Preachers, Prophets and Politicians (Part Two)
James Talarico, Ken Paxton and what it means to be "prophetic."
This is the second in a series exploring what it means to be “prophetic.” You can read part one here. In this post, I want to discuss the contrast between the two (likely) candidates in Texas for U.S. Senate, Ken Paxton and James Talarico. I think Talarico presents an interesting case study in progressive Christianity, which I’ve become more familiar with in recent years.
The Last Temptation of James Talarico
A former public school teacher turned Texas state representative, James Talarico is running to become the first Democratic senator of the Lone Star State in more than 30 years. A seminary student at Austin Presbyterian, Talarico has been able to speak eloquently about his faith, political ideals and how those two intertwine. This has caught the attention of national figures as wide-ranging as Joe Rogan and Ezra Klein.
But there is a central tension for the seminarian running for senator, a tension Texas Monthly captured in its profile, “The Last Temptation of James Talarico.” In the piece, the author shares an insight from Talarico’s longtime mentor and pastor, Dr. Jim Rigby:
“Rigby didn’t tell Talarico outright what to do, but he did explain that choosing the politician’s path would not be the prophetic one, and that it would come with certain pitfalls. The prophets, he said, were not fortune tellers but rather interpreters of the political situation of their time. They also gave up political power to maintain their purity. “A politician never gets to choose between pure good and pure evil,” Rigby recalled saying. “When you have power and you’re supposed to be negotiating between two different sides, there’s no purity, which is why the prophets surrendered power.”
Talarico didn’t surrender power. He ran an aggressive campaign, flipped a Republican-held district, and entered the Legislature in 2019 when he was 29 years old, then the youngest member of the Texas House of Representatives.”
Talarico didn’t surrender power. He pursued it.
A Stark Contrast
Talarico presents a strong contrast to his likely opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. As New York Times columnist David French put it, Paxton is one of the most immoral men to ever hold elected office in Texas:
The man is an admitted adulterer, which is something that used to matter to conservative Christians. His wife, a conservative state senator, has filed for divorce on “biblical grounds.” Paxton tried to help Trump steal the 2020 election, and he’s so corrupt that several of his top aides blew the whistle on him and resigned or were removed from their jobs, with many of them claiming that he provided favors for a donor in exchange for personal benefits, including finding employment for the woman said to be his mistress. Paxton has denied wrongdoing.
Paxton’s numerous scandals have not stopped him from continuing to use faith-based messaging around his campaign. At the recent CPAC event, he claimed it was the “grace of God” that “delivered” him through his impeachment trial.
In the same opinion piece criticising Paxton, French went on to praise Talarico for his decency:
Yet if the primary American divide is between decent and indecent, then the equation changes. Talarico shines.
Or, to put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian, and by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.
French received significant backlash for the piece, but I think he is directionally correct. I would, however, put more nuance to it (which is what the following post is). Talarico’s rhetoric about loving your neighbor is a welcome reprieve from the harsh, scalding rhetoric of both the right and the left.
Many criticisms from the Religious Right were also deeply hypocritical. For years, they overlooked or even cheered the ways Trump and his administration have used Bible verses and Christian messaging to advocate for behavior, rhetoric and policies that are counter to the Gospel.
If we are measuring simply by who is more “decent,” I agree there is no contest. Paxton presents an incredibly low bar, however. I think there are reasons to put some caveats to whether Talarico presents a uniquely “Christian” way to engage in politics.
Called to Service
A recent profile in The New Yorker details a meeting between Talarico and former Democratic Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings. The meeting took place in the pastor’s office at First Presbyterian Church of Dallas, because what else would be taking place there?
“Rawlings asked about his sabbatical from seminary: “You’re putting being ordained on hold? God’s gonna wait?”
“This is where I’m being called.”
Talarico has been called (by God?) to put seminary on hold and run for the U.S. Senate. But further down in the article, Beto O’Rourke shows a different side:
“I think the world of James,” [Beto] said recently. “I told him, ‘If you end up being the guy who runs for Senate against the Republican machine, you will want friends on that ticket.’ ” Instead, “James came in, like, ‘I don’t care what you guys are doing with your little huddle. Fuck all y’all, I’m doing this.’ He blew everything up in his excitement to make the case for himself.” O’Rourke called Castro afterward and said, “What the fuck?” But he also told me, “You’re not going to win in this game unless you’re really fucking confident.”
Beto remains the benchmark for many Democratic statewide campaigns in Texas after coming just 2.6 percentage points behind Ted Cruz in 2018. He is the closest Democrat to ever win a statewide election in Texas in the past three decades. In 2018, hoping to win in a ruby red state, Beto leaned heavily on themes of crossing divides and unity.
I voted for Beto in 2018 because I was drawn to his unifying words. But during the 2020 campaign, which began mere months after the 2018 campaign ended, Beto’s rhetoric changed.
Consistent themes of reaching across the aisle and working together became aggressive calls to combat conservatives. “There’s more that unites us than divides us“ became “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
All I’m saying is: politicians tend to say things that will win them elections and avoid saying things that will lose them elections. That’s why I’m less willing to take their statements at face value.
Talarico is a politician and should be evaluated as such. He chose to set aside the role of preacher and prophet to pursue his true “calling.”
As his mentor warned him, there’s no purity in being a powerful politician. You will have competing stakeholders, interest groups, and constituencies. You will be influenced by the polls, the media, your opponent’s attack ads, social media, party leadership, and so on.
A preacher/prophet aims to speak the truth. A politician aims to win votes.
Thou Shall Not Lie
Talarico sometimes engages in deception in his quest for power. This is obviously common among politicians, but it calls into question whether his words are “prophetic” or merely opportunistic.
Most notably, during his appearance on “The View,” he was asked to explain why he had missed 800 votes during his tenure in the Texas House. In response, Talarico claimed he missed those votes because he was breaking quorum while protesting Republicans’ redistricting efforts. As veteran journalist and Capitol watcher, Scott Braddock, tweeted, this was a lie:
Unbelievable: Rep @jamestalarico did not miss hundreds of votes because he was breaking quorum. That’s because no votes can be held on the Texas House floor if there’s not a quorum #txlege
This was far from the only time Talarico’s words didn’t match his actions.
A central focus of Talarico’s flipping tables rhetoric has been against billionaires and the influence they wield through their political action committees. But as Politico reports, Talarico has gladly accepted funding from PACs tied to billionaires in the past:
The single biggest donor to Talarico’s state House reelection bid last year [2024] was a group funded by casino mogul Miriam Adelson, according to state campaign finance data.
Adelson, the widow of the late Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, is one of President Donald Trump’s largest financial supporters and is seen as a boogeyman by much of the left.
…
Talarico received a total of $59,000 from the Texas Sands PAC through donations in February and December of 2024, according to state campaign finance records.
Billionaire Miriam Adelson and Texas Sands PAC have a vested interest in expanding legal gambling into Texas–a massive market. As journalist Zaid Jilani wrote earlier this year, Talarico voted in favor of a bill that would’ve put the question to Texas voters through a constitutional amendment.
Talarico claims on his website, “I’ve never taken a dime of corporate PAC money.” Technically true, but misleading. Texas Sands PAC is legally an issue advocacy PAC, not a corporate PAC funded by a corporation, a distinction the average voter will likely not make.
This is not the only disconnect between rhetoric and actions. Later in the piece, an anti-gambling advocate doesn’t mince words:
“The one word that comes to mind to describe his position would be hypocrisy,” said Les Bernal, the executive director of Stop Predatory Gambling, a national group that advocates against legal gambling. “If he [is] studying the Gospel, he must have missed the reading where Jesus says ‘Love others like I love you.’ Because casino gambling especially is a prime example of loving yourself more than your neighbor because it’s a business based on greed, manipulation, and exploitation.”
“Christian Nationalism”
Another key theme to Talarico’s campaign is warning against Christian Nationalism on the right. Talarico and others are right to be alarmed about this phenomenon. Trump’s rhetoric around the Iran War contains multiple examples.
I think scholar Dr. Matthew Taylor’s recent post about how Christian Nationalism is probably best understood as a spectrum is helpful. Otherwise, the term becomes confusing when someone seeking power and heavily relying on Biblical language to advocate for their policies also denounces those seeking to use power for Christian ends.
Heath W. Carter, associate professor of American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary, recently noted these contradictions in a piece for The Atlantic, “Americans Should Stop Using the Term Christian Nationalism.” While discussing Talarico’s recent appearance on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show,” Carter noted:
[Talarico] told Colbert that “there is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. It is the worship of power in the name of Christ. It is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.”
Talarico’s critique verges on irony. Given his own campaign for Senate, one presumes he is not opposed to the pursuit of power by avowed Christians. In fact, in that same interview, he outlined a more biblical approach to politics, citing the Gospel of Matthew on the measure by which believers will be judged: “by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger—nothing about going to church, nothing about voting Republican. It was all about how you treat other people.”
In that same interview, Talarico raised a common critique of how the Religious Right has elevated concerns about abortion and homosexuality:
For 50 years, the Religious Right…has convinced a lot of our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage—two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible, two issues that Jesus never talked about.
These are fair points. But when you visit the website for Talarico’s church, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, you are greeted by a cross draped in the rainbow pride flag and transgender pride flag. As a gay person, I appreciate when churches are clear (anywhere on their website) whether they are affirming or not of same-sex relationships. What I don’t appreciate is churches making that the center of their identity.
Just below that, with the title of “What Makes St. A’s Special,” is an image of a banner, “We Support Reproductive Rights.” Elsewhere on the website, you can find information on how the church is a “Reproductive Freedom Congregation.” The church has made abortion central to its identity.
Those are only a few of the red flags the church might raise for the average believer.
When the right makes abortion and gay marriage the center of their faith, it’s bad. But when the left does it, it’s good. When the right uses power to advance their interpretation of Scripture, it’s dangerous and toxic. But when the left uses power to advance their interpretation of Scripture, it’s righteous, noble and pure. Or, as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat put it after watching Talarico’s appearance on Colbert:
The other guys misled you into believing that Jesus was entirely on their political party’s side, but as it turns out Jesus is entirely on *my* political party’s side.
As I noted in the first post on this series, critics of the Religious Right would be much more compelling if they hadn’t engaged in some of the same behaviors themselves.
Weilding the Bible for Political Purposes
Much has been written about Talarico’s comments about how “God is nonbinary.” I think it is true that the Creator of the Universe does not fit into our biological categories. But why should that have any bearing on public policy?
The context of Talarico’s statement is what bothers me more than the statement itself. Talarico was speaking out about a bill limiting girls’ sports to female participants.
This has obviously been a contentious policy issue in recent years, so how should we navigate these questions? Should we turn to public polling that 70% of Americans (and likely a higher percentage of Texans) believe “Transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender”? Should we turn to science that shows a clear male advantage, on average, over females in sports? Should we consider safety and fairness questions, not just for transgender athletes, but for the cisgender athletes competing against them?
No? We’re going to go with “God is nonbinary?”
Journalist Dave Wiegel of Semafor interviewed Talarico last September about this moment and got the following response:
I would think that all of my fellow Christians would agree with that statement, that God is beyond gender, or, as the Apostle Paul says: In Christ, there is neither male nor female. That’s not me, that’s Ephesians.
It’s actually Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That passage is not about God’s gender but the fact that we are all one in Christ. But that’s just my understanding, I didn’t go to seminary.
But again, what does this have to do with the public policy question at hand?
This is what people criticize the Religious Right for: using their interpretation of Scripture over and above other considerations—including the clear majority of the public—when debating legislation.
Would an agnostic or atheist be comfortable with this rationale? Unlikely.
Speaking Truth to Power
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is the prototypical pastor who used his prophetic voice to enact social change. He is rightly regarded for his work in furthering Civil Rights, but a true test of his character came as the Vietnam War ramped up.
The heavy toll the war had taken on both America, Vietnam and the surrounding region compelled King to speak out against the very president who had delivered landmark Civil Rights laws only years before.
Now, let me make it clear in the beginning, that I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war.
…
I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.
Those are strong and stirring words taking direct aim at the LBJ Administration. King used his prophetic voice to call out injustices, even when inconvenient.
But imagine if, in addition to being a preacher, he was also a U.S. senator. He now has competing interests. Are there bills making their way through the legislative process he’ll need the president’s cooperation on? Is it an election year? What do the polls say? Are there defense contractors in his district?
I’m aware the current pastor of King’s church, Ebenezer Baptist, is also a U.S. senator from Georgia. I still think that’s a bad dynamic for all the reasons above. Preacher and Politician are two hats that do not fit on the same head.
All these extra layers, all these additional considerations, all those endless temptations to compromise.
Perhaps that’s why Talarico’s pastor told him:
A politician never gets to choose between pure good and pure evil. When you have power and you’re supposed to be negotiating between two different sides, there’s no purity, which is why the prophets surrendered power.
Or as Talarico stated in his interview with Colbert: “When the church gets too cozy with political power, it loses its prophetic voice.” This is from the man who put seminary on hold to run for the most powerful legislative body in the world.
Talarico didn’t surrender power. He pursued it.
I used to believe that not voting in general elections meant giving up your voice. I'll be voting in the May run off, and no one can make me vote for those two men.