Backfire: More white clergy running as Dems after Trump 'duped' churches

The Guardian reports roughly 30 Christian white clergy, including pastors, seminary students and other faith leaders, are filing or have already filed to be Democratic candidates in next year’s midterm elections.

“I … think the stereotypes of Republicans being pro-faith are bull—— …,” said Justin Douglas, who is running for a House seat in Pennsylvania. “We’re seeing a current administration bastardize faith almost every day. They used the Lord’s Prayer in a propaganda video for what they’re now calling the Department of War. That should have had every single evangelical’s bells and whistles and alarms going off in their head: this is sacrilegious.”

Douglas, 41, is among a new generation of the Christian left looking to evolve the Democratic brand beyond college-educated urbanites and connect it with white working-class churchgoers. This, said the Guardian, breaks the traditional racial divide between Republicans and Democrats with Black pastors who run for office typically bring Democrats and their white counterparts often Republicans. For years, that divide has strengthened the Republican brand among the religious right and evangelical voters.

Douglas numbered himself among that faction. He grew up on an Indiana farm, the son of a factory worker and eldest of five children. He studied at Liberty University, founded by conservative pastor and televangelist Jerry Falwell, reports the Guardian, and he recalls wearing a T-shirt expressing opposition to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

But that was two decades ago, before Trump entered the scene with his multiple wives, mistresses, assault accusations and his admission to Access Hollywood of how exactly to “grab” women.

James Talarico is a Texas state representative and a 36-year-old part-time seminary student who the Guardian said has amassed a sizable social-media following. Talarico uses scripture to champion the poor and vulnerable while castigating Republicans for what he casts as their “drift towards Christian nationalism and corporate interests.”

In Iowa, state representative Sarah Trone Garriott, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor, is seeking her party’s nod to challenge Republican incumbent Zach Nunn in what is already billed as one of the nation’s marquee congressional races.

“I joke sometimes that the two people who have changed my life more than any others are Jesus and Donald Trump, for very different reasons,” Garriot told the Guardian. “Donald Trump is absolutely inconsistent with Christian principles of love and compassion, justice, looking out for the poor, meeting the needs of the marginalized.”

In Arkansas, Christian pastor and former Republican Robb Ryerse is mounting his own challenge to Rep. Steve Womack, but he told the Guardian that the other person he’s running against is the president.

“We realize, hey, our churches and the people in our churches have been duped by this guy and so rather than hope someone else will clean up the problem, what we’ve seen is a lot of pastors respond with, you know what, I’m going to jump in and I’m going to be a part of the solution.”

“Donald Trump has also used and been used by so many evangelical leaders who want political power,” Ryerse added. “He has used them to validate him to their followers and they have used him to further their agenda, which has been a Christian nationalist culture war on the United States, which I think is bad for both the church and for the country.”

Read the Guardian report at this link.