Special Issue: No, You Can’t ‘Re-Market’ Kamala Harris To Evangelicals

Evangelicals for Harris misunderstand evangelicalism.

Multiracial depictions of Christ fascinate me. Be it the black Jesus of the early Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, the moko-sporting tengata whenua Jesus portrayed by Maori artists in New Zealand, or the Nordic/white Jesus many Western believers grew up seeing, I’ve always believed that the message of such artistry was a relatively simple one, if not the one you might immediately assume. While critics might look at such artwork as attempted co-optings of religion to fit a narrative of racial exclusion and social hierarchy (and some certainly are), the broader message of this artistic panoply can also be viewed as a subtle affirmation of the racial inclusion intrinsic to the Christian faith—how believers for thousands of years have affirmed Christianity’s permeation of all cultures, from East to West and everywhere in between.

In the modern era, particularly through the zoomed-in lens of our current political moment, one of the most examined of those cultures is that of the American evangelical, a strange subspecies of Christian viewed simultaneously as dangerous Christofascists, anti-science trogolodytes, fellow believers, and the last hope for America’s moral framework by different subsets of the population. Against the backdrop of an election year, this lens becomes even more critical: is the Trumpian stranglehold on the evangelical community capable of being breached? Enter Evangelicals for Harris, the reincarnated form of Evangelicals for Biden, a group intent to answer that very question.

How exactly do you go about convincing arguably the most pro-Trump demographic in the swing states where it matters most to turn against a candidate they support four to one? The answer’s likely to be a brutally simple one: you don’t.

The group is already taking heat from evangelical mainstays like Franklin Graham, but that’s largely window dressing for the true problem swirling at the center of this Hail Mary attempt at landing an electoral blow with Trump’s most devoted religious voter block. The true problem with Evangelicals for Harris is that it's a marginal play. It communicates that through its choices of speakers like Ekemini Uwan, whose pitch for reparations from the church for the institution’s role in the transatlantic slave trade is a electoral killer for all but the most liberal-leaning of those who darken the door of evangelical churches. It cedes its vernacular inability (or, perhaps more pointedly, profound disinterest) in making a compelling progressive case to evangelicals via a narrative of Kamala Harris’ faith journey that bizarrely includes zero mention of Jesus Christ. (For those of you who don’t live in evangelical-influenced areas of the country, picture how disinterested evangelical Christians are in that version of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, multiply it by five, and you’re in the neighborhood of a realistic assessment of Evangelical apathy about the Democratic nominee.)

As a non-white evangelical who lives in a swing state, and one who on paper might seem like a persuadable voter for an pro-evangelical Democratic voter drive, the problem with Evangelicals for Harris is evident to me. It has surprisingly little to do with racism or misogyny. It has to do with the fact that Evangelicals for Harris misunderstands the racial inclusion and cultural permeation of Christianity. Its leaders and supporters believe that a vague commitment to faith-adjacent language can activate enough of a ‘we’re all Christians united against a greater evil’ sense to push white Republican voters into changing their electoral outlook. But the trouble with evangelicalism is that it’s full of evangelicals. Evangelicals who actually see their worldview and preferred issues as in tension with a Harris-Walz administration will not be compelled by such things, whether you believe they’re right or wrong to feel that way.

At the end of the day, the tactical game isn’t marketing evangelicals to Kamala Harris. It’s marketing Kamala Harris to evangelicals. That’s nearly an impossible sell for a candidate at odds with virtually all of evangelicals’ home turf positions. And given that Democratic outreach to evangelicals, unlike virtually every other demographic-specific campaign, hasn’t included asking for money, I’m inclined to think Evangelicals for Harris actually understands that better than they’re letting on.

Author bio: Isaac Willour is an analyst at Bowyer Research, a Pittsburgh-based proxy advisory firm. He is a graduate of Grove City College in western Pennsylvania & can be found on X @IsaacWillour.