One Texas Democrat was on a roll this election season:
“God is non-binary.”
“There are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six.”
“Prophetic voices like Jesus have helped me reckon with my own whiteness.”
“If you deny your child’s gender identity, that’s incredibly harmful. … It’s abusive for sure.”
“It’s always rich to me that defund the police is considered off limits.”
“This idea that to be a Christian means you have to be anti-gay and anti-abortion, there really is no historical, theological, Biblical basis for that opinion.”
Those are just a handful of the comments from Texas’ newly elected Democratic senator, James Talarico—a graduate of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary who professes the Christian faith while championing LGBT ideology and abortion. Though he has claimed to have walked back certain comments (such as his 2021 comment of God being non-binary), throughout his campaign, he repeatedly bent Scripture to prop up positions that stand in open conflict with the Bible he cites.
In his victory speech Wednesday, Talarico cast his political agenda and supporters in the roles of David against Goliath—and then of Jesus Himself:
I’m reminded of that story from Scripture of a shepherd boy who goes up against a giant for 40 days. … In this race, we went up against our own Goliaths. … David wasn’t as big or as strong as Goliath. He didn’t have as many weapons, but he had hope. He had faith, and he had a slingshot. You were my slingshot. The people of Texas were my slingshot. And tonight we defeated Goliath. Scripture has taught me, my own life has taught me, always bet on the underdog.
…Through every underdog, through every David against every Goliath, through every Texan who believed in our state and believed in this movement. Now the real work begins. Two-thousand years ago, when the people at the top hurt His neighbors, that barefoot rabbi didn’t stay in His room and pray. He walked into the seat of power, and He flipped over the tables of injustice. As this movement heads to the seat of power, as we head to the United States Senate, we know what this moment requires of us. Texas, it’s time to start flipping tables.
During his campaign and even now on social media, supporters—progressive Christians and atheists alike—have held him up as a model of “faith.” But for Bible-believing Christians, the concern runs deep.
“He’s an actual heretic,” said Josh Howerton, senior pastor of Lakepointe Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. “A Biblically defined false teacher and heretic.” Politicians have long twisted Scripture to fit their narratives, Howerton noted. What sets Talarico apart, he said, is that “his whole platform is using the Bible to convince Christians to support godless things.” Howerton warned that what progressive so-called Christians like Talarico do is “hollow out your religion and wear it like a skinsuit.”
As others have noted, for more mature believers, the statements can be easy to dismiss. For newer or weaker ones—or those who have never read the Bible for themselves—the risk of being led astray is real.
Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at the Family Research Council and Government Affairs Advisor for NC Values Coalition, put the dynamic in sharper focus. Pointing to a speech in which the crowd cheered after Talarico quoted Scripture, Backholm observed: “Christianity is not offensive because of the God we worship. Christianity is offensive because of the gods we refuse to worship.”
“It’s always been this way,” he continued. “Nebuchadnezzar knew that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego worshipped Yahweh. That wasn’t a problem until their loyalty to Yahweh conflicted with their loyalty to him. When they refused to bow, they became a problem. So it is today.”
In Backholm’s view, “Secularists don’t care if you call yourself a Christian, talk publicly about Jesus, and regularly attend church as long as you worship their rainbow gods of autonomy too. If you do, they’ll hold you up as an example of one of the ‘good Christians’”—exactly as they are now doing with Talarico.
Jesus will be horrified, Backholm concluded, but the world will applaud it.
