A group of evangelical leaders has launched a coalition to support Kamala Harris for president. According to its website, the coalition says she "better reflects Christian values" than Republican Donald Trump and has a "life of public service" that "reflects her faith in Christ."Jesus said in Matthew 7:16, "Ye shall know them by their fruits."
Let's examine whether Vice President Harris's life of public service reflects her faith in Christ.
Be informed, not misled.
A group of evangelical leaders has launched a coalition to support Kamala Harris for president, saying she "better reflects Christian values" than Republican Donald Trump and has a "life of public service" that is a "reflection of her faith in Christ." Evangelicals for Harris launched in recent days and includes several names well-known within the evangelical community, including Dwight McKissic, the pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and a former trustee at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Claude Alexander, pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, N.C., and a board of trustees member for Gordon-Conwell Seminary and chairman of the board of directors at Christianity Today. A list of supporters also includes Jim Ball, executive vice president for policy and climate change at the Evangelical Environmental Network.
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Its website, EvangelicalsforHarris.com, says more than 200,000 evangelical Christians have signed a pledge to support the Harris-Walz ticket.
The site also says, "Evangelicals don't have to change who they are; they just need to reaffirm who they are by voting for someone who better reflects Christian values."
The coalition held a Zoom call last Wednesday to rally support for the Democrats.
"Evangelicals for Harris is a project founded because of our Christian belief in the common good," the website says. "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."
That is a definition of the "social gospel" of the Left.
These folks are not "evangelicals," so who are they?
True evangelicals say the coalition is promoting unbiblical positions. Denny Burk, professor of biblical studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a World Opinions column that the website is silent about the "radical" positions of Harris on abortion and gender.
So, who are these Evangelicals for Harris? The founder is the Rev. Jim Ball, who previously presided over an Evangelicals for Biden group. There are 19 speakers set to participate in the upcoming event, some of whom are more well-known than others:
- Bishop Claude Alexander, pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, N.C., serves on the board of trustees for Gordon-Conwell Seminary and as chairman of the board of directors at Christianity Today.
- Jerushah Duford is Billy Graham’s granddaughter and an “LGBTQ friendly” family therapist.
- Rev. Dwight McKissic is the pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and a well-known activist for women pastors within the Southern Baptist Convention.
- Jemar Tisby is an author and activist who previously served as an assistant director at Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research.
- Ekemini Uwan, a speaker and activist who spoke on the floor of the United Nations in Geneva two years ago, condemning the Church’s complicity in the transatlantic slave trade and demanding reparations from churches.
Don't be deceived.
DR. Burk says the list goes on, but none of the names are top-tier influencers within the evangelical movement. Nevertheless, the group aims to convince evangelicals of the Christian bona fides of Kamala Harris, but they have to distort orthodox Christianity to do so. The group’s website features a page devoted to “Kamala’s Faith Story,” which 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. It does, however, include this claim:
“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.”
Elsewhere, Harris says that she has learned “from all these traditions and teachings”—in particular she claims that Hindu, Jewish, and Christian influence have helped her “to see that all faiths teach us to pursue justice.”
What are her views on justice? When it comes to the unborn, no justice at all. As Ryan Anderson wrote for First Things last week, Harris is one of the most radical proponents of abortion rights who has ever run for high office. She supports the legal right to kill a child through all nine months of pregnancy. She has even opposed bills that would protect the lives of babies who survive abortions, which of course is infanticide.
In her remarks to the National Baptist Convention two years ago, Harris even made a religious case for her extremist views on abortion:
“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 yet nowhere on the Evangelicals for Harris website can you find any evangelical raising a concern about any of this. Instead, you find supporters praising her wisdom in holding these views. The group’s site quotes one female pastor from an LGBTQ-affirming church saying:
“Harris honored my religious voice as I intended for her to hear it, a deep valuing of American religious liberty and reproductive freedoms. … The vice president made clear her own support for reproductive health for all Americans alongside her ongoing commitments to religious liberty.”
How does all this affect the presidential race this November?
Clearly, the Left is pushing every button they think will help Harris become President of the United States by deceiving uninformed Christians.
Denny Burk concludes, "What this website describes is not the faith 'once for all committed to the saints' (Jude 3). It’s barbarism and syncretism in the service of partisan politics. It is wrong for any Christian to portray this kind of message as if it were in any way faithful to the Christian gospel. It is, in fact, a betrayal of the gospel. This isn’t evangelical. It’s not even Christian. Don’t fall for it."
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.