A pastor runs for Senate

Reverend Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Kansas, is running for US Senate as a Democrat. The megachurch spans nine campuses with twenty-three thousand members.

Kansas hasn't elected a Democrat since 1932

Hamilton is attempting something political observers once dismissed as far-fetched. Kansas is considered ruby red, with a conservative base that leans towards right-wing leaders like President Donald Trump.

Faith leaders running as Democrats

Approximately nine Democratic faith leaders, seminary students and Sunday school teachers are running for federal office in the November third election. Many compete in states like Iowa, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee.

Can faith appeal to red state voters?

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

Evangelicals have shifted right

More than sixty percent of Americans identify as Christian. In two thousand twenty-four, the Pew Research Center found eighty-five percent of white evangelicals leaned towards the Republican Party, up from sixty-five percent in nineteen ninety-four.

Republicans cultivated Christian votes

The Republican Party began cultivating Christian votes largely in the nineteen seventies and eighties. Faith leaders like mega-pastor Jerry Falwell founded groups like the Moral Majority in nineteen seventy-nine and the Christian Coalition of America…

Trump's evangelical support is slipping

Trump has harnessed the evangelical voting bloc, pledging to protect its interests. But his approval rating among white evangelicals slipped from seventy-eight percent in two thousand twenty-five to sixty-nine percent this year.

Progressive Christians have deep roots

Faith leaders running as Democrats are tapping into a long lineage of religious advocacy on the left.

The abolitionist movement was religious

Political scientist Ryan Burge traces the religious left to the nineteenth-century fight over slavery. The abolitionist movement was largely a religious movement involving liberal and progressive Christians in the North.

The Social Gospel movement

In the early nineteen hundreds, theologians and pastors sought to apply Christian principles to issues like poverty and social justice.

The religious left is more diverse

While the religious right is mostly Protestants and Catholics, the religious left has stronger representation among other faith groups. Muslims, Jews and African-American Christians lean overwhelmingly left.

Democrats resist overt religiosity

Democrats have resisted being overtly religious as their coalition has grown more diverse. Sixty-six percent of Muslims and sixty-nine percent of Jewish voters identified with Democrats as of two thousand twenty-four.

Religious voters are shrinking

In two thousand six, roughly twenty-three percent of Americans identified as white evangelical Christians, but that fell to thirteen percent as of two thousand twenty-four. The religiously unaffiliated rose to twenty-eight percent.

Love thy neighbour as a campaign theme

Democratic candidates have embraced similar themes emphasizing values like love thy neighbour from the Gospels. They frame issues like income inequality, minimum wage and healthcare as social justice issues motivated by religion.

Hamilton's vision of loving thy neighbour

When accepting his party's nomination on August fourth, Hamilton tied the biblical command to civic responsibility. Loving thy neighbour means making sure kids don't go hungry and people can afford healthcare.

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

Republicans attack Democratic faith

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

Pastors in Name Only

At a conservative religious summit in July, Joe Mitchell, a Republican in Iowa, accused Democratic candidates of misrepresenting their credentials.

“I call them PINOs. They're not real pastors, right? They don't profess the true gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Talarico leads in Texas polling

Several Democratic faith leaders are enjoying closer-than-expected races in deep-red states. A Marist poll this month found James Talarico leading Republican Ken Paxton with forty-seven percent support to Paxton's forty-five percent.

Hamilton slightly ahead in Kansas

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

Hamilton aims to pastor while serving

At sixty-two, Hamilton is attempting something very few have done. Only one senator in the last one hundred years has continued to pastor a church while in office: Reverend Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia.