Biden must push for a ceasefire in Gaza, or risk losing critical support, faith leaders warn

By Nicole Gaudiano and Rebecca Morin

Black and progressive faith leaders have always been in President Joe Biden’s corner, but they’re increasingly unhappy with his stance on the war between Israel and Hamas.

The president’s recent response to a protester calling for a ceasefire — that he’s “quietly working” with Israelis to get them significantly out of Gaza — was not what they have in mind.

“It's been well over two months and we've seen the existing strategy and approach lead to over 20,000 lives lost, largely civilians,” said The Rev. Michael McBride, a cofounder of the Black Church PAC and senior pastor of The Way Church in Berkeley, Calif. “Any effort needs to not be done quietly, in the shadows. It needs to be done publicly with the support of the world.”

The Rev. Dr. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, the new leader of the Rainbow Push Coalition civil rights organization, said “there comes a time when — I'm re-mixing Dr. King, now — ‘quietly working’ is also betrayal to human life.”

Liberal and Black faith leaders who are influential in helping elect Democrats have tried writing letters to Biden, holding vigils and church services and pleading with the Biden administration to call for an end to the violence. In November, more than 900 Black Christian faith leaders took out a full page ad in the New York Times, urging the president to press for a bilateral ceasefire.

Biden has repeatedly called on the Israelis to protect civilian life as they root out Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200. The administration pushed for the temporary pause in the conflict in November that led to the release of hostages and recently encouraged the Israelis to transition to a more targeted phase of the war.

But the administration's lack of support for an immediate ceasefire is a moral problem for faith leaders – and that could be a political problem for Biden.

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“People are angry right now,” said Kyle Cristofalo of Churches for Middle East Peace, a coalition of more than 30 national Christian denominations and organizations. “They're not convinced that the administration is doing enough to stop the violence right now.”

Most Americans (57%) say they disapprove of how Biden is addressing the conflict, while just one-third said they approve, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll published last month.

The critique of Biden on the war from Black faith leaders coincides with surveys of Black registered voters showing their support for the president has slipped to 63% in a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll published on Jan. 1 — down from 92% during the 2020 election, according to an analysis from Pew Research Center.

“It’s very difficult to be a surrogate for all the great things that the administration has done while we’re watching on our social media pages, every day, dead children who are dying because our tax dollars are raining bombs on their heads,” McBride said. “We don’t want to be…complicit with that. We want that to stop.”

The danger for Biden isn’t that Black voters will back his likely GOP rival, Donald Trump, who has support of 12% of Black voters. It’s that 20% of Black voters said they’ll back someone other than the two main presidential contenders. Or just not vote.

Young voters and those who are against the war, meanwhile, are losing enthusiasm for the president, said Shane Claiborne, an evangelical Christian leader and cofounder of the social justice group, Red-Letter Christians. People are trying to break through to the administration with nonviolent civil disobedience, marching in the streets, signing petitions and calling lawmakers, he said.

“I think it is stunning how many people want to see a ceasefire and how stubborn and difficult to convince Biden and (Secretary of State) Blinken and others in the administration,” Claiborne said. “It's very, very frustrating.”

‘No way they can support this administration’

The protest on Monday interrupted a speech Biden was giving at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, a historic Black church that was the scene of a racially motivated mass shooting in 2015. “If you really care about the lives lost here, then you should honor the lives lost and call for a ceasefire in Palestine,” the protester said before being ushered away.

The protesters’ chants of “ceasefire now” were overwhelmed by other attendees, shouting “four more years.” Biden said he understood the protesters’ passion.

An audience member defended Biden: “You’re an understanding person. They don’t realize that. You’re a good man.”

Other members later expressed alarm over the protest to reporters.

Quentin Fulks, Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager, said the president responded to protesters with “respect and decency.”

“Put that up against Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans who’ve time and again, exploited Americans’ differences for political gain, going so far as to erase our own history, ban books, or attack Americans for their identity if they don't like them,” he told reporters. “That’s the difference and the choice next November.”

Haynes, however, said young people are seeing the horrors of Gaza and an administration that is unwilling to call for a ceasefire. His 31-year-old daughter was disappointed hearing audience members say “four more years” instead of listening to what the protesters were saying.

Electorally, this issue is a “huge challenge” for Biden to overcome, he said.

“There are too many people I know, from Palestinians, African Americans, even some in the Jewish community who are very disappointed because they also recognize that what is going on in Gaza is nothing less than genocide,” he said. “And so I know too many who have basically said there's no way they can support this administration and that is something that we are going to have to fight to overcome.”

‘A wrong gamble’

In Georgia, a battleground state that Biden won in 2020 by less than a percentage of a point, the Atlanta-area New Birth Missionary Baptist Church recently held a service with Palestinian Christians in solidarity with Gaza. The service at the 10,000-member Black megachurch included an Orthodox priest leading prayers, choir members wearing keffiyehs, a Zoom performance from a children’s choir from Gaza – and the senior pastor, Jamal Bryant, calling for the world to insist on a ceasefire.

Bryant told The Messenger that Biden has a lot at stake with Black voters, in particular, and he is “getting ready to gamble his election” on this issue.

“To make these political missteps in the shadow of a looming election is a wrong gamble,” he said, adding that the president has also failed to give his administration direction in dealing with other world issues, like the strife in Congo. “I think this is gonna cost him sorely unless he owns it, and shifts it.”

‘That's not a moral response

Some Democrats in Congress have been pressuring Biden to shift course, calling for conditions on further aid to Israel. As emergency aid to Israel is pending in Congress, the administration moved forward with weapons sales to Israel, drawing intense criticism from some liberal Democratic senators.

Black faith leaders met with White House officials before moving forward with their New York Times ad and there’s been “some engagement” since then, said McBride. But they still feel “disheartened and troubled” about this “very consequential” issue to the voter base.

In 2020, the Black Church PAC – led by a group of Black Christian leaders from across the country – ran multiple engagement campaigns in battleground states and worked to get “souls to the polls.” Biden’s actions will help determine the intensity and the ability of their work to take root in Black communities in 2024, he said.

“We don't just want to continue to be told that we don't have any political choice because Donald Trump is on the other side of the ticket, so we should just be okay with genocide,” McBride said. “That's not a moral response to people who are raising a moral concern.”

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