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By Anna Rahmanan
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"It's time to start flipping tables."
When James Talarico invoked Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in his Texas Senate victory speech, the Democrat was doing something American conservatives have long made their own: claiming biblical authority for a political cause.
His November 3 defeat of Republican Ken Paxton gave Democrats their first Texas Senate victory since 1988, implicating the politics of a world beyond Texas. What happens when the party historically associated with secular liberalism begins speaking the language of Christianity as confidently as its opponents?
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Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, is among a growing number of Democrats bringing God back into progressive politics. For decades, Republicans have been the party most closely associated with Christianity, claiming the mantle of religious faith and moral authority while Democrats largely ceded that ground.
Now, politicians like Talarico are challenging that dominance by invoking the same Scripture to defend progressive values. Their appeal could test whether Republicans still command the loyalty of religious Americans, particularly those who see a growing gulf between the Christian values their leaders profess and the lives they lead.
How Republicans Became the Party of Christianity
The Republican Party's association with Christianity is neither ancient nor exclusive.
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Janine Giordano Drake, a historian at Indiana University Bloomington, traces its origins through Protestant business movements of the 19th century, long before the Moral Majority helped mobilize conservative Christians behind Ronald Reagan.
Meanwhile, Democrats have their own substantial religious inheritance, from the social gospel movement to the Black churches that helped sustain the civil rights struggle.
"From the dawn of the New Deal through the height of the civil rights movement and great society, a Christian liberal/left coalition dominated American politics," Heath W. Carter, an associate professor of American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary, told Newsweek. "It never went away, though it has been overshadowed since the 1980s by a resurgent religious right."
The Republican advantage is still formidable: Pew Research Center found that 85 percent of white evangelical voters identified with or leaned toward Republicans in 2024.
Talarico's achievement therefore suggests an opening rather than an established religious realignment.
Can Talarico Break Republicans' Hold on Christian Voters?
Talarico's challenge to Republicans may lie in his ability to speak to religious conservatives in the language of their own faith while drawing very different political lessons from the Bible. His Christianity emphasizes compassion for the poor and marginalized, offering an alternative to the religious conservatism that has helped bind Christian voters to the GOP for decades.
Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Indiana University Indianapolis who studies Christian nationalism, believes Talarico's approach could resonate with Christians who traditionally vote Republican.
"To see Talarico share his commitment to his Christian faith, but not to wield his Christian faith as a weapon against others, but as a motivating force to love and serve others, resonated with many of the messages they hear on Sundays," Whitehead told Newsweek.
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The contrast with his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, was particularly striking.
Paxton's wife accused him of adultery when she filed for divorce in 2025, citing biblical grounds.
For some Christian voters, such allegations may raise uncomfortable questions about the moral authority of politicians who publicly champion traditional Christian values. Others place greater weight on a candidate's policies, particularly opposition to abortion and support for religious liberty, than on personal conduct.
Talarico's appeal could complicate that calculation because his message invites religious voters to consider whether the Christianity they practice in their private lives is reflected in the politics they support.
There are limits to that appeal, of course. Conservative Christians who regard abortion and traditional teachings on sexuality as fundamental to their faith may find little common ground with Talarico, however sincere they consider him.
His political success also cannot be attributed to religion alone. But Whitehead believes Talarico has shown that Democrats can reach at least some Christians who have traditionally voted Republican.
And for a party that has long struggled to compete with Republicans on matters of faith, even a modest opening could matter.
Can Democrats Embrace God Without Alienating Secular Voters?
Talarico's Christianity is part of a broader development among Democrats, who are increasingly willing to speak about faith as a source of progressive values.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim Democrat, has likewise connected his religious beliefs to economic justice and public service. Their faiths are different, but both draw on religion to explain why they believe government has an obligation to help others.
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The renewed prominence of Christianity on the Democratic left comes as Islam has also moved to the center of political debate. Whether those developments are connected remains unclear, but, together, they suggest that Democrats are becoming more willing to discuss religious conviction in public, even as Americans disagree sharply over its place in politics.
That presents Democrats with an opportunity and a complication: religious progressives may welcome a party that speaks more openly about God. Secular Democrats, meanwhile, may be wary of bringing religion further into political life.
Talarico and El-Sayed offer a glimpse of how Democrats might reconcile those competing instincts: speaking openly about their own beliefs while making a political case that does not depend on voters sharing them.
Can Faith Bridge America's Political Divide?
The return of Christianity to Democratic politics could ease America's religious divisions just as easily as it could deepen them.
Carter specifically sees promise in the mainline Protestant tradition that shaped Talarico.
"It has long been a big and unwieldy tent, encompassing folks with many different political and theological outlooks," he said.
Drake, on the other hand, is more cautious.
"I think the new Democratic Party will have to reckon with how they want to position themselves vis-a-vis the religious right," she said.
The danger is that Democrats begin competing with Republicans over whose Christianity is more authentic, turning faith into another partisan battleground. Religious conservatives, meanwhile, may regard their disagreements with Talarico over abortion and sexuality as matters of fundamental doctrine, beyond the reach of political compromise.
As shown by Tamarico and El-Sayed, among others, Democrats are challenging Republicans for the right to speak in Christianity's name. If both parties come to believe God is on their side, America's political holy war may only be getting started.
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