In Iowa and beyond, the Democratic Party is seeing a familiar kind of public voice take the campaign trail: pastors and other clergy, presenting religion not as an accessory to politics but as part of how they say they understand policy and persuasion.
The Iowa state senator and Lutheran pastor Sarah Trone Garriott has sought support for her U.S. House candidacy while connecting her political message to her work in church life. She has described delivering sermons that urge congregants to welcome strangers “as Jesus did,” and she has campaigned in rural Iowa while criticizing Medicaid cuts and their effect on access to health care. Garriott’s candidacy also reflects a broader effort to approach religious difference directly rather than smoothing it over, and she has said she believes Democrats can get better at speaking about faith in ways that do not feel imposed or dismissive of other perspectives.
Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, said the shift she is seeing on the Democratic side is driven by a pushback against a tendency to treat Christianity as conservative by default and to view it through a Christian nationalist lens. She said Democratic candidates are increasingly arguing that faith can inform policy in “different ways,” as they try to make their religious language legible to voters in a party that contains more religious groups than Republicans and more voters who report no religion at all.
Garriott said she has done extensive interfaith work and that it has shaped her Lutheran ministry and her campaign style. She described how her days can blend faith communities, including moving from a Friday night Lenten fish fry at a Catholic church to an Iftar dinner at a mosque, and she said her approach to campaigning includes an emphasis on religious differences rather than treating everyone as “basically the same.” In her account, Democrats have begun to recognize the limits of glossing over differences, particularly as she argues that this approach left a vacuum that the religious right filled—and she said that more people are now seeking to hear issues discussed from a faith perspective.
The broader clergy-candidate landscape also includes James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and state representative in Texas who has drawn national attention, in part because of his theological framing on issues including abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights. Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of the conservative Christian group The Family Leader, said conservatives would consider Talarico’s approach to be a misrepresentation of the word of God, and he contrasted what he called the GOP’s consistency in proximity to scripture with Democrats who, in his view, use verses “here and there” to support positions.
Deckman said what makes the next phase of Democratic politics difficult is not simply recruiting faith-connected candidates, but developing an enduring way to talk about faith. She said the party’s next challenge is learning how to address religious groups in the long run, rather than treating religion as something political leaders mention only occasionally—while also speaking to voters who are not religious. She described this as a communication and practice problem as much as a policy one.
Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he attributes some gaps in support from religious voters to messaging inside the party, arguing that Democrats “stopped talking about our why.” He said losing authenticity can happen when the public no longer believes Democrats are committed to the work. Beshear, a deacon in his Disciples of Christ church, said his faith is part of his “authentic why” and said he hopes to communicate those motivations in a forthcoming book titled “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country,” drawing on the Good Samaritan parable.
The Iowa races are also drawing attention to different kinds of clerical experience and different catalysts for political involvement. Clint Twedt-Ball, a minister running in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, said in part that pastors should look inward and that they have not done a “great job” explaining faith to people. Twedt-Ball described his political engagement alongside other clergy in Iowa, including Lindsay James, a PCUSA chaplain running in the 2nd district and both of them tying their political decisions in part to the 2016 election.
Outside Congress, the reported trend of clergy involvement extends to other elections and political contests. Rae Huang, a PCUSA minister who is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is challenging Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and has said her candor about being a pastor has prompted questions from voters about whether she would be homophobic or seek to create a “theocracy” in the city. Huang said she sees that moment as an opening to offer a positive vision of her theology and argued that religion does not have to be a space of oppression where voices are suppressed, but instead can be associated with uplifting and liberation.
The story also places these candidacies in the context of how different religious groups supported candidates in 2024. It cited AP VoteCast findings that Trump won support from about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, while Kamala Harris won the same percentage of Black Protestant voters, and it said about 7 in 10 nonreligious voters supported Harris. As Democrats try to expand their coalition, the reported accounts from candidates and poll analysis suggest a campaign strategy that increasingly treats faith—and the ability to talk about it—both as a political asset and as a potential liability that must be managed carefully.