Though the religious left showed up in midterms, not everyone sees a new trend
Progressive mainline Protestant clergy and seminarians won congressional seats in the U.S. midterms, campaigning as Democrats with messages rooted in the social Gospel. Candidates James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas drew on Christian teachings about loving neighbors and opposing injustice. Commentators say frustration with the Trump administration and candidates’ religious backgrounds helped Democrats appeal to voters in traditionally Republican states. Analysts caution that the clergy candidates’ wins do not yet prove a lasting religious-left movement, though some see them as a counterweight to Christian nationalism.
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The 2026 midterms brought several faith-forward Democratic candidates—many with Protestant ministry backgrounds—to office, including in traditionally Republican states. Supporters see their success as a possible revival of the religious left, while scholars caution that a few victories do not show a broad shift in an electorate where religiously unaffiliated voters remain a major part of the Democratic base.
The campaign season followed months of public action by clergy and other faith leaders opposing the Trump administration, including protests against immigration enforcement in Minnesota and legal challenges framed around religious liberty. Baptist pastor Brian Kaylor said this activity reflected a renewed public voice among mainline Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders, and that the religious left’s reemergence did not begin on Election Day.
At least half a dozen mainline Protestant ministers ran as Democrats and won in the November 3 midterms, campaigning with language rooted in the social Gospel. Kaylor said messages such as “Matthew 25” and “Love thy neighbor” appealed to voters seeking an alternative to what he described as political corruption, moral hypocrisy and the glorification of violence.
James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, won a Texas Senate seat, becoming the first Democrat in more than three decades to represent the state in the U.S. Senate. In his victory speech, he invoked his grandfather, a Baptist preacher, and described Jesus as a “barefoot rabbi” who loved his neighbors and challenged injustice.
In Kansas, United Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton also won a Senate seat. He quoted Jesus’ Golden Rule in his victory speech and told the Associated Press that faith was central to his life and therefore something he felt compelled to discuss.
Adam Russell Taylor, an ordained Baptist minister and president of Sojourners, said the candidates presented their Christianity authentically by emphasizing love of neighbor. He said their election could offer a counterexample to the Christian right and potentially challenge Christian nationalism’s influence in politics.
Political scientist Geoffrey Layman said the results reflect Democrats’ need to recruit candidates who fit traditionally red states. In those states, he argued, openly religious candidates may fare better than highly secular candidates or Democratic socialists.
Ryan Burge, who studies religious demographics, was skeptical that the wins mark a new religious-left movement. He said the religious left has long existed, especially in mainline Protestant denominations, and that what has changed is some Democrats’ greater willingness to speak openly about faith; he also cautioned against reading a handful of victories as evidence of a broader electorate shift.
Burge noted that religiously unaffiliated Americans make up a substantial part of the Democratic base, while mainline Protestants account for a smaller share of the population than they did two decades ago. John White, an emeritus political science professor, was more open to the possibility of growth, describing the social Gospel’s renewed appeal as “a seed that could grow into something bigger.”
White said Trump’s approval rating fell below 30% in the weeks before the midterms and argued that the president’s actions helped push people such as Hamilton toward the Democratic Party. White said Democrats were also responding to a longstanding difficulty connecting with religious voters and frequent churchgoers.
Michael Wear, head of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, said Trump’s combative style created an opening for Democrats to renew attention to moral language and character in public life. Wear argued that the candidates’ faith-infused rhetoric could also offer a framework for their work in Congress.
Christian social teaching, political participation, and religious nationalism
Christian social teaching calls Catholics to participate actively in political life, bringing moral convictions into public debate for the common good. But it does not identify the Christian faith with a nation, a political party, or a project of cultural domination. The key distinction is between public witness shaped by faith and religious nationalism that treats political power or national identity as the measure of religious belonging. The Church’s sources support the first and warn against confusing it with political or cultural hegemony; they do not offer a single formal definition of “religious nationalism.”
Catholic teaching does not regard faith as merely private. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says that lay Catholics should carry their Christian conscience into public responsibilities, and identifies voting and other forms of civic participation as ways to help shape political choices toward the common good. It names goods such as peace, freedom, respect for human life, justice, solidarity, and care for the environment. Political engagement is therefore not a departure from Christian life: it is one place where Christian moral responsibility is exercised.
Benedict XVI describes this participation as a lay vocation: Catholics should offer reasoned convictions in democratic debate and seek broad agreement in defense of human life, freedom, truth, family life, solidarity, and the common good. At the same time, he states that Christians do not seek political or cultural hegemony. In other words, the aim is to serve society and bear witness—not to make political control itself proof of Christian success.
Christians do not seek political or cultural hegemony.
That distinction matters because political participation can be both vigorous and non-dominating. Catholics may advocate laws and policies they believe protect human dignity, but they should do so through civic argument and lawful democratic processes, not by treating opponents as outside the nation or denying their right to participate. The CDF describes the Church’s role as illuminating consciences, not exercising political power or eliminating Catholics’ freedom of judgment on contingent political questions.
Catholic pluralism does not mean that every moral claim is equally sound or that faith must be excluded from public life. The CDF rejects the idea that a Christian’s conscientious participation disqualifies him or her from politics; it calls such exclusion a form of “intolerant secularism.” At the same time, Catholic political involvement must serve the whole person and the common good, rather than seek privilege for Catholics as a group.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church also distinguishes the choices of individual Christians from the Christian community as such. Joining a party or political alliance is a personal decision, within the limits of compatibility with Christian faith and values. Catholics should not claim that their own party preference is identical with the Church’s authority. The community’s task is to assess its country’s situation in the light of the Gospel and to foster judgment through sincere dialogue oriented toward the common good.
This guards against two opposite errors. Secular exclusion says religious convictions have no legitimate place in public reasoning. Religious partisanship treats one party, faction, or political leader as the exclusive representative of Christianity. Catholic teaching rejects the first while cautioning against the second: faith should inform political action, but no party’s platform exhausts the Gospel or automatically speaks for the Church.
“Religious nationalism” can describe different movements, so the label alone does not settle whether a particular case is just or unjust. A person may love a country, value its religious inheritance, and want public life to respect religious freedom without making the nation an object of worship or seeking domination over others. The Catholic sources affirm civic responsibility and allow religious convictions to be brought into public life.
The concern arises when religious identity is fused with national or political identity in a way that makes one party, leader, or ethnic-religious group appear to own the nation—or when state power is used to impose religious conformity, marginalize other citizens, or claim that political victory is itself the triumph of the faith. Those features conflict with the sources’ insistence on the common good, free civic participation, and the Church’s refusal to seek political or cultural hegemony. This is an application of the principles in the sources, not a definition of every movement that has been called religious nationalist.
A useful test is to ask whether a political movement’s religious language leads toward service, protection of human dignity, solidarity, and cooperation—or toward exclusion, coercion, and the identification of the faith with a single political project. The sources support the former as a legitimate expression of Christian participation; they give grounds for caution about the latter.
The supplied magisterial texts speak in different historical registers. Leo XIII taught that Catholics should work so that the Gospel’s influence reaches the laws and institutions of nations, and he urged support for public leaders who respected the Church’s rights and served the common good. He also warned Catholics against withdrawing from public affairs.
The 2002 CDF document makes an important distinction: Christian moral engagement is not the same as “confessionalism,” and the Church’s role in political life is not to take political power. It affirms the rightful autonomy of the temporal order—the proper sphere of civic and political affairs—while insisting that Catholics cannot split their moral lives into a religious private sphere and an ethically unrelated public one.
These sources should be read together rather than reduced to a simple choice between a “Christian state” and religion-free politics. The enduring claim is that faith has public consequences and that Catholics should work for justice and the common good. The contemporary formulation also emphasizes pluralism, political freedom, and the Church’s distinct role. The supplied texts do not resolve every question about particular constitutional arrangements or movements; they do provide criteria for judging them.
Catholic political participation is neither withdrawal from public life nor automatic allegiance to a supposedly Christian political movement. It calls for informed judgment, participation in civic life, cooperation with others, and a willingness to test political claims against the Gospel and the common good. A Catholic should be wary both of demands to hide faith from public reasoning and of claims that one party or national project uniquely embodies the faith.
The central balance is clear: Christians should bring their faith into political life, but should not turn the nation or the pursuit of political power into a substitute for the Gospel.