When Democrats handed state legislator James Talarico a surprise primary victory over Rep. Jasmine Crockett in March, the party leaned heavily into his supposed appeal as a Christian seminarian. After the GOP runoff resulted in a win for Ken Paxton, who has his own baggage here in Texas, Democrats practically popped the bubbly. Paxton's marriage dissolved over his infidelity, and despite John Cornyn's inability to compete while slamming Paxton over his divorce, Democrats seemed convinced that the clean-cut Talarico and his public professions of Christian faith would give them a winning edge.
Conservatives began pointing out that Talarico's faith journey edged into radical-progressive politics rather than scripture, especially with Talarico's claims that "God is non-binary," that humanity has "six genders," and that trans children are a particular priority for him. Talarico's defenders rushed to defend him by claiming that his approach represented "mainline Protestant tradition." The left-leaning Texas Observer made this argument two weeks ago:
However, given the MAGA Christian response to the young politician-seminarian, you might think it was the Antichrist running for the Senate. He’s been called “demonic,” a “fake Christian,” and “blasphemous,” with “very, very radical and extreme views.” One Newsmax host accused him of using “fake passages from the Bible, tortured and misrepresented.” Talarico has drawn fire for characterizing God as “nonbinary,” though he later explained he meant God is “beyond gender” (a common theological notion). U.S. Representative Ronny Jackson, an Amarillo Republican, said the statement showed Talarico is “a full-on RADICAL LEFTIST!!”
Such over-the-top rhetoric is a sad fact of life in this age of post-truth hyperbole. But the ferocity of anti-Talarico invective reveals a deep and very public clash between two distinct ways of being Christian.
While MAGA Christians insist that the Bible dictates their anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant Christian nationalism, the Mainline Protestant tradition—of which Talarico’s Presbyterian Church (USA) is a part—has a very different understanding of what it means to follow Jesus, one that leads to a politics precisely opposite from that of MAGA Christians.
Within this Mainline tradition, Talarico is quite orthodox.
"Within this Mainline tradition" does a lot of heavy lifting as a qualifier for "orthodox." Just how 'mainline' is the Presbyterian Church (USA)? Last Friday, the Associated Press republished a report by RNS on the group's current high-priority debate, which is whether the PCUSA should allow ministers to live in polyamorous relationships. The debate erupted when a faction proposed a rule requiring monogamy for ministers at PCUSA churches, which prompted a pushback from the 'queer communities' of PCUSA:
A proposal that would require ordained clergy to be monogamous is on the docket at the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly this summer.
The overture, CON-10, has generated strong reactions online but not yet earned broad support from PCUSA groups. A separate asks for theological studies on gender and sexuality, life-giving relationships and the Christian vocation of family that would support the denomination’s commitment to inclusion of different familial realities. Together, these overtures show that as polyamory gains visibility in broader culture, it may have policy implications, especially in theologically progressive Christian denominations.
“I think it is the next big conversation that most mainline denominations will have,” said the Rev. Claudia Aguilar Rubalcava, director of engagement for the LGBTQ-affirming nonprofit More Light Presbyterians.
Note that this is not about welcoming polyamorous parishioners into congregations to spread the Word of salvation. The opposition to the proposal to require monogamy wants to allow ministers and church leadership to live in and model polyamory as part of their concept of 'mainline Protestant tradition,' according to the Texas Observer. Just the fact that the supporters of the proposal felt the need to clarify monogamy as the model for ministers speaks to the radical direction in which PCUSA has moved over the last generation.
Having read the Bible on occasion, the scriptural support for polyamory escapes me entirely. It certainly doesn't come from the New Testament. In Matthew 19, Jesus specifies that marriage was meant from the beginning as the union of one man and one woman, and then goes on to condemn divorce and remarriage. When He meets the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus reveals her sin in having multiple husbands and living with another man outside of marriage. The apostle Paul isn't even enthusiastic about marriage at all, commenting that it works for people who cannot maintain chastity otherwise. The only pseudo-biblical defense of 'Christian polyamory' is usually expressed as "Jesus was all about love," which is so ambiguous as to be meaningless.
Does Talarico support or oppose this proposal? So far, he does not appear to have any comment on it. However, his own supporters cite his connection to PCUSA as evidence that his version of Christianity is traditional and mainstream. If PCUSA envisions polyamory not just for its members but also for its ministers and leadership, "mainstream" would hardly be an apt descriptor, especially for the lived Christian experience for voters in Texas outside of a few polycules in Austin.
Polyamory is hardly the first radical position for PCUSA and, more specifically, Talarico's home church in Austin. The Daily Wire noted it just after the Texas runoff, in an article that may have prompted the pushback from the Texas Observer:
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the woke Austin church attended by Talarico, lists Planned Parenthood, which ends the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn babies every year, as one of the organizations that shares its “vision and goals for the world.”
The church, which The Daily Wire reported last week stocks sexually explicit books aimed at young people in its library, sets aside money every year for Planned Parenthood, according to its website. It also describes itself as a “Reproductive Freedom Congregation,” meaning it believes that “abortion is a blessing.”
Donating to Planned Parenthood is not the only way that St. Andrew’s promotes abortion.
Through its Social Justice Committee, the church backs a project called “Field of Hope.” The project was created as a memorial for the AIDs epidemic, but now promotes a variety of other activist organizations. One such organization is the Lilith Fund, which provides money for Texans to travel out of state to kill their unborn babies. ...
The radical pro-abortion groups are just a sliver of the liberal causes supported by the church. Other organizations St. Andrew’s lists on its donation page included Out Youth Austin, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Evergreen Action, and the Carbon180.
PCUSA and St. Andrews belong to a progressive tradition, not a Christian tradition. Both have shifted their priorities from the Gospel to the radical Left's political agenda, with just a fig leaf of Christianity to hide their naked pursuit of radical policies, even within the organizations.
My friend and colleague Dr. Albert Mohler laid this out carefully and comprehensively two weeks ago. The New York Times had run a lengthy profile of Talarico and his mentor Jim Rigby, the pastor at St. Andrews. Dr. Mohler argues that PCUSA and Rigby have essentially stripped God from the faith, leaving them with nothing but radical-Left values as their core belief system:
But when it comes to Talarico, he tries to be evasive. Here’s what he says, “I don’t believe in a progressive or conservative Christianity. I believe in a biblical Christianity. My faith is rooted in scripture and in the teachings of Jesus Christ.” Well, again, that is a move very similar to the liberals of the early 20th century. And of course they were repudiating Christianity and now we can see in terms of the pastor of this church, where that leads and I would say inevitably, and by the way, if you were to go back to those original theological liberals, they called themselves sometimes modernists in the early 20th century. They were adamant about the necessity of perpetuating Christian morality, for example, a Christian understanding, a biblical understanding of marriage and sexuality and all the rest.
Over the course of the last several decades, mainline Protestantism has ditched all of that. And of course, it turns out that this pastor, Jim Rigby, was very much a part of that within the PCUSA, the Presbyterian Church USA, which is the liberal Presbyterian denomination, or at least the largest of them, which is decreasingly large. There are a lot of conservatives there in Texas who have been very much onto, very much aware of what James Talarico is all about. One of the most amazing things is that Talarico has actually wandered or waded into some territory and he said some things which are very much on the record and well, you can look at them. Some of them are now posted on social media in which he says the most incredibly liberal things.
I don’t mean just liberal as compared to conservative. I mean, liberal as in terms of basically repudiating Christian truth and this is what becomes very, very clear.
When a 'Christian' church repudiates Christian truth, it becomes a club at best, and in practical terms, nothing more than social activism for radicals. Talarico is the furthest thing from "mainstream," and so is his progressive club.
