The Political Throne Put to the Test in the Midterm Elections: Faith as a Battleground in American Politics
The U.S. midterm elections are framed as an unusually consequential contest shaped by the complex role of faith in politics. Newly elected Senator Adam Hamilton cited biblical teachings, while Florida Governor-elect Byron Donalds thanked Jesus Christ in his victory speech. The political standoff between Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa and Greg Abbott highlights how Catholic identity is shared across opposing sides.
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The article presents the 2026 midterms as a contest over how religious faith should shape American public life. It contrasts candidates who invoke faith to widen civic inclusion and challenge economic power with figures who use it to define national identity and political loyalty, while portraying Catholic voters as divided rather than aligned with either party.
The article highlights several politicians’ religious references. Methodist pastor and newly elected Kansas senator Adam Hamilton cited the Bible, while Florida Governor-elect Byron Donalds opened his victory speech by thanking Jesus Christ. It also notes the shared Catholic identity of Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa and her political opponent, Greg Abbott.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, whom the article describes as the first Muslim state senator in U.S. history, used the Arabic phrases Inshallah (“God willing”) and Alhamdulillah (“Praise be to God”) in his victory remarks. He rejected the idea that his name or faith explained voters’ economic difficulties and pointed to support he had received from people in churches, synagogues, veterans’ halls, and union halls.
Texas Senator-elect James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and former teacher, cast his win as a David-and-Goliath struggle against wealthy and powerful opponents. He said his faith and life experience had taught him to “always bet on the side of the underdog.”
The article interprets El-Sayed’s and Talarico’s religious language as a call to expand the civic community and challenge entrenched power. It contrasts that approach with its portrayal of Donald Trump’s political Christianity as nationalist and exclusionary, using the Bible more as a symbol of national belonging than as a guide to social justice or reconciliation.
It describes Vice President JD Vance’s Catholicism as a distinct strand of the conservative approach. According to the article, Vance adapts the concept of ordo amoris—an ordered hierarchy of love—to support an “America First” agenda, prioritizing family, neighbors, and the national community in a way the article says excludes foreigners.
The article’s central distinction is between faith used to tear down barriers and faith used to mark who belongs within the nation’s protective community. It characterizes the former as represented by El-Sayed and Talarico, and the latter by Trump and Vance.
The Catholic electorate is described as a bellwether of these competing currents, but not as a unified voting bloc. Citing polls and reporting by America Magazine and the National Catholic Reporter, the article says Catholic voters shifted politically compared with 2024 while remaining almost evenly divided between the two parties.
The article points to varied expressions of Catholic political life, including 12 bishops praying with Trump in the Oval Office shortly before the election, Hinojosa treating her faith as a moral compass, and conservative lawmakers such as Tom Emmer and Riley Moore speaking about the Rosary and sacramental practice. It presents these examples as evidence that Catholic identity does not automatically determine party affiliation.
The article also highlights the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, directed by senior adviser and televangelist Paula White. It portrays White as a point where religious influence, political power, and money intersect, and questions whether the office will promote religious protectionism or policies favoring wealthy people.
The proper relationship between Catholic faith and political authority
Catholic teaching holds together two truths: political authority is legitimate and has a proper, God-given responsibility to serve the common good; and the Church has a distinct spiritual mission that neither replaces civil government nor may be controlled by it. Catholics should participate in public life, bringing moral judgment and concern for human dignity to political choices. But no government, party, or political program is identical with the Kingdom of God, and civil authority is not absolute.
Political authority has a real purpose: to uphold justice and order in earthly society. The International Theological Commission describes legitimate civil power as serving the good of the people and mediating justice in the historical order. That authority is distinct from the Church’s pastoral and religious mission; Christ’s Kingdom is “not of this world,” and the Church must not confuse pastoral care with the political exercise of power.
The distinction does not mean that political life is morally self-contained or irrelevant to faith. Decisions about law, public policy, and civic life affect people and the common good, so they raise moral questions. The Church’s role is to teach and form consciences, not to take over the state or dictate every contingent political decision. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says that the Church’s social teaching is not an intrusion into the government of countries; it guides Catholics in acting morally and promoting the human person and the common good.
The distinction also protects the Church’s freedom. Civil authorities do not have jurisdiction to control the Church’s teaching, worship, or spiritual governance. The International Theological Commission says that political authority’s prerogatives are legitimate so long as it does not usurp God’s place; the Church’s teaching authority and mission remain distinct.
Catholics are not called to reject civil authority simply because it is civil. The New Testament passages cited by the International Theological Commission recognize legitimate political authority and its role in the public order. Yet the state is not the highest authority in every matter. The faithful owe ultimate obedience to God, and when a government demands what is contrary to God’s law, obedience to God takes precedence.
This is not a license to disregard laws merely because one dislikes them. The Catholic principle is more exacting: respect legitimate authority and the public order, while refusing commands that violate a higher moral obligation. The same source stresses that obedience to God is not inherently an attack on civic order.
Political participation is a proper vocation for lay Catholics, not a distraction from religious life. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith points to voting, public service, and other forms of civic participation as ways citizens can contribute to political decisions for the common good. It says lay Catholics should bring Christian values into public life while respecting the rightful autonomy of the temporal order and cooperating with others according to their abilities and responsibilities.
That participation should not be split into a “religious” life and a supposedly faith-free civic life. The same document teaches that conscience is one and indivisible: Catholics should not set aside moral responsibility when acting in public. Political engagement, on this account, is neither an attempt to impose a party platform as Church teaching nor a reason to exclude Christians from public debate.
“man cannot be separated from God, nor politics from morality.”
The document uses St. Thomas More as an example of fidelity to conscience alongside fidelity to legitimate authority. The point is not that every political dispute has a single, self-evident Catholic answer. Rather, political judgments must remain answerable to moral truth; they cannot be treated as morally neutral simply because they concern public policy.
Catholic teaching sets moral boundaries and goals; it does not settle every practical question about how to govern. The Church calls Catholics to defend human dignity and serve the common good, but many decisions involve contingent circumstances, competing practical considerations, and judgments about means. The CDF’s instruction explicitly says that the Church does not seek to eliminate Catholics’ freedom of opinion on contingent questions.
That leaves room for legitimate political disagreement among Catholics. People may differ about policies or institutional arrangements while sharing moral commitments. In a democracy, proposals can be freely discussed and examined; the CDF rejects both the idea that Catholic convictions disqualify people from public life and the reduction of Christian political engagement to “confessionalism”—the attempt to treat a political position as binding merely because it is presented as religious.
Similarly, the Church is not identical with any political party. Pope Leo XIII taught that the Church must not bind herself to a party or make her mission answerable to short-term political demands. He also held that the Church need not prescribe one particular form of government, provided religion and good morals are respected.
Catholic teaching rejects two opposite mistakes. One is to treat religion as something that must be excluded from public life, as if a citizen’s religious convictions could not contribute to debate about justice and the common good. The CDF calls that kind of exclusion intolerant secularism. The other mistake is to identify the Church’s mission with a political movement or to confuse the authority of the Church with the authority of the state.
The Church can therefore challenge public policies, advocate moral principles, and encourage Catholics to act politically, while recognizing that political authority has its own proper sphere. Catholics may seek a society more consistent with human dignity and moral truth, but they should not assume that every political disagreement is a contest between the Church and its enemies, or that a particular party speaks for the Church. The CDF describes the Church’s public intervention as instruction for consciences, not an exercise of political power.
In practical terms, the Catholic approach is to respect legitimate civil authority, participate responsibly in public life, judge political choices by moral principles, and preserve the distinction between Church and state. Faith should inform political responsibility, but political power cannot claim God’s place, and the Church should not become a political party or government.