I have always needed a reason.
For as long as I can remember, I have always sought an explanation for why something is done or not done.
It has impacted pieces of my life. In court, zealous advocacy is poetic and being on the side of justice is noble, but it is the pursuit of truth, and with it, reason that keeps me wedded to the practice of law.
In seminary, I questioned a great deal. I needed to know why seminary was three years and not a one or two-year course of study. I wanted to know how the required coursework was chosen, and what its practical implications would be for leading a church. I wanted to know why seminary programs were not more accessible to lay members of the church. I questioned.
And so when a person close to my congregation asked me the reason I was supporting Kamala Harris for president, it warmed my heart that someone needed to hear some reasons.
I told them that there were four Biblically-based reasons I was supporting Harris. Here they are:
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark: 12:31).
Kamala Harris recognizes the God-given dignity of every human being, noting that in Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan “Neighbor” is about understanding and living in service of others—that we are all each other’s brothers and sisters.” She adds, “My earliest memories of the teachings of the Bible were of a loving God, a God who asked us to ‘speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves’ and to ‘defend the rights of the poor and needy.’”
For a decade Harris’ opponent has disparaged entire ethnic groups, mocked the handicapped and war-wounded, and witheringly belittled those who disagree with him, shifting policy disputes to personal attacks marked by venom and bigotry. He has normalized in many followers an acceptance of crudeness and unfounded accusations, having long ago found that it’s easier to voice hatred when it’s served up as comedy.
Even in Christian settings, audiences who might never on their own indulge in such characterizations, laugh and hoot, temporarily deaf to Christ’s command, “Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.”
“You shall not bear false witness.” (Matthew 19:18).
The Bible warns over 100 times against lying and Jesus spoke clearly about the importance of telling the truth. No political candidate has immaculate hands; Kamala Harris and her campaign have made misstatements. But, between the two candidates, only one has made a pattern of telling outright lies. Harris’ opponent’s own press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, who knew him well, states devastatingly, “He has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth. He used to tell me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, say it enough and people will believe you.’
Beware of false prophets” (Matthew 7:15)
Christianity teaches that only God is omniscient. The nation’s founders, recognizing human propensity for sin, created checks and balances to ensure no branch of government acquires unwarranted power.
The first call Harris made after deciding to run for president was to her pastor, the Rev. Amos C. Brown of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church, who invoked his favorite Bible verse, Micah 6:8, as he spoke with her, reminding her to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your maker. . .That’s what we need in this nation. There’s too much arrogance and egocentricity after all this Trumpism.”
Harris’ opponent seeks to empower himself. He tells followers that checks and balances should be jettisoned for one powerful figure, himself.
Fair elections are the bedrock of democracy, but the former President, echoing autocrats worldwide, has refused to commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election unless he wins. His chief of staff, John Kelly, describes Harris’ opponent as “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person who has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
You will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew7:15-16)
Harris’ opponents’ supporters excuse his personal wrongdoing and polarizing behavior. “We’re Christians and we can look past that,” says one. “It doesn’t bother me because his policies are strong.”
The fruits of those “strong policies” often turned out bitter. During his four years in office, the U.S. economy lost 2.7 million jobs. Unemployment increased to 6.4%. The federal debt and trade deficit—which Donald Trump vowed to lower—both went up instead, rising even before the 2020 global pandemic, exacerbated by a tax cut that failed to bring in predicted revenues. “I am the King of Debt,” Donald Trump once boasted, and he confirmed it during his term.
Public health fared even worse than economic health. Due in part to Harris’ opponent’s denial and mismanaged response to COVID-19, 400,000 Americans died of the disease during his years in office—a higher rate of deaths than any other wealthy nation. In a study of 38 million articles about the pandemic, Cornell University concluded in 2020, “The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid.”
In recounting his policies, the two mentioned most favorably are “Abortion” and “Immigration,” but Trump supporters omit two revealing statistics: the numbers of abortions in the U.S. increased during his Administration (reversing a nearly 30-year decline), and illegal immigration along the Southwest border rose while he was president.
Christian voters who would make Kamala Harris’ and the Democratic Party’s support for reproductive rights the main reason to vote against her are ignoring history: the 30-year decline in abortions (until 2017) occurred under both Democratic and Republican Administrations but at a steeper rate during the former. Republican attempts to ban abortion and limit access to contraception appear to prove less effective in actually reducing abortions than Democratic steps on behalf of family-planning education and low-cost contraception.
When it comes to immigration, Christian voters should be hard-pressed to reconcile Jesus’ command to “Welcome the stranger” with the Harris’ opponent’s administration’s forcible separation of families at the border and his stated intent in a second term to round up and deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants “poisoning the blood of our nation.”
Kamala Harris is a former prosecutor who insists that the US is a nation of laws that must be followed, but her approach combines tightened border security with earned pathways to citizenship, all without resorting to demonization of the immigrant.
Harris backed the toughest bipartisan immigration measure in decades, one supported by the Border Patrol Union, and was set to pass in Congress until Harris’ opponent publicly called for Republicans to repudiate it.
Christians for Harris’ opponent who describe themselves as single-issue voters pivoting on abortion or immigration may have been undermining causes dear to them.
In her political career, Kamala Harris has exhibited greater adherence than her opponent to the commands of Christ and democratic traditions. The signs are hopeful that a Harris presidency will reflect those same values that have distinguished her life.
