During a campaign swing through the battleground state of North Carolina, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke Oct. 23 from the pulpit of a 7,000-member African-American Baptist church.
The former secretary of state reminded worshippers at Union Baptist Church in Durham, N.C., of Christ’s command for Christians to love one another.
“We are not just urged. We are commanded,” she said in a video excerpt. “Jesus said it was the greatest of his commandments.”
Clinton, a lifelong Methodist, said she often talked about those verses when she served occasionally as a Sunday school teacher in the past.
“I taught on that lesson, and I taught both sides of it,” she said. “Love your neighbor as yourself. Sometimes the hardest part is the second part.”
“It’s a hard commandment to obey,” Clinton confessed. “Some days it’s really hard for me.”
Recent polls show evangelical Christians sharply divided by race in the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential election. A survey released last week by Public Religion Research Institute/Brookings found that nearly 70 percent of white evangelical voters supported Republican candidate Donald Trump, while three fourths of non-white voters are behind Clinton.
Led by Pastor Kenneth Ray Hammond, Union Baptist Church is affiliated with American Baptist Churches/USA, American Baptist Churches of the South, the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the Lott Carey Global Christian Missional Community.
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