DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) \u2014 In polite company or otherwise, the Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott is very comfortable talking to people about religion and politics.<\/p>\n
She delivered an impassioned sermon last Sunday encouraging the people in the pews at Grace Lutheran Church to welcome strangers as Jesus did. The day before, she campaigned for Congress in rural Iowa, decrying Medicaid cuts and their impact on people\u2019s access to health care.<\/p>\n
The Lutheran pastor and state senator is one of three clergy members in Iowa running as Democrats for the U.S. House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
After years of white Christians overwhelmingly supporting Republican Donald Trump, a striking number of clergy are currently running for political office as Democrats. While James Talarico, a 36-year-old Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) seminarian who recently won his Texas primary for U.S. Senate, has gained national attention, he\u2019s hardly the only progressive candidate with a theological education this midterm season.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause there\u2019s been the tendency to define Christianity as very conservative and with a Christian nationalist lens, I think you are seeing people on the Democratic side saying, \u2018Wait a minute. There are different ways to think about how our faith informs our policy,\u2019\u201d said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute.<\/p>\n
Democrats\u2019 next challenge is to figure out how to talk about faith for the long haul in a party that\u2019s more religiously diverse than Republicans and has a greater number of voters who aren\u2019t religious at all. Trone Garriott, ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has done extensive interfaith work, something she says has made her a better Lutheran. It\u2019s also informed how she campaigns, sliding seamlessly into a Friday night Lenten fish fry at a Catholic church then going straight to an Iftar dinner at a mosque down the road.<\/p>\n Despite high-profile politicians including former President Joe Biden, a lifelong Catholic Democrat, being candid about their faith, Trone Garriott thinks part of the reason many Democrats have failed to engage certain religious groups is a discomfort in talking meaningfully about it.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of folks just don\u2019t have the practice to do it in a way that doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s imposing oneself on others or being dismissive of other perspectives,\u201d she said. \u201cFolks tend to fall back into this, \u2018Well, everyone\u2019s basically the same.\u2019 We\u2019re different and those differences are important.\u201d<\/p>\n But Trone Garriott senses Democrats are now seeing that glossing over religious differences isn\u2019t the answer. \u201cThat left a vacuum that the religious right has filled. And there are a lot of people now realizing that it is really important to speak about these issues from the perspective of faith and claim their faith,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Talarico, a Texas state representative who reaped national attention last summer after appearing on Joe Rogan\u2019s podcast, has done just that.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we have to force people to put up a poster, to me that means that we have a dead religion,\u201d he said of his opposition to a Texas bill requiring that public schools display the Ten Commandments.<\/p>\n Deckman argues what makes Talarico unique among white Democrats is his comfort in talking about the Bible. But it\u2019s also made him a target for conservatives, particularly his theological rationale for supporting abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights.<\/p>\n \u201cHe would be one that I would say, \u2018Wait a minute. You are misrepresenting the word of God,\u2019\u201d said Bob Vander Plaats, the politically influential president and CEO of the conservative Christian group The Family Leader. \u201cThe GOP has been vastly more consistent in their proximity to God\u2019s word, versus using a verse here and there to try to back up a position.\u201d In the 2024 election, Trump once again won the support of about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters, while the same percentage of Black Protestant voters went for Democrat Kamala Harris. About 7 in 10 nonreligious voters supported Harris.<\/p>\n Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he attributes that lack of support from certain religious voters to messaging within the party.<\/p>\n \u201cWe stopped talking about our why,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen that happens, I think you lose your authenticity. And sometimes that means that people stop believing that you are going to work as hard as you\u2019re committed to doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Amid speculation he will run for president in 2028, Beshear, a deacon for his Disciples of Christ church, hopes to communicate his motivations with his forthcoming book, \u201cGo and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country,\u201d a reference to the Bible\u2019s Parable of the Good Samaritan.<\/p>\n \u201cMy faith is is my authentic why. It\u2019s what drives me to try to better this world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For some, the overwhelming support for Trump among white Christians has caused them to look inward. \u201cI put that on us as pastors, that maybe we haven\u2019t done a great job of explaining the faith to people,\u201d said Clint Twedt-Ball, a minister running for Congress in Iowa\u2019s 2nd Congressional District. Black clergy running as Democrats is not new. U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., is a Baptist senior pastor and the late Rev. Jesse Jackson was a two-time presidential candidate. There are fewer examples of white clergy doing the same, despite the obvious skills, like preaching, that translate to campaigning.<\/p>\n Both Twedt-Ball, a third-generation United Methodist pastor and founder of the nonprofit Matthew 25, and Lindsay James, a PCUSA chaplain who is also running in Iowa\u2019s 2nd district, said the 2016 election was a catalyst for their political involvement.<\/p>\n The rise of pastors in politics extends beyond congressional races.<\/p>\n Rae Huang, also a PCUSA minister and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is challenging Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Huang said her candor about being a pastor has sparked questions from voters.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Are you somebody who is homophobic? Are you somebody who is gonna try and create a theocracy in our city?\u2019 Because that\u2019s all they\u2019ve known,\u201d she recalled. She sees an opportunity to give voters a positive vision of her theology. \u201cReligion doesn\u2019t have to be that space of oppression, that space where we have been suppressing voices rather than uplifting and liberating.\u201d After he was elected New York City\u2019s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani appeared on comedian Trevor Noah\u2019s podcast and argued the importance in politics of having the imagination for change \u2014 a theme Noah linked to religion.<\/p>\n \u201cReligion is declining, but it\u2019s declining in areas where people are particularly left-leaning or progressive,\u201d Noah said. \u201cOne of the things that faith requires of you is the ability to believe that this current state that you\u2019re in is not the end \u2014 there is a possibility that something can be greater.\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani, who is not clergy but is vocal about his faith, agreed. \u201cIt\u2019s often in houses of worship where New Yorkers still have that trust,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s by and large lost when it comes to politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Huang, who the Los Angeles Times speculated could be \u201cL.A.’s Mamdani,\u201d echoed this sentiment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re called and being invited to be prophetic, to be forward thinking, to actually grow our imagination,\u201d she said. \u201cThe religious right has a hold over American culture. I think that\u2019s changing. I think progressive Christianity is beginning to stand up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) \u2014 In polite company or otherwise, the Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott is very comfortable talking to people about religion and politics. She delivered an impassioned sermon last Sunday encouraging the people in the pews at Grace Lutheran Church to welcome strangers as Jesus did. The day before, she campaigned for Congress … Continue reading Three Democratic pastors in Iowa are running for Congress, a snapshot of a national trend<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2851],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1489885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news-archive"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 01:13:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1489885"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1490106,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489885\/revisions\/1490106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1489885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1489885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1489885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nTalking about religion<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nReligious voters at the polls<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nFrom pews to halls of power<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nFinding hope through faith<\/strong><\/p>\n