'Evangelicals for Harris' courts 'politically homeless' Christians to back Democrat in November
An Evangelical Christian group is hoping to shake up the 2024 race by persuading voters of faith to see Vice President Harris as the candidate who will better uphold their values.
“We all want people to think more deeply about their civic participation and their faith, and how their faith engages with their politics,” Rev. Lee Scott of “Evangelicals for Harris” told Fox News Digital. “[F]rankly, I believe that President Trump has used Christian voters to further his own ends at the expense of the faithful witness of those same voters. Behavior that would be unacceptable in toddlers is promoted as strengthened leadership. And that’s gotta change.”
Scott is a Pennsylvania farmer, pastor and registered Republican who is supporting Harris this November with Evangelicals for Harris, formerly known as Evangelicals for Biden.
White evangelical voters have traditionally supported the Republican presidential candidate and an overwhelming majority backed Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections. But the pro-Harris group believes it can make inroads with evangelical voters who’ve been turned off by Trump’s rhetoric.
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The group argues that Harris’ policies and character are a more accurate reflection of Christian values.Â
“Kamala’s life of public service is a reflection of her faith in Christ,” the website says with a link to Harris’ faith story.Â
Over 200,000 evangelicals have already signed a pledge to vote for Harris, the Evangelicals for Harris website says.
Scott said the coalition is growing and attracting Christians like himself who’ve felt “politically homeless” since Trump entered the White House.
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“My first election was in 2004, and there was just this assumption that Christians would just naturally support the Republican candidate,” he said. ” I think that there’s certainly understandable reasons for that. I think there’s a significant crossover in personal interest and Christian interest in a lot of Republican politics. It certainly has seemed in recent years that we’ve set aside some of our deeper thinking on that in favor of just going through the habit of pulling the lever for the Republican candidate without really thinking deeper about what that means,” he continued.
“I myself have felt politically homeless since 2016,” the pastor confessed. “I think that Evangelicals for Harris and prior to that, the group that Reverend [Jim] Ball started as Evangelicals for Biden, is really tapping into a desire for a place for those who are feeling, as believers, somewhat politically homeless,” he added.
Evangelicals for Harris has faced scrutiny from conservative Christians who point to Harris’ and Walz’ far-left record on abortion, gender ideology, and more as antithetical to Christian beliefs.
The group recently drew criticism from Samaritan’s Purse CEO Rev. Franklin Graham after it used footage of Graham’s father, the late evangelist Billy Graham in an attack ad against Trump.
“The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris. They even developed a political ad trying to use my father @BillyGraham’s image,” he wrote in a social media post. “They are trying to mislead people. Maybe they don’t know that my father appreciated the conservative values and policies of President @realDonaldTrump in 2016, and if he were alive today, my father’s views and opinions would not have changed.”
Scott, the Pennsylvania pastor, says he doesn’t wholeheartedly agree with the Democratic platform, particularly on abortion. But he believes Christians should consider more than just one issue when heading to the polls.
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“I think that there’s more to it than just a simple, well, where is this candidate on abortion? And you need to get past litmus test politics because we’re not running a chemistry experiment,” he said.
“So much gets bandied about whether a candidate is pro-life or pro-choice. And I think too often that just gets reduced to a perspective of, ‘What is their position on abortion?’ I think that the matter of life far exceeds just that fact,” he continued. I think that access to health care, access to an expanded child tax credit, access to support for adoption, foster care, fixing systems that are broken, in regard to those, the Democrats have a better plan.”
Evangelicals for Harris made news earlier this month after it held a Zoom conference hosted by “reparations activist” Ekemini Uwan, who has argued that “Whiteness is wicked” and the police as an institution “needs to be destroyed and rebuilt.”
The group is reportedly targeting religious voters in swing states by spending over $1 million on an ad campaign that will play on YouTube, Hulu, Apple TV, Google, Facebook and other spaces, the group’s founder Reverend Jim Ball recently told CBN.
The group has posted three ads to its social media accounts. After its Billy Graham ad, it released another video ad warning Trump was a “false prophet” warned about in the Biblical passage 1 John 4.
A third ad put out this week called “fruits of the spirit,” features Harris talking about how her faith informs her to take care of her neighbor.Â
“The Bible says, we shall know Christ’s true followers by their fruits. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have made their priority clear—that in America we choose to love our neighbors,” Evangelicals for Harris wrote in a caption accompanying the ad in its post on X.
Trump, Harris’ 2024 opponent, has expressed skepticism towards Christian voters who support Democrats.
“How any Christian can vote for a Democrat, Christian or person of faith, how you can vote for a Democrat is crazy. It’s crazy,” Trump told attendees at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) International Christian Media Convention last February.
Fox News’ Alexander Hall contributed to this report.
