OPINION:
Today’s Democrats love wrapping themselves in the cloak of piety when election season rolls around, only to quickly jettison much talk of God once in power.
The party clearly isn’t that of John F. Kennedy or Jimmy Carter or even Harry Truman, who kept his faith private but acknowledged publicly, “The fundamental basis of the Bill of Rights of our Constitution comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus, St. Matthew, Isaiah and St. Paul.” Try getting Vice President Kamala Harris to say that from the heart.
The Trump campaign has not so subtly raised whether Ms. Harris is a phony on several levels, and Americans would be right to wonder who she is, particularly when it comes to her religious beliefs.
“She represents a lot of Americans’ religious story because here’s the thing: Nobody grows up in a straight line with religion in America anymore,” gushed Anthea Butler, a professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania, to Religion News Service.
It’s a ridiculous notion, of course, but emblematic of how the left views both Ms. Harris and religion as they attempt to give the Democrats’ new standard-bearer a moderate makeover.
Democrats want Americans to view faith not as a personal connection with God based on truth as expressed in the Bible but as more of a veneer of subjective feelings about one’s own spirituality. This distinction is important because genuine faith in the divine directly connects the believer to the underpinnings of Western civilization, the American republic and the Constitution.
As vice president, Ms. Harris has never given a speech that referred to her Christian faith or biblical values, according to the White House website. Her meetings with faith leaders have generally been about abortion, immigration and pushing COVID-19 vaccinations.
Ms. Harris has said that “faith is a verb” and it’s about action, but what that means to her remains a mystery. Talking about going to church as a child and quoting Second Corinthians a couple of times isn’t necessarily mean that you’re a Christian or that you believe in biblical values.
Her mother was Hindu, and her estranged father has been tied to Marxism, an atheistic ideology. Her stepdaughter is a pro-Palestinian activist. Ms. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, may have nailed a mezuzah to their front doorpost at the Naval Observatory and hosted a Passover Seder, but that doesn’t mean her own faith is tethered to biblical values in any real sense.
Perhaps no political figure on a national ticket in recent memory has so assiduously avoided mentioning the Bible, biblical values or even Almighty God in public statements as Ms. Harris has. There is, therefore, plenty of reason to wonder whether she is committed to the country’s religious and biblical underpinnings.
If she is a Christian, then what kind of Christian is she? Ms. Harris says she been a member of the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco for years. It’s unclear, however, the last time she attended services there or in any church unrelated to a political event or funeral. More troubling is that Third Baptist is led by the Rev. Amos Brown, whom Ms. Harris called a “voice of leadership” and said she is proud to have as her pastor.
Mr. Brown is perhaps even more radical than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor. He is a vocal supporter of the redistribution of wealth to pay for reparations. In 2001, he, like Mr. Wright, made comments blaming the United States for the 9/11 attacks. In 2021, Ms. Harris’ pastor told the San Francisco Chronicle: “I know America. America is a racist country.”
Ms. Harris has credited Mr. Brown with helping on her political journey, again oddly avoiding any discussion of faith and Christ.
It all sounds more like the church of leftism than Christianity.
Faith isn’t about a photo-op or only what you do in public. It is the essence of who you are and your personal relationship with God. As a leader, it is also a critical link to the beliefs of our founders.
Faith is also not about today’s concepts of identity or “tradition,” another left-wing buzzword. Religion and faith are a set of strong convictions that translate into personal, daily practices. Faith informs our decision-making and how we approach living. It should not be an enigma wrapped in a riddle, as it appears to be with Ms. Harris.
Whether she’s a Hindu or Jewish or Christian is immaterial. What is important here is that, even after all this time in public life, we don’t fully understand how committed she is to any belief system connected to a higher power, let alone one that is specifically linked to our freedoms.
We’ve seen the consequences of leaders with no genuine grounding in an easily discernible religious belief system. We can’t afford another.
This country’s guarantee of religious liberty is our first freedom and the foundation of all other rights we possess. The left has been attempting to redefine culture and strip away biblical truth and all faith in favor of some form of empty secular humanism. Marxism, after all, is about deconstructionism.
Right now, the evidence suggests that Kamala Harris could be a wrecking ball.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV and a columnist with The Washington Times.
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