How Faith Forward Democrats Are Flipping The Script On Christian Nationalists
Are the 'What Would Jesus Do?' politics of James Talarico the key to taking MAGA down?
Last Tuesday, James Talarico won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate from Texas. In his victory speech, Talarico sounded a note familiar to anyone who’s followed his meteoric rise from obscure Texas State Rep. to U.S. Senate candidate.
As he spoke about what originally inspired him to run for office, Talarico waxed religious:
“My faith teaches me to love my neighbor as myself. Not just my neighbor who looks like me. Not just my neighbor who prays like me. Not just my neighbor who votes like me. I am called to love all of my neighbors the way I love myself.”
Yesterday, in his first TV interview since his victory, he echoed this sentiment almost verbatim.
For Talarico, who is also a Presbyterian seminarian, his Christian faith is not just central to his story, it is at the core of his political communication strategy. It was his knowledge of scripture—and the way he weaponized it against his pious Republican colleagues during Texas State House debates—that first brought him viral fame back in 2023. Talarico’s very first TikTok, which featured him calling out the hypocrisy of a conservative Christian lawmaker as she tried to defend her bill requiring Texas public schools to hang the Ten Commandments in classrooms, has more than 7 million views.
His faith also gives him credibility when he calls out the dangers of Christian nationalism. Its rising influence in the Republican Party has paralleled his own rise within the Democratic Party. Talarico regularly calls Christian nationalism “a betrayal of Christ.” As he likes to say, “there is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism.”
So it feels almost fitting that the very week Talarico reached this new height of his political career, we also got disturbing reporting that demonstrates just how ingrained Christian nationalism is within the Trump administration. And just how high it goes.
According to a March 2 post on Jonathan Larsen’s Substack,
A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.
As Larsen reports, that’s just one of more than 100 similar complaints that were received by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) from members of “every branch of the military.”
Unlike most stories that expose the blatant Christian nationalist leanings of the Trump administration, this story really broke through this past week, highlighting a dangerous ideology at the heart of the current regime. The rise of Talarico, who can credibly make the exact opposite argument, feels like the right man for this moment.
And he is hardly alone. A new breed of young Democrats who lead with their faith as part of both their biography and their politics are making the case for progressive values from a faith-based perspective, even as the number of people who are “religiously unaffiliated” is higher than ever. In a moment when the Republican Party is being driven by a toxic and hateful version of Christianity, are these new Democrats the key to taking down MAGA once and for all?
Trump’s And Hegseth’s Holy War
Donald Trump has never shied from embracing far-right Christian extremists in the interest of solidifying political power. And as we have seen, as Trump has gained power, so have extreme far-right Christian forces within the conservative movement.
The Republican Party has played the “long game” by installing these extremists on school boards and local legislatures for decades. And now under Trump, their movement has come to fruition, whether it’s his radical SCOTUS majority overturning Roe v Wade; the rise of one of their own, Rep. Mike Johnson, as Speaker of the House, just third in line to the presidency; or having their Christian nationalist blueprint, Project 2025, embraced and largely implemented by the leader of the free world.
Despite his own apparent lack of any actual faith belief, however, Trump has done his part to elevate some of the most insidious Christian extremists into his administration, not the least of which is his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
While Hegseth is mostly known for having been a weekend Fox News host and for his white nationalist tattoos, Hegseth’s radical religious faith has gotten less notice. As Baptist News recounts, Hegseth and his wife moved their family within proximity to Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, which is part of the Idaho-based Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches led by Christian nationalist preacher Doug Wilson.
As Idaho Capital-Sun described Wilson:
“Wilson and his allies have a rigid patriarchal belief system and don’t believe in the separation of church and state. They support taking away the right to vote from most women, barring non-Christians from holding office and criminalizing the LGBTQ community.”
According to the Capitol-Sun, “Wilson says one of his goals is to get like-minded people into positions of influence,” and that with Hegseth’s elevation to head up the Pentagon last year, “he’s closer to that.”
“I was grateful for Trump’s win, and believe that it is much more likely that Christians with views similar to mine will receive positions in the new administration.”
In Hegseth, turns out Wilson and his Christian nationalist buddies got more than they bargained for.
As Jonathan Larsen reported in his March 2 bombshell about the Christian nationalists waging Trump’s Iran war, the fish rots from the head.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has enshrined evangelical Christianity at the uppermost levels of the U.S. military, airing monthly prayer meetings throughout the Pentagon. Last year, the Pentagon confirmed to me that Hegseth attends a weekly White House Bible study. It’s led by a preacher who says God commands America to support Israel.
Hegseth made it clear at last month’s National Prayer Breakfast, he very much sees his job at the Pentagon in religious terms.
“America was founded as a Christian nation. It remains a Christian nation in our DNA, if we can keep it. And as public officials, we have a sacred duty 250 years on to glorify him,” Hegseth said as he pointed upward. “That’s precisely why we instituted a monthly prayer service at the Pentagon, an act of what we see it as, spiritual readiness.”
“We talk a lot about ‘peace through strength,’” he added. “But we also need to remember that we derive our strength through faith and through truth and through the word of God.”
In a statement to Larsen about the hundreds of calls Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received from servicemembers complaining of their commanders’ framing the Iran war in apocalyptic religious terms, MRRF president Mikey Weinstein responded angrily,
These calls have one damn thing in freaking common; our MRFF clients report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new “biblically-sanctioned” war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian “End Times” as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation.
Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.
The notion that Donald Trump is implementing “God’s divine plan” and ushering in “the imminent return of Jesus Christ” is common wisdom among Christian nationalists, whose very support for Trump has even been viewed by many as the fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy. And now, with this war in Iran, they are seeing that play out in real time.
With this war, it’s almost as though Trump and Hegseth are living out the warning often attributed to Voltaire, that “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Christian Democrats Use Scripture To Flip The Script
Talarico has been calling out the dangers of Christian nationalism for years, even well before he ran for U.S. Senate. He regularly calls it the “worship of power” and has proclaimed that the teachings of Jesus should turn us “away from theocracy and toward a radical form of democracy that embraces people of all faiths or no faith at all.”
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The implications of a Christian nationalist movement at the top of the federal government understandably get most of the headlines. But the way the right has injected the ideology into policy debates, from abortion to trans rights to hanging the Ten Commandments in public schools, is arguably even more insidious. And it’s here where Talarico and his fellow religious travelers on the left are flipping the script on Republicans, who until now have laid claim to the Bible and faith as their own.
During his 2023 exchange with his colleague who sponsored Texas’ Ten Commandments bill, Talarico called the bill “deeply un-Christian” and declared “a religion that has to force people to put up a poster to prove its legitimacy is a dead religion and it’s not one that I want to be a part of.”
Two years later he famously shamed the same state legislator for scheduling a vote on the Ten Commandments bill on a Sunday, in violation of the 4th Commandment.
As Talarico gained prominence in Democratic politics, he has deftly used his faith as a shield to explain what traditionally would be considered toxic positions for red state Democrats to hold, whether on reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights or immigrants’ rights. He even used the Bible to excoriate Trump’s budget bill last year.
During an appearance on Ezra Klein’s show recently, for example, Talarico shamed the Christian nationalist right for focusing on its broader culture wars rather than what Jesus actually taught in the Bible.
“To focus on those two things instead of feeding the hungry and healing the sick and welcoming the stranger — three things we’re told to do ad nauseam in scripture — to me is just mind blowing.”
During his viral appearance on the Joe Rogan Show in 2024, Talarico famously advanced a Biblical-based reasoning for defending abortion rights, saying that,
“In Genesis, God creates life by breathing life into the first human being who we later call Adam. Life starts when you take your first breath. And that is actually the mainline position of Judaism.”
He then shifted to a discussion about Mary,
“I say all this in the context of abortion, because before God comes over Mary, and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary’s consent…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… so that’s how I come down on that side of the issue.”
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On trans rights, Talarico drew backlash from conservative Christians as far back as 2021 in a floor speech during which he cited scripture to declare,
“God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary.”
He then added,
“Trans children are God’s children, made in God’s own image. There’s nothing wrong with them, nothing at all. They are perfect, they are beautiful and they are sacred.”
Just this week, Talarico took heat from the GOP for a statement the RNC claims they “unearthed” of him saying he loves trans children.
And that’s a problem because…?
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After 2024, the issue of trans rights was widely seen as toxic for Democrats, but Talarico is demonstrating in real time how even red state Democrats can effectively speak about the issue.
In that same vein, we can also look at Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, who won reelection in 2023 in one of the reddest states in the country by five points and is now, according to recent Morning Consult polling, the most popular Democratic Governor in the country with a net approval of +37.
His 2023 reelection came in the wake of his having vetoed a sweeping anti-trans bill in March of that year. In a powerful statement explaining his veto, Beshear cited conservative bugaboos of “government interference” in healthcare and the “freedom of parents” to make decisions about their children’s health. But then Beshear made a powerful faith-based plea on behalf of trans kids:
“My faith teaches me that all children are children of God and Senate Bill 150 will endanger the children of Kentucky.”
Beshear has begun to lay the groundwork for a possible 2028 presidential run, and it is this message that he has taken with him on the talk show circuit. He went on The View just last month:
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Beshear and Talarico are not alone. According to Axios, dozens of candidates running in 2026 are following their lead, including around 30 clergy members.
“We’re tracking about 30 white clergy who are running for office as Democrats around the country. That’s shocking,” said Doug Pagitt, a pastor and executive director of the progressive Christian group Vote Common Good.
Notably, just like Talarico and Beshear,
This wave of clergy is weaving Scripture into online defenses of Democratic politics, and joining other progressive faith leaders in challenging President Trump on immigration, civil rights and poverty.
In addition to Talarico, some examples they cite, include,
Robb Ryerse, a Christian pastor and former Republican, is challenging Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) as a Democrat and using the slogan “Faith, Family, & Freedom” in his campaign literature — language typically used by the GOP
Iowa state Rep. Sarah Trone Garriott, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor, is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) in one of the nation’s most-watched swing House races in 2026.
Justin Douglas, a Pennsylvania pastor and county commissioner, is seeking the Democratic nomination to face Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry in a closely watched race in the swing south-central part of the state.
As Ariel Messman-Rucker wrote back in 2023 in the wake of Talarico’s viral call-out of the sponsor of the Ten Commandments bill,
“Conservative Christians continue their quest to shove their religious beliefs down everyone’s throat, but with lawmakers like Talarico out there, we may have a chance of keeping them out of our schools.”
These faith-forward Democrats are not only calling out the hypocrisy of religious extremists, they are tapping into the growing universe of “What Would Jesus Do?” moderate voters who are sick of seeing their religion used to divide and degrade. They are also constructing a permission structure for voters indoctrinated for years into seeing Democrats as angry godless leftists.
Beshear, Talarico and others on the Christian left are able to break through to these voters and reframe progressive policies—and what it means to be a Democrat—at precisely the moment when the cruelty, incompetence and radicalism of Donald Trump and his regime have opened that door.
They are demonstrating how Democrats can build winning coalitions not by running away from abortion rights, trans rights and immigrant rights, but by leaning into them with compassion and authenticity.
EVERYONE needs to read, "The Separation of Church and Hate," by John Fugelsang. Exactly shows how the horrible things Christian nationalists advocate are NOT what Jesus said.
Atheist here who has great respect for Jesus Christ. I am so ready for some thoughtful Democratic religious politicians to take down the sanctimonious MAGA hypocrites. Please proceed.