James Talarico

This country is going to be Christianity, right?

Now, in India, it may be a conversation about Hindu nationalism, but here, the dominant religion is Christianity.

Yeah.

And, you know, we've seen that too many churches, too many faith leaders have abused that trust.

A lot of Gen Z, a lot of my fellow millennials, when they hear me talking about, you know, my faith and how it informs my public service, they're like, I've never heard of this kind of Christianity, right?

Like, I was told that if you wanted to be a Christian, you had to hate gay people, right?

If you wanted to be a Christian, you had to want to control women.

If you wanted to be a Christian, you had to reject science.

And so when Gen Z and when millennials were faced with that choice, it was a pretty easy choice for them, right?

They chose their gay friends.

They chose women's rights.

They chose believing in science.

And that, in my opinion, was always a false choice.

And in fact, a lot of those positions that I just mentioned are contrary to biblical values, to the teachings of Jesus.

And so, you know, there's always going to be progressive Christians and conservative Christians.

That's a very healthy debate we should always have.

But in this country, it's become synonymous with right-wing politics, right?

So much so that when people hear I'm a Christian politician, they just assume I'm a Republican.

I mean, it's just I think that has pushed a lot of a lot of people away.

Well, I think broadly we should say that using religion to control the people is a tale as old as time.