Hillary Clinton greets members of the audience after speaking in Kansas City, Mo. Clinton, projecting a softer image, opens up about her faith

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Hillary Clinton spent the morning savaging Donald Trump as unfit to serve as commander in chief. She spent the evening presenting herself as the only religious candidate in a 2016 election that has utterly redrawn the usual partisan battle lines.

Making the case here on Thursday night to the annual session of the National Baptist Convention — a largely African American Christian denomination — that her faith has guided her since she spent her youth watching her father pray and her mother teach Sunday School, the Democratic nominee framed her task ahead as “transforming love into action."


Clinton, speaking to a cavernous convention hall audience, reminisced about her childhood minister taking her white suburban church group into inner-city Chicago to see black churches and, once, to listen to Martin Luther King, Jr.

It was a far cry from her usual half-hour Trump attack plan.

“I remember hearing Dr. King preach one of those well-known sermons, ’Staying Awake During the Revolution,'” she said, leading up to the crescendo of her uncharacteristically personal speech. “And then I stood in line along with everyone in that big hall just to shake his hand and look into his eyes. His words, the power of his example, affected me deeply and added to the lessons of my minister to face the world as it is, not as we might want it to be, but to commit ourselves to turning it into what it should be."

“So, thanks to my family and my church,” she said, “I embraced a social activist faith, a ‘roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty’ faith."

The speech was no one-off. Concerned that her affirmative message is not breaking through in a campaign that has largely been defined by her case against Trump, along with his own mistakes, Clinton’s team is mounting a newfound effort to present its candidate in a more positive — more human — light. And if she can peel off faith voters skeptical of Trump’s religious bona fides, so much the better.

On Thursday, that included a post on the Humans of New York website, where a disarmingly candid Clinton acknowledged that many perceive her as cold or aloof.

And addresses like Thursday’s — another attempt to promote a softer Clinton — will now be front-and-center for the candidate who is viewed favorably by just 42 percent of likely voters, according to a recent CNN/ORC survey. She’ll deliver three more “Stronger Together” speeches branded with her campaign slogan and focused on her central values in the coming weeks, communications director Jennifer Palmieri said on the candidate's flight to Kansas City. Coming up next, starting Tuesday: policy-based talks on building an inclusive economy, on national service, and on working for families and children.

Thursday’s speech in Kansas City provided a look at the latest attempt in a long line of Clinton’s efforts to project a new image or message.

Quoting scripture, Clinton depicted her animating principle as “trying to live up to the responsibility described by the Prophet Micah, ’that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.’ Humility is not something that you hear about much in politics, is it? But we should. None of us is perfect."

“We need a president who understands the role of faith and communities of faith have always played in moving our country toward justice,” she said. “A president who will pray with you and for you."

The new push isn’t just about painting Clinton as a softer figure. Her political advisers have been concerned that framing the election as a referendum on Trump -- a strategy that extended to her campaign ads and those of her supporting super PAC -- was allowing him too much room to improve, especially ahead of the debates.

Without mentioning Trump’s name here, Clinton still went after him repeatedly, painting the Republican nominee as a threat to American values to the churchgoing crowd.

“Our nation’s values are being questioned in this election. We are facing a candidate with a long history of racial discrimination in his business, who traffics in toxic conspiracy theories like the lie that President Obama is not a true American,” she said. “He doesn’t even respect all Americans. How can he serve all Americans?"

And in a speech billed as nonpolitical, Clinton touched on her domestic policy proposals, singling out those aimed at African Americans: her push for gun control, clean water in Flint, Michigan, protecting voting rights and criminal justice reform.

Nonetheless, Thursday’s Clinton was a far more introspective one than voters are accustomed to seeing, starting with the Humans of New York post in which she did a bit of self-diagnosis.

“I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that’s a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don’t want to seem ‘walled off.’ And if I create that perception, then I take responsibility,” she wrote. “I don’t view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can’t blame people for thinking that."

Clinton rarely brings up her faith on the trail, except on occasion to rebut her opponent. But when she does, it can provide some of the more revealing moments of her campaign. The Missouri address was no exception.

“We are not asked to love each other, not urged or requested, we are commanded to love,” she told the many pastors in the crowd. “Indeed, Jesus made it his greatest command. When I used to teach the occasional Sunday School class, I often taught on that lesson. That’s a hard commandment to obey, sometimes it’s really hard for me. But in so many ways, all of you have answered that call. I’ve been privileged to see your love in action with my own eyes."

And she acknowledged the change of pace, referring to the talk as “something that doesn’t always come naturally to a midwestern Methodist."

“Sometimes people ask me, ‘Are you a praying person?,’” she said to knowing laughter, playing the role of politician speaking to an adoring crowd that knew just what was coming. "And I tell them, ‘If I wasn’t before, one week in the White House or on a campaign trail would have turned me into a praying person.’"