The media keeps lavishing attention on Texas’s freshly elected Senator, 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 a former seminarian, understood all of this. His grandfather, once a Baptist preacher, moved onto the “moderate” side when conservatives took control of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s and ’80s—a development plotted in Texas. Talarico grew up in a church that has long been known locally for its forward-leaning activism.
During a CNN town hall in October, a voter from Round Rock, his hometown, asked him in a Christian-on-Christian tone about provocative past remarks such as “God is nonbinary.”
“Do you believe that the Bible remains the absolute source of truth and God’s final authoritative word, even when our culture says otherwise?” she pressed.
“Yes,” Mr. Talarico replied.
For many, his ascent underscored the broad scope of what Christianity can mean in Texas.
“The loudest voices people hear are from these megachurches, and people assume that represents all of us,” said the Rev. Janet Maykus. She grew up in a progressive church in what was then rural Lancaster, Texas, where she learned that “faith is something unique to every person,” rooted in justice and kindness rather than in doctrinal rigidity.
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, she calls it a “train wreck” with affectionate respect. Some speak a version with gender-inclusive language; others add a few extra words here or there. In every service, Maykus also prays aloud for “our siblings in Christ who have strayed toward the lure of white Christian nationalism.”
In recent months, she said, she has talked with several visitors to the church who told her they had been inspired by Mr. Talarico to seek out a church like hers. She is set to baptize a baby this Sunday.
The expansion of progressive congregations like hers is precisely why Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the politically influential First Baptist Dallas, watched Mr. Talarico’s rise with alarm, he told me 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 serving as a Christian pastor, or even as a Christian,” Jeffress argued, referring in part to Talarico’s suggestion that Christianity is not the sole path to truth.
Last Sunday, Jeffress said, he alluded to Mr. Talarico while preaching about the Tower of Babel, warning that “false religion always blends truth with error.”
Jeffress’s church, established in the 1860s, is one of many Texas institutions that have long made the state 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 built on the Ten Commandments and low taxes. It is where W.A. Criswell, a predecessor of Mr. Jeffress, described the separation of church and state as “the figment of some infidel’s imagination” in 1984. And it is where Dan Patrick, the state’s current lieutenant governor, presents his socially conservative agenda as an expression of his Christian faith.
I have previously run afoul of writing about progressive Jewish faiths. I suspect I will tread the same ground with progressive Christian faiths.
Are there any aspects of Talarico’s progressive political stances that diverge from his Christian beliefs, or is his Christian faith simply an extension of his progressive politics? We are told that conservative Christians twist scripture to justify their policy preferences. Do progressive Christians twist scripture to fit their own policy aims as well?
When conservative Christians find justification for their political views in their faith, they are labeled Christian Nationalists. What label would fit progressive Christians who draw on their faith to justify their political positions? Christian Socialism, perhaps?
I believe the same standard should apply to people of faith across the political spectrum.
