Source: Daily Wire, By PAUL BOIS, June 26, 2019
Democrats are recruiting figureheads among the religious Left in the hope that they may persuade Christians away from Trump’s corner in the 2020 election.
“Political pundits said Democrats have a God problem and their latest move shows they are taking steps to solve it,” reports Fox News. “The Democratic National Committee recruited a far-left religious outreach director and is launching a round of listening sessions with faith leaders leading up to the 2020 election. The DNC hired former Washington, D.C. anti-Trump pastor, Rev. Derrick Harkins, who held a similar position in 2012 and has been the senior vice president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, which recently celebrated ‘rejoicing in the queerness of God.'”
Speaking with Religious News Service, Harkins said that the Democratic Party takes its relationship with faith communities “seriously” while promising to make faith “a priority going into 2020, but even more importantly, beyond 2020.”
Exactly how Harkins plans to square Christianity with the Democratic Party’s radical pro-abortion platform — not to mention the candidates’ proposals to have taxpayers fund the grisly procedure — was not explained. He did, however, say the Democrats welcome faith into their party, despite the fact the party almost literally booted the word “God” from its platform in 2012.
“The idea that there’s some antipathy within any quarters of the Democratic Party around faith — I just don’t see that to be true,” said Harkins.
Michael Wear, the faith outreach director for Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, told Religious News Service that while Harkins will do well for the Democratic Party, the ultimate test will be on how well the nominee reaches out to voters of faith.
“You’re not going to get too many more people with (Harkins’) breadth of experience,” said Wear. “At this stage, Democratic faith efforts look for me more promising than they did in 2016. But if it plateaus here, it won’t reach its potential.”
The enlistment of Harkins comes less than a week after The Hill reported that evangelical voters do not have buyer’s remorse for supporting Trump in 2016 and largely believe he has kept his promise to defend their religious liberty and protect unborn life.
Faith leaders and anti-abortion groups are ramping up their efforts to reelect President Trump, rewarding a president who has become an unlikely hero of the Christian right because of his commitment to socially conservative causes.
The Faith and Freedom Coalition will spend tens of millions of dollars on a voter mobilization effort that aims to register 1 million Christians in key battleground states and reach 30 million people nationwide.
The group, which is led by conservative activist Ralph Reed, will pump literature into more than 100,000 churches across 18 states, primarily focusing on the presidential battlegrounds but also with an eye on contested House and Senate races.
The Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List, an anti-abortion rights group, has a budget of $41 million this campaign cycle to “expose the extremism of Trump’s opponents,” among other initiatives.
Aside from the pro-abortion platforms, the Democrats have also alienated religious voters by working so tirelessly to remove God from daily political activities. For instance, the phrase “so help me God” was removed from U.S. House Committee oaths earlier this year at the insistence of Democrats. Also at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, delegates voted by a large margin to remove God from the party platform.
