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Six white clergy members and one white seminarian are running for Congress as Democrats, part of a growing trend of white politicians seeking to court Christian voters while embracing left-wing ideas.
Unlike Democrats of the past, these candidates represent a party that has shifted drastically, embracing policies ranging from same-sex marriage and unfettered abortion access to feminism and forced diversity.
Is ministry a "calling" for these folks, or an opportunity — a career?
Be informed, not misled.
The Daily Caller noted yesterday that "Sarah Trone Garriott, James Talarico, Robb Ryerse, Anna Golladay, and Lindsay James are attempting to blend the language of “faith, freedom, and family” with the increasingly progressive policies of the modern left."
"White clergy members running for Congress as Democrats are a rarity. Since the 1970s, only three have been elected to the federal legislature, while numerous Republican clergy members have served in Congress. Currently, two Democrat members of Congress are clergy: Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock and Missouri Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, both of whom are Black."
Some of the six clergy and seminarian members are from evangelical Christian backgrounds and others from mainline Protestant denominations.
Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran minister and current Iowa state senator challenging Republican Rep. Zach Nunn, said that the “Faith perspective” in politics does not reflect her values and the scriptures as she understands them, according to Religion News Service.
She is a Lutheran minister and Democratic state senator in Iowa and has beaten Republican candidates in three state senate races going back to 2020. Next fall, she hopes to unseat GOP Congressman Nunn in the national midterm.
Garriott said she is motivated by the needs she sees in her district, but also a desire to reclaim what it means to be a follower of Jesus in politics.
“Faith has something to say to politics. And what we are seeing labeled as the faith perspective is not faithful to me,” Garriott said. “It does not reflect the teachings in the Scriptures that I read. It does not reflect my values. This is a really important moment for people of faith to be engaged in the public realm.”
Indeed it is, but are we talking about the same Jesus?
A closer look reveals we are not.
The Jesus we evangelical and other biblical Christians follow, serve, and worship is different from the "progressive" Jesus the Left has crafted for the 2026 primaries and the November mid-term elections.
A fake conversion.
The so-called Christian Left is trying to seize the moment and "reclaim" what it means to follow Jesus. And win an election.
The progressive legal establishment for years treated religious freedom exemptions as obstacles to be dismantled, threatening the livelihoods, consciences, and institutions of Christian business owners, healthcare workers, and even nuns.
Now, the left is embracing the very religious-liberty arguments it spent years working to defeat.
Pew polls show Democratic voters claim to be alienated from religion by evangelicals’ strong identification with the Republican Party, forged in a common opposition to abortion, as well as by their own disaffiliation with religious institutions — most prevalent among political liberals.
This shift on the left is not merely rhetorical. Hoosier Jews for Choice has sued for religious exemptions from Indiana’s abortion ban, arguing that the law conflicts with Jewish teachings about when life begins. The Latino Christian National Network and other Christian and Jewish organizations have invoked religious freedom in challenges to ICE enforcement near houses of worship and in efforts to protect faith groups that shelter illegal immigrants.
Safehouse, a Philadelphia nonprofit, is likewise pressing a religious-liberty claim for permission to operate a supervised drug-consumption site. The organization argues that its Judeo-Christian obligation to preserve life and care for the sick entitles it to an exemption from federal drug laws. Together, the cases show progressive organizations adopting the same legal protections their political allies have long sought to narrow when invoked by conservative Christians, according to The Guardian.
Constitutional and policy scholars, however, told the Caller the sudden pivot isn’t a genuine defense of conscience — it’s a tactical workaround that falls apart under legal scrutiny.
Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, says that many of the cases are “silly and cynical,” but legally shrewd.
Many earlier religious-liberty cases involved objections to government compulsion: a Christian baker declining to create a cake for a same-sex wedding, for example, or nuns resisting a mandate to provide contraceptive coverage.
The newer cases, by contrast, use religious-liberty claims to advance policy outcomes their proponents already supported on secular grounds. That distinction has led legal scholars such as Blackman to question whether the newfound commitment to religious freedom is principled or merely strategic.
Blackman, who has followed the Jewish abortion litigation for four years, said the plaintiffs may struggle to establish both the sincerity of their asserted beliefs and standing to sue — particularly where some of the women bringing the cases are not pregnant.
But, Blackman noted, “the problem is courts are very, very hesitant to probe sincerity.”
The left’s new strategy marks a sharp departure from its earlier efforts to force religious groups to yield to progressive policy priorities, including repeated attempts to pass the Do No Harm Act across six consecutive Congresses — an effort championed in part by Kamala Harris during her Senate tenure.
The bill would have barred individuals and organizations from invoking RFRA to seek exemptions from federal laws governing civil rights, employment, healthcare and other areas where advocates argued religious claims could enable discrimination. Harris said the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom should “never be used to undermine other Americans’ civil rights or subject them to discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
Takeaway
There's more to this, but you get the drift of where the "religious Left" is trying to take the country in order to win an election.
Don't be misled.
They are trying to introduce another Jesus, not the Jesus of the Bible. They are literally trying to put words in His mouth that He never spoke. And principles that He never taught.
Ryerse, the Arkansas candidate, has even made traditional Republican faith language a feature of his campaign: “For a Future of Faith, Family & Freedom,” says his website. “I don’t think Republicans ought to be able to own those things,” said the candidate, who has sought to reframe them in more progressive terms. “When I talk about faith, I’m not talking about religious faith; I’m talking about our belief in each other,” he says. “Our country is so divided now. We have this complete lack of trust between people. It seems like we’ve lost our ability to band together and do great things.”
By “family,” he said, there’s a need to protect families that “come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. The so-called party of family values hasn’t valued families very well.” Defending freedom, he said, includes fighting off threats to women’s reproductive rights.
But Ryerse says he’s not “trying to take America back for a liberal Jesus. I’m not running for office because I want to have my progressive evangelical faith to be the law of the land,” he said, adding, “I see in Jesus an example of someone who cared for the marginalized, fed people and stood up to the rich and powerful, but the Bible is not the basis for law in America.”
Biblical Christians see Jesus as the only begotten Son of the living God who gave Himself to be beaten, crucified, and killed on a cross for the sin of all mankind. He rose from the grave, conquering death, Hell, and the grave for the remission of our sins.
The Jesus of the Bible certainly cared for the marginalized, fed people, and stood up to the powerful, but that was not His main thing.
His main thing was Redemption for mankind through His shed blood and the power of His resurrection.
He said, "I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly."
Ryerse says, "The Bible is not the basis of law in America."
I understand he was trying to delineate between Islam's theocracy and America's democracy.
The Apostle Paul actually weighed in on this matter of another Jesus.
He said in 2 Corinthians 11:4: "For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him."
- The Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the church in Corinth.
- He warned believers to protect their minds from false teachers
- He compared false teachers to the serpent who tricked Eve
- Key Warnings in the Verse: A false or altered picture of Christ.
- Another Spirit: A deceptive spiritual influence, and another Gospel.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Faithful. Be Prayerful.
