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

A Republican congressional candidate who said in a sermon that Jews and Muslims should convert to Christianity to create peace in Israel won his race for North Carolina’s 9th House District.

Mark Harris narrowly beat Democrat Dan McCready 49.4%-48.8% in the midterm election on Tuesday.

Harris expressed the importance of conversion for Israel and shared anti-Muslim sentiments in several sermons, CNN reported.

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“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,” he said in 2011, noting he had visited the Holy Land. “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.”

Harris also has a history of making Islamophobic comments, CNN revealed. In a 2010 sermon, he 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.”

Harris, who was backed by the Trump administration, served as a Baptist pastor in Charlotte until resigning last year to run for office. Republicans had held the 9th District seat since 1963, according to the New York Times. It was predicted to be a close race.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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