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Kamala Harris’s social justice values have been shaped by her faith. To delve deeper into them, it is necessary to try to understand the religious influences that the Democratic Party candidate for the US presidency has incorporated into her ideology.
Kamala is the daughter of immigrants who came to the United States to study at the University of California-Berkeley. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was from India and earned a doctorate in biomedicine. Her father, Donald J. Harris, was from Jamaica and earned a doctorate in economics and taught economics at several universities before eventually settling at Stanford University, where he was appointed chair of the Department of Economics. He was the first black academic to achieve such a position at the prestigious university. Shyamala and Donald met through civil rights activism, married in 1963, and Kamala was born the following year. The couple divorced in 1972, and since then her mother’s influence has grown in the formation of the Democratic presidential candidate. Shymala died of colon cancer in 2009 (https://acortar.link/EbF6Hl and https://acortar.link/oDIx8P).
On September 8, 2022, Kamala Harris spoke at the National Baptist Convention (NBC), which meets annually and is predominantly African-American, unlike the mostly white and conservative Southern Baptist Convention. Harris reminded her listeners that as a child and teenager she was a member of the Pentecostal Church of God, located on 23rd Avenue in Oakland, California. She recalled: “There I learned – like many of us – the many teachings of the Bible about the ever-present tension between darkness and light. And I learned, in those moments, how important it is to recognize the power of faith. Faith teaches us that there is always a better future ahead and that we must continue to move forward to make that future a reality. And to move forward, in short, I also learned, and we all know this: faith requires action.”
As a young adult, Kamala joined Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, California, where Amos Brown has been pastor since 1976. Brown had Martin Luther King as a teacher at Morehouse College and was involved in the civil rights movement. She spoke with him on the phone to confide in him that she was going to run for president of the United States. In the conversation with her, Brown quoted her favorite Bible verse, Micah 6:8, to remind her that do justice, love mercy and walk humbly before your Creator. That is what we need in this nation. There is too much arrogance and self-centeredness after all this Trumpism.
(https://acortar.link/3rbG02).
Kamala reminded the CNB delegates, including Pastor Amos Brown, that the organization’s founders and successors staunchly opposed racist laws and ideas. In the 1960s, African-American church leaders were also at the forefront of the fight for civil rights, and in doing so, Harris said, they were putting into practice the teachings of Jesus. That generation, Kamala emphasized, worked together with people of other religious beliefs and different ethnic backgrounds, who agreed on the fight against the racist system, because they understood the importance of collective actions that transcend a particular group. That is, they were able to involve in their battle social actors who saw a hopeful and different future.
In the tradition of African-American preachers, Kamala Harris incorporates the interpellant power of speech, in which, so to speak, she dialogues with her listeners and they express their feelings with the classic amen (so be it, truly), and/or use different verbal/body language to show their state of mind to the speaker.
On an issue that has polarized American society, Harris clarified her position on the matter. Those who are going to vote in the November elections will have to weigh these words: As extremists work to take away women’s freedom to make decisions about their own bodies, religious leaders are taking a stand, knowing that it is not necessary to abandon one’s faith or deeply held religious beliefs to accept that a woman should have the ability to make decisions about her own body and not be told what to do by her government. And she will choose, in consultation with her pastor or her priest, or a doctor and her loved ones. But the government should not make that decision.
He concluded this part of the speech with a biblical quote, “At this point, let us pay attention to the words of the first epistle to the Corinthians 16:13-14: ‘Stay alert; stand firm in the faith; be courageous and strong. Do everything with love.’”
In her dispute with Donald Trump, who is going to intensify the use of the Bible in favor of his political interests, Kamala Harris has behind her a hermeneutical and fighting legacy to confront the supremacist who yearns for dark times.
