Georgia is on the mind of the Rev. Jim Ball.
Ball is the founder of Evangelicals for Harris, formerly Evangelicals for Biden, which hosted a Zoom call Wednesday night to woo conservative Christian voters. Organizers said more than 3,200 people joined the virtual meeting.
“Georgia is definitely one of our target states,” said Ball.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ entry at the top of ticket has energized a large swath of voters and spurred a number of online meetings and fundraisers, drawing in potential voters who may not have voted Democratic or at all.
While the campaign for Harris isn’t likely to garner a majority of evangelical voters, whatever she can siphon away from former President Donald Trump could keep her competitive in Georgia, said Gbemende E. Johnson, an associate professor of political science at the University of Georgia.
During the 2020 election, Georgia was a key battleground state credited with helping President Joe Biden defeat then President Donald Trump, ending his run for a second consecutive term. Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes.
“Trends and and history show that evangelicals are more likely to vote Republican; however, no group is a complete monolith,” Johnson said.
The work to appeal to evangelicals will be a tall task for Democrats.
Many conservative Christian leaders are reluctant to publicly voice their support for Harris over concerns about what their fellow church members, relatives and friends may think. At least one person who took part in Wednesday’s call made reference to the risks taken by publicly speaking out.
While voters who identify as evangelical may be primarily white, the Evangelicals for Harris zoom call reflected all races.
According to Edison Research’s exit polls, in 2020, an estimated 76% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. Another poll, the AP VoteCast survey, found that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in that election, compared to 18% who supported Biden.
It’s important to note that “evangelicals” in polls are hard to define — polls almost always depend on self-identification to categorize people as evangelicals, and the polls generally only ask white people if they are evangelicals, said Thomas Kidd, author of “Who Is an Evangelical?“ and a research professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri.
That means that people in political polls are not necessarily practicing churchgoers and people of color who self-identify as evangelicals are often left out of the discussion, he said.
Kidd has extensively written about the evangelical movement, particularly as it intertwines with culture and politics. American evangelical attachment to the Republican Party started in the 1950s, when Republicans seemed reliably anti-communist. The commitment to the GOP continues today.
“I doubt that Harris and (running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim) Walz will attract much support overall from practicing evangelicals, who are overwhelmingly pro-life,” said Kidd. “However, Trump and (running mate J.D.) Vance have downplayed the pro-life issue in 2024, apparently seeing the issue now as a question for states to decide after the Dobbs decision.”
Still, “even if there are small numbers of evangelical defections from Trump, it could make a huge difference in swing states like Georgia,” said Kidd.
Atlantan Latasha Morrison, author of “Brown Faces, White Spaces: Confronting Systemic Racism to Bring Healing and Restoration,” spoke during the Evangelicals for Harris call. She said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the call that for many years she was in an evangelical network that believed “to be Christian also meant to be a Republican.”
She primarily voted Republican until 2012 when she voted for President Barack Obama over Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. “To be a Christian, I thought it meant to be a one-issue voter and that was the abortion issue.”
She no longer believes that.
During the time Obama served as president and after the killing of Trayvon Martin, Morrison, who is Black, said she began to see how some whites view race through a political lens.
“I started questioning my understanding of what I believed and why. ... I began educating myself on the Gospel and what Jesus said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ I don’t live in a theocracy.”
In November, she plans to vote for Harris.
“I feel like she’s the best candidate and I think she cares about everyone, not just one group of people. Not just the rich, but all Americans. Look at her policies.”
The Rev. Dwight McKissic, senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas and a prominent African American Southern Baptist, also spoke during the call to say voting for a Democrat doesn’t mean abandoning core evangelical beliefs.
McKissic and other speakers made it clear that they were not retreating from their long-held positions against abortion or same sex marriage, but that they would vote for Harris as the best candidate to run the nation.
“After much soul searching, I have concluded that the better person and best qualified person in this election between the two major party nominees is by far is Madam Vice President Kamala Harris,” McKissic said.
He said voting for the best candidate rather than strictly along party lines should be the guiding principle for all voters and the best person to unify the nation.
McKissic and others were critical of Trump’s personal insults and misogynistic racist remarks against Harris, but also some evangelical votes were dismayed by Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts and other court cases.
“Last time, Georgia was won on the margins and this is going to be one that is won on the margins again,” said the Rev. Francys Johnson, a Baptist preacher and chairman of the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan organization that works to to register and civically engage voters.
Rev. Johnson said he has talked with conservative Christian pastors who have struggled over which candidate to support, but they aren’t likely to speak out publicly.
“They have to support the will of the members of their congregations, but at the same time they have privately shared the deep misgivings they have about Trump.”
One of the goal of Evangelicals for Harris is to have people pledge to do 10,000 hours of community service. “We’re on the way to 50,000 hours now so the new goal is 100,000,” Ball said the day after the Zoom. “We want this to be a fulfillment of how we see the Christian life and to help people understand the evangelical support of Harris.”
Although he was not on the call, retired Rev. Lamar Wadsworth said he plans to vote for Harris. The preacher from Rockmart in North Georgia describes himself as a “recovering” Southern Baptist and said he wants to see Harris in the White House.
Wadsworth, 72, last voted for a Republican when Richard Nixon ran in 1972 and “I was solely voting against the Vietnam War and quickly regretted it.” Since then he’s voted for Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and now Harris.
He considers himself an evangelical, but “Lord knows I hate what people have done with that term in attaching it to a political agenda. That has reduced Jesus to nothing more than a mascot for their political agenda. It’s like I’m always having to say, ‘I’m Baptist but not that kind of Baptist,’ all in one breath.”
He defines an evangelical as someone who has made an intentional choice to live as a follower of Jesus and one who models the way of Jesus for others as a natural part of who they are.
Does Trump fit the bill?
“No,” he said laughing.
He knows of an evangelical friend who voted for Trump and “now considers it possibly the worse thing they ever did in their lives and decided not to do it again.”
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