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Doug Pagitt, an evangelical pastor and organizer, has heard from his fellow Democrats that they wanted nothing to do with his ilk.
"They've said, ‘Yeah, I would rather lose elections than win with those people,'" Pagitt told us of conversations he has had with Democratic strategists in past cycles.
He is part of a vocal contingent of Democrats who think their party has neglected faith-based voters to its detriment. We've discussed this in the past with Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Georgia), the only working pastor in the Senate, who said Democrats have "ceded" religion over to Republicans.
Pagitt is on a mission to change that. The pastor is executive director of Vote Common Good, a nonprofit dedicated to Democratic outreach to Christians, which is announcing a $3 million effort today to train candidates to connect with Catholics and evangelicals.
The investment also includes campaign events with candidates in key House and Senate races, and a bus tour through the spring and summer in states including Arizona, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. The group will have a conference in June to bring faith leaders and candidates together and discuss ways to connect with faith-based voters.
The group's core message to candidates: Acknowledge that religion is a major part of voters' lives and that their churches are pillars in their communities.
"We believe that voters don't need their candidates to be like them," Pagitt said. "They just want their candidate to like them."
Democrats do have a long history of religious outreach, including to evangelical voters. Jimmy Carter carried considerable evangelical support in 1976, calling himself the first "Born-again" believer to run for the White House. Joe Biden's Catholicism was a central part of his appeal to former Trump voters in 2020. And a notable crop of Democratic candidates this year are making their Christianity central to their campaigns.
Sarah Trone Garriott, a state senator and ordained Lutheran minister, is running in Iowa's competitive 3rd Congressional District as a Democrat. Robb Ryerse, an evangelical pastor who grew up a Baptist Republican, is running as a Democrat in Arkansas to challenge Rep. Steve Womack. Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton is mulling an independent Senate run in Kansas against Sen. Roger Marshall. Presbyterian pastor Matt Schultz is running for Alaska's at-large House seat.
James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and Democratic state representative running for Senate in Texas, often invokes his faith in countering Republicans. He has become a viral sensation, raising more money at this point in a Senate race than any other candidate in Texas history.
Christians aren't the only ones speaking more publicly about their faiths. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) has made his Judaism a pillar of his message when speaking with voters on similar lines as Pagitt - that candidates should acknowledge an important part of voters' identity.
"As people have approached me and expressed to me the fear that they have to live openly about who they are in this country, I have felt the responsibility to be more open about my faith, to offer some comfort to them," Shapiro told reporters earlier this year.
But religion has long been a sticky area for Democrats, whose party prides itself on emphasizing pluralism and secular governance.
Evangelical Christianity in particular makes many Democrats squeamish. Its theology of proselytizing only one path to salvation can butt heads with Democrats' commitment to religious pluralism. A vast majority of evangelicals oppose abortion and same-sex marriage. Evangelicals are some of the most reliable supporters of Israel's Likud government anywhere in the world.
Evangelicals, particularly White evangelicals, are also among President Donald Trump's most loyal supporters. White evangelicals express the highest approval rating for Trump of all Christians, according to polling by Pew Research in January, with 69 percent supporting the president.
But Pagitt said he's hearing from a greater number of evangelicals who are questioning the MAGA movement after recent actions by the Trump administration. The president faced major backlash from some of his evangelical and Catholic supporters after posting a meme appearing to depict him as Jesus and openly lambasting the pope (Trump said he thought the meme showed him as a doctor, and the post was removed). The National Association of Evangelicals has criticized the Trump administration's mass deportations as "inhumane."
Polling appears to support Pagitt's claim. The same Pew survey shows a decline in Trump's support among White evangelicals from earlier in his term. In February 2025, 78 percent of them supported the president.
It's an environment that Pagitt says is ripe for Democrats to make greater inroads.
"These people are so movable, and our appeal to them is: ‘There's people like you, shared faith, that are inviting you not to become a Democrat but to vote for one in the next election. Could you lend your vote this one time?'" he said.
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