Y’know, for a fella who starts his article off by saying “I don’t normally comment on political races,” he sure packs a helluva wallop.

Calling Bullsh-t on James Talarico
Jesus is not your campaign surrogate.

I don’t normally comment on political races, but when I see someone who is as fundamentally full of sh-t as James Talarico, I believe it is my duty to say something about it. James Talarico is now the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from Texas, having defeated Jasmine Crockett in the 2026 primary. He has discovered a political instrument more powerful than a Super PAC, more versatile than a focus group, and considerably harder to interview: Jesus Christ. After generations of right-wing Protestant pastors hijacking the message of Jesus and turning him into some kind of political football, you have to hand it to James. After all, he is shameless enough to say, why not me?

Down in the backwater leftist stronghold of Austin, Texas, Talarico is selling progressive politics with a halo. He has shamelessly transformed Jesus into a mouthpiece for leftist progressivism. But that same feeling that we used to get when we watched the PTL Club pervades his aura. I have to hand it to American Protestantism; despite its amazing versatility, it can still make you feel dirty, cheap, and used.

Talarico’s maneuver is a simple one for the simple-minded. He selects biblical passages that he can bastardize and put into the service of leftist progressivism, as if it were a direct command from the Lord Jesus Christ to the White House and the U.S. Senate. Jesus becomes a mouthpiece for the massive expansion of government, open borders and illegal immigration, and NGOs. However, the clarity of his stance rolls into the fog the moment that the fate of an unborn child enters the discussion.

It would be too simple to call him a political whore. But I have to say that hearing him speak makes me nostalgic for Jasmine Crockett. Talarico has shamelessly peddled the God-loves-abortion argument that was vomited out by his professors at the far-left seminary he attended in Austin. Just a quick review of the course catalogue puts the “seminary” in the same political hotbox as any American progressive propaganda center these days. As a survivor of Harvard Divinity School, I can recognize all the usual fluff: Activism and the Old Testament Scriptures, Womanist and Feminist readings of the New Testament, Immigration and the Old Testament, Communication for Ministries of Social Justice. At Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, there is not even a pretense to read the Bible through anything other than a Marxist, feminist lens. The historical texts never stood a chance.

What is especially loathsome about these seminaries is that they seem to barely read the printed word and have no real interest in what the Gospels actually say. Their efforts have been directed toward “demythologizing” the gospel (Rudolf Bultmann), finding the secular meaning (Paul van Buren), secularizing the message (Harvey Cox, The Secular City), or drawing a picture of God to their liking, literally conjured up from thin air (God the Problem, Gordon Kaufman). Then there are the feminist wackos like Mary Daly, the “theologian” who despised all men, would not accept men into her classroom, and would only refer to God as “Goddess.” For any serious scholar who actually wants to study Augustine, Aquinas, Athanasius, Luther, or the actual Bible, stay the hell away from a mainstream Protestant seminary. They wouldn’t know a Bible if it fell off the shelf and hit them over the head. They haven’t even lifted their heads out of Das Kapital for the last 75 years.

“It would be too simple,” you say? I dunno, myself; seems to me that calling the smarmy cockholster a “political whore” meets the case quite nicely.