James Talarico defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett in a Texas Democratic primary for the Senate nomination to challenge Republican Sen. John Cornyn. He is a state representative, a former public school teacher, and a current seminary student. He also believes God is nonbinary, that the story of Mary in the Gospel of Luke is a theological argument for abortion, and that Jesus of Nazareth is the clearest ideological alternative to Donald Trump.
Texas Democrats just made him their Senate candidate.
Talarico's religious commentary is not the background noise spirituality of most politicians, the Daily Caller reported. It is central to his identity and his policy arguments. He has built a public persona around reinterpreting scripture to support a progressive agenda, delivering sermons, appearing on major podcasts, and invoking the Bible on the Texas Legislature floor.
During a 2021 debate over legislation to restrict child sex change operations, Talarico turned to Genesis to make his case. His argument was that the Hebrew text uses both masculine and feminine words to describe God, and therefore:
God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary.
He also claimed during a state Legislature hearing that same year that there are six genders. These are not offhand remarks. They are Talarico's stated convictions, delivered from the floor of the Texas Legislature.
On the question of abortion, Talarico goes further. Appearing on "The Joe Rogan Experience" in July 2025, he offered a reading of the Annunciation, the moment in the Gospel of Luke where an angel tells Mary she will conceive Jesus, as a scriptural endorsement of abortion rights. His argument: the angel asked Mary's permission, and she agreed. Therefore, consent is sacred. Therefore, no one can be compelled to carry a pregnancy.
God asks for Mary's consent, which is remarkable. I mean, go back and read this in Luke. I mean, the, the angel comes down and asks Mary if this is something she wants to do, and she says, 'If it is God's will, let it be done.' So to me that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent.
This is a breathtaking interpretive leap. The Annunciation has been understood by Christians across two millennia as an act of divine grace, Mary's submission to God's plan, not a model for reproductive autonomy. Talarico is not engaging seriously with Christian theology. He is cosplaying it to reach a predetermined conclusion.
He acknowledged that even Pope Francis, who called abortion a "grave sin" in September 2024 and compared it to murder, holds a legitimate theological position, one Talarico said he would "listen to and respect." He just disagrees. That is his right. But dressing up that disagreement in scripture while dismissing the consistent teaching of the global Christian church is not theological depth. It is theological theater.
Talarico's political theology did not begin with his Senate run. In 2019, he delivered a sermon at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in which he identified the antidote to Trumpism:
The antithesis of Trump is not Biden or Warren or Harris or Castro. It's not even President Obama. The clearest anti-Trump we have is Jesus of Nazareth. His teachings, and those delivered by other prophetic voices throughout history, show us the way to defeat Trumpism in our world and in ourselves.
He has also weighed in on who counts as a genuine Christian. Speaking about his colleagues in the Texas Legislature, he said:
I have met so many Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics who are more Christ-like than some of the Christians I serve with.
And on the floor of the legislature during the 2021 debate, he rebuked fellow lawmakers directly:
Even on this floor today, a member tried to justify a hateful amendment in the name of God's law.
The pattern is consistent. When scripture affirms his politics, Talarico invokes it with enthusiasm. When Christians reach a different conclusion from the same text, they are weaponizing religion to hurt people. His Bible is always right. Theirs is always suspect.
Talarico has not limited his progressive framework to abortion. During the same 2021 legislative debate on restricting child sex change operations, he also declared that transgender Texans require specific political protection:
I want to acknowledge that our trans community needs abortion care, too. Defending trans Texans is something we have to do every day at the state Capitol.
He made this argument on the floor of the Texas Legislature while fighting a bill designed to prevent children from undergoing sex change procedures. The man now seeking a seat in the United States Senate made protecting that process a defining cause.
Republican National Committee spokesman Zach Kraft did not mince words:
James Talarico is a woke nutjob. Texas will not break its 32-year Republican streak to elect a man obsessed with telling the world that 'God is nonbinary' and that there are six genders.
That 32-year streak is a useful anchor. Texas has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988. Talarico is not a moderate attempting a careful rebranding of Texas Democrats. He is a seminary student who argues abortion from the Annunciation and believes the nonbinary nature of the Hebrew Bible vindicates progressive gender ideology.
Let that sink in: this is the candidate Texas Democrats chose to challenge one of the longest-serving Republicans in the Senate.
The Talarico candidacy is not really about Texas. Texas is not flipping. What this race reveals is the direction the Democratic Party's activist base is moving, and what it rewards. Jasmine Crockett, herself a progressive firebrand, lost to a man who uses the Gospel of Luke to argue for abortion rights and the opening lines of Genesis to argue against binary gender.
This is where the theological left ends up: not with a serious engagement of faith and public life, but with scripture selectively quarried to rubber-stamp whatever the progressive consensus already demands. The text bends to the politics, never the other way around.
Texas voters will have a clean choice in November. They usually make it the same way.
