Kamala Harris’s multi-religious identity is a map of the future
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at an event May 1 in Jacksonville, Florida. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)
President Joe Biden made history on Sunday by withdrawing his candidacy for a second term. The reconfigured Democratic presidential ticket he endorsed, with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top, would be historic. It would also be a map of the United States’s future.
Harris has a diverse personal religious and spiritual history that is now far more representative of America’s multifaith makeup. Raised Hindu by her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a native of Chennai, India, as children she and her sister, Maya, were often taken to 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland, California, by their neighbor Regina Shelton. As an adult, Harris joined a Black Baptist church—Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, led by Amos Brown.
Meanwhile, the man who would become Harris’s husband, Los Angeles lawyer Douglas Emhoff, grew up in New Jersey attending a Reform synagogue.
