Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would make “one of the best presidents South of Heaven and North of Hell. Unequivocally.”
And that comes from someone who knows her well - her pastor, the Rev. Amos C. Brown, senior pastor of historic Third Baptist Church of San Francisco.
She joined the church, which has about 800 members, as an adult and is still a member, said Brown, 83, who has served as pastor since 1976.
He calls Harris a very spiritual person.
“She couldn’t forsake it,” he said. “Her mother was a spiritual person … She’s just a regular, solid citizen with common sense who is enlightened and who’s excellent. She has integrity. She is good people.”
He said the congregation regularly prays for Harris as she first launched her political career and as continues as she seeks to become the nation’s first female president.
On Sunday President Joe Biden announced he was stepping aside from the presidential race and endorsed Harris to head the ticket. Biden had been under intense pressure to do so after a poor debate performance against former president Donald Trump, last month and concerns about his ability to lead for four more years.
“You know what James said, ‘Be doers of the Word’,” he said. “She believes in the social justice, personal expression of spirituality at its best. No one-sidedness. No extremism. Just spirituality at its best … She’s a people person, that’s why she’s so jolly with that laugh, but when it’s time to be serious and taking care of business she’s at the top of her game.”
Her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist, was an Indian immigrant. Her father, Donald Harris, is of Jamaican descent and is a prominent economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University. They met after they came to the United States to graduate school in Berkeley, Calif.
As a child a neighbor took her and her sister, Maya, to 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. She said in an interview with Interfaith Youth Magazine that that’s where she formed some of her earliest memories of the Bible’s teachings.
“It’s where I learned that ‘faith’ is a verb and that we must live it, and show it, in action,” she added.
“She’s been in a multifaith environment and I think that made her more open to diversity and more open to different perspectives than what we get from the garden-variety Protestant person,” said Anthea Butler, professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, who has never met Harris. “That’s her strength, actually. It means she’s able to talk to different people.”
Brown was involved in her campaigns as she ran as district attorney, attorney general, the U.S. Senate and as President Joe Biden’s running mate.
Harris has already endured racial and gender-based attacks by her opponent’s surrogates, being called a “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) vice president by a GOP congressman.
“I know what they’re saying,” Brown said of her detractors. “They have a problem with knowing that Black people have as much sense as anyone else to do an excellent, effective, efficient and elevating job.”
He gives little thought to such comments.
“The old saying coming from the Greeks and one of the things they got right: ‘‘He whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. We don’t have time to be mad, we have to be smart.”
And Brown knows. A Morehouse College graduate and native of Jackson, Miss., Brown has been involved in civil rights for nearly 70 years, several of them in Atlanta. “As my good friend, (Congressman) John Lewis used to say, good trouble. I’ve always been in good trouble.”
He worked with Lewis and was tutored by civil rights activists Roy Wilkins, Vernon Jordan and Medgar Evers, whom he calls his mentor. He was one of eight students in 1962 in the only class the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. taught at Morehouse.
He still has King’s notes and the class roster that included Julian Bond.
His sons and daughter graduated from Morehouse and Spelman colleges, and a grandson is a Morehouse student.
In addition to his pastoral duties, he also serves on the national board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
He added more about Harris’s faith.
“She has a romance with God that is attractive, effective and empowering.”
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