An August 17 ABC News report speaks volumes about the Senate race in Texas. It's headline, “Some Democrats trying to reclaim the issue of faith from the Republican Party,” raises a number of questions about what happens at the intersection of religion and politics. The first question is obvious: when and why did Democrats abandon faith in the first place? But a deeper question, one that is increasingly prominent in the Texas Senate campaign, is whether Democrats are trying to reclaim faith or redefine it.
James Talarico, the Democrat seeking to replace departing Republican Sen. John Cornyn, has issued numerous statements on his interpretation of the Bible that are diametrically opposed to both traditional Christian orthodoxy and black-letter Scripture. Talarico’s prior pronouncements include claims that God is non-binary, that there are six genders, and that the incarnation of Jesus Christ makes the case for supporting abortion. They’re preposterous statements yet they pale in comparison to others when viewed in the context of Talarico’s past training as a seminarian.
“I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity,” said Talarico during a 2021 interview on the podcast Activist Theology. In January, he suggested that all faiths contain the “same truth” as Christianity. Last week, Talarico criticized an optional Texas public school English curriculum teaching select Bible stories for purposes of literary and historical context as an attempt to “push propaganda, to push indoctrination” on students, describing it as “deeply immoral.” Conversely, Talarico has no such criticism of Texas schools teaching stories from the pagan Greek and Roman religions of antiquity.
These and other assertions raise the question of why Talarico would want to enter a Christian seminary at all. He claims to believe the teachings of Jesus yet ignores John’s Gospel in which Christ declares, “I am the way, and the truth,
Many Christians believe the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God yet Talarico defines teaching it as deeply immoral propaganda. The man thinks of himself as one who hates Christianity, the faith he’s presumably studying in seminary. What drives a person with such radical views to enter a seminary is a mystery, but history provides some possible clues.
One of America’s lesser known leftists was Bella Dodd, a low-key Communist Party operative in the 1930s who was instrumental in promoting communism among New York teachers. She became a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party during World War II, and played a part in the secretariat of the New York State Communist Party before her expulsion from the party in 1949 for supporting private property rights.
Dodd is alleged to have confessed to recruiting a thousand or more radicals to enter Roman Catholic seminaries in an effort to subvert and destroy the church from within. There are no letters or telegrams reflecting such an effort so we’re left with uncorroborated accounts of Dodd’s supposed admission. It may or may not be accurate.
However, Dodd testified before Congress that the Communist Party actively sought to infiltrate American labor unions and other institutions, so the notion of similarly infiltrating American seminaries is completely aligned with the broader communist political strategy of eliminating religion from society.
Dodd also delivered a lecture in September, 1961, telling her audience, “I was familiar with a number of the young ministers in the Protestant - among the Protestant clergy. God bless some of them. They wanted so much to do good. The Communist Party used to raise money to send them to seminaries, which would last maybe for one year, two years. And then they’d come back and preach the social doctrine.”
It’s entirely possible — perhaps likely- that Talarico paid his own way through seminary for a few years before suspending his studies to seek the power that comes with a seat in the Senate. Today, he is campaigning on a social doctrine that is antithetical to traditional Christianity. The coincidence is impossible to ignore and any question of whether he is or was supported by communists becomes almost immaterial. His own actions reflect the party’s long stated ambitions of destroying religion, dating back to Vladimir Lenin.
Contrary to the ABC News headline, Talarico is not reclaiming faith; he wants to redefine it. His subversion of Scripture and Christianity are on display for all to see. One needn’t be a biblical scholar to recognize that a seminarian who considers himself “a Christian who hates Christianity,” is just plain weird, and Texas voters may be coming to that realization.
Polling tracked by Real Clear Politics shows that within the course of just a few weeks, Talarico’s four-point lead in the Texas A&M/Siena survey shifted to a one-point advantage for his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Once the campaign begins in earnest and voters start paying more attention after Labor Day, it would not be surprising to see this trend continue. Let’s hope it does.
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