Meet Kamala Harris’s spiritual mentor: The radical pastor who suggested America was to blame for 9/11

Amos C Brown, who vice-president turned to after winning her party’s nomination, has history of controversial comments

When Kamala Harris learned that she was about to be catapulted into the front seat of the presidential race in July, there was just one man she wanted to speak to.
“Pastor, I called because I want you to pray for me, Doug [Emhoff], this country,” she told Amos C Brown, calling him shortly after he finished conducting a service at San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church.
Joe Biden had just dropped out of the contest after his disastrous debate performance, endorsing Ms Harris as his successor.
The vice-president has often relied on her pastor, Dr Brown, for strength and spiritual guidance.
“We exchanged pleasantries, I congratulated her because she’ll be a great president, and we had prayer,” Dr Brown told Sojourners Magazine.
“She was so gracious and thankful that I took the time.”
The man whose spiritual tutelage the presidential hopeful craves is a civil rights leader tutored by Martin Luther King with a history of controversial comments that are a potential source of embarrassment for Ms Harris as the race nears its conclusion.
Dr Brown outraged senior Democrats after the 9/11 attacks, when he appeared to blame the US for the terrorist atrocity that claimed the lives of almost 3,000 victims while speaking at a memorial service.
“America, is there anything you did to set up this climate?”, local media reported him asking in September 2001, just days after the two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
“America, America. What did you do – either intentionally or unintentionally – in the world order, in Central America, in Africa where bombs are still blasting?”
Nancy Pelosi, the California congresswoman, was reported to have been left in tears and pushed back on the remarks when it was her time to speak.
“The act of terrorism on September 11 put those people outside the order of civilised behaviour, and we will not take responsibility for that,” said Ms Pelosi, who would go on to become speaker of the House Representatives.
Two other senior Democrats, the late California senator Dianne Feinstein and former California governor Gray Davis, walked out during his remarks.
Paul Holm, the partner of Mark Bingham, who died while trying to storm the cockpit of a third plane hijacked by terrorists, was overheard saying: “This was supposed to be a memorial service.”
Ms Harris had been associated with Dr Brown for years by this point, having been introduced to him by Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco and her former boyfriend, in the 1990s.
She subsequently advised him on campaigning for a seat on the city’s board of supervisors.
As she climbed through a series of elected offices – California’s attorney general, senator, vice-president – she maintained that relationship.
Last year, she posted a photo of the pair of them on her Instagram account, saying it was an “honour to spend time with my pastor”.
She added: “He remains a source of inspiration to me always.”
Shortly after Ms Harris had accepted the Democrats’ nomination as presidential candidate at the party convention in August, Dr Brown headed onstage with the aid of a cane to deliver the closing prayer and round off the event.
He prayed for “blessings” for Ms Harris, her running mate, Tim Walz, and “upon the bright future they will bring to the future of America”, as balloons and confetti drifted from the ceiling of the United Centre in Chicago.
With the stakes higher than at any point in her political career, Ms Harris has not shied away from her pastor during the presidential campaign.
At the same time, Dr Brown has not stopped courting controversy. Earlier this year, he issued an apology after allegedly threatening a local business owner when he criticised a local Democrat.
Chino Yang had published a “diss track” on YouTube claiming that London Breed, mayor of San Francisco, was a “clown” and had turned the city into “zombie land” – a reference to its public drug use and overdoses.
In response, Dr Brown, a close ally of Ms Breed, threatened to “turn the black community against him”, Mr Yang claimed in a statement issued via a third party.
He also appeared to suggest something could happen to Mr Yang’s business or family, saying: “If anything happened to Yang’s small business or family, it wouldn’t be Rev Brown’s fault”, the San Francisco chronicle reported.
Dr Brown, who leads a local chapter of the NAACP, the black civil rights organisation, denied threatening Mr Yang but apologised for his comments.
“No one need question Third Baptist and Amos Brown’s integrity and track record of working together with all people, with regard to race, creed, sexual orientation,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle.
In 2021, Dr Brown, a member of a reparations task force examining how to compensate African-Americans for slavery, declared: “I know America. America is a racist country.”
Commentators have drawn comparisons between Dr Brown’s comments and those of Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
After the 9/11 attacks, Dr Wright, who officiated at the former president’s wedding, declared that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” because the US had supported “state terrorism” against Palestine.
In a series of provocative sermons, he also declared that African-Americans should sing “God damn America” instead of “God Bless America”, and said that the government had invented HIV as a way to commit genocide against minorities. Mr Obama cut ties with him ahead of the 2008 presidential election.
Dr Brown has been approached for comment via his church.