Originally published at The Crux
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Clergy members and other Democratic candidates with an unapologetically Christian message to “love your neighbor” helped their party flip control of Congress.
It was a striking midterm victory that demonstrated the strength of the religious left as a counter to the stalwart evangelical support for President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans.
“This attempt to corner the market on Christianity by evangelicals was repudiated,” said Brian Kaylor, a Baptist pastor and editor of a progressive faith and politics site.
Instead, American mainline Protestantism, with its less-strident theology, took the election spotlight.
Seminarian James Talarico in Texas, megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas and Iowa ministers Sarah Trone Garriott and Lindsay James flipped key seats in the U.S. Senate and House. They’re part of the mainline Presbyterian, Methodist and Lutheran branches with moderate or progressive beliefs.
Unlike the nationalists wanting America to privilege a particular Christian worldview in public life, the mainline candidates in keeping with their Christian values backed church-state separation and sought common ground across religions, Kaylor said.
“There were so many people in our country who felt so strongly that what was happening in D.C. was not moral,” Hamilton told The Associated Press. “It didn’t reflect our national
