Scandal-prone Baptist pastor Mark Harris wins seat in Congress

The North Carolina pastor has a long history of trashing women and LGBTQ people. And that's just the start.

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With Republicans on the verge of a governing trifecta, one of the Republicans who will soon have the power to write laws is Mark Harris, a freshman House member from North Carolina who believes being gay is a “choice” and that the only role a woman should have is “helper” to her husband.

Mark Harris (screenshot via YouTube)

Harris has an interesting yet troubling backstory. He lost a GOP primary for U.S. Senate in 2014, lost a GOP primary for Congress in 2016 by a razor-thin margin, then won that same primary two years later. He ended up defeating the Democrat in the race by 0.4% and was literally in Washington, D.C. ready to take his seat when he learned there was an investigation into anomalies in his race.

It turned out one of his own staffers had been charged with absentee-ballot fraud. (Yes, there was actual voter fraud in that race. Committed by a Republican.) That staffer “allegedly orchestrated the collecting, tampering, and forging of ballots,” and so the North Carolina Board of Elections chose not to certify those results. Harris said during the subsequent trial that he had no knowledge of the scheme… but, while on the stand and after a brief break, Harris read a statement saying “a new election is warranted.” Harris himself was never charged with any crimes, but he decided not to run in the do-over election.

That could have been the end of his brief, bizarre political career. But with an open congressional seat in a new Republican-favored gerrymandered district, he decided to try again last year.

This past March, he comfortably won his primary, and this week, the foregone conclusion became official: Harris will soon become a member of Congress.

As the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, he has every intention of Christianizing the country. In an interview with The Assembly, Harris quoted something Speaker Mike Johnson said on FOX, where, in response to questions about his conservative beliefs, he said, “Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” He has also mixed church and state whenever possible over the years, inviting to his pulpit Sen. Ted Cruz, former Sen. Rick Santorum, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and (because this is North Carolina) pro-Nazi adult film connoisseur Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.

In fact, it was during Robinson’s visit last year when he condemned LGBTQ people and their allies, saying people who flew rainbow flags “spit right in the face of God.” Harris, of course, was totally fine with that comment.

Robinson later endorsed Harris after he entered the race.

When Harris ran in 2018, we also learned about his views on women.

One of the headlines during that campaign involved an unearthed 2013 sermon in which Harris pushed traditional gender roles—including a very specific one for women:

There is only one title that is given to women in all of Scripture. Only one title given to a man, only one title given to a woman. The title, in all of Scripture, only one title given to a man is “head.” The title given to a woman is “helper.”

He went on to define “helper” as “servant lover”… as if that made anything better.

He also criticized women who chose careers and independence:

"In our culture today, girls are taught from grade school that we tell them that what is most honorable in life is a career, and their ultimate goal in life is simply to be able to grow up and be independent of anyone or anything," said Harris, then the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Charlotte, adding, "But nobody has seemed to ask the question that I think is critically important to ask: Is that a healthy pursuit for society? Is that the healthiest pursuit for our homes? Is that the healthiest pursuit for our children? Is that the healthiest pursuit for the sexes in our generation?"

All of that seems downright quaint at the moment, but I swear it was as disturbing then as it was this summer when NFL player Harrison Butker made similar comments.

At a time when women’s rights are being curtailed state by state, with a similar fate dangling over women’s heads across the country once Republicans take charge, Harris will now have the power to write the laws that directly affect them. On his campaign website, he says he believes in the “sanctity of all human life, from conception to natural end,” which suggests he would back a national abortion ban with no exceptions.

We should also be concerned about his education policies. Harris wants to strip money from public schools to support vouchers for private Christian schools, and in 2018, he got a very enthusiastic endorsement from pseudo-historian David Barton, the guy who’s done more than anyone to poison the well of information regarding the influence of religion at the founding of our country.

He’s also awful when it comes to LGBTQ issues. In 2013, during his first campaign, he said that being gay was a “choice”:

“I’ve yet to buy in, as there is not the medical evidence, that an individual that chooses the homosexual lifestyle is born that way,” Harris said. “That is a choice.”

Two years later, he said during a Christian gathering that our nation was experiencing “moral decay.” His proof? Back in the good old days, he argued, we used to put gay people in prison, but we don’t do that anymore!

“We have watched in one generation where homosexuality was once criminalized to now we see the criminalization of Christianity.”

(Christianity has never been criminalized in the U.S.)

Harris is being coy about all this, too.

When he was asked by the Charlotte Observer about his top priority if elected, he offered the vague nothing-burger of an answer, “To represent the people of North Carolina’s 8th district.” And when asked if he would certify the presidential election, he said “Absolutely”… only to follow that up with, “I will proudly vote to certify the results of any election that was conducted fairly and legally.” That comment, as we know by now, is what Republicans always say these days because so many GOP candidates refuse to accept election results that don’t end up in their favor.

He’s already worked with a group that fought for more abortion restrictions in North Carolina; the same group supported a now-repealed bathroom bill that prohibited transgender people from using the proper bathroom in public spaces.

And with Donald Trump as his new Lord and Savior, he’s also perpetuating the lie that any election that doesn’t turn out the way you want must be the result of theft... which is incredibly rich given his own history. In 2021, his Helper Wife published a book called Thirteen Ballots: The Manufactured Scandal That Overturned an Election (affiliate link), in which she describes the conspiracy that took her husband out of Congress. (She says they experienced “the nastiest political trickery imaginable.”)

In fact, when Harris announced his candidacy, he claimed in an overly dramatic video that “they manufactured a scandal to steal the election” from him. (Who’s “they”? Democrats, he insisted, with no evidence.)

Now, with the scandal in his rear view mirror, but with a pocket full of vengeance, he’s ready to push Christian Nationalism even further:

“Even in 2016 and in 2018, when I won, I felt at times … that I almost had to apologize for being a pastor,” Harris said. “No more is there any apology at all. Because I think the general public is recognizing that we’ve got to start having leaders that come with discernment”—a Christian term that means seeking God’s will.

He didn’t win in 2018. Literally no one was mad at him for being a pastor. They were merely critical of his sexism and bigotry. They were right.

There was a time not that long ago when someone like Harris would have been an anomaly in the GOP, but he’s now smack dab in the Republican Party’s mainstream, pushing a slew of conspiracy theories and lies, all in the name of Jesus, while he steers the country in a direction that directly limits women’s choices and restricts the civil liberties of LGBTQ people.

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