Does Vice President Kamala Harris support religious freedom for all?
The answer depends on how you define religious freedom — and which Americans you’re most worried about.
To some, she seems unwilling to address the concerns of theologically conservative believers and quick to abandon religious freedom when it interferes with her other values, such as abortion access or LGBTQ rights.
To others, Harris appears well-positioned to try to strike a balance between religious freedom and other civil rights.
These views are shaped not only by Harris’ campaign speeches and political record, but also by an ongoing battle between conservatives and liberals over religion’s place in American life.
While Harris won’t be able to resolve that battle by Election Day, religion experts from different faith groups and political parties are hopeful that, by speaking about her unique religious background, Harris will help voters see the value of religious freedom in a new way.
“I don’t think we’ve ever before had a candidate who has navigated various religious spaces and celebrated those various spaces in such an intimate way as the vice president,” said the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president of Interfaith Alliance.
Kamala Harris and religion
As the Rev. Raushenbush noted, Harris has a deep familiarity with a variety of faiths.
Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, grew up in India and taught her about Hinduism. Her father, Donald Harris, connected her to Christianity, and she identifies as a Baptist today.
Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish, and has led efforts to combat antisemitism during his time as second gentleman.
Harris’ boss, President Joe Biden, is Catholic, and speaks regularly about his faith.
All of these connections help Harris put a spotlight on and celebrate religious diversity at a time when some Americans are growing increasingly hostile to non-Christian religions, said Nathan Finn, senior fellow on religious liberty with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
“There are socially conservative believers who can be wrong-headed about religious liberty,” he said. “Maybe they think it’s OK to have a state church or maybe there are particular religious beliefs that they think are so wrong people shouldn’t have the freedom to believe it.”
It’s a unique moment in American history, and Harris is a unique candidate, Finn added.
“She represents a religious pluralism that ought to be amenable to religious freedom,” he said.
Harris’ past comments on religion
But supporting religious freedom is about more than supporting Americans’ right to believe whatever they want to believe.
It also involves supporting their efforts to live according to those beliefs in the public square, and it’s on this measure that Harris falls short for some religious voters, Finn said.
“I think it would be fair to say that many religious conservatives find Kamala Harris’ beliefs about religious freedom troubling,” he said.
Finn clarified that this discomfort doesn’t just stem from her support for abortion access or from what she believes about gender and sexuality, which can fuel faith-related legal conflicts.
“She believes what you’d expert her to believe as a political progressive about those issues. There are no surprises there,” he said.
But there are surprises, at least according to Finn and some of the religious conservatives in his personal and professional circles, in Harris’ past comments and policy moves related to religious individuals and organizations.
“She has been an unusually vocal proponent of the sort of legislation that causes those who are committed to religious freedom for all to be nervous and to think that she might not be as committed to that constitutional principle as I’m sure she would say she is,” Finn said.
For example, as a senator, Harris sponsored the Do No Harm Act, a bill that would limit the application of federal religious freedom protections. She argued that the bill was necessary in order to prevent people from using those protections as a license to discriminate.
“That First Amendment guarantee (of religious freedom) should never be used to undermine other Americans’ civil rights or subject them to discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity,” Harris said in a 2019 statement about the Do No Harm Act, per NBC News.
Finn is among those who reject Harris’ characterization of the bill and instead believe it’s a threat to religious liberty. The Do No Harm Act “would make it harder for many institutions to maintain their religious identity,” wrote Michael Gerson in a column for The Washington Post in 2020 after Biden chose Harris as his running mate.
Gerson’s overall argument in that column was that Harris would exacerbate religious voters’ concerns about the Biden campaign instead of easing them. He noted that she had been accused in the past of applying a religious test to judicial nominees and of equating conservative faith groups with hate groups.
Finn echoed Gerson’s concerns in his interview with the Deseret News, arguing that Harris’ support for religious freedom weakens when it comes up against other socially progressive causes that she cares about.
“At times, its seems to me that her convictions about socially progressive issues inform the way she thinks about religious liberty rather than her seeing religious liberty as a constitutional right that ought to be defended regardless of what somebody believes,” he said.
Competing ideas about religious freedom
Although Finn’s views on Harris likely resonate with many voters, they’re not held by all people of faith.
Some religious people support Harris’ past work on religious freedom, including her sponsorship of the Do No Harm Act, the Rev. Raushenbush said.
They believe she’s embraced a faith-based call to care for others, not a mission to drive religion from the public square.
“Many of us working in religious freedom space feel strongly about its value but don’t want religious freedom to be used to harm others,” the Rev. Raushenbush said.
He added that the Do No Harm Act “is a perfect example of how she has taken a stand on religious freedom in an appropriate, measured way.”
Harris won’t be able to bridge the gap between competing views of religious freedom over the new few months, and it’s still unclear if she’ll try.
What is clear is that Harris’ candidacy brings ongoing conflict over the true meaning of religious freedom into sharp relief.
“That’s the question that needs to be answered in regards to any candidate — what are they talking about when they’re talking about religious freedom?” the Rev. Raushenbush said.