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The Democratic Party has a newly minted hero. He is a 36-year-old Texas state representative named James Talarico, the Democrat candidate running to become the next senator from Texas who Democrat leaders are praying will turn Texas blue. And praying is the right word. Mr. Talarico, who has been a seminary student while serving as a state legislator, is running a faith-based campaign that seeks to present his leftwing, progressive vision of Christianity as an alternative to more traditional Christian beliefs.
Mr. Talarico is an imposter. He is trying to fool voters by wrapping his radical views on public policy issues in the packaging of a devout student of the Scriptures.
Take his support of abortion, for example. He has gone beyond the usual pro-choice policy arguments presented by pro-abortion advocates. Mr. Talarico claims that the Bible supports abortion by turning the story of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus, into a lesson about personal female autonomy.
“The Angel comes down and asks Mary if this is something she wants to do,” Mr. Talarico said. “To me that is an affirmation that creation has to be done with consent.”
Mr. Talarico has twisted Mary’s welcome of the divine will to rationalize his support for abortion. His pro-abortion interpretation is not only at variance with Catholic teachings. It is at variance with the official position opposing abortion of the Presbyterian Church, to which Mr. Talarico belongs.
On another occasion, Mr. Talarico said that “Our trans community needs abortion care too.” Does he mean biological women who think they are men, biological men who think they are women, or both? He doesn’t tell us.
Opposing a bill in the Texas legislature to ban men from women’s sports, Mr. Talarico managed to weave in his warped interpretation of the Scriptures. “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary,” he said.
No, Mr. Talarico, God is neither masculine nor feminine nor “everything in between.” Nor is God “non-binary.” Anthropomorphic words are used to refer to God because human beings are not omniscient. But God rises above all such anthropomorphic categories. Mr. Talarico would do well to read and try to comprehend the words of Exodus 3:14: “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’”
Mr. Talarico’s Presbyterian Church welcomes transgender people and “people who identify as gender non-binary.” But that does not translate into defining God as non-binary.
Attacking his favorite punching bag, Christian nationalism, Talarico has preached that a truly Christian nation “would forgive student debt.”
He must have skipped over Romans 13:7-8 in seminary class: “Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
While the Bible does contain passages about the moral obligation to help the poor, Democrat proposals to forgive student debts have not stopped there. They would also help students from upper bracket families who attend high-priced private colleges and universities. These students have the prospect of earning substantial incomes in the future that would easily enable them to pay back their student debts. They would not seem to be among the poor, needy people Jesus had in mind.
Mr. Talarico complained that he was “tired of being pitted against my neighbor” and has preached about what he calls the “politics of love.” That sounds nice. But out of the other side of his mouth, Mr. Talarico sounds like a race huckster.
“White skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus,” Mr. Talarico posted, referring to 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.”
To cure the virus, Talarico said in 2020 (the year of the riots triggered by George Floyd’s killing) that “The first small step is proclaiming loudly and unequivocally that #BlackLivesMatter.” Would that include agreeing with the president of Greater New York Black Lives Matter, Hawk Newsome, who said in 2020 that “my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the most famous black radical revolutionary in history”?
James Talarico has claimed in the past that “prophetic voices like Jesus” have helped him reckon with his own whiteness and masculinity. Did those voices tell him to be ashamed of his ‘white privilege’ and ‘toxic masculinity’ or were those the voices of the Left calling out to him? Mr. Talarico has a history of taking words and stories from the Bible out of context and twisting them to fit his progressive ideology.
Now Mr. Talarico is running a deceptive Senate campaign in which he seeks to portray himself as a devout Christian in a deeply religious state to win over voters attracted to his “religious” rhetoric. He has become a favorite of Hollywood and the legacy media who think they can sell Talarico as a politically moderate man of God. But voters in Texas need to beware of false prophets in sheep’s clothing.
