These evangelicals are voting their values — by backing Kamala Harris

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the Rev. Lee Scott publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president during the Evangelicals for Harris Zoom call on Aug. 14, the Presbyterian pastor and farmer said he was taking a risk.

“The easy thing for us to do this year would be to keep our heads down, go to the ballot box, keep our vote secret and go about our business,” Scott told the group, which garnered roughly 3,200 viewers according to organizers. “But at this time, I just can’t do that.”

Scott lives in Butler, Pennsylvania, the same town where a would-be assassin shot former President Donald Trump in July. Scott told The Associated Press that the attack and its impact on his community pushed him to speak out against Trump and the “vitriol” and “acceptable violence” he normalized in politics.

Trump has maintained strong support among white evangelical voters. According to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the electorate, about 8 in 10 white evangelical voters cast a ballot for him in 2020. But a small and diverse coalition of evangelicals is looking to pull their fellow believers away from the former president’s fold, offering not only an alternate candidate to support but an alternate vision for their faith altogether.

“I am tired of watching meanness, bigotry and recreational cruelty be the worldly witness of our faith,” Scott said on the call. “I want transformation, and transformation is risky business.”

Trump has heavily courted white conservative evangelicals since his arrival on the political scene almost a decade ago. Now he is selling Trump-themed Bibles, touting the overturning of Roe v. Wade and imploring Christians to get out the vote for him.

But some evangelicals have used perceived cracks in his political fidelity to further distance themselves from the former president, especially as Trump and his surrogates have waffled over whether he would sign a federal abortion ban  should he become president.

The Rev. Dwight McKissic, a Baptist pastor from Texas who spoke on the Evangelicals for Harris call, said he saw no “moral superiority of one party over the other,” citing the GOP’s decision to “abandon a commitment to ban abortion with a constitutional amendment” and to soften its stance against same-sex marriage in its party platform.

Though he has historically voted Republican, McKissic said he would vote for Harris, whom he said has stronger character and qualifications.

“I certainly don’t agree with her on all matters of policy,” said Scott, who identifies as evangelical and is ordained in the mainline Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). “I am pro-life. I am against abortion. But at the same time, she has a pro-family platform,” citing Harris’ education policies and promise to expand the child tax credit.

Grassroots groups like Evangelicals for Harris are hoping they can convince evangelicals who feel similarly to support Harris instead of voting for Trump or sitting out the election altogether.

With modest funding in 2020, the group, formerly known as Evangelicals for Biden, targeted evangelical voters in swing states. This election, the Rev. Jim Ball, the organization’s president, said they’re expanding the operation and looking to spend a million dollars on targeted advertisements.

While white evangelicals vote strongly Republican, not all evangelicals are a lock for the GOP, and in a tight race, every vote counts.

In 2020, Biden won about 2 in 10 white evangelical voters, but performed better with evangelicals overall, according to AP VoteCast, winning about one-third of this group. A September AP-NORC poll found that around 6 in 10 Americans who identify as “born-again” or “evangelical” have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Harris, but around one-third have a favorable opinion of her. The majority — around 8 in 10 — of white evangelicals have a negative view of Harris.

Vote Common Good, a similar group run by progressive evangelical pastor Doug Pagitt, has a simple message: Political identity and religious identity are not a package deal.

″There’s a whole group who have become very uncomfortable voting for Trump,” Pagitt said. “We’re not trying to get them to change their mind. We’re trying to work with them once their minds have changed to act on that change.”

In August, Harris’ campaign hired the Rev. Jen Butler, a Presbyterian (U.S.A.) minister and experienced faith-based organizer, to lead its religious outreach.

Butler told the AP she has been in touch with Evangelicals for Harris. With less than two months until Election Day, she wants to harness the power of grassroots groups to quickly engage even more faith voters.

“We want to turn out our base, and we think we have some real potential here to reach folks who have voted Republican in the past,” Butler said.

They are focusing on Black Protestants and Latino evangelicals, especially in key swing states. They are reaching out to Catholics and mainline Protestants across the Rust Belt and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona and Nevada. Butler’s colleagues are working with Jewish and Muslim constituencies.

Catholics for Harris and Interfaith for Harris groups are launching. Mainline Protestant groups like Black Church PAC and Christians for Kamala are also campaigning on behalf of the vice president.

Butler, who grew up evangelical in Georgia, said the Harris campaign can find common ground with evangelicals, particularly suburban evangelical women.

“There’s a whole range of issues that they care about,” she said, citing compassionate approaches to immigration and abortion. “They know that the way to address any pro-life concerns is really to support women.”

Even for evangelicals who dislike Trump, it can be difficult to support a Democrat.

Russell Jeong, a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and speaker on the Evangelicals for Harris call, told AP that the group doesn’t “agree with everything that Harris stands for” and that evangelicals can “hold the party accountable by being involved.”

Others on the call noted they would use their vote to pressure Harris on issues where they disagreed, with Latina evangelical activist Sandra Maria Van Opstal saying she’d push the potential Harris administration “to do better on Palestine-Israel and do better on immigration.”

Soong-Chan Rah, a professor of evangelism at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, describes himself as a nonpartisan progressive evangelical and a “prophet speaking to broken systems.” Though he’s never endorsed a candidate before, he said the stakes of this election are so high that he wanted to throw his public support behind Harris.

“Not only do I find this candidate, Trump, repugnant and repulsive,” Rah said, “it is to such an extreme that I want to endorse his opposition.”

But the chorus of evangelicals who find voting for a Democrat unconscionable remains loud.

Trump-supporting evangelical worship leader Sean Feucht ridiculed the existence of Evangelicals for Harris on X: “HERETICS FOR HARRIS rings so much truer!”

The Rev. Franklin Graham, a longtime Trump supporter, took issue with one of the group’s ads and its use of footage of his late father, the Rev. Billy Graham. “The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris,” he wrote on his public Facebook page, which has 10 million followers.

But the project of shoring up Democratic evangelical voters goes beyond partisan politics. It gets at the core of what evangelicalism means.

The term evangelical itself is fraught and has become synonymous with the Republican Party, argues Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University.

“More people are probably evangelical theologically,” said Burge, “but they’re not going to grab that word because they don’t vote for Trump or they’re moderate or liberal.”

Evangelicalism has historically referenced Christians who hold conservative theological beliefs regarding issues like the importance of the Bible and being born again. But that’s changed as the term has grown more connected with Republican voters.

For many, evangelicalism has largely been defined along racial and socio-political lines and in endorsing Harris, Rah hopes to “show that there are other voices in the church aside from the religious right and Trump evangelicals.”

Latasha Morrison, a speaker on the Evangelicals for Harris Zoom, told the AP that as a Black woman, “I never associated myself with the word ‘evangelical’ until I started attending predominantly white churches.”

For years her anti-abortion views led her to vote Republican, but now the Christian author and diversity trainer says, “I feel like women and children have a better opportunity under the Harris administration than the Trump administration.”

For Ball, the Evangelicals for Harris organizer, he’s not looking to “tell people if they are an evangelical” or not.

“Diversity is a strength for us. We’re not we’re not looking for total unanimity. We’re looking for unity,” Ball said. “We can be united while we still have differences.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration  with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Presbyterian pastor Lee Scott drives through the pastures of his family farm in Butler, Pa., on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Cows graze at Laurel Oak Farm in Butler, Pa., on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

The Rev. Lee Scott stands in the pasture with his cows at Laurel Oak Farm in Butler, Pa., on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

A cow grazes in Laurel Oak Farm, owned by Rev. Lee Scott, in Butler, Pa., on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

The Rev. Lee Scott, a longtime registered Republican who has recently endorsed Kamala Harris for president, harvests a pumpkin in the fields of his farm in Butler, Pa., on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

The Rev. Lee Scott stands in the pasture with his cows at Laurel Oak Farm in Butler, Pa., on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Farmer and Presbyterian pastor Lee Scott pets one of the cows on his family farm, Laurel Oak Farm, in Butler, Pa., on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, right, speaks with Steve Hahn and his wife Kyung-Ae Kim Hahn at the Korean Church of Boston, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah speaks wth a parishoner at the Korean Church of Boston, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah poses at the Korean Church of Boston, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah poses at the Korean Church of Boston, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah poses at the Korean Church of Boston, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah poses at the Korean Church of Boston, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah poses at the Korean Church of Boston, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

NEW YORK (AP) — Kamala Harris wanted to help voters get to know her better with a cascade of media appearances on Tuesday, but the most lasting impression might have been her unwillingness to break with Joe Biden.

Asked on ABC’s “The View” how she would be different from the president she’s served under for four years, Harris said “we’re obviously two different people” and “I will bring those sensibilities to how I lead.”

However, she was not able to identify a decision where she would have gone another way. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris said.

The exchange encapsulated Harris’ struggle to portray herself as a candidate who can deliver the change voters crave while also remaining loyal to the current administration. Some Harris aides privately winced as gleeful Republicans swiftly circulated clips of her response and Donald Trump swiped at her in a social media post, calling it “her dumbest answer so far.”

It wasn’t until later in the show that Harris named something that she would do differently than Biden — she would put a Republican in her Cabinet.

The Democratic nominee said she would welcome contributions from the other party “because I don’t feel burdened by letting pride get in the way of a good idea.”

The interview was a reminder that friendly media venues — the women of “The View” were nearly rapturous in their embrace of Harris — can be as treacherous for politicians to navigate as hardball journalistic interrogations. And it came at a delicate moment for Harris, whose motorcade whisked her from studio to studio in New York on Tuesday.

Even though her abbreviated and unexpected campaign for the presidency is more than half over, Harris is still racing to introduce herself to voters who haven’t made up their minds about her or whether to cast ballots in this year’s election. After “The View,” she spoke to radio host Howard Stern and planned to tape a show with late-night comedian Stephen Colbert. The trio of appearances came after Harris granted interviews to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which aired Monday night, and Alex Cooper’s podcast “Call Her Daddy,” which was released Sunday.

It's a kaleidoscopic media blitz intended to reach key demographics, from men who are longtime fans of Stern to young women who follow Cooper's frank conversations about sex and relationships.

Harris' decision to open up is a sharp shift after largely avoiding interviews since replacing Biden at the top of the ticket, and it’s an acknowledgment that she needs to do more to defeat Trump.

Getting personal has never been easy for Harris, a lawyer by training whose first job in public life was making opening and closing arguments as a courtroom prosecutor.

“It feels immodest to me to talk about myself,” Harris said to Stern. “A friend of mine actually said, ‘look, this is not a time to worry about modesty, because obviously you gotta let people know who you are.’”

By the time she was finished with the interview, Harris had, by her standards, bared her soul. Some examples:

She ate a family sized bag of Doritos after Trump beat Hillary Clinton. She works out on an elliptical every day. Her first job was cleaning test tubes at her mother’s laboratory, and she got fired. Her favorite Formula One driver is Lewis Hamilton. She went to see U2 at the Sphere in Las Vegas, and she recommends going with a “clear head,” meaning not high on drugs, because “there’s a lot of visual stimulation.”

Harris also said “I literally lose sleep” over the election because “the stakes are so high.”

Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said Harris has to energize people who have tuned out politics because they believe “all the politicians are the same, they all say the same thing, they don’t know anything about my life, I can’t relate to them at all."

“They want to like and trust you," she said.

Jennifer Harris, the former White House senior director of international economics, said Harris has a steeper hill to climb because of the way she became the Democratic nominee.

“We did not have a good long primary to meet Kamala Harris in the way most voters are accustomed to,” she said. Harris has to find a way to demonstrate the instincts and principles that ”will be guiding any number of hundreds of specific policy questions that will come up in the course of the presidency.”

Harris used her Tuesday appearance on “The View” to discuss her proposal to have Medicare cover in-home care for the elderly, helping to relieve the burden faced by an increasing number of families.

“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle," she said. "They’re taking care of their kids and taking care of their aging parents.”

She spoke about taking care of her own mother when she was dying of cancer, including cooking for her and picking out soft clothing that wouldn't irritate her. And she criticized Trump as selfish and uninterested in helping Americans. If you watch his grievance-filled rallies, she said, “he does not talk about what your parents need, what your children need.”

Instead, Harris said, “he talks about his needs.”

It was a moment that Harris' campaign would much rather get noticed than her answer about Biden. They believe that a small yet pivotal numbers of undecided voters want to know more about Harris before making up their minds, and that the more those voters see Harris, the more they like her.

Republican communications strategist Kevin Madden said defining Harris in voters' eyes is the central challenge of the campaign.

“This race is actually pretty simple in the sense that the next few weeks are about who’s going to fill in the blanks on who Harris is,” he said.

Harris' name recognition grew when she became vice president, but 1 out of 10 people still said they didn't know enough about her to have an opinion, according to AP-NORC polling. Recent shifts in her favorability numbers suggest that views on Harris may still be somewhat malleable.

Other polls have similar results. One-quarter of likely voters said they still feel like they need to learn more about Harris, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted after her debate against Trump, while about three-quarters say they pretty much already know what they need to know about her.

Near the end of Harris' interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, Cooper confronted the vice president with one of the central questions of this campaign.

So many people, Cooper said, are “frustrated and just exhausted with politics in general," so "why should we trust you?”

Harris answered by saying “you can look at my career to know what I care about.”

“I care about making sure that people are entitled to and receive the freedoms that they are due," she said. "I care about lifting people up and making sure that you are protected from harm.”

Megerian reported from Washington. AP writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris chats with the hosts during a commercial break at The View, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, in New York. Seated from left are Ana Navarro, Harris, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris chats with the hosts during a commercial break at The View, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, in New York. From left are Ana Navarro, Harris, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris chats with the hosts during a commercial break at The View, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, in New York. Seated from left are Ana Navarro, Harris, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris chats with the hosts during a commercial break at The View, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, in New York. From left are Ana Navarro, Whoopi Goldberg, Harris and Alyssa Farah Griffin. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris chats with the hosts during a commercial break at The View, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, in New York. From left are Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Whoopi Goldberg, Harris, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at the Dort Financial Center in Flint, Mich., Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris boards Air Force Two at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Saturday, October 5, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C., after a briefing on the damage from Hurricane Helene. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force Two to depart for New York at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)