On Sunday, Rev. Amos C. Brown led service at Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, as he has on most Sundays since becoming pastor there in 1976.
Wearing a hoodie bearing the images of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Kwame Ture, and John Lewis, along with the words “GOOD TROUBLE,” he called the congregation to fix their “hearts, minds, and spirits on prayer.” He prayed, by name, for over 30 members of the church who were “sick and shut in.”
Before Brown read from Hebrews 12:1-3, a congregant handed him a note to let him know that President Joe Biden was stepping out of the race for reelection. He read from the verse, saying, “seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”
Then, after the service, Brown received a phone call from another member who was absent that Sunday: Vice President Kamala Harris, who was preparing to run a very different type of race.
“She said to me, ‘Pastor, I called because I want you to pray for me, [my husband] Doug, this country’ — and finally she said — ‘and the race I am intending to run for president,’” Brown told Sojourners on Monday. “We exchanged pleasantries, I congratulated her because she’ll be a great president, and we had prayer. She was so gracious and thankful that I took the time.”
Brown is no stranger to speaking faithfully into high-pressure political moments — as a younger man, he was one of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s few students at Morehouse College. Brown, a veteran Civil Rights activist, has served at Third Baptist since 1976. He also served as a delegate to the United Nations Conference on Race and Intolerance in 2001, is the president of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP, and served as vice chair of California’s Reparations Task Force.
Harris, who earned enough delegate support by Monday to become the Democratic Party’s nominee, has previously referenced Brown in her public speeches. She referenced him in a January speech to a Women’s Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Brown told Sojourners that he invoked his favorite Bible verse, Micah 6:8, as he spoke with Harris, reminding her to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your maker.”
“That’s what we need in this nation. There’s too much arrogance and egocentricity after all this Trumpism,” he said.
Brown said he has known Harris and her family for more than two decades, calling Harris’ mother “a terrific scholar and scientist.” Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a Hindu from Chennai, India, who worked on breast cancer research. Harris’s father, Donald Harris, is a Black Baptist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University.
Her parents gave her experiences from the Hindu and Baptist traditions when she was growing up. In her 2019 memoir, Harris wrote that her “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.’”
Brown said that he hoped the “groundswell” of people who protested in the summer of 2020 after George Floyd’s murder would show up in 2024.
“We can’t be cynical,” he said. “Some of these young people are cynical and misguided.”
Harris’ campaign has already been marked by widespread use of memes online — “coconut tree,” “brat,” and Harris’ love for “Venn diagrams.” Some of the memes, according to the Associated Press, are being used by Harris’s supporters in hopes of turning back “apathy” in the 2024 election and “could be a way for Harris’ campaign to resonate with younger voters.”
Brown said the vice president joined Third Baptist, where she has remained a dues-paying member, because she knew about the church’s history of working with Civil Rights leaders. Even before Brown’s time, he said the church has hosted leaders like W.E.B Du Bois and Paul Robeson.
“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 fulfilment and salvation.”
When asked how he’s seen Harris grow over the decades, Brown said she was a “lifelong learner.” When asked where she could grow more, he first said she should just “stay the course and hold the hope” before adding that Harris could grow in her foreign policy expertise.
Brown told Sojourners he will hear from Harris again before the week is over, on a call scheduled between the likely Democratic nominee and a group of preachers across the country.
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