The Rev. Dr. Amos Brown was taking his usual Sunday afternoon nap in late July when a longtime congregant, Vice President Kamala Harris, called.

“Pastor, I need for you to pray for Doug, for me and for this nation,” Dr. Brown, pastor of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, recalled her saying. “I’ve decided to run for president.”

President Biden had announced only a few hours before that he was abandoning his re-election campaign, and he endorsed Ms. Harris almost immediately.

The prayer Dr. Brown, 83, offered was drawn from a Bible verse that Ms. Harris quotes often herself: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”

That quiet moment is a rare glimpse into the private spiritual life of Ms. Harris, whose biography embodies the multifaith, pluralistic and increasingly secular America she is bidding to lead. The daughter of a Hindu mother and a Christian father, she went on to marry a Jewish man in a ceremony that incorporated both Indian and Jewish traditions, according to local media reports at the time. The couple affixed a mezuza — a small scroll in a decorative case, signifying a Jewish home — on the door post of the vice-presidential residence in 2021, a first.

Ms. Harris is a person “who has gone through what it means to be living in a multifaith democracy in her own life,” said the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, who heads Interfaith Alliance.

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