A slate of Democrats are running for Congress leaning on their Christian bona fides. Republicans are trying to portray them as wolves in sheep’s clothing.

In Texas, Republicans are running ads blasting seminarian James Talarico for saying he’s “a Christian who hates Christianity.”In Iowa, they are going after a pair of clergy in key House races as “PINOS” — “pastors in name only,” because they “don’t profess the true gospel of Jesus Christ.”In Kansas, Republicans pan megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton as “too woke and too weak.”

“His sermons are essentially a carbon copy of the Democrat National Committee platform,” said Brent Robertson, chief of staff to Hamilton’s opponent, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), pointing to a past sermon in which Hamilton urged followers to reduce their carbon footprint.

The closing arguments on these Democrats — as evidenced by the most recent ads — shows a concerted effort to turn their preaching against them to paint them as fake, corrupt or even blasphemous.

In Texas, MAGA Inc. is on air painting Talarico as a “liberal weirdo,” clipping Talarico’s controversial statements, like “Jesus Christ Himself was a radical feminist” and “God is non-binary.”

The Trump-aligned No Going Back PAC is on air in Iowa’s 2nd District hitting Presbyterian minister and Democrat Lindsay James as inauthentic: “When the cameras are on, Lindsay James goes into a character, a caring pastor who says what you want to hear, but when there's no spotlight, Lindsay James shows just how radical she can be.”

And in Kansas, GOP Sen. Roger Marshall’s campaign is on air slamming Hamilton as a “slimy,” “millionaire megachurch CEO,” saying he “used faith to fatten his wallet” and “asked churchgoers to pony up for God, then use church resources for his own campaign.”“The swamp's got enough money changers,” the ad says.

The attacks are coming precisely because these candidates have proven to be formidable candidates in purple to red areas, using their faith backgrounds to bolster themselves against GOP accusations that they’re out of their state’s mainstream. Talarico poses Democrats’ best chance to flip a Texas Senate seat in nearly four decades. Hamilton has turned deep-red Kansas into a battleground. And James and Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran minister, are running tough in a pair of Iowa districts Trump won in 2024.

Voters “understand and appreciate authenticity, and they know that faith without works is dead,” said Chaz Molder, the Democratic nominee in Tennessee’s deep-red 2nd District who leads a Sunday School class with his wife. “And just posting scripture on Sunday morning to point out that they went to church is not enough.”

But with Democrats’ clerical credibility comes a practical challenge: years and years of on-camera sermons, a treasure trove for oppo researchers. It’s become a challenge in Hamilton’s race, where Vice President JD Vance joined the pile-on earlier this month: During a visit to Iowa, he took a shot at Hamilton as having “kind of a ‘gee whiz, I'm a nice pastor’ vibe,” but said he “tells his congregation not about the gospel of Jesus Christ, but that they need to repent for their white privilege while eating beef.”

Democrats have largely brushed off the attacks. Talarico has said he’s “missed the mark” on some of his “cringey” past comments, but has doubled down on his sermonizing: “When I take on the politicians who are serving themselves and not the people, I’m doing it on biblical grounds,” he said in a sermon last weekend. A James spokesperson criticized Republicans for “desperately attacking Lindsay’s deeply held faith commitments. If it wasn’t so insulting to other Iowa Christians, it would be laughable.”

Hamilton has seen clergy run to his side: 120 fellow Methodist ministers across Kansas wrote an open letter to Marshall telling him to stop attacking Hamilton’s pastoral ministry, saying the attacks “tear at the fabric that is the body of Christ.”“We're not the first Christians to be attacked for our faith, and we won't let smears and lies from a couple of Washington politicians stop us from living out our values in the world,” Hamilton said in a video after Vance’s speech.

In many ways, this election marks something of a faith resurgence for the Democratic Party. While only half of Democrat- and Democrat-leaning U.S. adults identify as Christian (a 24-percentage-point decline since 2007), Democrats this cycle are running clergy, Sunday School teachers, chaplains and other devout Christians across the map.

“As a person of faith, I think that it's time for the Democratic Party to reassert that Democrats are a big tent, and we have many elected officials from different faiths for whom faith is something very important to them,” said Ben McAdams, the Democratic nominee in Utah’s 1st District and a volunteer Sunday School teacher in his Latter-day Saint congregation in Salt Lake City. “The Republican Party of Donald Trump does not seem to be reflecting the Christian values that I grew up with.”

Doug Pagitt, executive director of progressive group Vote Common Good, counts nine clergy running for federal office this cycle as Democrats — something he hasn’t seen before.

“The idea that a faith leader, especially a white faith leader, would run as a Democrat and be forthright about it … it's really unusual,” Pagitt said. “We've had candidates [in the past] whose moms were pastors, and they were nervous about mentioning that in the Democratic Party circles. But that seems to have shifted and changed.”