Vice President Kamala Harris pointed out a glaring absence from the 2024 presidential campaign debate: religion. This Sunday, Harris spoke at a South Carolina Baptist church about the role of faith in her life and career. Her comments come amid an election cycle that is increasingly throwing up polarizing issues about the economy, immigration, and national security with not a word about religion or moral leadership.
Speaking to the congregation, Harris has argued that faith has an important role to play in public service, and for her “faith has always been a source of strength, guiding my principles and decisions.” She spoke of her multicultural upbringing where Christian and Hindu values would shape her understanding of the issues and encouraged each voter to care about the moral differences of the political decision being made.
Whereas religion has traditionally been an important part of any presidential campaign in the United States, faith-based issues have rarely featured in the 2024 race. Democratic and Republican hopefuls of all stripes have generally avoided making their faith a key component of their platforms for election, far from what has characterized presidential elections where such candidates consistently set out to identify with the religious voter.
Harris’s church visit is interpreted by some political commentators as an effort to reach out to religious communities. This is especially true in the battleground states like South Carolina, where faith still very much governs public life. Some people even surmise that Harris might be trying to fill a vacuum that President Joe Biden created since taking over his office, often strictly keeping the fact that he is a devout Catholic away from political discourse.
The vice president’s comments were also timely because Republican hopefuls, including former President Donald Trump, continue courting evangelical voters. However, the focus of their courting is shifting toward issues of culture and policy instead of personal religious beliefs.
Harris’s appearance only serves to underscore a wider debate over the place of faith in American politics, certainly during a period in which secular questions dominate the national agenda. Whether this presages a renewed focus on religion in the coming months remains to be seen, but for now her remarks serve to highlight just how much relative silence surrounds faith in the 2024 campaign.
