WASHINGTON — In an Iowa swing district, Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott recounts how her work as a hospital chaplain and a Lutheran minister set her on a path to public service.

In deep-red Alaska, the Rev. Matt Schultz says his run as a Democrat for the state’s at-large House seat is part of his calling to “feed the hungry, comfort the grieving and stand up to bullies.”

And in Texas, Presbyterian seminarian and Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico blends progressive politics with lines from Scripture, a combination that has made him a viral sensation and a fundraising juggernaut.

As Democrats look beyond 2024’s lacerating losses, some candidates are challenging the idea that religion has no place in an increasingly secular party. They include Iowa state Auditor Rob Sand, a Bible-quoting Lutheran running for governor, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, whose public identity is intertwined with his Jewish faith.

The 2026 midterm elections will also feature a growing cast of Democratic contenders who studied theology, or serve as members of the clergy, including Trone Garriott, Schultz and Talarico. Vote Common Good, which helps progressive candidates connect with evangelical Christian and Catholic voters, is tracking about 30 white Christian clergy members who are running as Democrats, mostly in right-leaning and conservative regions, according to Axios.

Trone Garriott, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, says serving in elective office is another way to show up for her community. A member of the Iowa legislature since 2021, she is among several Democrats vying to take on Republican Rep. Zach Nunn in the purple-shaded 3rd District. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the race, which could help determine control of the House, as Lean Republican.

“Faith is about how we live together, and so is politics,’’ Trone Garriott said in an interview. “There is a sense that your politics and … your faith are private and personal, and you need to keep them separate. But your faith … shapes who you are and how you engage in the world.“

Progressive Christians have increasingly been willing to talk openly about how their faith undergirds what they view as a moral obligation to speak out against the policies of President Donald Trump and his GOP allies in Congress. Schultz invoked the parable of the Good Samaritan, noting that the villains of the story aren’t the robbers who attack the traveler but rather those who walk by and do nothing.

“It’s important to remember that if someone is hoping to just be an innocent bystander, that’s not an option,’’ said Schultz, the pastor of Anchorage’s First Presbyterian Church. “You’re either helping or you’re part of the problem.”

But Schultz, who is challenging Republican freshman Nick Begich in a state Trump carried by 13 points in 2024, said he’s committed to finding common ground with those whose politics differ from his.

“In my church, we have Trump supporters and people that voted for Kamala Harris and people that voted for unknown (candidates), because oftentimes they don’t tell me,” he said in an interview. “It shows me that nothing ever gets done unless we reach across the aisle and build bridges to those who disagree with us and humbly listen to their opinion.”

Inside Elections rates his race against Begich as Likely Republican.

Talarico, who serves in the Texas House and is pursuing a Master of Divinity degree, also views religion as a way to reconcile political divisions.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to vote for me because of my faith,” he said in an interview, “but I do think it opens a door to talk about shared values and shared traditions and shared dreams for the future.”

Faith, Talarico said, can help Democrats reach white evangelicals, who have long been aligned with the GOP. Both Trone Garriott and Talarico flipped Republican-held seats in their first elections.

“It’s a bridge to people who maybe feel alienated by the Democratic Party,” said Talarico, who faces Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the primary for the seat of longtime GOP Sen. John Cornyn.

In addition to breaking down political and cultural barriers with white Republican Christians, quoting Scripture and invoking the Bible can also help Democrats win over the growing population of Latino evangelicals in Texas and around the nation, Talarico said.

“That community is really worried about the extremism that they’ve seen from the current administration on immigration, but at the same time, they feel that the Democratic Party has been hostile to people of faith and to our cultural values,’’ he said. “Me being unapologetic about my faith creates an opportunity for connection.”

A ‘spiritual crisis’

White evangelical voters began streaming toward the GOP in the late 1970s, when the newly powerful Christian right formed an alliance with Ronald Reagan that propelled him to the presidency. In the Trump era, that bond has endured.

But Trump also made major in-roads with Christian voters beyond white evangelicals: He won 55% of the Catholic vote in 2024, a percentage bump of 6 points from 2020, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. And he made gains among Hispanic and Asian Protestant voters.

Meanwhile, voters who identify as agnostic, atheist or have no specific religious affiliation voted overwhelmingly for Harris, as did Black Protestant voters.

Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, the only working clergy member serving in the chamber, has been pressing to shift those numbers by encouraging fellow Democrats to discuss their faith in the context of their politics. Warnock is the senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once led.

The nation is experiencing a “spiritual crisis,” Warnock said last week in a speech at the Center for American Progress.

“For too long, politicians in both parties have failed to center the people and the cycle of despair has led us further and further into the spiritual abyss,’’ he said. “Part of the reason, if we are honest, we got here is that our politics has only operated in the narrowest realm of the possible.”

Black clergy members have had more electoral success as Democrats in recent years. In addition to Warnock, the current Congress includes Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, an ordained Methodist minister from Missouri. And among the candidates running for the House is the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a Dallas-based pastor running for the seat Crockett is vacating.

White Democrats — from Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian, to Pete Buttigieg, an Episcopalian who made his faith a prominent part of his 2020 presidential campaign — have openly embraced religion. But doing so risks alienating the party’s secular base, said David Campbell, a professor at the University of Notre Dame and director of its Democracy Initiative.

“It’s common for political consultants to say that Democrats need to learn to speak to religious voters,’’ Campbell said. But “any Democrat who is espousing faith-filled language has to keep in mind that they have a lot of people in their base who are quite secular.”

While the new crop of devout progressives is more comfortable with open displays of faith in the public sphere, it isn’t always easy in a party that has long placed a premium on the separation of church and state.

“It’s pretty rare to have leaders in the Democratic Party who speak so openly (about faith),” Talarico told podcaster Joe Rogan in a recent conversation.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the grandson of a Baptist preacher from freely discussing his beliefs.

“That’s just the tradition that I was raised in, where religion is supposed to be something you talk about in public,” Talarico said. “It’s something you should bring to every part of your life.”

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