MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Among the Democrats who won House and Senate seats, four members of the clergy and a seminarian. Here to talk about how faith may have helped these candidates connect with voters is NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose. He's been covering this story since this summer. Hey, Jason.
JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: Hello.
KELLY: All right. Who are we talking? Who are these new members-of-Congress-elect?
DEROSE: Well, on the Senate side, there's Adam Hamilton, the pastor of a very large United Methodist congregation in Kansas, one of only a few megachurch pastors in Congress. Also, James Talarico in Texas - he's a Presbyterian seminarian as well as a Texas Statehouse representative.
KELLY: And then what about on the House side?
DEROSE: Well, staying in Texas, there's Frederick Haynes. He's the pastor of a 13,000-member Baptist church in the Dallas area. That's another megachurch pastor on the Democratic side. There's Sarah Trone Garriott. She's a state senator from the Des Moines area in Iowa and a Lutheran pastor. Also in Iowa, Lindsay James, a Presbyterian chaplain and a statehouse representative. And in a seat not yet called by The Associated Press, there's Chris Jones, a clergyperson running for the House in Arkansas.
KELLY: OK. And what do we think made these candidates successful?
DEROSE: Well, I put that question to Robert Jones at the Public Religion Research Institute. He says there's something about the way clergy from these denominations, mainline Protestant churches, think about religion that may have affected how they encountered voters and appealed to them.
ROBERT JONES: This idea of compassion, loving your neighbor, making room for everyone, hospitality is actually quite a prominent theological virtue in the mainline tradition. I think it's actually much better suited for broad, pluralistic democracy.
DEROSE: Better suited, Jones says, than the way many evangelical Christians have framed both religion and politics in us versus them terms.
KELLY: Now, I know you spent time with these candidates in Texas, in Iowa. Did you see religion helping them connect with voters?
DEROSE: Well, I saw it in a couple of ways because of how they spoke religiously, but also because of the kinds of skills clergy need to be good pastors. Let's start with how they talked about the Bible. James Talarico had a specific way of doing that. He'd visit multiple churches on a Sunday morning, preaching on things like the parable of the good Samaritan, a story about the importance of caring for the most vulnerable.
Talarico also had a line he used again and again in which he alluded to the beatitudes. Blessed are those who weep, he'd say. He said sometimes people see more clearly through their tears. And this type of language, I thought, really connected with people who were hurting. Some were feeling the pain of the cost of gas or groceries. Others were hurting because they felt disenfranchised after redistricting there in Texas eliminated one of the state's majority Black congressional districts.
KELLY: So that's some of the language they were using. But what about those skills you mentioned? Like, being a good clergy member, how does that translate on the campaign trail?
DEROSE: You know, something I observed in Iowa sticks with me these many weeks later. They spent more time listening than talking. Sarah Trone Garriott and Lindsay James spent a lot of time hearing what voters care about, whether it was at coffee hour after worship or shaking hands at a county fair. In fact, with both of the candidates, I didn't really hear explicitly religious messages to voters. What I saw was concern for what mattered to the people - the cost of groceries, the cost of an ambulance ride. That's a skill, genuine listening, that's sometimes called ministry of presence - needed by both good clergy and good politicians.
KELLY: NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose, thank you.
DEROSE: You're welcome.
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