(RNS) — After years of decline, religion appears to be on the rebound, especially as a force in American politics. Many of the major stories of 2025 — from the triumphal return of Donald Trump and a national crackdown on immigrants to debates over gender and the death of Charlie Kirk — had a religion angle.
That trend is likely to continue in the year to come, with pastors running for office in places like Iowa and Texas, conservative activists seeking to recruit church members to get involved in politics, and Catholic bishops and nuns ministering to immigrants being deported, while Jewish, Muslim and Hindu Americans find themselves under fire by the MAGA movement for not being “real Americans.” Here are a few of the faith voices and activists who may make news in the year to come.
Texas state Rep. Nate Schatzline
A Republican state legislator from Fort Worth, Nate Schatzline recently announced he won’t seek reelection in 2026 but instead plans to join the National Faith Advisory Board founded by televangelist and Trump spiritual adviser Paula White.
“It has never been more clear that the battle for our nation is not political, it is spiritual,” Schatzline wrote in announcing his new role.
Along with serving as a lawmaker, Schatzline is also a pastor at Mercy Culture, a charismatic congregation in Fort Worth known for its outspoken mixing of faith and politics. The church’s senior pastor, Landon Schott, has repeatedly endorsed candidates for office during services — including Schatzline. Schatzline also helps lead “Campaign University,” an online program that helps train churchgoers to run for political office. In the course, which costs $100, he offers to help prepare students “to make an impact for the kingdom in government,” according to the Fort Worth Report. Mercy Culture has also started a prayer house in Washington, D.C., near the Supreme Court and is hoping to launch a church there too, as well as one in California.
Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA
Erika Kirk was thrust into the national spotlight after the death of her husband, Charlie Kirk, who was murdered during a Turning Point USA appearance at a college in Utah. During a nationally televised memorial for the slain political activist and speaker, Erika Kirk, who is Catholic, said her faith led her to forgive the young man accused of killing her husband.
“On the cross, our savior said, ‘Father, forgive them for they not know what they do,’” she said. “That man, that young man: I forgive him.”
A former college basketball player who was named Miss Arizona in 2012, Kirk has been tasked with filling the vacuum left by her husband’s death. It’s a tall order, as her 31-year-old husband had become one of the most influential activists and organizers in Trump’s MAGA movement — able to rally large numbers of young people to the GOP cause and, allies and analysts argue, hold together a contentious MAGA coalition.
The TPUSA movement has already begun to fracture in the wake of his death — especially with feuds over whether conservatives should support Israel, and conspiracy theories over the death of Charlie Kirk spread by former allies such as Candace Owens. “We’ve seen fractures. We’ve seen bridges being burned that shouldn’t be burnt,” Erika Kirk said during a speech at AmericaFest, TPUSA’s annual conference in December. The mother of two young children, Kirk runs a faith-based fashion company and a ministry to promote Bible reading, serves as the CEO of TPUSA and is also part of the “momfluencer” movement of young American women who embrace more traditional roles for women as wives and mothers.
Brad Lander, Mamdani ally and Israel critic
The remarkable success of Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral race might not have happened without the endorsement and support of City Comptroller Brad Lander, a progressive Jew who has been highly critical of Israel’s war in Gaza. When the two men rolled out a cross-endorsement in June as competing candidates in the city’s ranked-choice voting system, it helped convince many New York City Jews to take Mamdami, a young candidate and a Muslim, seriously. “When Brad and Zohran co-endorsed each other in the primary, I felt like any reservations that I may have had about Zohran were really addressed, because I trust Brad, and I trusted that Brad would not co-endorse somebody he felt he had any reason to be concerned about, vis-à-vis the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Emily Cohen of the West End Synagogue.
Lander, a longtime member of Brooklyn’s Kolot Chayeinu synagogue, did not snag a spot as the incoming mayor’s top deputy. Instead, he is challenging U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman in the Democratic primary in June. The House seat, covering parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, will be another test of whether New York City Jews are ready for a more critical stand on Israel. The district went heavily for Mamdani, who does not believe Israel should exist as a Jewish state. Lander, a liberal Zionist, has more nuanced views but shares Mamdami’s critique of Israel and calls its campaign in Gaza a “genocide.” Goldman, a “proud Zionist and steadfast supporter of Israel,” received funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC — the influential pro-Israel lobbying group whose brand has become increasingly toxic. If Lander succeeds in capturing the House seat, it might signal a profound generational change in American Jewish attitudes toward Israel.
Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala
A native of El Salvador and a naturalized American citizen, Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala has been a leading pastoral voice for immigrant Catholics in Washington, D.C., and beyond in 2025. In his role as a pastor of a local parish and an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Washington, Menjivar-Ayala made headlines for comparing the plight of immigrants to the suffering of Jesus on Good Friday.
“Many fear this crisis will lead only to ruin, but there is one thing in our lives that is not endangered and in which we can take hope — and that is the ongoing presence of Jesus the Risen Lord among us,” he wrote in an essay for the Catholic Standard, the archdiocesan newspaper. Menjivar-Ayala, who came to the U.S. at age 19 while fleeing violence in El Salvador, led a Good Friday procession at his parish and then led a Mass where he told worshippers to turn to God during times of crisis.
“Stop thinking just about your problems,” Menjivar-Ayala preached. “When you become part of a community, fear becomes farther away and hope emerges and is born again,” he said during the Mass.
Catholic leaders have been concerned that the crackdown on immigrants has led to a climate of fear — where people are afraid to go to worship and worry they might be arrested while picking up kids from school. “Despite obstacles and prejudices, generations of immigrants have made enormous contributions to the well-being of our nation,” the nation’s bishops wrote in a statement earlier in 2025.
The Rev. David Black and other religious critics of ICE
When asked, the Rev. David Black, a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister, insists he’s just a pastor. But to the Quaker-turned-Presbyterian — who leads a church known for its long history of social justice advocacy — being a pastor is more than a quiet, sequestered role at a parish.
“I put a very high value on being a pastor who’s involved in the public square,” he told RNS in an interview in October.
Black’s work became especially public in September, when footage went viral of the pastor being shot with pepper balls while praying outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois. As news of the incident began to circulate — even garnering a rebuke from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — Black appeared on a range of news programs to articulate passionate faith-based opposition to Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Since then, Black has emerged as a de facto representative of an increasingly vocal group of religious Americans outraged by the administration’s immigration policies. He has continued to show up to protests outside the Broadview ICE facility and has spoken at multiple “shadow hearings” convened by federal lawmakers to discuss issues regarding ICE and other immigration officials. Black has earned praise from congressional Democrats and has taken his cause to the courts: He joined journalists and activists in filing a lawsuit against DHS, alleging that agents who shot him with pepper violated his religious freedom. A federal judge ultimately sided with him, and at least three other clergy members eventually signed on to the same suit.
Whether Black himself will remain the public religious voice in the spotlight is an open question, but the broader faith-based movement he represents appears primed to continue to grow in 2026 — a phenomenon Black casts in a spiritual light. “I’m seeing almost a revival of Christianity through what’s happening at Broadview in Chicago,” he said.
Pastor Doug Wilson (and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth)
It’s no secret that the influence of Doug Wilson, a provocative pastor based in Idaho, has grown steadily in far-right circles in recent years. After garnering a surge of attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pastor’s traditionalist views — on such matters as women’s roles and sexuality — as well as his restrictive immigration stance and his open support for Christian nationalism began to attract a subset of prominent conservatives associated with Trump.
In 2025, Wilson was fully embraced by a genuinely powerful figure: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who attends both a Tennessee-based church in the denomination Wilson co-founded and a new plant of Wilson’s own church that was established in 2025 in Washington, D.C. Since becoming defense secretary, Hegseth has begun hosting a monthly worship service at the Pentagon organized by the secretary himself, the first iteration of which was led by a pastor from Wilson’s denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.
Hegseth also tweeted out a CNN interview of Wilson, prompting questions as to whether Hegseth agreed with pastors in the clip who argued women shouldn’t be allowed to vote (a Pentagon spokesperson later said the secretary believes they should). And Hegseth spoke at an event in September co-sponsored by the Association of Classical Christian Schools, a group Wilson founded.
Meanwhile, a number of far-right insiders have been spotted in attendance at Wilson’s new D.C. church plant, and Wilson himself spoke in 2025 at both the National Conservatism Conference and AmericaFest — both prominent conservative gatherings.
Mehdi Hasan, journalist and founder of Zeteo
When MSNBC — since renamed MS NOW — canceled Mehdi Hasan’s show at the beginning of 2024, critics warned the move would further reduce the already small number of prominent Muslim media figures. But after a short stint at The Guardian, Hasan did something few journalists have been able to do: He successfully launched a media outfit all his own, called Zeteo. Even more surprising: Far from fizzling out like so many other media startups, the Substack-based Zeteo continued to grow in 2025, bringing on new writers while boasting 450,000 subscribers and more than 50,000 paid subscribers as of August.
Operating with an unapologetically progressive political lens, the outlet has published articles and videos that have garnered attention and occasional backlash for being especially critical of Israel’s ground assault in the Gaza Strip, American conservatives and the Trump administration, which has referred to Zeteo as “a worthless gossip rag.” The outlet has landed regular contributions and interviews with an array of left-leaning politicians, celebrities and advocates, such as Mamdani, actress Denise Gough and activist Greta Thunberg.
While religion is not a central focus of Hasan’s work, he has made a point to be vocal about his faith. In an editorial written shortly after Mamdani’s recent mayoral victory, Hasan decried “Republicans and conservatives who have attacked Mamdani’s Muslim faith and identity,” and he insisted that “Muslim Americans are not going anywhere.”
“I’m sorry to have to break it to the Islamophobes,” he wrote, but “we’re just getting started.”
The Rev. Frederick D. Haynes, pastor and Texas congressional candidate
Long before the Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III filed the paperwork to run for Congress in early December, he was well-known as a Black Protestant leader. In addition to serving as pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, he is co-founder of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference and sits on the boards of the Conference of National Black Churches, the National Action Network and the IC3 Church and Development Conference. He had succeeded civil rights icon Jesse Jackson in leading the Rainbow PUSH Coalition until Haynes left the post in 2024.
But Haynes has also long been publicly political, speaking out on state and national issues such as voting rights, raising the federal minimum wage and ending the Senate filibuster. So when one of Haynes’ own congregants, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, announced plans to run for the U.S. Senate, the pastor set in motion a campaign to fill her seat that could expose his spiritual politics to an even broader audience.
It’ll be a campaign to watch, and if he wins in November, Haynes would join at least two other prominent Black pastors currently serving in Congress: Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who leads Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, a United Methodist minister.
Scalabrinian Sister Leticia Gutiérrez
A member of the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo, Scalabrinians, Sister Leticia Gutiérrez is the director of migrant hospitality ministry for the Diocese of El Paso. In that role, she often accompanies migrants during immigration court hearings in El Paso, along with a retired immigration lawyer turned priest. She also speaks to immigrants before they are taken into custody. “Gutiérrez helps them arrange their affairs, sometimes taking up to 30 to 40 minutes before they walk toward the agents. She encourages them to call their families one last time and share their Alien Registration Number, and then to write phone numbers on their bodies so they can call family if they’re detained,” RNS’ Aleja Hertzler-McCain reported earlier in 2025.
Vivek Ramaswamy, Hindu politician
Ramaswamy, a one-time GOP presidential candidate now running for governor of Ohio, found himself being asked in 2025 to defend his Hindu beliefs to a crowd of students at Montana State University. Speaking at an event sponsored by the conservative group Turning Point USA after the death of founder Charlie Kirk, Ramaswamy found himself in a theological debate. A student questioned whether Ramaswamy’s beliefs were compatible with the Christian values promoted by Turning Point. Calling himself an “ethical monotheist,” Ramaswamy gave the student a copy of the U.S. Constitution, pointing out that it bans religious tests for office. “What matters most is our shared value set,” he said. In recent weeks, Ramaswamy has found himself defending the idea that people of different religious faiths can be real Americans. That idea has been challenged by members of the MAGA movement who say the country belongs to “heritage Americans” — namely, those descended from white European Christians. Ramaswamy has rejected that claim.
National Reporter Yonat Shimron contributed to this report.
