Stick a Fork in James Talarico. He's Done.

James Talarico wants Texans to believe he's a man of faith, a true Christian believer that Texans of all stripes can feel comfortable supporting. Unearthed audio suggests otherwise, and it’s a campaign killer, believe me.

Talarico, the Democrat nominee facing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in November's Senate race, has spent months trying to sell Texans on his Christian faith. But his past words have muddied that message. Talarico has previously claimed "God is nonbinary," argued that the bible sanctioned abortion, and described surgically altering the bodies of gender-confused children as an expression of God's love.

But now we have his March 2021 appearance on the podcast Activist Theology, and it’s so bad I don’t see how his campaign can survive this one.

"I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity, right?" Talarico said on the show, describing himself as a "boring, straight, cis, white male" who believes he's uniquely positioned to bring "moral clarity" to politics. Christians who hate Christianity aren't exactly the demographic Texas Democrats need to flip a Senate seat in a state where, according to Pew Research, nearly half the population identifies as evangelical Protestant or Catholic.

🚨 UNEARTHED

In an interview with a self-described “TransQueer” activist theologian, Texas Democrat James Talarico says he "hates" Christianity:

"I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity.” pic.twitter.com/wFEONx03CW

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 23, 2026

The podcast host doesn't help his case either. Roberto Che Henderson-Espinoza, formerly known as Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, identifies as a "nonbinary, transgender, Latinx theologian on the autistic spectrum" and once taught "Queer Theory and Theology" at Duke Divinity School. Espinoza authored an academic paper proposing "transing religion" as a method to dismantle what the paper called the "(hetero)norm of binaries," and once preached a sermon in a Black Lives Matter vest declaring the Bible "trans-positive." Espinoza asked the congregation to "mobilize darkness in the face of the deep as part of the creative process that is trans-inclusive and trans-positive." Make no mistake about it, this is not mainstream Texas theology.

Talarico didn't keep his distance from any of this. He gushed that when Espinoza followed him on Twitter, he "couldn't contain" his "inner fan boy," and told Espinoza directly that "y'all's work continues to inspire me." He praised Espinoza's book Activist Theology on air, the same author behind Body Becoming: A Path to Our Liberation, whose Amazon description says the author "inhabits a nonbinary body, a trans body, a body in two races."

Then there's Talarico's pastor, Jim Rigby, who has led the leftist congregation at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin for more than 35 years. Talarico called him "proudly part of a Christian anarchist tradition" and praised him as a "true white traitor." That phrase isn't an accident. "Race traitor" traces back to Marxist academic Noel Ignatiev, who built a career around "abolishing whiteness" and famously declared that "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." Talarico went on to confess that his own "whiteness and masculinity" limit his thinking. "All of those things limit my imagination about what's possible," he said.

ICYMI: Democrats Just Got Brutal News About Their Texas Senate Dream

Talarico also called Jesus Christ a socialist, telling Espinoza, "It's very strange every time I think about it, that the most popular figure in our country, particularly on the conservative right, is this socialist anarchist from Palestine." He went on to argue that controlling "moral language" is the key to pushing the culture toward something "more life-affirming, life-enhancing, life-furthering," and that people with "functioning hearts," by which he means leftists, have a "moral obligation" to drive that shift.

This is the man asking Texans to send him to the United States Senate, a man trying to use his Christianity to get people to vote for him, while being someone who, by his own admission, hates Christianity. That's not a message that wins a statewide race in Texas. Stick a fork in him. James Talarico's campaign is over.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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