Baptist pastor and North Carolina congressional candidate Mark Harris. Image by First Baptist Church Indian Trail/YouTube

By Aiden Pink November 2, 2018

A Republican congressional candidate in a competitive race in North Carolina said in a sermon that there would be no peace in Israel unless Jews and Muslims converted to Christianity, CNN reported Friday.

Mark Harris, who served as a Baptist pastor in Charlotte until resigning last year to run for office, recounted in 2011 his visit to the Holy Land.

“You cannot be in that land, as powerful and as moving as it is, without realizing the incredible tension that is constantly in that land between the Palestinians and the Jews,” Harris said. “There will never be peace in Jerusalem until the day comes that every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

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Harris went on to say that no Jewish or Muslim resident of Jerusalem would find peace unless they accepted Jesus Christ.

“Jesus, when he went into Jerusalem, said, ‘I am the vine. I am the true vine,’ and until those that are called in Islam realize that and until those that are called in Judaism realize that, for that matter, until those that are caught in the religion of Christianity and are missing the personal relationship with Jesus Christ, realize that, there’ll never be peace in their soul or peace in their city,” he said.

CNN also found multiple other instances of Harris making Islamophobic remarks. One November 2010 sermon called Islam Satanic and “the great counterfeit of our generation… That’s why we’ve got to be so careful of political leaders who somehow just like to speak of it as one of the great world religions. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not.”

A Harris campaign spokesperson did not return CNN’s request for comment. The polling website FiveThirtyEight calls the race between Harris and Democrat Dan McCready in North Carolina’s 9th district a “toss-up.”

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected]

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