Monday’s New York Times brought more “strange new respect” for Christianity in a 1,600-word story pumping up James Talarico, yet another Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, where the Democrats haven’t won a stateside office since 1994.
Lisa Lerer, national political reporter, and Elisabeth Dias, national religion correspondent, brought a religious angle, and the paper, typically hostile to mixing faith (at least Christian faith) in politics, is on board with Talarico and his warped version of Christianity.
The headline was quite bold: “In Senate Race, Talarico Challenges ‘Heretical’ Right-Wing Christianity.”
James Talarico, in one of his first interviews since winning the Democratic nomination for Senate in Texas, attacked the use of Christianity to promote conservative politics, saying his candidacy was part of a broader mission to counter what he sees as a partisan takeover of the American church.
Mr. Talarico, a state legislator and seminary student, used unsparing language to describe what he called “Christian nationalism,” saying such beliefs were “fundamentally un-Christian,” a “perversion” of his faith tradition, “unbiblical” and “heretical.”
The criticism amounted to a declaration of war against Christian conservative leaders in a deep red state who have successfully pushed policies that ban abortion, weaken the separation of church and state, and insert their Christian values into public schools.
Support from conservative Christians has fueled President Trump’s successful transformation of the American evangelical church into the backbone of his MAGA movement over the past decade. Christians from more progressive traditions have fought back with little success.
Now, Mr. Talarico, 36, is positioning his candidacy as an effort to break the stranglehold conservatism holds over both American politics and Christianity itself.
The Times portrayed conservative Christians as furious with Talarico, the gentle sheep.
His victory has unleashed a wave of fury from conservative Christian leaders attacking the theological underpinnings of his political positions and moral values.
Hours before his victory last Tuesday, prominent politicians, activists and pastors began assailing what they called Mr. Talarico’s “blaspheming tongue.” They blanketed podcasts, social media platforms and right-wing media outlets with video clips of him using the story of Jesus Christ’s conception to defend abortion rights, saying “God is nonbinary,” and finding spiritual truths beyond Christianity to support religious pluralism. Such positions, they argued, were an “abuse of Scripture” that disqualified him as a Christian leader.
As he moves into the general election, Mr. Talarico is pushing Christians to reclaim what he sees as core principles of their faith in American political life, including compassion for immigrants, helping the poor and loving one’s neighbor.
In doing so, he poses a new kind of threat to Republicans.
The Times sounded positively puritanical in their sudden insistence that there is only one true path to holiness, the left-side one.
Asked if such conservative Christians are transgressing God’s call to love their neighbor, he said, “Yes.”
After misleading about Talarico’s aborted appearance on Stephen Colbert’s late-night “comedy” show (CBS did not block his appearance under F.C.C. pressure), the article continued taking Talarico’s claims of deep faith at face value, not even hinting at potential religious hypocrisy, as the Times surely would with a Christian Right politician: “Mr. Talarico’s faith has been a core motivator of his life since childhood….”
The paper treated the politician as a prophet without honor in his own country.
For his part, Mr. Talarico is deeply aware of how his conservative Christian opponents view his reading of the Gospel.
On election night, he invoked the example of Jesus, “that barefoot rabbi,” who in the gospel story overturned the tables of money changers in the temple.
“They’re going to call me a radical leftist,” he warned supporters gathered in Austin. “They’re going to call me a fake Christian.”
But are they wrong? To quote the Bible: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
In 2018 Dias celebrated another Texas Democratic hopeful for the Senate, Beto O’Rourke (remember him?) showing similar strange new respect for his Christian supporters.
