A chaplain at Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico’s church said in a video that no one can know if Jesus really existed and that he did not die to save sins, remarks that lay bare the progressive congregation’s approach to core Christian claims.
Rev. Babs Miller, listed as an “out” lesbian chaplain at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, made the comments in an unearthed video. She returned from retirement in 2022 to serve the church again because she “missed the fun of doing ministry here, and I missed all the people.” Breitbart reported the remarks and Talarico’s long association with the congregation.
Miller told the camera that traditional beliefs are optional. “Part of what we encourage here is for people to think for themselves,” she said. “It’s kind of like what they say in 12-step programs: Take what you want and leave the rest.”
That same church is home to head pastor Rev. Jim Rigby and to Talarico, the Democratic Senate hopeful who has publicly embraced its outlook. Voters looking at the candidate’s record already know him from fights over gender ideology and media rules; the theology coming from his own pulpit now sits in plain view.
Miller went further on the virgin birth. She said the story “comes out of the pagan belief that the gods came down and impregnated people that people were still hanging on to during that time,” and that clinging to it would “greatly offend your relatives who want to hang on to these archaic rules.”
The chaplain did not stop at doctrine. She questioned whether the central figure of Christianity lived at all.
Miller stated, “We have no way of knowing if Jesus really existed any more than we have of knowing that the original Buddha ever existed.” She added, “whether or not Jesus existed doesn’t really matter to me.”
“The fact remains that that message that was delivered by someone named Jesus, supposedly, and it could have all been made up for all I know. And the God in the Old Testament is not a loving God,” she continued.
On the crucifixion itself, Miller rejected the traditional account of atonement. “Jesus was put on that cross not to save us,” she said. “Jesus was put on that cross because Rome hated him, and they thought he was a threat to their domination of that area, and so they killed him.”
“He didn’t die to save our sins.” When asked whether Jesus fit the role of social justice warrior, she answered, “Yes. So that makes a whole lot more sense to me than to say that some God would kill His Son for us. That doesn’t make sense.” She finished, “How does that make up for all the things I can do? No, it doesn’t.”
Those lines come from the same church Talarico has long attended. The candidate has already drawn national attention for other progressive stands, including the moment he called parents abusive for rejecting a child’s gender identity.
Head pastor Rev. Jim Rigby struck a similar note in a 2023 Easter message. He described the resurrection story as something humans reshape to make mystery “manageable.”
Rigby said, “...what lies underneath, what’s too big, what’s too deep, what’s too mysterious. But we’re human beings and we want to make it manageable. So we want to try to move the mystery into magic because you can control magic.”
He asked his listeners, “Do you want to just bet your entire life on what somebody a long time ago told you because somebody told him that? Or is it possible that the symbols are calling you to a deeper understanding of the human condition?”
“Maybe the person I’m sitting next to is as close as I need to get. Religious symbols, if they’re healthy, are not symbols of something that happened. They’re symbols of the principles by which everything happens, if that makes any sense,” Rigby continued.
He widened the sacred beyond Jesus: “I think it’s this: We need to see the sacred in every being on the face of the planet. I think animals, too. Plants. But if we just love each other, wouldn’t that be good? But when we make the resurrection about Jesus, that doesn’t happen when it’s just about Jesus.” Living fully in the present moment, he suggested, is “close to heaven as you need to get.”
Talarico’s own public comments have tracked the same direction. Prior reporting noted he has openly doubted that Jesus is the only way, a stance that fits the church’s pattern of treating exclusive Christian claims as optional.
That pattern also shows up in the candidate’s shifting cultural positions. He once claimed six biological sexes before reversing course, another example of fluid progressive framing on foundational questions.
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church is not a side detail. It is the congregation where Miller serves as chaplain, Rigby leads, and Talarico has rooted his faith identity. The staff page describes Miller’s return in 2022; the video and the 2023 sermon supply the theological content that congregation has platformed.
None of the statements treat the virgin birth, the historical Jesus, the atoning death, or the bodily resurrection as non-negotiable. They present them as stories that can be set aside, reinterpreted as social justice, or reduced to symbols of general human principles.
For a Senate candidate who presents himself as a person of faith, the gap between historic Christian confessions and the words spoken by his own church leaders is the story. The same progressive instincts appear elsewhere in his record, from headlining events to policy reversals.
Earlier coverage already captured Talarico headlining a Pride festival that featured an 11-year-old drag performer, another marker of the cultural lane he occupies.
He has also adjusted on sports policy. After voting against Republican bans, the Texas Democrat now opposes transgender athletes in girls’ sports, a late shift that still leaves the broader worldview intact.
Media fights have followed him too. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr recently called out Talarico over an Equal Time dispute tied to a Ted Cruz appearance, showing how quickly the candidate reaches for institutional levers.
The church material stands on its own. Miller’s video and Rigby’s Easter sermon do not require outside interpretation. They state, in the leaders’ own words, that Jesus’ existence is unknowable, that the cross was Roman politics rather than salvation, and that resurrection language works better as symbol than as history.
Talarico has not publicly broken with those voices. He remains tied to the congregation that platforms them. In a Senate race, that association is fair game for voters who still treat the creeds as more than optional poetry.
When a candidate’s own chaplain and pastor treat the Gospels as negotiable myths, the progressive politics that follow should surprise no one.
