Evangelicals typically vote strongly Republican, often 75% to 80% by white evangelicals. But there’s long been an Evangelical Left pushing for more to vote Democrat. Evangelicals for Biden has enlisted longtime Sojourners activists Jim Wallis and Lisa Sharon Harper, along with Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action.
They were joined at a recent Evangelicals for Biden virtual event by Steven Harris, formerly a policy director at the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Commission. “I’m encouraged in this moment, having seen the complexities of religion in public life, that there are those who are speaking out, who refuse to be drowned out by the politics of fear, bigotry and hate,” Harris said. “I invite people to look at Biden and Harris… and to commit your support.”
Other guests at the September 23 event included Billy Graham’s granddaughter Jerushah Duford and former U.S. ambassador and former Democratic U.S. Congressman Tony Hall.
Josh Dickson, faith engagement director for the Biden campaign and a former Republican, opened the event with an exhortation for evangelicals to use their values as a way to serve and unite rather than divide. “We need to take a stand around the idea of imago Dei, of inherent dignity; these are threatened by the things we see from the current administration.”
Although the Q&A session did not address abortion or Biden’s Catholicism, the speakers focused on comparing the virtues of the two presidential candidates and argued that Biden is a more moral choice for evangelicals. The event came on the heels of a recent Vice and Virtue survey conducted by Vote Common Good, a left-leaning collaboration between polling researchers at University of Southern California, Duke University, University of Maryland College Park and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. The report researched evangelical perceptions of Trump and Biden in swing states. The survey predicts an 11% swing of evangelical and Catholic voters towards Biden, a dramatic shift from the 2016 election. On average, 50% of respondents rated Biden as more virtuous than Trump, differing from a July 2020 Pew Research Center survey which predicted that although evangelical support for Trump has declined 82% of white evangelical voters would pick him. Jim Ball, founder of Evangelicals for Biden, identified their targeted audience as “disenchanted evangelical Trump voters who have voted Democrat in the past.”
“When Christians talk about politics and elections, they almost never talk about Jesus,” said Wallis, founder of Sojourners and one of the contemporary Evangelical Left’s founders. “But what would it mean to put the least of these first in policy?”
On this topic, Wallis asked Dr. Michelle Ami Reyes, author and co-founder of the Asian American Christian Collaborative, what religious issues ought to be a focus of the campaign. Reyes pointed out that both parties are courting Asian American votes without recognizing the true diversity within the population and the wide spectrum of theological views.
“God did not create Asian American Christians to be honorary white Christians,” Reyes said. “While I am excited for [Kamala] Harris on the ticket, her presence alone won’t be enough to change voter behavior.”
Reyes called on the evangelical community to be a body of Christ that seeks social good to reflect the love of God. Evangelical can be a fraught term, however. Wallis often heard it referring to white evangelicalism, and Lisa Sharon Harper pointed out this evidence that race has shaped Christianity and culture in the United States. Harper came to faith after responding to an altar call at a predominantly white church in New Jersey.
“We grew up inside of white denominations thinking it was all about our faith,” Harper said. “But we were growing up in organizations that in some way or another had been shaped by race in America.”
Harper outlined the history of racial legislation beginning with the slave trade and how the awakening of the abolitionist and civil rights pushed the country and the church to “adjust what it means to be American.”
Former Southern Baptist policy staffer Steven Harris connected this history to the current challenges to the church. “We’re living in a moment where we are dealing with what we have been bequeathed. Our history hasn’t adequately been reckoned with.”
As the former employee of a conservative denomination, Harris has recently drawn criticism on social media for supporting Biden. Some have speculated that he is now campaigning for the candidate. Harris said that he backs Biden because he sees the candidate as “understanding the capacity of faith” and an individual who values ethical leadership. He lamented that in current Christian spheres “supporting Biden calls the genuineness of our faith into question.”
“Most people of color and of faith will find themselves voting for Biden,” said Harris, who is biracial. “To suggest that they are not true Christians, to call it into question is illegitimate itself.”
Ron Sider comes from a different background as a white evangelical, yet he also supports Biden as someone he believes is a moral leader with a plan. He explained that white evangelicals find themselves in a contradiction if they support President Trump.
“To support Trump is to contradict the values Jesus and the Bible demand,” Sider said. “For example, Jesus in the Bible condemns racism and Trump stokes it – the same for sexual purity, bigotry, etc.”
Jerushah Duford joined the conversation to discuss the church’s role in the public square. Duford uses Jesus’ ministry to create criteria for what to look for in a president. She cited those for whom Jesus fought and those he blessed, including the poor, marginalized, oppressed, immigrants and women.
“When you compare the candidates to Micah 6:8 and this criteria, the choice is clear,” Duford said. “When we use that criteria, we’ll be happily casting a vote for Biden.”
Wallis agreed that biblical criteria should be a significant factor in the voting decisions of evangelicals. He urged faith communities to bring theology into the discussion and to discern how the gospel applies to choosing a leader for the country.
“This isn’t just a political gathering for us. It’s not about religion and power and taking sides. It’s about who we are as people of faith.”
Comment by Douglas Ehrhardt on October 12, 2020 at 5:14 am
Yipes, George Soros is smiling.
Comment by Jim on October 12, 2020 at 9:38 am
This group of so-called Christians, wants us to believe that voting for the democrat platform is what Jesus would have done. In other words, we’re to believe that abortion on demand which has devolved to infanticide; same-sex marriage; transgenderism; abolishing a God ordained government authority (law enforcement); open borders; riots in the streets of our cities, etc. is the agenda of Jesus? From Romans chapter one: 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:21, ESV)
This group of so-called evangelicals is in fact a group of false teachers.
Comment by Thomas F Neagle on October 12, 2020 at 6:04 pm
These are the people that give the term “evangelical” a very bad name.
So Joe Biden is so moral. He believes in wholesale slaughter of innocent babies. His son benefitted from any number of insanely crooked deals while he was vice president. And he bragged about getting a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating these crooked deals fired. He was part of an administration that took the Little Sisters of the Poor all the way to the Supreme Court to try to force them to abandon their religious beliefs. I could go on.
As far as Trump’s racism, I have yet to see one single concrete example of such. The people in this article would have much more credibility if they could adduce ONE example. If he is the racist that they maintain he is, that shouldn’t be hard. But for some reason they never do.
Comment by Timothy on October 12, 2020 at 6:08 pm
These ‘johnny come lately’ leftist self described evangelicals are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They’ve infiltrated, co-opted and watered down the evangelical movement for their personal political advancement.
Comment by Thomas F Neagle on October 12, 2020 at 7:17 pm
If self-described “pro-life evangelicals” can back a candidate openly in favor of killing millions of babies every year, then the term has no meaning at all.
Comment by Seneca Griggs on October 13, 2020 at 9:46 pm
I wish people would just state they hate Trump versus dredging up non existent reasons to support Biden – who is seriously cognitively compromised at this time in his life.
Comment by David on October 14, 2020 at 9:03 am
“According to this year’s [2018] America’s Health Ranking Annual Report, the U.S. infant mortality rate is 5.9 deaths per 1,000 live infant births, while the average rate of infant mortality among the OECD countries is 3.9 deaths per 1,000 live births. Compared with other OECD countries, the U.S. ranks No. 33 out of 36 countries.”
I have always found it odd that those so upset about abortion tend to be the same ones who oppose health programs that would reduced infant mortality. It would seem that they feel that right to life ends at birth.
Comment by Donald on October 17, 2020 at 3:10 am
From my friend, Mark Holmberg –
“Interrupting our cross-country travelogue for a very important message:
Those who are planning to vote for Biden for president: know that you are not only voting for the oldest, whitest, most baggage-laden, politically-entrenched, one-precenter, DC insider – literally – on the planet, YOU ARE VOTING TO ALLOW THE UNELECTED BIG MEDIA TO CHOOSE OUR PRESIDENT.
Since before the inauguration, nearly all the big national media outlets sought to nullify and overturn the results of the 2016 election.
Not because Trump uses all their weapons – dishonesty, manipulation, derision, rudeness, unfair attacks, snap judgements, etc. – but because he has committed the unpardonable sin of pushing the country to the right; towards law and order, a healthy economy, respect for historic standards of decency and expectations that citizens act right, work for what you get – the golden rule.
Make no mistake: most of big media are leftists – poll after poll proves it. Their work SHOUTS IT. Many of you can’t see it because you agree with it.
Our founders gave the media tremendous power, never thinking they would collectively use it to help one side of the left-right teeter totter that has always been with us.
Those without blinders know the devotion and backup most of big media gave to Obama and then to his presumptive heir to continue the leftward march, Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s victory stunned them, enraged them.
Thus began the absolute worst chapter in journalism history.
The Russian collusion hoax – now obviously manufactured by Hillary Clinton’s people – was leapt upon by big media, whose involvement in spreading lies from “sources” and illegally leaked information was so wrong it was criminal. Instead of the Pulitzer Prize given to the New York Times and the Washington Post, they should’ve been given indictments.
EVERY DAY big media outlets like the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, the networks and many others, brought you a new outrage Trump had supposedly done.
Despite a record economy, record unemployment, better trade deals with Mexico, Canada and a start with China THAT BIG MEDIA SAID COULDN’T BE DONE, they portrayed Trump as an abject failure.
Remember how they mocked him for reaching out to N. Korea’s Kim Jong Un, what a horrible mistake it was? Guess what? No missiles. Un actually voicing regret for suffering there!
Trumps horrible recognition of Jerusalem would set that region ablaze, big media cried. Instead, crickets.
The Covid virus is Trump’s fault, big media screams. We must shut down the red-hot economy, try to hide from the virus! Wear a mask, distance, isolate!
As all the experts said FROM THE START, all we can do is SLOW THE SPREAD. Everyone gets exposed eventually, the vast majority without even knowing it.
So we crushed the economy and spread infections and deaths over time. States had to re-open to keep from total collapse and guess what, infections and deaths increased again.
YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM VIRUSES.
Instead of a three-month pandemic we’ve stretched it out to a year-plus and counting ordeal at a cost of way more than $3 trillion with countless lives and businesses crushed WITHOUT SAVING ANY LIVES.
And just as strides were being made in black employment and economic health, big media pushes out a litany of “innocent” blacks being “wrongly murdered” by police as evidence of “systemic racism” that somehow skipped over the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration.
The actual facts In the individual cases often contradicted the rush-to-judgement narratives pushed out by big media so starkly that they should’ve been served with lawsuits for malpractice.
Cities and businesses were burned and continue to do so. MANY DIED because of that malpractice. Homicides have shot up in many of the protest hotspots.
As long as it hurts Trump, right?
Remember how well we were doing one year ago. Yes, those on the left were howling up a storm, but the nation was really cruising along.
Many of you think 2020 is just a really bad year, either it’s Trump’s fault or we’re just in dire need of a rabbit’s foot.
The truth is big media wanted Trump stopped at all costs.
We’re experiencing exactly that.
Biden’s baggage in being totally ignored by big media.
Imagine if Trump’s son got millions for doing nothing for a Ukrainian firm. Every media outlet would be frothing at the mouth. Instead, we have one or two media outlets like the New York Post digging into it.
And, oh by the way, Trump was impeached for asking about it.
Many of you have been totally fooled by big media. You actually believe they are honoring the noble mission charged to them by our founders.
I know so many of you hate me for my words. Some of you, I know, respected me for my work during my 32 years as a journalist.
I hear you saying “what happened to you?”
Well, I’m exactly the same guy who dug for the truth, who went where few journalists would go, who went without sleep and risked life and limb to bring you stories that showed you what was really going on.
No, it’s not me who has changed.
It is journalism as practiced on the national stage.
There is no longer a hunger for objectivity. There is no longer careful editing and a search for balance and honesty.
It has devolved into all-out warfare.
The body count is staggering: a crushed economy, titanic debt, a dangerously divided land, cities burned and out-of-control, businesses and dreams shattered, a surge in deaths of those big media claims to champion.
All to get rid of Trump.
Go ahead. Vote for Biden. Have more shutdowns. I believe you’ll watch your taxes soar, gas prices double and the stock market plummet. That’s speculation on my part.
But what is not speculation is this:
Big media wants you to choose Biden. They’ve spent four years convincing you to elect – literally – the oldest, whitest, most baggage-laden, entrenched DC-insider on the planet.
Why? Because they want their steady march to the left back.
At all costs.”