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Throughout his campaign for the U.S. Senate in Texas, James Talarico, a Democratic state representative, has capitalized on his Christian faith.
His message, blending biblical language with his policy vision, has struck a chord in a state where the Democrats have struggled for decades. In Texas, a Democrat has not won a statewide race in more than 30 years.
Last week, Talarico won the Texas Democratic primary, defeating Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett and raising new speculation about whether Democrats might mount a serious challenge in the general election.
For decades, the conversation about religion in American politics has been dominated by the “religious right.” But Talarico’s rise has sparked a debate about whether a new “religious left” is beginning to take shape, and whether it can balance out religious public voices that belong predominantly to evangelical Christians.
A 36-year-old politician and Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico is a progressive Christian, and so are his interpretations of the Bible.
On Joe Rogan’s podcast, Talarico pointed to what he sees as biblical backing for abortion: the story of the Annunciation involved God asking Mary for her consent before incarnation.
“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,” Talarico said on the podcast.
He’s also said that “God is nonbinary,” later clarifying that “God is beyond gender,” still a controversial idea for many Christian conservatives.
Talarico is also an ardent believer in the separation of church and state, and has criticized proposals to post the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms. He said it would be “un-Christian” to impose Christianity on Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic and other students.
“And forcing our religion down their throats is not love,” Talarico said when he appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show that didn’t end up airing on CBS, but now has over 9 million views on YouTube. (CBS says it blocked the interview due to FCC’s equal-time rule for all candidates in the election, but Colbert argued that the agency wanted to silence those who oppose the Trump administration.)
Talarico has positioned himself at the inception of a “new politics” that transcends traditional partisan divides and unites citizens of both parties in his state around the fight against political economic elites.
In his primary victory speech, he warned supporters about the backlash he expected from Republicans.
“They’re going to call me a radical leftist. They’re going to call me a fake Christian,” he said in his victory speech.
He wasn’t wrong. Many conservatives have pushed back against Talarico’s brand of Christianity. While his rhetoric may appeal to voters looking for a fresh tone — The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg described this as “code-talking” — his policy positions diverge sharply from what many conservative Christians believe their faith requires.
In an essay in First Things, Colin Redemer described Talarico’s positions as “backward Christianity.” Without the “polish and the TikTok virality,” he wrote, Talarico’s message is in line with the decades-old tenets of the mainline left — “a Christianity evacuated of its doctrinal substance and refilled with the priorities of the Democratic National Committee (if not the Democratic Socialists of America).”
Editor of Compact Magazine Matthew Schmitz wrote on X: “James Talarico’s woke Billy Graham shtick has the same function as Tim Walz’s trans-affirming Elmer Fudd persona. Democrats desperately want a rural/religious-coded white male who can make their most unpopular positions seem American as apple pie.”
In a recent column discussing Talarico, David French made a point that regardless of the party, America needs more compassionate politicians who can be forceful without being hateful.
“This miserable political moment won’t end when the left takes back the government from the right or if the right continues to beat the left,” he wrote. “It will end when our politicians — especially Christian politicians — forsake cruelty for compassion and realize that we shall know Christians in politics not by their stridency and ideology, but by their integrity and love, including their love for, as Talarico put it, ‘all of our neighbors.’”
One point that Talarico made in his Colbert interview may resonate across political and religious differences of opinion: “In reality, your politics should grow out of your faith, not the other way around.”
Whether or not his campaign succeeds in November, Talarico’s popularity points to an important moment: more Democrats are speaking openly about religion, invoking their faith in the political arena. At the same time, it raises questions about the degree to which we want religious rhetoric and scriptural interpretations to shape our political arguments.
Fresh off the press
- I sat down with Jonathan Wing, the man behind RootsTech, the annual family history conference in Salt Lake City that took place last week. We talked about his family’s move to Utah when he was 8 years old, finding comfort in making family recipes and playing piano, and how he came to run the world’s largest family history and genealogy event in the world.
- According to a recent Pew Research Study, Americans are critical about moral choices of their fellow citizens. Out of 25 countries surveyed, Americans more than other cultures disagree with their compatriots about their morality. Browse full report.
- “Today” crew members joined in “spontaneous prayer” during Savannah Guthrie’s studio visit. “Why not hold hands and send up one big prayer to God, ask for a miracle. He wants to feel needed. So we asked for that miracle. ... If you don’t ask, you don’t receive,” said meteorologist Dylan Dreyer, a Catholic, who led the group in prayer.
Faith in the news
- Why America needs evangelicals on the Supreme Court — and more. — The Washington Post
- There seems to be an influencer category for everything: home renovation, books, finances, parenting. The world of religion influencers, particularly from a range of Christian denominations, has been growing, too. “At a time when religion in the U.S. has been flat or declining for decades, influencers including Redeemed Zoomer, Religion for Breakfast, Data Over Dogma and Esoterica are revealing a large audience hungry for details and distinctions about the vast array of religious choices available to them. With social norms or pressures to be religious much weaker, experts say people seem to want deeper, specific reasons for why they should practice one way or another — if at all,“ writes Michelle Boorstein. She calls religion influencers “travel guides to the world of religion.” — The Washington Post.
- Belief in afterlife isn’t going away. In fact, it’s actually increasing, according to Ryan Burge. “In the full sample, 88% of folks said that they did believe that each being possesses both a soul and a physical body. I look at survey data all day, and here’s what I know: it’s hard to get 88% of Americans to agree on anything, really. If you tried to pull together a battery of 10 public policy proposals, it’s very unlikely that any of them would get 88% support. But the data tells this story clearly: almost all Americans believe that there’s something happening beyond our physical bodies,” according to Burge. — Graphs About Religion.
End notes
Sharon Eubank, a longtime humanitarian and president of Latter-day Saint Charities, spoke at Harvard Divinity School on Friday about her book “Doing Small Things with Great Love.” One of the things she discussed was the power of volunteerism to bring people in communities together that perhaps otherwise wouldn’t go together.
In her book, she describes volunteerism as a mindset that says “I am willing to do something for the good of the whole.”
I’ve often approached volunteering begrudgingly — with a sense of duty and obligation that takes me away from more important work that I should be doing. But Eubank talks about volunteerism as a social movement that “spins off friendships, enhances the meaning of our lives, and creates a climate for many kinds of believers to thrive together side by side.”
I like this framing much more. It’s how we build social capital and relationships and, hopefully, heal our communities.