When the Texas candidate cites his Christianity, it’s often in service of a trendy progressive position.
When the Texas candidate cites his Christianity, it’s often in service of a trendy progressive position.
W hen Jasmine Crockett announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Texas in December, I immediately did two things: (1) celebrated riotously; (2) began reading up on her remaining opponent in the Democratic primary, Austin-area state legislator James Talarico. I had a feeling that Crockett might blow this race — I long ago accurately took her measure as a genuine counterfeit, a media-generated hologram — and I knew for a fact that the Democratic establishment would be putting its finger on the scales for Talarico, to salvage the chance of a shot at the seat.
Before I started checking up on Talarico, I was aware only that he was a progressive Presbyterian seminarian (studies currently on hold) who had once announced his belief that “God is nonbinary” on the floor of the Texas House. Armed only with my knowledge of what progressive Presbyterians are like (that is, self-defeatingly, publicly obnoxious), I then went to YouTube looking for ammunition. I found a sermon he delivered in 2023, warning against the dangers of “Christian Nationalism” (subtitle: “God Is Not a Christian”) and instantly came away with the belief that he was toast no matter who the Republican nominee was.
As he ranted against the founding of “Christian schools,” denounced Constantine as the “first Christian nationalist,” and stated, “We are closer than we think to a Christian theocracy,” I had one thought, aside from his manhandling of doctrine: This ain’t gonna sell statewide. I was amused that Democrats thought this guy was going to win religious voters in Texas — whether Catholic or Evangelical — while peddling Austinite progressive politics under the thin veil of a Christianity unrecognizable to most practitioners of the form. Who did these people think they were fooling?
No matter — he won the primary. And Democrats celebrated across the nation. And then the real oppo file began to drop.
All the old videos are now being reposted. The old tweets are “resurfacing.” And the hopes of national Democrats are being slowly gutted as they read old texts of their Great White Texan Hope righteously babbling ultra-woke slop such as, “White skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus [of racism]. But we spread it wherever we go — through our words, our actions, and our systems. We don’t have to be showing symptoms — like a white hood or a Confederate flag — to be contagious.” (Why yes, of course he wrote that in May 2020, but even more amazingly it was written before George Floyd’s death. Talarico was ahead of the zeitgeist.)
His Joe Rogan Experience appearance has once again made the rounds, where he gave a uniquely pro-abortion and biblically inaccurate spin to the Annunciation: “Before God comes over Mary, and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary’s consent. . . . So to me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create.” Elsewhere video surfaced of Talarico delivering more sermons, this time delivering a hilarious pro-transgender word salad to the gathered flock: “Our trans community needs abortion care too.” (Always keep your eye on the little things that matter, James.) Most tellingly, Talarico at one point cited the so-called Gospel of Thomas during a sermon to bolster one of his progressive talking points; that is exactly the sort of action that sends enormous red flags running up in front of every serious Christian.
The Gospel of Thomas is a late-second-century a.d. collection of narratively unrelated “esoteric sayings” put together by a gnostic cult that was working from the already-canonical four Christian gospels — a heretical splinter group purporting to reveal the “deeper truth” of Christianity by recourse to Hellenic philosophical and religious thought. A copy of the full text was recovered in the early 20th century, and it was treated as historical curiosity until very recently, when its necessarily impenetrable double and triple meanings have provided ample fodder for revisionist “religious scholars” to import all manner of anachronistic modernisms into authentic ancient Christianity.
But serious theologians have not endorsed the revisions. In his brief mention of it, Talarico describes the Gospel of Thomas as “later omitted from the Bible by church officials,” and this sleight of hand starkly reveals him to be a crooked shepherd, wittingly leading his flock astray. As any seminarian surely knows — because even I know — the Thomas gospel was never canonical, and also never intentionally “excluded” from the New Testament. It wasn’t even much known about at all outside of a particular sect. The four Gospels that form the core of the New Testament were acknowledged as canonical by the universal understanding of Christendom as far back as the mid-second century, without any acts of “suppression.” Talarico’s insinuation that he is referencing hidden truths obscured by the Church Fathers (or maybe Constantine himself, that dastardly Christian Nationalist) is the sleaziest sort of false counsel — and delivered during a church service, no less.
And that brings me to what rings so false about James Talarico’s attempt to sell himself as the candidate of Christian decency to fence-sitting Texans, even as he factually deceives: Nobody seems to use faith more instrumentally. Every time I’ve seen Talarico deliver a sermon or refer to his Christianity — every single time — it has been in service of a 2026-era progressive position, indistinguishable from the sort of trendy twaddle you might hear from Jack Schlossberg.
James Talarico’s God not only supports abortion — isn’t that the true meaning of the Incarnation, after all? — he also wants Texans to house abortion clinics in federal buildings. James Talarico’s God defers to “modern science,” and knows exactly how many sexes there are. (The answer, apparently, is six.) Does God ever make any demands of Talarico that might put him crosswise of his activist base, or are the heavens secretly ruled by choirs of genderqueer angels?
David French of the New York Times (and once of National Review) leapt to Talarico’s defense over the weekend:
If the primary American divide is between right and left then Talarico isn’t that interesting. There’s a long history of progressive religious activism in the United States just as there is a long history of conservative religious activism. Yet if the primary American divide is between decent and indecent then the equation changes. Talarico shines.
I am not so sure. Mind you, I have no problem damning Ken Paxton’s moral character, having done so enthusiastically several times here at NR. (The man both morally and personally resembles Jabba the Hutt in cowboy boots. Vote Cornyn.) But speaking as a Christian myself, I see nothing particularly praiseworthy about James Talarico’s moral character at all, and in fact much that suggests either intellectual cowardice or dishonesty: a failure to accept the demands that Christ places on man and society. In fact, I see a strange kinship he has with Ken Paxton: Both are, in their own way, politicians who found the simple rigors of Christianity inimical to their politics and appetites, and they therefore decided to sacrifice the demands of Christ for the desires of man.
Christianity is not merely a system of manners; it’s a system of divinely commanded morals. Those morals are not socially negotiated among activists. As an unrelated aside, it’s worth remembering that Jesus warned against false prophets.