New York Times (Lauren Jackson), On James Talarico: The Democratic Senate Candidate Is Campaigning on His Faith:

James Talarico has been taking classes to become a Presbyterian minister. And he wants you to know it.

At packed rallies, on Joe Rogan’s show and to his nearly two million Instagram followers, Talarico is constantly repeating his religious bona fides. He cites Scripture from memory and uses it to give theological answers to political questions. Even his campaign slogan has biblical roots. “It’s time to start flipping tables,” he says, referencing Jesus’s wrath in response to corruption at the temple in Jerusalem.

His campaign is a long-shot bid in a red state. Still, Talarico is copying the Republican playbook by leading with his strong Christian faith. It’s a risk. But there’s some evidence it has gained traction. He has pulled ahead of his opponent, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, in the primary, and Democrats nationally, desperate for a path (any path!) forward, are paying attention. His strategy has become a petri dish, of sorts, testing a new model of progressive campaigning.

New York Times (Ezra Klein), Can James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left?:

Talarico is a little bit unusual for a Democrat. He’s a very forthright Christian politician. He roots his politics very fundamentally in a way you don’t often hear from Democrats in his faith (“there is no love of God without love of neighbor”).

I wanted to have Talarico on the show to talk to him about his faith, his politics and the way those two have come together in this attentional moment to allow him to say things in a language and within a framework that people seem to really want to hear, that people seem hungry for: a language of morality, and even of faith, at a time of incredible cruelty. And at a time when the radicalism of faith seems to have been perverted by the corruption of politics.

Ezra Klein: I wanted to start with your faith, because your politics is so rooted in your faith. For you, what is the root or the experience of your belief? Is it learned for you? Is it embodied? Cerebral? Is it something you’ve always had? Or something you had to struggle to find?

James Talarico: All the above. [Chuckles.] So my granddad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas, in Corpus Christi and in Laredo, where my mom grew up. When I was real little, he told me that Christianity is a simple religion — not an easy religion, he would always clarify, but a simple religion — because Jesus gave us these two Commandments: To love God, our source, and to love our neighbors.

And so those two Commandments have really guided my life at its best moments, and it’s why I’m in public service. I was a public-school teacher, and now I’m a public official. That’s “loving my neighbor.” And it’s why I’m a seminary student studying to become a minister one day — that’s the “loving God” part. And both of them sustain each other, challenge each other, reinforce each other on a daily basis. …

How do you think about the competing claims of different religions? Do you believe Christianity to be more true than other religions? Do you believe there to be exclusivity in these beliefs, that they’re incompatible with each other?

I believe Christianity points to the truth. I also think other religions of love point to the same truth. I think of different religious traditions as different languages. So you and I could sit here and debate what to call this cup, and you could call it “cup” in English, and you could call it something else in Spanish and French, but we are all talking about the same reality.

I believe Jesus Christ reveals that reality to us. But I also think that other traditions reveal that reality in their own ways, with their own symbol structures. And I’ve learned more about my tradition by learning more about Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam and Judaism.

I see these beautiful faith traditions as circling the same truth about the universe, about the cosmos. And that truth is inherently a mystery.

I think the most destructive thing is when religion becomes an end in and of itself. That’s when religion implodes.

My pastor always told me growing up that religious symbols are like aspirin: In order to work, they have to dissolve. They point beyond themselves. If you get lost in the symbols, if you get lost in the words, you’re missing the reality that we’re all trying to describe and talk about. …

I listened to you when you did your “Joe Rogan” appearance, and you offered there a very, very progressive form of Christianity.

Archival clip of “The Joe Rogan Show”:

Rogan: What do you think is the biblical evidence to support the opinion of being pro-abortion?

Talarico: So before God comes over Mary and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary’s consent, which is remarkable. Go back and read this in Luke. The angel comes down and asks Mary if this is something she wants to do, and she says: If it is God’s will, let it be done. Let it be. Let it happen.

So to me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create. Creation is one of the most sacred acts that we engage in as human beings, but that has to be done with consent. It has to be done with freedom. And to me, that is absolutely consistent with the ministry and life and death of Jesus.

You’re not just emphasizing in your politics different aspects of your faith, but you’re very much challenging quite widespread interpretations of it.

Again, I think that’s what we’re called to do as Christians. Almost every debate Jesus is in is with the religious authorities of his time, directly challenging orthodoxy. Jesus was a religious reformer. Paul was a religious reformer. And so I think when we’re at our best as Christians, we are challenging religious dogmas and religious supremacy.

But I also try to come at this with humility. On the issue of abortion, I’ve said before, I don’t know what Jesus thought about abortion. The Bible doesn’t tell us. The Bible doesn’t mention abortion at all. And so, as with many issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible, we have to take Scripture, and we’ve got to try to piece together what we think is what love demands of us on a particular policy question.

And you’re right: For the past 50 years in this country, the religious right, a political movement, convinced a lot of Christians in America that the two most important issues were abortion and homosexuality — two issues that aren’t really discussed in Scripture. Abortion is never mentioned. Consensual same-sex relationships are never mentioned.

It’s remarkable to me that you have an entire political movement using Christianity to prioritize two issues that Jesus never talked about. And so I’m not saying they’re not important — I actually think both of those issues are very important. But to focus on those two things instead of feeding the hungry and healing the sick and welcoming the stranger — three things we’re told to do ad nauseam in Scripture — to me, is just mind-blowing. …

One thing I appreciate about President Trump is he doesn’t pretend that his politics are built on piety. That’s not his style. But the vice president, JD Vance, does suggest that his politics are built around a Christian ethic. And I want to play a clip of him for you.

Archival clip of JD Vance: As an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. It doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old school — and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

What did you think when you heard Vance say that?

That’s not the gospel. And I don’t think I’m saying this as a Democrat. I think I’m saying this as a fellow believer. JD Vance and I are part of the body of Christ together, and I think this is antithetical to the Gospel.

The Gospel is all about prioritizing those on the outside, those who are least lovable, and that’s what’s so revolutionary about it. There are some strange passages in the New Testament, and one of them is when Jesus tells his followers that they have to hate their mother and father. I don’t think Jesus was speaking literally — I don’t know, but I don’t think so — because I think we should love our moms and dads. I love mine. The Ten Commandments require us to, and Jesus was a devout Jew from the day he was born until the day he died.

But I think he’s using shocking language to teach us something, that our little loves for our parents, for our friends, for our children, for our neighborhood — really important, crucial, beautiful, profound loves — can sometimes get in the way of the big love — the love for the stranger, the love for the outcast, the love for the foreigner. And I should add love for our enemies — the hardest love to achieve.

And so what JD Vance is describing is the culture that we already live in, that’s the world. And we Christians are called to see beyond the world, and that’s to a divine love, a godlike love. Because as Scripture says: “The rains and the sun fall on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.” God loves all of us, no matter what we’ve done, no matter how good or how bad we are. And we as Christians are called to have that divine agape love for every person equally.

And that’s hard to do. I fail at it. I love my family more than I love other families. I’m guilty of that. I think we all are. But the gospel is pushing us to move beyond that and to have the same love for a child on the other side of the world that we have for our child. It’s almost impossible to do that, but it is what we are called to do. …

Your campaign slogan is: “It’s time to start flipping tables.”

Yes.

What’s that in reference to?

It’s a story in the New Testament, of when Jesus walks into the temple — and I think it’s hard for us in our modern context to really understand an equivalent of the temple. You would think it’s a church or a synagogue or a mosque, but the temple was so much more than that. It was the center of not just religious power but economic power and political power.

And so this humble rabbi from the backwoods in the Galilee doesn’t just stay in his room and pray when his neighbors are being hurt. He walks into the seat of power, and he flips over the tables of the money changers, the tables of injustice. And it’s a profound act of protest, of civil disobedience. It’s ultimately what gets him killed by the Roman Empire.

And I and many others always think about Jesus being gentle and kind and soft — all those things he was. But he was also strong and tough and confrontational and aggressive when people were being hurt. And at least for me, and I think for this country, we have to remember that is what love demands of us sometimes.

So I wanted to center that story when we started the campaign, because this campaign was going to be about fighting back. The billionaires who own our algorithms, who own our cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens and keeping us all divided: This was going to be a campaign that was going to bring people together to stand up to those forces.

Who were the money changers?

We were talking earlier about religion being corrupted. The folks who were going to the temple sometimes had to make sacrifices — part of that ritual. And so the money changers were allowing them to participate in that temple economy, and in the process, getting rich off those people.

This is again partly why we are so focused on trying to keep these traditions sacred, because in this case, the money changers are profiting off people’s search for the sacred, and it’s what we’re called to challenge directly.

• New York Times, A Democrat in Texas Thinks Faith and Honesty Can Win a Senate Campaign
• New York Times, He’s Young, Talented and Openly Religious. Is He the Savior Democrats Have Been Waiting For?
• New York Times, James Talarico Gives JD Vance a Bible Lesson
• Austin American-Stateman, Why James Talarico Is Betting His Christian Faith Can Win Over Democrats in the U.S. Senate Race
• Christian Post, Texas Democrat Tells Joe Rogan ‘Test of Christianity’ Is ‘Do You Love Judas?’
• The Economist, The Democrat Who Calls Trump a Child of God
• The Hill, James Talarico Might Be the Antidote to MAGA Christianity
• Houston Chronicle, How Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico Are Both Leaning Into Their Christian Faith
• Salon, Texas Needs What James Talarico Is Selling — And So Does America
• Texas Monthly, The Last Temptation of James Talarico
• Texas Tribune, James Talarico’s Progressive Take on Christianity Made Him an Online Sensation. Will It Translate to His Texas Senate Bid?
• The Week, Democrats’ Strategy to Woo Voters For 2026: Religion

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