James Talarico

They became these peculiar people, is how the Bible describes it, because they didn't participate in the economy, the military, the culture.

They were persecuted because they turned the world upside down.

Again, that's how it's described in Acts.

But 300 years after the Roman Empire crucified Jesus,

Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of that very same empire, the same empire that crucified Jesus.

So this is 300 years later.

And now Christianity is the official sponsor of of the empire of Western civilization.

It's always hard to tell with politicians, and I say this as a politician myself.

Well, he was baptized, I don't know the year, but he was baptized after he had this vision before a decisive battle when he saw the cross and decided that his soldiers would put the cross as part of their emblem.

And then they won that battle, right?

Which, you know, who knows if it was because of his vision or not.

But it started a trend, which we've struggled with for literally, you know, more than 1500 years of powerful people, you know, emperors, billionaires, dictators, megachurch pastors, using religion to protect their own wealth and power.

And to me, Christian nationalism is just the latest iteration of that, whether it's the Ten Commandments bill, whether it's the bill, I don't know if you read about this, a bill that we passed that allows schools to replace school counselors with untrained, unsupervised religious chaplains.

Sometimes people who go online and become a chaplain within five minutes.

You know, that to me, again, is an example of Christian nationalism.

It's using the state.

It's using political power to elevate one religious tradition over all the others.

It's using governmental power to dominate our neighbors instead of loving them as ourselves, which is exactly what we're called to do as Christians.

And then, of course, most recently we saw this bill that defunded public schools here in Texas to subsidize private Christian schools.

And to me, again, that is a bill that's right in the middle of this Christian nationalist movement to erode the separation of church and state and force a certain interpretation of Christianity on everybody against their wills.