周二晚上，民主党人在得克萨斯州和堪萨斯州赢得参议院选举，这不仅仅意味着将两个红州变成蓝州——当然，这本身就已经具有历史意义。
The Democratic Senate victories in Texas and Kansas on Tuesday night were about more than just turning two red states blue — which, to be sure, is historic enough.
这也标志着特朗普时代后期一种新型民主党政治的崛起——一种更具宗教色彩的政治。
They also signal the rise of a new kind of Democratic politics in the late Trump era — a more explicitly religious one.
在得克萨斯州，长老会神学生詹姆斯·塔拉里科在结果出炉时以20个百分点的优势击败了共和党籍州总检察长肯·帕克斯顿。而在近一个世纪没有选出过民主党参议员的堪萨斯州，该州最大教堂的主牧师亚当·汉密尔顿牧师击败了现任参议员罗杰·马歇尔。
In Texas, James Talarico, the Presbyterian seminarian, was beating Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton by 20 points at the time of the call. And in Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in nearly a century, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, the chief pastor of the state’s largest church, has defeated incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall.
他们属于美国政治中的一股上升浪潮：宗教左翼的兴起，将温和或自由派的基督教与民主党的政策和政治优先事项结合起来。他们的胜利是这一运动在2026年选举周期中的首批重大胜利。
They belong to a rising tide in American politics: the emergence of a religious left that marries moderate or liberal strains of Christianity with Democratic policy and political priorities. Their wins are the first major victories of this movement in the 2026 cycle.
与此同时，在附近的艾奥瓦州，另外两位民主党基督教徒——路德宗牧师萨拉·特罗内·加里奥特和长老宗牧师林赛·詹姆斯——也在翻转共和党把持的众议院席位的竞选中领先。
Meanwhile, in nearby Iowa, two more Democratic Christians — the Lutheran minister Sarah Trone Garriott and Presbyterian minister Lindsay James — are also leading in their races to flip Republican-held House seats.
早在塔拉里科赢得成为得克萨斯州美国参议院民主党候选人提名时，我就写过，他和他的对手代表了美国基督教的两种截然不同的愿景。塔拉里科在激烈的初选之战中胜出，他押注在红州搞民主党政治的最佳方式是通过重新拾起宗教、宽恕政治对手以及爱邻如己（即使他们的投票选择不同）来扩大基本盘。他基本上是在竞选集会上讲道——甚至在最近的一次采访中表示，帕克斯顿是“上帝的孩子”。
Back when Talarico won his bid to be the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Texas, I wrote that he and his opponent represented two drastically different visions of American Christianity. Talarico had emerged victorious from a bitter primary battle, betting that the best way to do Democratic politics in a red state was to expand the base by reclaiming religion, forgiving political rivals, and loving neighbors, even if they voted differently. He basically preached on the campaign stump — even saying in a recent interview that Paxton is a “child of God.”
作为一名长老会牧师，他作为正统新教基督徒的代表，正在接受牧师培训，这在如今已经是一个日益消亡的群体。
And he was doing this as a pastor-in-training, representing a dying breed of mainline Protestant Christians as a Presbyterian.
他当时面对的是当今占主导地位的美国基督教品牌的化身。帕克斯顿是一名强硬的保守派福音派基督徒，他代表了那种让基督教在现代与保守派共和主义划等号的宗教政治。
He was facing off against an avatar of the dominant brand of American Christianity today. A hard-line conservative evangelical Christian, Paxton represented the kind of religious politics that has made Christianity synonymous with conservative Republicanism in the modern era.
帕克斯顿一直是得克萨斯州共和党人运动的领袖，该运动试图将一种更具保守色彩的基督教愿景注入公共广场。他去年辩称：“在得克萨斯州的教室里，我们希望打开上帝的话语，展示十诫，并向上祈祷……我们的国家建立在圣经真理的磐石上，当极左翼试图将我们的国家推向流沙时，我不会袖手旁观。”这是一种更具威权色彩的基督教——有些人称之为基督教民族主义——它与塔拉里科所宣扬的更加宽容、包容的基督教愿景形成了完美的对照。
Paxton had been a leading figure in the Texas GOP’s crusade to infuse the public square with a more conservative-tinged vision of Christianity, arguing last year that “in Texas classrooms, we want the Word of God opened, the Ten Commandments displayed, and prayers lifted up. … Our nation was founded on the rock of Biblical Truth, and I will not stand by while the far-left attempts to push our country into the sinking sand.”It’s a more authoritarian-flavored variety of Christianity — some might call it Christian nationalism — and it created a perfect foil with the more tolerant, inclusive vision of Christianity that Talarico was preaching.
汉密尔顿在他那场表现超出预期的整个竞选过程中也做了同样的事情。在竞选期间，正如他几十年来在堪萨斯城郊区的基督复活联合卫理公会担任牧师时所做的那样，他经常谈论自己的信仰之旅和对基督的信仰、关于彼此相爱，以及关于修复被特朗普时代的政治所破坏的关系。与塔拉里科一样，他也将重点放在切身利益上，并列举了特朗普政府伤害美国人的种种方式。
Hamilton did the same throughout his stronger-than-expected campaign. On the trail, as he’s done for decades as the pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in the Kansas City suburbs, he spoke frequently about his faith journey and belief in Christ, about loving one another, and about repairing relationships ruined by Trump-era politics. Also like Talarico, he doubled down on kitchen-table issues and listed off all the ways the Trump administration had hurt Americans.
但他同时也告诉我，他认为自己是这场全国性牧师、神职人员和宗教人士运动的一部分，他们正在与“基督教民族主义”正面交锋，并向基督徒和非基督徒展示圣经价值观和耶稣的教导如何能引导一个人走向民主党的政策世界观。
But he also told me that he viewed himself as part of this national movement of pastors, ministers, and religious people squaring off against “Christian nationalism” and showing Christians and non-Christians alike how biblical values and Jesus’ teachings might lead someone to a Democratic policy worldview.
“我希望民主党人能够谈论信仰，并且其方式能够体现出与你在基督教民族主义中所见之物的不同，”汉密尔顿在10月初我为了解他而访问堪萨斯州时对我说。“我们的信仰反映了正义和公平的理念。圣经中有两千节经文谈到贫困和照顾穷人。你在基督教民族主义者那里听不到这些。但你在身为民主党人的基督徒那里能听到。”
“I want Democrats to be able to talk about faith and to do so in a way that reflects a difference from what you see in Christian nationalism,” Hamilton told me in early October when I visited Kansas for a profile of him. “Our faith reflects the ideas of justice and fairness. Two thousand verses in the Bible talk about poverty and taking care of the poor. That’s not what you hear from Christian nationalists. But it is what you hear from Christians who are Democrats.”
他上个月告诉我，无论输赢碰巧身为民主党人的信仰人士都希望继续在政治中发挥积极作用——为了民主党的发展，也为了基督教的发展。“有思想的基督教人士为对话增添了重要的内容，”他说。
He told me last month that, whether he won or lost, he hoped people of faith who happen to be Democrats continue to play an active role in politics — for the sake of the Democratic Party and for the sake of Christianity. “Thoughtful Christian people have something important to add to the conversation,” he said.
汉密尔顿和塔拉里科的宗教信息都面临批评。批评者（包括总统唐纳德·特朗普和副总统万斯，以及普通的福音派和保守派基督徒）对他们的神学解释、教派现状或信仰的真实性提出了质疑（一些攻击不那么复杂，比如干脆称塔拉里科或汉密尔顿为“觉醒派”）。
Both Hamilton and Talarico faced criticism of their religious message. Detractors, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, as well as average evangelical and conservative Christians, took issue with their theological interpretations, the state of their denominations, or the authenticity of their faiths (some attacks were less sophisticated, such as simply calling Talarico or Hamilton “woke”).
但他们的胜利至少表明，足够多的温和基督徒和具有独立思想的共和党人被他们对信仰的阐述说服了，从而站在了这些具有宗教背景的候选人一边。对于民主党人来说，这应该是一个令人鼓舞的信号，表明他们在未来可以继续扩大信仰阵地，并在未来的选举和联盟建设中考虑信仰角度。
But their wins suggest at least that enough moderate Christians, and independent-minded Republicans, were persuaded by their articulations of their faith to side with these religious candidates. That should be an encouraging sign for Democrats moving forward to continue to expand the faith lane and think about the faith angle in future elections and coalition building.
一些分析人士认为，为了在未来的国会和总统竞选中保持竞争力，民主党必须继续在争取宗教选票方面取得进展。“在某个时候，你必须对声音高亢的世俗左翼说：‘嘿，我们感谢你们，我们当然需要你们的票，但无论如何你们都会投票给我们。我们需要天主教徒、正统新教徒以及诸如此类人群的选票，’”宗教与政治学者瑞安·伯ge对我说。
To remain competitive in future congressional and presidential contests, some analysts argue, Democrats must continue to make inroads with the religious vote. “At some point you’ve got to say to the loud secular left, ‘Hey, we appreciate you and we want your votes, of course, but you’re going to vote for us anyway. We need the votes of Catholics and mainline Protestants and those kinds of people,” the religion and politics scholar Ryan Burge told me.
然而，从历史上看，建制派阶层——为竞选活动提供动力的金主、活动人士和组织者——并不总是习惯于向这些宗教群体发出呼吁，因为他们的优先事项往往与基本盘不一致。但塔拉里科在深红之地的胜利表明，如果他们能够适应一种新型的民主党人，就能获得怎样的成果。
Historically, though, the establishment class — the donors, activists, and organizers who power campaigns — has not always been comfortable appealing to these religious groups, since they often have priorities at odds with those of the base. But Talarico’s win in deep-red country shows what can be gained if they can get more comfortable with a new kind of Democrat.