current presidential campaign and made the following remarks: “We better stop this culture war that’s going on in America, about whether or not a woman can lead this nation,” he said. “This has got to stop, this culture war about where the woman belongs. For I heard Sojourner Truth said, a long time ago, ‘Ain’t I a woman? I can pick up a pail of water. I can move a log. I can do anything a man can do.’”
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
