Religion and the 2026 Midterms: Polarization and Pursuing the Common Good

David Crary has been a reporter, editor and bureau chief with The Associated Press since 1976. Since mid-2021, he has been news director of AP's Global Religion Team. Crary joined the AP in Mississippi, later worked in Colorado and on the AP's international desk in New York, then covered East Africa and Southern Africa from 1985-1990 from bases in Kenya and South Africa. His assignments in Africa included the Ethiopian famine, the uprising against apartheid and Nelson Mandela's release from prison. From 1990-95, he was news editor at AP's Paris bureau, while serving eight stints in Sarajevo covering the war in Bosnia. He was named bureau chief in Toronto in 1995 and transferred to New York in 1999, where for 22 years he was a national writer primarily covering volatile social issues such as abortion, LGBTQ rights, and child welfare. 

Melissa Deckman (she/her) is the CEO of PRRI and a political scientist who studies the impact of gender, religion, and age on public opinion and political behavior.

Deckman is the author of The Politics of Gen Z, which tells the story of Gen Z’s growing political participation, and Tea Party Women (NYU Press: 2016), which examined the role of women in conservative politics. Her first book, School Board Battles: The Christian Right in Local Politics (Georgetown University Press: 2004) won the American Political Science Association’s Hu Morken Award for best book on religion and politics.The author of more than two dozen scholarly peer-reviewed articles, Deckman’s commentary and research about politics has appeared in The New York Times, MSNBC, The Washington Post, CNN, The Hill, Vice News, The Wall Street Journal, 538 , and Politico among other outlets.

Prior to joining PRRI, Deckman served as the Louis L. Goldstein Professor of Public Affairs and Chair of the Political Science Department at Washington College, where she taught courses on American politics and research methods. Dedicated to promoting leadership opportunities for young women, she was the co-founder of Training Ms. President, a Maryland-based, non-partisan program that encouraged young women to consider running for political office. She is proud to have conducted research for IGNITE, a leading non-profit organization that builds political ambition in young women across the country.

Deckman received her Ph.D. in Political Science from American University. A first-generation college student, she received her bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she graduated class valedictorian.

Michele Dunne OFS is a professed Secular Franciscan and is the executive director of the Franciscan Action Network (FAN). Before coming to FAN, her career focused on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. From 2006 until 2021, she headed programs focused on peace, human rights, and democracy in the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Atlantic Council. Before that, she served for nearly 20 years in the U.S. Department of State, including assignments in Jerusalem and Cairo. She holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University and lives in Washington DC with her husband.