Are Texans ready for Talarico’s kind of Christianity?

On a recent Sunday morning at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, Jim Rigby asked his congregation to share what came to mind when he mentioned the Apostle Paul, the major Christian figure to whom 13 books in the Bible are attributed. They cheerfully complied:

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“Villain!”

“Homophobic!”

“He’s a jerk.”

Paul’s attributed writings include passages seen as encouraging wives to submit to their husbands and instructing them to be quiet in church, and others condemning same-sex sexual behavior as sinful.

Rigby acknowledged the trouble. But in a sermon that also cited the Bhagavad Gita and the Buddha, he nudged his congregation to reconsider the apostle, one of the most important in the early Christian church. “Aristotle and Plato, they were creeps, too, in modern times,” Rigby said. “But do we want to learn from our ancestors or not?”

One longtime member of St. Andrew’s was not there, although he had attended the previous weekend: James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate. Rigby, who has led St. Andrew’s since the 1980s and is a well-known activist locally, has suddenly become a key to understanding Talarico, a candidate who aims to be the first Democrat to win statewide office in Texas in a generation.

In an interview with The New York Times, Talarico described Rigby and St. Andrew’s, along with his grandfather, who was the pastor of several Baptist churches in South Texas in the late 1960s, as “the biggest influences on me as a Christian, as a human being.” Rigby baptized Talarico as a toddler, and married his parents.

“He is my pastor in every sense of the word,” Talarico said of Rigby. “Not that we agree on everything.”

He added: “I think every Christian disagrees with their pastor. And the beautiful thing about Dr. Jim is that he welcomes and encourages that.”

At 37, Talarico has become one of the Democratic Party’s fastest-rising stars in part by talking about his identity as a Christian. Unlike some politicians who forge politically strategic relationships with faith leaders deep into their careers, Talarico has an authentic lifelong relationship with a local pastor, and speaks easily about his personal faith.

As the Democratic base becomes increasingly secular, Talarico’s faith-forward approach is unusual for a white Democrat. And it seems to be working. He won a competitive primary in March and outpaced his Republican rivals in fundraising. Some polls before the Republican runoff last week put him ahead of the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general, Ken Paxton, whom some analysts in the state see as a relatively weak opponent.

But as the race intensifies, Talarico’s religious identity is also coming under new scrutiny. He is a seminary student at Rigby’s alma mater, a progressive institution in Austin. And he has injected unusually complex theological arguments into discussions of progressive policy. In return, political and theological conservatives have called Talarico a heretic, compared him to the serpent in the Garden of Eden and suggested he could be the Antichrist.

By his own account, Rigby has been a major influence and inspiration. And now, Talarico’s opponents are also turning a critical eye ​to the pastor. They are finding a spiritual leader whose views on political issues like immigration and abortion, but also questions like the historical truth of the resurrection of Jesus, are out of step with the teachings of many other churches.

Rigby’s theology and his rhetoric reflect what would be heard at many mainline and progressive Christian churches across the country. But in Texas, where conservative evangelicalism looms large, they are rarely visible on platforms like the ones Talarico now occupies.

Rigby does not use male pronouns for God, for example, because it is a kind of “violence” to imply to a girl that her brother is more like God than she is, he said in an interview after the service. He does not use the word “Lord,” because it conjures a wealthy, European, male God, he said. For that matter, he added, he does not much care for the word “God.” He uses it on occasion, he said, but he tries to use synonyms, because “it’s going to mean something different to everybody.”

In his sermon that morning, he had referred to “the creative impulse of the universe,” which “can be called God, but it doesn’t have to be called God.”

Talarico uses the terms “Lord” and “God” and, he said, has no issue with using male pronouns to refer to God. He sees the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event, he said.

“I don’t believe in a progressive or conservative Christianity; I believe in a biblical Christianity,” Talarico said. “My faith is rooted in Scripture and the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

Talarico’s politics, as he has defined them in his Senate campaign, start with the biblical command to love God and love your neighbor. Those principles, as he sees it, have implications for public policy on abortion, immigration, the separation of church and state, and “economic justice” that elevates the interests of the poor and the oppressed over those of the wealthy and powerful. His campaign slogan, “It’s time to start flipping tables,” is a reference to a passage in the Bible where Jesus displays righteous anger.

Talarico’s knack for couching progressive policy arguments directly in Christian teachings stood out early in his career as a state representative. In Texas, it meant he was frequently doing so in exchanges with Republicans who interpreted those same teachings to opposing ends.

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Now under a national spotlight, Talarico is igniting heated public theological debates, and drawing sharp attacks from politicians on the right while being championed by progressive Christians who have long lived in the shadow of conservatives.

“James Talarico is a very dangerous person not only for the state of Texas, but for the United States of America,” said Jason Rapert, a former Republican state senator in Arkansas and the president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. He explained that by articulating “apostate” views on the campaign trail, Talarico was “spreading misinformation and falsehood.”

Steve Toth, a conservative pastor who has served with Talarico in the Texas House, has called him “a demonic presence in the world.”

Talarico, who is on leave from his studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, often veers into the theological weeds in a way that other politicians who talk about their faith do not. His interpretation of a central passage from Galatians in the New Testament that says “nor is there male and female” under Christ has led some critics to believe he is suggesting that the verse dismantles not just inequalities in status or worth, but the concept of gender differences at all.

“I’ve never seen anybody do this before, so in one sense, hats off, James,” said Josh Howerton, the pastor of a large North Texas evangelical church, in a video reacting to Talarico’s interpretation. “In another sense, I want to bang the microphone against my head.”

Talarico said he had been purposefully “a little provocative,” but his larger argument had been misunderstood. “There are clear differences between men and women,” he said. His point was that “you can’t define God using human categories because God is so much bigger than that.”

On the Sunday after Easter, the service at St. Andrew’s opened as usual with a song. “Every life-giving path is welcome here,” the congregation sang. “We are different and the same, naming Holy many names.”

Rigby baptized a baby, and welcomed a family of four as new members, handing them a new copy of the Inclusive Bible, an unusual feminist translation St. Andrew’s has used since the 1990s. In Genesis, instead of writing that God created a man, Adam, the translation refers first to an “earth creature.” It often uses the term “kindom” of God in place of “kingdom,” which it deems classist.

Talarico said he uses his father’s copy of the Revised Standard Version, a mainstream translation, for his personal use, not the Inclusive Bible.

Among the congregation — about 240 people that Sunday — were multiple people who had been drawn to the church by hearing about it from Talarico’s public appearances. The church’s in-person attendance has risen by about 50 people on an average Sunday over the last year, Rigby said. David Rackley, a leader, said the church now had a budget surplus for the first time in decades, and possibly ever.

Jonathan Westerfield, a visitor, had contacted Talarico’s campaign to see if he was preaching anywhere that Sunday. When he learned that he wasn’t, he decided to come to St. Andrew’s to hear from “the guy behind the guy” — Rigby.

“I could see myself coming back here,” he said. He brought along his father, a pastor who compared Talarico to Jimmy Carter — a good thing, he hastened to add.

Jim Hall, an MBA student, heard Talarico interviewed by Joe Rogan last year and had “never heard Christianity described that way.” He had attended several times with his wife, and that week brought along his brother.

“He’s the reason I know about this church,” said Emma Borders, who carried a water bottle with a Talarico sticker on it and another sticker criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement in colorful language.

Borders, who is the finance director for Austin Young Democrats, was raised as a Southern Baptist in East Texas. But she hadn’t attended church in more than a decade when she came across a sermon Talarico preached on Easter last year. She sobbed as she watched Talarico speak about “extinguishing evil with love,” and about finding Jesus in the immigrant, the protester, the vulnerable older adult.

She attended St. Andrew’s for the first time last fall, and eventually started volunteering with the church’s homeless ministry and its food pantry.

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“Now you couldn’t drag me out,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.