Texas Dem, Talarico Tries To Dunk On Christians… The Clown Should Have Flunked Seminary

Just like Tim Walz was supposedly a ‘bro’ who could win the confidence of truck-loving hunters, Talarico is the left’s star candidate who can ‘win over’ the Christians because he’s a devout leftist who also went to seminary.

Democrats think that makes him like Texans. I’m guessing Texans will wise up and see that the only person that REALLY makes Talarico like is, well, Joseph Stalin.

To fully appreciate how badly James Talarico fumbled this ball, you must first understand a little bit of backstory, including the high opinion James has of himself and his theological pedigree.

The Back Story

While serving as a Congressman, he went to Seminary to work on his masters. As you can tell in his interview with Ezra Klein, Talarico intends to ‘Reclaim Christianity for the left‘. A close reading of the points he makes in that and other interviews reveals that his vision of ‘Progressive Christianity’ is nested within his political worldview and NOT the other way around. For example, he denies Christ’s own claim that he is the only path by which sinful men can be reconciled to a Holy God, while also cherry-picking other familiar passages that just happen to demonize the right people and (when lifted out of their original context) seem to endorse his party’s broader political positions.

He makes a point about having a baptist preacher as a grandfather and being raised in a Christian community (by one of the trailblazers in same-sex weddings). He leverages his linguistic training in Hebrew and Greek to (once again) reframe common Christian sentiments in ways that make him seem authoritative. (The greek word for faith, pistis, meaning not just belief, but trust.) That sense of authority is used as his moral authority to make pronouncements about what the other Christians have been getting wrong.

In that same interview, he makes it clear that he is on a crusade (pun intended) against anyone who gets Christianity ‘wrong’. He throws around the term ‘Christian Nationalism’, a phrase whose meaning no two people seem to quite agree on, as a pejorative for people like Pete Hegseth and JD Vance. It could be argued that it’s little more than a catch-all for any Christian or Christian denomination that has not given the ‘Ceasar Is Lord’ to secular progressivism. But that’s a question for another time and place.

This began by Dem establishment types deliberately pushing the Texas Senate primaries in his favor. In the primaries, we all saw how Schumer and Co rigged the game so that white-as-rice Talarico would get a multi-million dollar windfall as a result of being featured on the Stephen Colbert Show (while Jasmine Crockett was NOT featured).

Colbert and Talarico both pretended that the controversy from the CBS legal team came from personal animus from the Trump campaign and not legal advice about obligations to give the other two Democrat primary candidates equal time as per law. The two ‘devout Christian’ leftists both ‘Bore False Witness’ together against Trump by playing the victim, which gave James Talarico a MASSIVE name recognition boost and — imagine that — an extra $2M in donations.

Establishment Dems did what they always did. They decided who their best ‘Stepford Wife’ candidate was and rigged the game in his favor. Sorry Jasmine, it’s been fun. Now go away.

The winner of the run-off between Paxton and Cornyn will contend for the Senate seat in November’s midterms. There have been a couple of times where Talarico’s outlandish statements claiming that the Gabriel’s announcement to Mary was evidence in support of abortion, or that God is somehow ‘trans’ because of the nature of Hebrew syntax were defended by NeverTrump pseudo-conservatives like David French. (What’s that old saying about ‘with friends like these’?)

This Week’s Drama

This Week’s Drama

Where Talarico really beclowned himself was his social media interaction when a pastor pushed back against his rhetoric.

Huffpo got the ball rolling when they exposed their Biblical illiteracy by misunderstanding a fairly basic Christian concept, and one more complex one.

“I pray that God kills him,” Haymes said. “Ultimately, that means killing his heart and raising him up to new life in Christ.”
Potteiger concurred. “Right, right,” he said. “We want him crucified with Christ.”
Haymes repeated that he wants “death and new life” for Talarico. “And if it would not be within God’s will to do so, stop him by any means necessary,” he said. —Huffpo

First, the phrase ‘crucified with Christ’ describes the Christian process of redemption, of repentance from sin, and the new life that is found in Christ. It’s a shorthand way of describing that in a very real sense, Christians stop being who they once were, and accept the new life that is given to them from the Lord who died and conquered death on their behalf.

Second, is the imprecatory prayer. (Our own Doug Giles wrote an entire book on the topic, which we can link below.) You see it in the prophetic condemnation of Judas ‘let his office another man take’ in Psalms that is affirmed as fulfilled in Acts. You see it when Peter confronts Simon the Sorcerer, ‘your silver perish with you’.

We see two different accounts, even in the New Testament, of God taking a direct hand in the judgment of the wicked (Acts 5 Annas and Sapphire and Acts 12, when Herod was struck dead). Lesser judgments, like the Apostle Paul himself being struck blind for several days, are a divine show of force used to soften a wicked heart that it might receive redemption. Unlike the left’s calls to ‘Charlie Kirk’ people they hate (yes, they’ve turned it into a verb), this is an appeal to heaven to intervene in the life of someone who is actively opposing the advance of the gospel.

Taken in context, the podcast calls upon God to either transform Talarico’s heart so that it does not sell a corrupted, politicized form of the gospel, or that God in his Sovereignty make whatever moves He has to do that (in this case, Talarico’s) opposition to the authentic gospel fail.

This actually respects the biblical mandate to leave judgment in the hands of God whose motives are pure and whose understanding is perfect, and not in people, who tend to get a lot of things wrong a lot of the time.

The self-congrats and puffery in Talarico’s answer shows that he doesn’t understand the conversation..

He’s too busy playing the victim (just like he did with the whole Colbert thing) to see or say the truth.

Talarico can say he ‘loves’ the pastor. We all saw Nancy saying the same thing about Trump. That’s easy and convenient for a politician to say publicly, especially when it makes you look like the good guy and/or victim.

In reality, the pastor he’s denouncing sees in Talarico the same lost soul that the Apostle Peter saw in Simon the Sorcerer, who saw the trappings of religion as a means to an end.

In praying for James to be ‘crucified with Christ’ (see Galatians 2:17-21, especially v. 20) this pastor is praying for the very salvation of James’ soul.

Funny how ‘super-saint’ James Talarico hasn’t done the same, even though he seems to see ‘Christian Nationalits’ in exactly the same light.

Because he’s a progressive.

Politics is the TRUE religion, and faith is just one expression of the political worldview.

Joshua Haymes — the podcaster on whose show the quote was made — dropped the gauntlet in the replies:

How do we know that Hegseth’s pastor is on the right track in raising those concerns?

There’s a really glaring clue right in the earlier interview with Klein that we linked. While Jesus explicitly claimed to be uniquely able to reconcile man to God, and scripture plainly says that without faith in Jesus Christ we are ‘dead in our trespasses’… James Talarico contradicts God’s own word, saying each faith is like a different language expressing the same religion of love.

So which is it, James: Is Jesus Christ the only path to salvation?
Or are you calling Him a Liar?

There IS no ‘door number three’.

(And the second you say he’s a liar, you deny his sinless life, and negate the entire point of the crucifixion.)

There’s a world of difference between cultural churchianity and a living faith in Jesus Christ. For all his posturing, it’s sure looking like James hasn’t yet made the jump to the latter.

Like we said… Stalin went to Seminary too, but that doesn’t mean faith in Christ had any role in his political life.