Chapter 1: How did James Talarico rise to prominence in Texas politics?
The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen. The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections. I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling. I go to games always. Doing the mini, doing the wordle. I loved how much content it exposed me to. Things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for. This app is essential.
The New York Times app. All of the times, all in one place. Download it now at nytimes.com slash app.
One of my obsessions over the past few years has been the role of attention in modern American politics. The way attention is a fundamental currency. And the way it works differently than it did at other times when it was controlled by newspaper editorial boards and nightly newsbookers.
And so I've been particularly interested in politicians who seem native to this attentional era, who seem to have figured something out. We've talked a lot about how the Trump administration uses attention, how Zoran Mamdani uses attention. But somebody who's been breaking through over the past year in a very interesting way is a state representative from Texas named James Tallarico.
And Tallarico is a little bit unusual for a Democratic politician. He's this very forthrightly Christian politician. He roots his politics very fundamentally in a way you don't always hear from Democrats in his faith.
Because there is no love of God without love of neighbor.
But he began emerging as somebody who was breaking through on TikTok and Instagram and viral videos where he would talk about whether or not the Ten Commandments should be posted in schools.
This bill, to me, is not only unconstitutional, it's not only un-American, I think it is also deeply un-Christian.
And the ways in which the Bible's emphasis on helping the poor and the needy had been perverted— by those who wanted to use religion as a tool of power and even greed.
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Chapter 2: What role does faith play in James Talarico's political views?
I was a public school teacher and now a public official. That's the loving my neighbor. And it's why I'm a seminary student studying to become a minister one day. And that's the loving God part. And both of them sustain each other, challenge each other, reinforce each other on a daily basis.
But you just slipped into how you live your faith, not what it is for you. Yeah. So has belief come easy to you?
You know, part of being a seminary student is studying Hebrew and Greek so you can actually read scripture in its original language. And one of the mind-blowing things that happened to me my first year of seminary is I was studying this word faith And many translations, it is belief, you know, the idea of believing in a concept or an idea, which makes sense in English Western translations.
But it can also be translated as trust, which to me is much more experiential. trusting that love is going to get you through the hour, through the day, through your life, that love is going to carry all of us forward, that love will ultimately prevail even when it's temporarily defeated. To me, that's what my faith feels like. It feels like trust.
Almost like I learned how to swim at our neighborhood pool. And I remember my swim teacher telling me, don't fight the water. Let the water carry you. And there's so much temptation in our lives to control our surroundings, control other people. And I think the opposite of that control is faith, is that kind of trust, letting life, letting the universe hold you up and not fighting it.
And so that's what it feels like for me. Again, when I'm most faithful, it's a struggle on a daily basis to feel that trust and not to fight the water.
Was it always there for you, or did you have a period as a college atheist reading Christians?
You know, I was really lucky that I grew up in an incredible church community. I didn't grow up with my granddad as my pastor. I grew up in a Presbyterian church, actually, in Round Rock, Texas, St. Andrews. Shout out to our church. And our pastor, Dr. Jim Rigby, he married my parents. He baptized me when I was two years old.
And he's a unique, I think, religious leader and thinker and got in trouble a lot. When I was in elementary school, he was ordaining gay and lesbian clergy. He was blessing same-sex unions, which now doesn't seem controversial, but certainly back in the 90s. Well, in some traditions, it certainly is. That's true.
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Chapter 3: How does James Talarico define Christian nationalism?
He brings people to a hillside. And he says, look at the birds of the air. Look at the lilies of the field. This is how we're supposed to live. This is who we truly are. That is revolutionary. It is radical in the true meaning of that word, going to the root of all of our lives and our problems and our dreams.
And to me, that is the spirit of our tradition of breaking these chains, of breaking out of these systems. The word church in Greek means to be called out of, called out of our culture, called out of our economy, called out of our political system. That is what religion, I think, at its best does. It's what I was given that kind of religion.
just because I happen to be growing up across the street from this incredible church.
How do you think about the competing claims of different religions? Do you believe Christianity to be more true than other religions? Do you believe there to be exclusivity in these beliefs, that they're incompatible with each other?
I believe Christianity points to the truth. I also think other religions of love point to the same truth. I think of different religious traditions as different languages. So you and I could sit here and debate what to call this cup. And you could call it a cup in English. You'd call it something else in Spanish and French. But we are all talking about the same reality.
I believe Jesus Christ reveals that reality to us, but I also think that other traditions reveal that reality in their own ways with their own symbol structures. And I've learned more about my tradition by learning more about Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam and Judaism. And so I see these beautiful faith traditions as circling the same truth about the universe, about the cosmos.
And that truth is inherently a mystery. And I think the most destructive thing is when religion becomes an end in and of itself. That's when religion implodes. My pastor always told me growing up that religious symbols are like aspirin. In order to work, they have to dissolve. They point beyond themselves.
If you get lost in the symbols, if you get lost in the words, you're missing the reality that we're all trying to describe and talk about. What is your relationship to prayer? Prayer is essential for me. I start out every morning in prayer. Sometimes it's silent prayer, which to me is probably the most helpful.
Oftentimes those are just prayers of gratitude that God woke me up this morning, that I have health, that I have my family, that I have my friends, that I get to do a job I really care about, making an impact.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the separation of church and state?
Nothing about saying the Lord's Prayer. Nothing about reading the Bible. Just helping others. Just loving. I mean, it's remarkable when you go back and read that passage. But They need each other. Prayer needs action and action needs prayer.
And so I don't want anyone to misunderstand what I'm saying because you can be out there doing the work and if you're not connected to something deeper, you're gonna burn out really fast. When I said earlier that the love of God and the love of neighbor sustain each other, they are in relationship. They are united.
You know, this is the entire mystery of incarnation, is the divine and the human being brought together into one union.
So I listened to you when you did your Joe Rogan appearance, and you offered there a very, very progressive form of Christianity, right?
What do you think is the biblical evidence to support the opinion of being pro-abortion? So before God comes over Mary and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary's consent. which is remarkable. I mean, go back and read this in Luke. 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. Let it be, let it happen.
So to me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create. Creation is one of the most sacred acts that we engage in as human beings. But that has to be done with consent. It has to be done with freedom. And to me, that is absolutely consistent with the ministry and life and death of Jesus.
You're not just emphasizing in your politics different aspects of your faith, but you're very much challenging quite widespread interpretations of it.
Again, I think that's what we're called to do as Christians. Almost every debate Jesus is in is with the religious authorities of his time and directly challenging orthodoxy. So I do think this is, you know, Jesus was a religious reformer. Paul was a religious reformer. And so I think when we're at our best as Christians, we are challenging religious dogmas and religious supremacy.
But I also try to come at this with humility. On the issue of abortion, I've said before, I don't know what Jesus thought about abortion. The Bible doesn't tell us. The Bible doesn't mention abortion at all. And so as with many issues that aren't mentioned in the Bible, we have to take...
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Chapter 5: How does Talarico view the current immigration debate?
which is pretty woke for the first century, you know? So yeah, again, it's because religion is being used to control people and accumulate power and wealth for those at the top. This is a tale as old as time, and it is not unique to Christianity. Powerful people will always see religion as a tool to make more money and be able to keep people in line.
For those unfamiliar with the term, what is Christian nationalism?
You can define it a lot of different ways. I define it as the worship of power in the name of Christ. I define it that way because I want us to see it as part of a very long tradition. How do they define it? They being the people who would self-identify with it. I would think they would define it as wanting a Christian nation.
But again, these politicians want a Christian nation unless it means providing healthcare to the sick or funding food assistance for the hungry or raising the minimum wage for the poor. It seems like they wanna base our laws on the Bible until they read the words of Jesus. Welcome the stranger, liberate the oppressed, put away your sword, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor.
I mean, I'm not exactly sure a Christian nation is really what these people want. Again, I believe the separation of church and state is sacred. I think a nation with one supreme religion is not just un-American. I also think it's un-Christian, given how Jesus taught about religious supremacy.
But I do think if these people are going to call for a Christian nation, they need to reach for all of it. You know, I fought the bill to require the Ten Commandments posted in every classroom. And I've often wondered, instead of posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom, why don't they post money is the root of all evil in every boardroom?
Why don't they post do not judge in every courtroom? Why don't they post, turn the other cheek in the halls of the Pentagon? Or it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. This is the inconsistency I'm trying to call out because they're using my tradition. They're speaking for me.
And so I think I have a special moral responsibility to combat Christian nationalism wherever I see it.
One thing I appreciate about Donald Trump, about President Trump, is he doesn't pretend that his politics are built on piety. That's not his style. But the vice president, J.D. Vance, does suggest that his politics are built around a Christian ethic. And I want to play a clip of him for you.
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Chapter 6: What are Talarico's thoughts on the 'rage economy'?
And that's hard to do. I feel like I love my family more than I love other families. I'm guilty of that. I think we all are. But the gospel is pushing us to move beyond that and to have the same love for a child on the other side of the world that we have for our child. And it's almost impossible to do that, but it is what we are called to do.
I think as somebody who is outside Christianity, And as such is always a little bit astonished by the radicalism of the text.
Yes.
And the strangeness of it. God incarnates in a human being that human being is tortured and murdered. and rises again as a lesson in mercy and forgiveness and transcendence. And there's all manner of violence I'm doing to the story there, but the incarnation in the least among us, the structure of, to me, the New Testament as Jesus goes to one outcast member of society after another.
And then I look up into particularly this administration and And I see people who are incredibly loud in their Christianity and also incredibly cruel in their politics. Put aside the question of what borders you think a nation must have. You can enforce that border in all manner of ways without treating people who are coming here to escape violence or to better their family's life cruelly.
You can do it without the memes we see them make on social media of a cartoon immigrant weeping as she's being deported, of the ASMR video of migrants shackled to one another, dragging their chains, with the implication being that the sound of that should soothe you.
It is the ability to insist on your allegiance to such a radical religion and then treat other human beings with such genuinely to me unmitigated cruelty that I actually find hard at a soul level to reconcile.
Scripture says you can't love God and hate other people. That's in 1 John. You can't love God and abuse the immigrant. You can't love God and oppress the poor. You can't love God and bully the outcast. We spend so much time looking for God out there that we miss God in the person sitting right next to us, in that neighbor who bears the divine image.
In the face of a neighbor, we glimpse the face of God. The commandment to love God and love neighbor is not from Christianity. It is from Judaism. And all Jesus is clarifying as kind of a radical rabbi is that neighbor is the person you love the least. The parable of the Good Samaritan, maybe the most famous of Jesus's parables, I think we forget in our modern context how shocking it was.
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Chapter 7: How does Talarico propose to engage with voters who disagree with him?
If you read the Sermon on the Mount, again, I think Jesus should have a say in what Christianity means. In that sermon, he is the ultimate conservative and the ultimate progressive at the same time. You know, as all great teachers, he is breaking us out of the dualistic thinking that plagues us. He is rooting everything in his tradition, Judaism.
Everything goes back to Moses and the 10 commandments and the Torah, everything. And he says, I'm not here to destroy the law. I'm here to fulfill the law. So he's connected to something that's bigger than himself. But then he's also pushing us to take those teachings to the next level, to go deeper into them. You know, the law tells you an eye for an eye. I'm telling you to turn the other cheek.
Moses told you an eye for an eye because you weren't ready to hear turn the other cheek. Eye for an eye was meant to keep things from spiraling out of control. It was meant to have a balance of justice. And then Jesus is going further in teaching nonviolence, which is consistent and a growth, an evolution. And that's the universe we live in. God created an evolving universe.
And you can actually go back in the New Testament. The first word out of Jesus's mouth is change. Some can call it repent or turn around, but change is the first thing he says in his public ministry. So I think both of these things can be true at the same time. We are rooted in something eternal, something that has existed forever. since before time existed.
And it is also always moving us forward. And we are always changing and evolving. And both of those things can be true at the same time.
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Your campaign slogan is, it's time to start flipping tables. Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What books does Talarico recommend for understanding his perspective?
What is, to you, the rage economy?
I just mentioned the billionaires who own the algorithms and the news networks. They have created for-profit platforms with these predatory algorithms that divide us on an hourly, daily basis, dividing us by party, by race, by gender, by religion. And they elevate the most extreme voices very strategically and
to provoke our outrage, to provoke our anger, because that leads to more clicks, which leads to more money for them. Because anger sells, hate sells, fear sells. These billionaires and their platforms are engineering our emotions so they can profit off of our pain. They are selling us conflict and they're calling it connection. It's almost like feeding someone empty calories.
And I think it's left people starving for actual community, for real relationship.
Well, the thing you had said a minute ago about the money changers that made me want to jump to this question of the rage economy is it is actually quite intimate. And I think sacred would be going probably too far, but to go to a place searching for connection, to go to a place searching to be understood, which I think at its core, is what social media was originally offering us.
To go there and say, this is where your family is, this is where your friends are, this is where you can find people like you. And for many of us, it was that for a time. And it is not that now. I thought it was amazing in the FTC versus Meta case. It came out for Meta that on Instagram now, only 7% of the time people spend on Instagram, 7% is spent on content offered by friends and family. Yeah.
And I noticed this, I turn on Instagram and it's much better at hooking my attention than it used to be because the algorithm is better at finding things that might grab my emotions and my friends and family are. But I came looking for connection and all of a sudden I'm pissed, I'm confused, I'm being fed content about psychedelics from the 1970s. It's not all that it's bad, but it is...
a perversion or a instrumentalization to profit off of what was a very intimate impulse, to say nothing of to profit off of my attention, which is my most intimate faculty. Right.
Well, and the business model depends on us leaving behind our real human relationships. The biggest competitor to these platforms, to meta, is actually not TikTok. It's not X. It's not Snapchat. It is real human relationship. And that should be terrifying. We have a whole economy now built on keeping us in our rooms, on our phones for as many hours in the day as possible.
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