The media continues to fawn over Texas’s new Senator-Elect, James Talarico. The New York Times draws a contrast between the traditional conservative evangelicalism and Talarico’s progressive christianity.
Mr. Talarico, an eighth-generation Texan and onetime seminarian, understood all that. His own grandfather, once a Baptist preacher, found himself on the “moderate” side when conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s and ’80s, a move masterminded in Texas. Mr. Talarico was raised in a church that has been known locally for its progressive activism for decades.
In a town hall hosted by CNN in October, a voter from his hometown of Round Rock, Texas, pressed him “Christian to Christian” about provocative past statements like “God is nonbinary.”
“Do you believe that the Bible is the absolute source of truth and God’s final authoritative word, even when our culture says otherwise?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Talarico answered.
For many, his rise was a reminder of the capacious borders of Christianity in the state.
“The loudest voices that people hear are these megachurches, and they think that’s what we’re all doing,” said the Rev. Janet Maykus. She was raised in a progressive church in then-rural Lancaster, Texas, where she was taught that “faith is something particular to every person,” rooted in justice and kindness rather than doctrine.
Ms. Maykus, 64, now leads the United Christian Church of Austin, a small mainline Protestant congregation in the capital.
When her congregation recites the Lord’s Prayer, it’s a “train wreck,” she said fondly. Some people recite a version with gender-inclusive language; others tack on a few extra words here and there. In every service, Ms. Maykus also prays aloud for “our siblings in Christ who have lost their way to the lure of white Christian nationalism.”
In recent months, she said, she has talked with multiple visitors to the church who said they had been inspired by Mr. Talarico to seek out a church like hers. She is baptizing a baby on Sunday.
The growth of progressive congregations like hers is exactly why Robert Jeffress, pastor of the politically influential church First Baptist Dallas, watched Mr. Talarico’s ascent with alarm, he said in an interview this week.
“What James Talarico believes about the Bible and about Jesus, those beliefs don’t disqualify him from being a senator, but they do disqualify him from being a Christian pastor, or even a Christian,” Mr. Jeffress said, referring in part to Mr. Talarico’s suggestion that Christianity is not the only religion that points to the truth.
Last Sunday, Mr. Jeffress said, he alluded to Mr. Talarico as he preached about the tower of Babel, warning how “false religion always mixes truth with error.”
Mr. Jeffress’s church, established in the 1860s, is one of many institutions that have long made Texas a major exporter of politically conservative Christianity.
Texas is where the folksy fundamentalist radio host W. Lee O’Daniel became governor in 1938, with a platform based on the Ten Commandments and low taxes. It’s where W.A. Criswell, a predecessor of Mr. Jeffress, called the separation of church and state “the figment of some infidel’s imagination” in 1984. And it’s where Dan Patrick, the state’s current lieutenant governor, described his socially conservative agenda as an expression of his Christian faith.
I have gotten into trouble in the past for writing about progressive Jewish faiths. I suppose I will do the same with progressive Christian faiths.
Is there any facet of Talarico’s progressive political views that depart from Talarico’s Christian beliefs? Stated differently, is Talarico’s Christian beliefs merely an extension of Talarico’s progressive political views? We are often told that conservative Christians distort scripture to support their policy preferences. Do progressive Christians also distort scripture to support their policy preferences?
When conservative Christians find support for their political beliefs in their faith, they are described as Christian Nationalists. What is the comparable label for progressive Christians who find support for their political beliefs in their faith? Perhaps it should be called Christian Socialism?
I think the same rule ought to apply to people of faith on all sides of the spectrum.