Talarico Called Himself A ‘Christian Who Hates Christianity’

James Talarico has poured his leftist idea of Christianity down the throats of Bible Belt Texas for some time, even more so now in his quest for higher (political) power: The U.S. Senate. His road to Damascus moment of sorts seems to be that a “boring, straight, cis, white male” can bring a moral clarity to the nation’s political swamp. 

That is of course if you believe moral clarity is believing that “God is nonbinary,” that the Annunciation gave the go-ahead to murder the unborn, and that mutilating confused children’s bodies to change their sex is a manifestation of God’s love. 

Talarico, who is facing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in November’s pivotal Senate election, likes to use Christianity in his politics, but the alleged Biblical scholar admitted that he’s no fan of Christianity. 

“I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity, right?” the Austin Democrat said in exclusively unearthed audio. 

Talarico was the guest on Roberto Che Henderson-Espinoza’s Activist Theology podcast. The candidate said a lot of striking things on the program from March 2021, most of it more Marxist than mysterious. 

‘Transing Religion’

Espinoza, formerly known as Robyn Henderson-Espinoza identifies as a “nonbinary, transgender, Latinx theologian on the autistic spectrum.” The Ordained Baptist previously taught “Queer Theory and Theology,” “Introduction to Christian Social Ethics,” “The Ethics of Liberation,” and “Queer Theory and Religious Ethics” at Duke Divinity School, according to her bio. 

The trans activist once wrote a paper for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion titled, “Transing Religion: Moving Beyond the Logic of the (Hetero)Norm of Binaries.” In it, she proposed “transing religion as one approach to methodologically dismantle the logic of the norm that grounds the reproduction of binarisms and theologies of complementarity.”

Espinoza once delivered a sermon (in a “Black Lives Matter” vest) declaring the Bible is “trans-positive.” 

“How might we embrace the language of the writer of Genesis in that the earth being a formless void and mobilize darkness in the face of the deep as part of the creative process that is trans-inclusive and trans-positive,” Espinoza asked.

In fighting against a Texas bill that requires schools notify parents if their child tells a school official that he or she is trans, Espinoza warned that young trans queers living in Texas like she was “can be outed to their parents at will…”

Talarico confessed that when Espinoza followed him on Twitter, he “couldn’t contain” his “inner fan boy.” Espinoza’s book, the Senate candidate said, inspired him and, in an affected Texas accent, added that “y’all’s work continues to inspire me.” 

Talarico, was talking about Espinoza’s book, Activist Theology. She wrote her opus, Body Becoming: A Path to Our Liberation, when he was a she (hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side), aka Robyn Henderson-Espinoza. The author, according to the Amazon blurb, “inhabits is a nonbinary body, a trans body, a body in two races — and a body continually in discovery. Theirs is also a body on sojourn invested in experience, body understanding, and engagement in and for human thriving.”

Yes, you need a flowchart for the pronouns. 

Critical Race Theory Christianity

Talarico’s hatred for Christianity may not sit well with voters in one of the most Christian states in America, nearly half of which consider themselves evangelical Protestants or Catholics, according to Pew Research. While sin plagues all institutions of man, it’s unlikely that a significant percentage of Texas Christians “hate Christianity.” 

Yet Talarico, at least in March 2021, was stuck. In the 2021 podcast, he told the hosts that he just couldn’t quit Christianity. 

“And I always get drawn back into it because nowhere else, in no other political philosophy, in no other economic theory, do I find anything as truly radical or revolutionary as the teachings of that barefoot Rabbi,” Talarico told Espinoza and co-host Rev. Anna Golladay, who in 2018 lost her associate pastoral position at Chattanooga, Tennessee, United Methodist churches for officiating a gay wedding.  

Golladay is running a long-shot campaign to unseat longtime Tennessee 3rd Congressional District Rep. Chuck Fleischmann. President Donald Trump won the ruby red district by more than 35 percentage points in 2024. 

Talarico draws from the same intellectual well as Golladay and Espinoza, steeped in a kind of critical race theory Christianity. 

Roberto Che Henderson-Espinoza Source: Youtube

In the podcast, Talarico praised his longtime minister, Jim Rigby, head of the progressive flock at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin for more than 35 years. Rigby, who, according to the church website, has a “love of world religions and a passion for social justice,” was “proudly part of a Christian anarchist tradition,” Talarico said on the podcast. 

He said his mentor paid a heavy price early on for his liberal interpretation of the Bible. 

“Now I look back and understand what kind of risks he was taking with his own career,” the Democrat said, describing Rigby as a “true white traitor.” Sounds like an insult. It’s not in Marxist land. 

Being a “race traitor,” according to the now-dead communist who peddled the divisive ideology, is the call not only to abolish so-called “white privilege”, but the act of “abolishing whiteness.” All part of the far left’s — aka modern Democrat Party — “commitment to class struggle.” 

In other words, it’s insanity. Charles Manson Helter Skelter philosophy. 

“The philosophers have merely interpreted the white race; the point, however, is to abolish it. How can this be done?” the Boston Review’s Mike King pondered in a memorial piece on his hero, Noel Ignatiev. The formerly alive Marxist professor at Harvard and champion of critical race theory claimed that “treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.”

‘Christianity can be Powerful’

Talarico is a disciple of this radical school of thought. He confessed his white privilege sins to Golladay and Espinoza, that his imagination is “limited by his own background and identity.” 

“My whiteness and my masculinity, all of those things limit my imagination about what’s possible,” the man who wants to be Texas’ next senator said. 

One thing became crystal clear in the podcast: Talarico wants to commandeer Christianity to preach the old failed faith of Marxism. He wants to make Christ into Karl Marx so that he can push radical leftist policies should he be elected to higher office. And he wants to use the Gospel — at least his version of it — to reach Christian voters. 

Christianity is the vehicle for rising leftist power in America, he said. 

“The reason I think Christianity can be powerful in our context in this country is because so many of our political opponents share that kind of, that tradition,” Talarico said, calling Jesus Christ a socialist. 

“It’s very strange every time I think about it, that the most popular figure in our country, particularly on the conservative right, is this socialist anarchist from Palestine,” he said. 

Like any good Marxist, Talarico knows the power is rooted in language — control of what he calls the “moral language.” 

Success on that front, he predicted, will begin to shift the culture “toward something that’s more life-affirming, life-enhancing, life-furthering.” The “people with functioning hearts” — leftists like himself — have a “moral obligation” to be the force behind that shift, Talarico said.  

That sounds political, not Christian. Sounds like a twisted religion from someone who, it seems, really does hate Christianity. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.