What Kamala Harris has said about her faith

Kamala Harris comes to her 2024 campaign for president with much more exposure to the world’s religions than typical American politicians.

The vice president was introduced to both Hinduism and Christianity as a child and has since become part of a Jewish family.

Calling Harris a Baptist or a Christian is accurate, but it doesn’t capture the nuance of her religious background, experts say.

“She has a unique and interesting religious identity. ... She’s been part of both mainline American Baptist churches and Hindu fellowships, and she’s married to a Jewish man,” said Nathan Finn, senior fellow on religious liberty with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

He added, “I don’t know that we’ve had another president who is this religiously diverse and who has had that kind of experience.”

Kamala Harris and Hinduism

As Finn noted, Harris did not have the purely Christian upbringing that’s been the norm for presidential candidates in the United States.

Through her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, she was connected to Hinduism, learning about Hindu leaders and attending Hindu ceremonies in the U.S. and India.

Even her name, “Kamala,” is significant in Hinduism and other South Asian religions, according to The Conversation.

“Most significantly, the kamala, or lotus, is closely associated with Sri-Lakshmi: the goddess of sovereignty, auspiciousness, fecundity, wealth and good fortune, who is worshiped by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains,” the article said.

Harris has said in the past that her connection to India and to Hinduism fueled her commitment to social justice, according to Religion News Service.

Kamala Harris is Baptist

Throughout her political career, Harris has also drawn strength and inspiration from the Baptist tradition, which is one of the many Christian denominations that comprise Protestant Christianity.

She was introduced to the Baptist Church by her father, Donald Harris, and still identifies as a Baptist today, as the Deseret News previously reported.

In her memoir, Harris cited her early experiences in Christian churches to explain some of her work in politics.

My “earliest memories of the teachings of the Bible were of a loving God, a God who asked us to ‘speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves’ and to ‘defend the rights of the poor and needy,’” she wrote, per Sojourners.

Harris’ home church is Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, which is led by the Rev. Amos C. Brown.

The Rev. Brown took a class from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a college student and was active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

He remains known as a civil rights activist, as well as for building bridges with leaders from other faith groups, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“You are the quintessential embodiment of the best leadership in the faith community of the United States of America anywhere to be found south of heaven, north of hell,” the Rev. Brown said about President Russell M. Nelson in June 2021, as the Deseret News reported at the time.

The Rev. Brown recently told Sojourners that the vice president was drawn to Third Baptist due to its work on civil rights.

“She came to this church because she knew our ways, she knew our history,” he said. “This church has always had a balanced spirituality: social justice and personal fulfillment and salvation.”

Kamala Harris’ family

Harris also has extended exposure to Judaism, since her husband, Douglas Emhoff, and stepkids are Jewish.

Since Harris was elected vice president, Emhoff has worked to combat antisemitism and other forms of religious violence, as the Deseret News previously reported.

In an interview for that story, the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president of Interfaith Alliance, highlighted Harris’ ties to Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity, noting that her religiously diverse background makes her stand out.

“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,” he said. “She’s coming from a background where one parent is from the Hindu tradition and one parent is Christian from the Caribbean. She chose to go to Howard, which has been associated with the Black American Christian tradition, and then married a Jewish man and helped raise his children, who are Jewish.”