Religious Democrats won midterms by promising to make America more loving. James Talarico said, "My faith teaches me that love is the strongest force in the universe." The party will triple its clergy members in Congress next year. These winners offer a new path for the party to consider.
Some religious Democrats campaigned on an old commandment -- to love thy neighbor. Is that a new road map for the party?
Democrats swept the midterms by promising to make America more affordable. But some winners also won with a surprisingly sentimental pitch: to make it more loving. It's an unlikely suggestion in 2026. The midterms got ugly -- with dirty tactics that pulled in a candidate's estranged mother, peddled Islamophobia and plotted to split votes.
A few religious Democrats insisted that a biblical commandment was the solution. "My faith teaches me that love is the strongest force in the universe," James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian in Texas, said in his Senate election victory speech -- which included the word love 27 times. "Love can heal what's broken in America."
A wave of religious Democrats will enter Congress next year, and the party will more than triple its number of clergy members in the chambers. They weave scripture into their stump speeches, read progressive policies into the Bible -- and offer an alternative to the Christian nationalism that has dominated Republican politics.
Their victories have made the religious left more prominent and more powerful -- and have given their party, grappling with an identity crisis, one strategy to consider as it maps a path to 2028.