The arrogant, unpopular “Catholic” Stephen Colbert recorded what was essentially a fawning 15-minute campaign ad for James Talarico on YouTube this week in which Talarico revealed how little he understands about Scripture, the Constitution, and ideological consistency.
The 36-year-old, unmarried Talarico has served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives and is currently running against U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett in the primary for U.S. Senate. Talarico, who is viewed as a Democrat “rising star,” hopes to flip Texas from a red state to a depressing blue state.
Interestingly, Colbert, who wears his fake Catholicism as a badge of honor and is dismissive of theological orthodoxy, seems uncharacteristically impressed by Talarico’s master’s degree in theological studies from Austin Presbyterian Seminary. The reason for that admiration is that Austin is a PCUSA seminary—in other words, it’s heterodox, if not heretical.
So, let’s tiptoe through the convoluted tulip field of these two heretics.
Talarico began by accusing the GOP of engaging in the “most dangerous kind of cancel culture”:
This is the party that ran against cancel culture and now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. … Corporate media executives are selling out the First Amendment to curry favor with corrupt politicians, and a threat to any of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights.
I kid you not. Talarico, a member of the party that engages in egregious censorship in public schools, the academy, the arts, and publishing, said that.
Corporate executives sold out our First Amendment rights years ago to curry favor with corrupt Democrats by censoring news and social media about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Joe Biden’s dementia, the Biden crime family’s influence-peddling, “trans”-cultic “healthcare,” and COVID. Surely, the baby-faced Talarico who has served in political office since 2018 knows all that.
Ignoring Talarico’s patent dishonesty, Colbert proceeded to simultaneously admire Talarico’s seminary background while criticizing the faith of other Americans:
Now, one of the things that’s … gotten you attention out there is that you are a Presbyterian seminarian. Presently, you’re a seminarian. … The right attempts to co-opt Christianity to say that you can’t believe in God, you can’t believe in Christ. … and be a Democrat. But the religious right is … largely a political movement that references spirituality.
There are many Christians, this writer included, who think that belief in the God of the Bible is irreconcilable with support for human slaughter and homosexuality, just as belief in the God of the Bible would be irreconcilable with support for chattel slavery. Would saying that Christians ought not belong to a political party that supports chattel slavery constitute “co-opting Christianity”?
As we will see, both Colbert and Talarico appeal to Scripture to buttress their political positions while condemning theologically conservative Christians for doing likewise.
Talarico responds with such biblical ignorance, it’s difficult to believe he earned an MDiv even at a PCUSA seminary:
Well, for fifty years, the religious right—a political movement—that is the perfect description for it. … 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.
Where to begin.
First, as any seminarian knows—or should know—it is not just the words of Jesus that are authoritative. According to St. Paul,
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16).
Second, Jesus never mentions bestiality, and neither Jesus nor any Scripture mentions pedophilia. I hate to think what that signifies to Talarico.
What we do learn from Scripture is that Christ’s existence as a human person was acknowledged when he was in Mary’s womb.
We also learn that God knew each one of us when we were knitted together in our mother’s womb.
We learn that every human bears the image of God and that each life is worth more than sparrows.
We learn from Jesus himself what marriage is:
He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? (Matthew 19: 4-5)
Both the Old and New Testament prohibit homosexual acts:
Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality … will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (Leviticus 18:22)
While Talarico has learned at the feet of heterodox scholars, surely, he knows that the views he holds on sexuality, marriage, and crossdressing didn’t emerge until the latter half of the latter half of the 20th Century. They are radical eisegetical views read into Scripture by sexual revolutionaries.
Of course, there are also non-religious reasons for opposing the legal recognition of same-sex erotic unions as “marriages.” If Talarico thought and read deeply on the subject, he might wonder why the state is involved in marriage at all.
The state has never had a vested interest in sanctioning loving feelings. The state is involved in marriage because the sexual union of one man and one woman is the way humans reproduce, and the state has an interest in protecting the needs and rights of children.
That’s the reason marriage was limited to two people: There are two sexes, and children are naturally produced by the sexual union of one person from each sex. The state has no interest in the romantic and erotic feelings of people who choose to be in naturally—that is, by design—sterile unions.
Talarico tacitly claims that politically conservative Christians exploit Scripture to deceive Americans that abortion and legalized homo-marriage are critically important cultural issues while trying to exploit Scripture to convince Americans that those issues are unimportant. But to do so, he is forced to lie about what Scripture teaches.
Lying about Scripture comes easily to seminarian Talarico:
Jesus in Matthew 25 tells us exactly how you and I and every one of our fellow believers, how we’re going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved. 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.
How wrong can a seminarian be?
In Ephesians 2:8-9, St. Paul teaches how we’re going to be saved:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
And in John 3:16, God makes clear how we are saved:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Scripture teaches that every person will be judged first by whether they accepted the salvific work of Christ on the cross. Those who don’t choose to submit to Christ will not see the kingdom of heaven no matter how many charitable works they do.
Christians are absolutely commanded to do charitable works, and charitable works are good works no matter who does them. But we are not saved by works.
Both political parties support feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and welcoming the stranger. Disagreements arise over how to achieve those good goals. How much money should the government spend on these goals when the national debt is approaching $39 trillion? How is using Matthew 25 to justify his politics different from conservatives allowing their politics to be informed by Scripture?
Talarico deceitfully implies that only Democrat policies can fulfill those biblical commandments. In other words, he is using Scripture to justify his political plans and policies. He tries futilely to exploit Scripture to convince Americans that salvation comes through the works he wants government to perform.
Talarico continued in his effort to exploit Scripture for political ends:
I’ve said before, don’t tell me what you believe. Show me how you treat other people, and I’ll tell you what you believe. … Jesus gave us two commandments. Love God and love neighbor. And there was no exception to that second commandment. Love thy neighbor regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation. … And it’s why I have fought so hard for the separation of church and state in the state capital in Texas.
Talarico who just moments earlier claimed the Bible said nothing about abortion or gay marriage now implies the Bible says, “love thy neighbor regardless of gender or sexual orientation or immigration status.” Christians are, indeed, commanded to love our neighbors, but Christians need to know what biblical love is.
Biblical love is not affirmation of all that people think, feel, or do. In 1 Corinthians 13:6, Paul teaches that “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth.” St. Paul says, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” That necessarily means making distinctions between good and evil, and between truth and falsehood. John teaches that “truth came through Jeus Christ” and that God’s word “is truth.”
Colbert asked Talarico about his efforts as a state rep. to prevent schools from displaying the Ten Commandments. Talarico responded that he was motivated by love for his neighbors:
[W]e are called to love all of our neighbors, including our Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, agnostic, atheist neighbors. And forcing our religion down their throats is not love.
Ironically, Talarico again uses his religious beliefs or interpretation of Scripture—specifically Scripture about loving his neighbor—to justify his policy positions.
Does Talarico believe the far more intrusive public broadcasting of Muslim calls to prayers in Minneapolis; New York City; Hamtramck and Dearborn, Michigan; and Paterson, New Jersey constitutes forcing Islam down the throats of the Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, agnostic, and atheist neighbors?
Talarico sacrilegiously characterizes the separation of church and state in the First Amendment as “sacred”:
And it’s why … I fought so hard for that sacred separation in our First Amendment. The boundary between church and state doesn’t just benefit the state or our democracy, although it certainly does, but it also benefits the church. Because when the church gets too cozy with political power, it loses its prophetic voice, its ability to speak truth to power, its ability to imagine a completely different world.
The First Amendment does not require the separation of one’s political views from one’s faith. The Establishment Clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” That does not mean that government leaders are prohibited from having their religious convictions inform their political decisions.
To expect or demand that decisions made by government leaders be divorced from personal religious beliefs is an untenable, unconscionable breach of the intent of the First Amendment that also includes the oft-neglected Free Exercise Clause which states that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
It’s clear that Talarico doesn’t divorce his religious beliefs from his policy decisions. Nor did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who wrote in Letter from Birmingham Jail,
How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.
The sanctimonious Talarico with the sacrificial heart of gold believes he is the just the person “to confront Christian nationalism and say and tell the truth, which is that there is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. It is the worship … of power in the name of Christ. And it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.”
As with “love,” Talarico provides no definition of “Christian Nationalism.” Near as I can tell, when leftists use the term, it refers to Christians whose theologically orthodox religious beliefs inform their political views and who love the United States of America.
It’s a donkey of a completely different color when Christians, like Talarico and Colbert, whose heretical religious beliefs inform their political views and who love America. Those people are definitely not Christian Nationalists no matter how cozy they are with political power.
Talarico continues in his transparent effort to convince theologically conservative Christians to abandon the public square to leftists:
[R]ight now what you’ve got is people baptizing their partisanship and calling that Christianity when in reality your politics should grow out of your faith, not the other way around. … my job in this moment is to try to … change the politics of our state and change the politics of our country. … [W]e have a moral imperative to win in November in Texas and to win across this country.
Exactly. Biblical truth, repentance, submission to the will of God all come first. And from that emerge our actions—including political actions.
But I’m confused. Does Talarico believe there should be an impenetrable wall of separation between religion and politics, or does he believe faith should be the source and grounding of one’s politics? He speaks of his “moral imperative.” From where does seminarian Talarico derive this moral imperative?
Here’s what Jesus says about the totalizing effect of being a Christ follower: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” and “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
Let’s hope and pray that wise Texans reject seminarian Talarico who wants only his religious beliefs to commingle with politics.