Texas Democrat James Talarico is a Presbyterian seminarian who preaches at his Austin church, but according to a new commentary in American Thinker, the beliefs on display there look very little like the Christianity most Texans would recognize. Writer Mike McDaniel, who opens by saying he looks forward to no longer writing about Talarico after the midterms, argues that the Senate candidate’s faith is “bizarre” and “non-Christian” — and that Talarico’s allies are angry not because the criticism is false, but because someone is putting video and audio of Talarico’s own words in front of voters.
The piece frames Republican Ken Paxton’s release of that material as the “dirty trick” of simply exposing the public to Talarico saying things. McDaniel’s contention is that there is no shortage of such material. He points to Talarico’s lobbying on abortion, where he characterized fetuses as “tapeworms and parasites” — a formulation McDaniel says even most abortion-rights proponents are careful to avoid.
The transgender legislation fight
On transgender issues, McDaniel describes Talarico as “trans-obsessed” and cites a bill Talarico pushed as a state legislator that would, in McDaniel’s characterization, seize a parent’s child if the parent did not fully support a gender transition. He quotes Talarico from a debate over legislation designed to protect parents who decline to affirm a child’s gender identity from having that refusal used against them in custody proceedings.
“I think there are some folks that would think that if you deny your child’s gender identity, that’s incredibly harmful,” Talarico said, according to the commentary. “And whether or not we label it with the term abuse, it’s abusive for sure.”
McDaniel’s gloss on that quote is blunt: Talarico is describing parents who won’t affirm a child’s stated gender identity as abusive, which McDaniel presents as the practical heart of the bill he backed.
Walking back ‘God is non-binary’
The commentary also revisits Talarico’s 2021 statement that God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between — that God is non-binary. Asked by Fox News correspondent Brooke Taylor whether he still stands by that, Talarico answered that he was “being provocative” and that what he meant was that human categories cannot define God, adding that this is “not controversial theologically.”
McDaniel rejects that defense. He asks what seminarian or minister would think such a thing about God the Father, and argues the claim is indeed controversial — a sign, in his reading, of something deeper than a poorly chosen phrase. He goes further, suggesting Talarico’s attempts to move toward the political center are described as lies by the ministers of his own church.
The pastors in the undercover footage
A significant portion of the American Thinker piece is built on undercover video footage, as reported by The Daily Caller and Texas Scorecard. McDaniel highlights Rev. Babs Miller, whom he identifies as a lesbian, saying she “doesn’t have a need for a God” and that while she believes there is “something out there that holds all this together,” she does not see it as a God. She also says, “We are not a worshipping church.”
McDaniel asks what a church might be without worshiping God, and answers with what the church reportedly offers its members instead. According to The Daily Caller, Talarico’s longtime Austin congregation gives new members copies of an “Inclusive Bible” that removes gendered language for God. Rev. Jim Rigby, the head pastor at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian for more than 35 years and described as a spiritual mentor to Talarico, told an undercover journalist that the church “typically” hands out that translation when people join.
“It’s good on the gender stuff,” Rigby said, according to the account. “The more, like, metaphysical stuff, it’s not a very good translation, if that makes sense. I think it’s really important to have a good translation so you can let go of the stupid stuff.”
McDaniel reads “the stupid stuff” as a reference to titles like “the Lord,” “Son of God,” and “Son of Man.” He notes that Miller said the “vast majority” of the congregation would identify as “agnostic or atheist.” And he cites Texas Scorecard’s reporting that the church describes itself as “Presbyterian & Progressive” and argues that calling God male is “perhaps the most sexist comment a person can make.”
Rigby’s own theological commitments get a paragraph of their own. McDaniel quotes him as saying that “Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion.” Rigby reportedly does not use male pronouns for God, describing it as a kind of “violence” to imply to a girl that her brother is more like God than she is. He also avoids the word “Lord,” because it conjures a wealthy, European, male God, and he is not especially attached to the word “God,” preferring synonyms since “it’s going to mean something different to everybody.”
Can a candidate be judged by his church?
McDaniel anticipates the obvious objection: that Talarico should not be blamed for the beliefs of the congregation he attends and where he often preaches. His answer is a single verse, Matthew 7:20 — “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”
That framing is the argumentative spine of the piece. McDaniel’s case against Talarico is not merely that the candidate holds progressive theological views, but that those views are visible in the company he keeps and the pulpit he uses. In McDaniel’s telling, Talarico’s “perversion of Christianity and the Word of God” will be more than enough to convince Texans he isn’t remotely like them, and Paxton’s exposure of Talarico’s own words still has time to reach enough voters to do it.
It is worth being precise about what kind of claim this is. Much of the American Thinker commentary rests on quotes and characterizations of Talarico and his church drawn from undercover recordings, news reports, and Talarico’s own past public statements — the video of the abortion-lobbying remark, the legislative quote on parental refusal, the Fox News exchange, and the Daily Caller’s account of the Inclusive Bible. The interpretive layer on top of those facts — that Talarico is “anti-Christian,” that his church is not a Christian church, that his shifts are lies — is McDaniel’s opinion, offered in a piece that plainly intends to influence how Texans vote in a race involving Paxton.
What the commentary makes clear is that the fight over Talarico’s religious identity is likely to keep running through the midterms, and that his own words and those of his pastors are going to be central exhibits on both sides. Whether those exhibits persuade Texas voters is another matter — the kind that gets settled at the ballot box rather than in a blog post.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/james-talarico-the-anti-christian-christian-seminarian/