Can religion help Democrats win in red states? These faith leaders hope so

Published On 19 Oct 2026

In the landscape of religious life in the United States, Reverend Adam Hamilton has a massive pulpit.

The organisation he founded, the Church of the Resurrection, is considered the largest United Methodist congregation in the country. It spans nine campuses and 23,000 members. Hamilton himself has authored more than 30 books.

But this November, Hamilton is eyeing an even bigger platform: the US Congress.

A mild-mannered pastor with square glasses and a receding swoop of white hair, Hamilton is hoping to achieve what many political observers once dismissed as far-fetched.

He is hoping to win a seat representing Kansas in the US Senate – as a Democrat.

Not since 1932 has a Democrat won a Senate race in the Midwestern state. Kansas is considered ruby red, with a conservative base that leans towards right-wing leaders like President Donald Trump.

But Hamilton is part of a trend in the 2026 midterm election cycle. Largely in right-leaning states, several Christian leaders have stood for election as Democrats, bucking the stereotype that religion is the domain of conservatives.

Approximately nine Democratic faith leaders, seminary students and Sunday school teachers are in the running for federal office in the November 3 election. At least a dozen were on the ballot during the primary elections earlier this year.

Many are competing in states like Iowa, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, which have a history of backing right-wing candidates in statewide elections.

Their campaigns have raised questions about whether appealing to Christian voters can be a path to victory for Democrats in the hotly contested midterms.

Reverend Shannon Fleck, executive director of Faithful America, a progressive Christian advocacy organisation, believes some voters have grown disenchanted with the Republican claim on religious values.

Democratic candidates, she argues, can offer an alternative.

"This is going to move the needle even more in red states because, in our homes, faith has been a part of our ecosystem for forever, but it’s also been manipulated by our leaders for forever," Fleck, an Oklahoma resident, said.

She added that faith-inspired Democratic candidates have "more opportunities for turnover" in right-leaning states, "because we are so intimately familiar with the other option".

Harnessing the evangelical bloc

More than 60 percent of Americans identify as Christian. But in the last three decades, white evangelical Protestants in particular have shifted steadily rightwards on the political spectrum.

In 2024, the Pew Research Center suggested that 85 percent of white evangelicals leaned towards the Republican Party, up from 65 percent in 1994.

Overall, 59 percent of Protestants, 52 percent of Catholics and 75 percent of Mormons identified with right-wing politics.

Experts say the Republican Party began cultivating Christian votes largely in the 1970s and 1980s. At the time, faith leaders like mega-pastor Jerry Falwell had grown disillusioned with the social policies of left-wing leaders like Jimmy Carter, himself a Sunday school teacher.

They founded groups like the Moral Majority in 1979 and the Christian Coalition of America in 1987 to support issues popular on the religious right, including restricting access to abortion and limiting the government's reach.

Trump himself has harnessed that evangelical voting bloc, pledging to protect its interests while in office. Since starting his second term, Trump has established a "religious liberty commission" and pledged to eradicate "anti-Christian bias".

But findings from the Pew Research Center have suggested Trump's hold on the white evangelical vote has started to wane.

As of January, the president's approval rating among the demographic had slipped from 78 percent in 2025 to 69 percent this year.

Only 40 percent of respondents expressed confidence that Trump has acted ethically while in office.

Democrats are hoping to capitalise on Trump's falling approval ratings in the midterm elections, which will decide which party controls the two chambers of Congress.

Deep left-wing roots

Faith leaders running as Democrats are not new. If anything, experts say the candidates are tapping into a long lineage of religious advocacy on the left.

“There have always been progressive Christians throughout American history,” said Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, the vice president of programmes and strategy at the Interfaith Alliance, an advocacy organisation for religious freedom.

In his work as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a research nonprofit, Graves-Fitzsimmons studies the intersection of religion and politics.

He has tracked the influence of religious leaders to a range of critical moments in US history, from the civil rights movement – with figures like Reverend Martin Luther King Jr – to the push for women's rights.

Even conservative groups like the Moral Majority once participated in efforts like the environmental movement, championing a Christian responsibility to engage in the stewardship of nature.

"Every movement that we associate with the left or progressive movement in American history has been full of Christians, as well as people of other faiths and the non-religious,” Graves-Fitzsimmons explained.

Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Washington University in St Louis, traces the roots of the religious left even further back in US history, to the 19th-century fight over slavery.

"The abolitionist movement was largely a religious movement involving a lot of liberal and progressive Christians in the North,” Burge said.

Fast forward to the turn of the 20th century, and Burge said the country witnessed its "Social Gospel movement", a period in the early 1900s when theologians and pastors sought to apply Christian principles to issues like poverty and social justice.

“The best-selling book in America was A Theology for the Social Gospel for three years in a row around the turn of the century, which is a very liberal Christian book," Burge added.

But while the religious right tends to be a more homogeneous group, Burge explained that the religious left is more diverse, with faiths outside of Christianity better represented.

“On the religious right, it’s almost all Protestants and Catholics,” he said.

The religious left, meanwhile, has stronger representation among other faith groups. “You also have Muslims, who are a strong Democratic constituency, as well as Jews," Burge said, noting that African-American Christians also lean overwhelmingly left.

A shifting relationship to religion

There can be disadvantages to appealing to Christian voting blocs. Experts say Democrats have resisted being overtly religious in recent years as their coalition has grown more diverse.

Some 66 percent of Muslims identified with Democrats as of 2024. The number was 69 percent among Jewish voters.

“Candidates being overly religious is not a huge turn-on for a lot of Democrats,” Burge said. “They want strong separation of church and state. They don’t want their politicians to sound like Republicans. They don’t want to talk about Jesus.”

Burge also pointed out that the number of overtly religious voters may be shrinking.

In 2006, roughly 23 percent of Americans identified as white evangelical Christians, but that has fallen to 13 percent as of 2024, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

The proportion of religiously unaffiliated Americans, meanwhile, has risen to 28 percent.

The shift has spurred questions about how powerful the religious voting bloc is, particularly for Democrats.

“I would even argue it’s probably the smallest it’s ever been in the last five years,” Burge said.

Still, several religious leaders have entered this year's midterm race, hoping to help the Democratic Party retake control of Congress.

They include figures like Hamilton in Kansas and Robb Ryerse in Arkansas, who founded their own churches.

Others, like Frederick Haynes III of Texas, Sarah Trone Garriott of Iowa, Anna Golladay of Tennessee and Lindsay James of Iowa, serve as faith leaders and pastors.

A couple – including Ben McAdams in Utah and Chaz Molder in Tennessee – have touted their work as Sunday school teachers. And then there is James Talarico, a seminary student in Texas locked in a heated race for the state's open Senate seat.

'Love thy neighbour'

Several candidates have embraced similar themes on the campaign trail in the lead-up to the November 3 vote.

Burge has noticed a heavy emphasis on values like "Love your neighbour as yourself" from the Gospels.

“There’s a lot of emphasis on the dignity of each person, in terms of income inequality as a moral issue. That filters down to things like minimum wage, workers’ rights, unions – but also to things like healthcare and health insurance,” Burge said.

The religious left, he added, "cast these issues not as economic issues but as social justice issues motivated by religion".

On the night Talarico won the Democratic nomination, the 37-year-old stood in front of a throng of supporters, some of whom waved signs emblazoned with the phrase "Love thy Neighbor".

It was a theme he reprised in his victory speech, tying the phrase to an embrace of diversity.

“My faith teaches me to love my neighbour as myself. Not just my neighbour who looks like me, not just my neighbour who prays like me, not just my neighbour who votes like me," Talarico declared to the crowd. "I am called to love all of my neighbours the way I love myself.”

Hamilton struck a similar chord when accepting his party's nod on August 4, after he won the Democratic primary for Kansas's Senate seat. He used the same biblical command to encourage civic responsibility.

“Loving your neighbour includes making sure that kids don’t go to bed hungry at night. Loving your neighbour is making sure people who are living in your midst who are marginalised, or made to feel small or belittled, are not belittled," Hamilton said.

"Loving your neighbour means making sure people don’t have to choose between making their house payment and making sure they can get healthcare.”

Religion as a battlefield

Religion has also been a springboard for attack during the midterm race, with both Democrats and Republicans pointing to Christian scripture to accuse their opponents of moral failings.

At the Iowa State Fair in August, Lindsay James, a Presbyterian minister running for Iowa's 2nd congressional district, painted her opponents as unfeeling by drawing on a biblical tale: the parable of the good Samaritan.

In the story, two religious leaders pass an injured man without stopping to help him. Finally, a Samaritan comes to his aid.

“That, to me, sounds a lot like what is happening in Washington, DC, right now,” James said. “Those who have the power and the authority to actually do something are turning a blind eye and walking away from people who are hurting and harmed.”

Republicans, for their part, have used the religious backgrounds of some Democratic candidates as a line of attack. Several have framed their opponents' beliefs as unorthodox or questioned their Christian faith.

At a conservative religious summit in July, Joe Mitchell, James's Republican rival in Iowa, even accused her of misrepresenting her credentials.

"She's also one of these people that calls herself a pastor, just like James Talarico, just like Sarah Trone Garriott," Mitchell said.

"I have a nickname for them. I call them PINOs," he added, defining the acronym as "Pastors in Name Only".

"They're not real pastors, right? They don't profess the true gospel of Jesus Christ."

Talarico has faced similar accusations in the Senate race in Texas. On a podcast, his opponent, Republican Ken Paxton, denounced the Democrat's beliefs as “antithetical to historical Christian views".

"They are literally the opposite of Christianity," Paxton said.

'Looking for authenticity'

It is unclear whether the religious backgrounds of Democrats like Talarico will resonate with voters when it comes time to cast a ballot.

Burge believes Democrats campaigning on their Christian bona fides could enjoy a boost in certain parts of the country, but not in many traditional left-wing strongholds.

“That’s not going to be a winning message in some places, like California or Massachusetts,” Burge explained. “It might work in a purplish state in the Midwest, but it’s not going to work in a deep-blue place."

Graves-Fitzsimmons, meanwhile, suggested that religion could be an avenue to build connection with voters.

“I think people are looking for authenticity right now," he said. "There’s a wide, open field for those who can speak truthfully, honestly, compassionately and from a place of faith that’s not trying to impose your faith on others.”

So far, several Democratic faith leaders on this year's midterm ballot are enjoying closer-than-expected races in their deep-red states.

Recent polling suggests candidates like Talarico and Hamilton are neck-in-neck with their Republican adversaries, even exceeding them in some measures of support.

A Marist poll this month found Talarico was leading Paxton with 47 percent support, compared with the Republican's 45 percent.

An Emerson College poll from September suggested Hamilton was also slightly ahead of his opponent, incumbent Senator Roger Marshall, by two points.

The stakes are high for Democrats, particularly in the Senate. The party needs every victory it can get to achieve a majority in the 100-seat chamber, given that only a third of the Senate's seats are on the ballot this November.

But the stakes are perhaps even higher for Hamilton, who at 62 is attempting to achieve something very few have done. Only one senator in the last 100 years has continued to pastor a church while in office, as Hamilton intends to do.

That senator is Reverend Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from another battleground state, Georgia.