5 things to know about Kamala Harris' pastor

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, July 31, 2024

1. Accused Trump of trying to incite ‘second civil war'

Following then-Vice President Mike Pence’s debate with then-Sen. Kamala Harris ahead of the 2020 presidential election that the Biden-Harris ticket ultimately won, then-President Trump called Harris “this monster that was on the stage with Mike Pence” and a “communist,” expressing gratitude that his running mate “destroyed her” in the debate. This did not sit well with Brown, who wrote an op-ed for The New York Times condemning Trump’s remarks.

“When President Trump calls Senator Kamala Harris a ‘monster,’ it is nothing less than naked racism and misogyny for which he owes her, along with every woman and every black citizen in America, an immediate and sincere apology,” he wrote. “As her pastor, I am both disturbed and alarmed at this outburst. It puts a lie not only to the president’s pretense of Christianity, but also to any claim he makes about condemning white supremacists or the violent right-wing extremists who support him.”

Brown continued: “What is monstrous is that the man in the Oval Office dispensed long ago with even the pretense of civility in public discourse. He has trampled even the most extreme boundaries of robust political discourse, finally dropping his dog whistle to pick up a bullhorn he uses every day to incite those extremists. Vice President Mike Pence, by his failure to condemn the president, is complicit by his silence.”

Brown took his criticism of Trump a step further, suggesting that his description of Harris as a “monster” was “the kind of rhetoric almost designed to start a second civil war.” He insisted that “our nation can no longer abide this kind of rhetoric from the administration.”