Vice President Kamala Harris has described calling her pastor due to “the gravity of the moment” after President Joe Biden dropped out of this year’s presidential election and endorsed her.
Biden announced that he would no longer being seeking the Democratic nomination for president on July 21, shortly after informing Harris of his decision in a phone call to his 2020 running mate.
Harris told CNN‘s Anderson Cooper at a town hall event in Pennsylvania on Wednesday night that she called her pastor, Reverend Amos C. Brown of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, after hearing the news.
“It was an extraordinary day, that Sunday when the president called me,” Harris said. “I instinctively understood the gravity of the moment, the seriousness of the moment. I didn’t predict or know exactly how that day would play out. Obviously, now it’s been three months since I’ve been at the top of the ticket.”
“I just called him, I needed that spiritual kind of connection,” she added. “I needed advice. I needed a prayer…There’s a part of the scripture that talks about Esther, ‘such a time as this,’ and that’s what we talked about. And it was very comforting for me.”
US Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris seen at a CNN Town Hall in Aston, Pennsylvania, on October 23, 2024. Harris at the event described a call she had with her pastor after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP) (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
Cooper then asked the vice president if she prayed “every day.”
“I do pray every day, sometimes twice a day,” Harris responded. “I was raised to believe in a loving God, to believe that your faith is a verb—you live your faith.”
“The way that one should do that is… think about how you can serve in a way that is uplifting other people, that is about caring for other people,” she continued. “That guides a lot of how I think about my work and what is important.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Harris campaign and the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco via email on Wednesday night.
Harris has placed an increased focus on her faith while campaigning in the final weeks before the November 5 election, recently speaking at two different churches during a visit to the swing state of Georgia.
Former President Donald Trump, Harris’ Republican opponent, is still expected to get the bulk of votes this year from evangelical Christians, having won the demographic by a wide margin in each of the last two presidential elections.
However, polls and other indicators suggest that Harris may be winning over some Christian voting blocs. A survey conducted by EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research in late August showed that Harris was leading Trump among Catholic voters by a margin of 50.1 percent to 42.7 percent.
Christian groups that support Harris and oppose Trump have also emerged this year, with the group Evangelicals for Harris running ads in support of the vice president on social media, and several anti-Trump online petitions by the group Faithful America have quickly gathered signatures.
Polling also shows that white evangelical Christian conservatives may not care whether their religious beliefs are shared by Trump, who has identified himself as a non-denominational Christian.
A poll released last month by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs found that about 7 in 10 white evangelical Protestants view Trump favorably. Only half of the group said that the ex-president represents their beliefs, while just 2 in 10 associated him with the term “Christian.”
