Democratic Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian running against Attorney General Ken Paxton, delivered a 2023 sermon declaring "God is not a Christian", part of a growing record of inflammatory religious statements now shadowing his campaign.

Talarico took the pulpit at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin to denounce what he called "Christian nationalism," telling the congregation that conservative Christians had hijacked the faith and were steering America toward theocracy. The sermon, titled "God is not a Christian," is available on YouTube and lays out a worldview sharply at odds with the beliefs of most Texas churchgoers, and most Republican voters he would need to win over in a statewide race.

The sermon matters now because Talarico holds a narrow 1.2-percentage-point lead over Paxton in the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, making the 2026 Texas Senate contest one of the most closely watched races in the country. And the more voters learn about what Talarico has said from pulpits, podcast microphones, and the Texas House floor, the harder it becomes to square his public faith with the positions he uses it to justify.

Beer, religion, and a seminary student's punchlines

The sermon opened with what Talarico framed as humor. He told the congregation his pastor, Dr. Jim Rigby, had sent him a list of reasons beer is better than religion. Talarico shared several of them from the pulpit:

"Number one, when you have beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away. Number two, there are laws against forcing beer on minors who can't think for themselves. Number three, nobody's ever been burned at the stake because of their favorite brand of beer."

He added: "If you've devoted your life to beer, there are groups to help you."

The jokes drew laughs inside the Austin church. Whether they play as well across a state where millions of Christians take their faith seriously, and don't appreciate it being compared unfavorably to a six-pack, is another question entirely.

From there, Talarico moved into theology. He told the congregation that God transcends all human categories, including Christianity itself:

"God is so much bigger than our human categories. God is not a Presbyterian. God is not a Christian. God is not a noun at all. God is a verb. God is not a being. God is being self. God is love."

He went further, arguing that Jesus himself opposed organized religion: "That's why Jesus is against anything that gets in the way of that love between neighbors, including religion. That's why he's always breaking religious rules. That's why he says sinners will see the kingdom of heaven before religious people do."

Talarico painted conservative Christians as fascists from the pulpit

The sermon's sharpest edge was reserved for conservative believers. Talarico declared that "there is a cancer on our religion" and identified that cancer as Christian nationalism, which he called "a sectarian movement based on mutual hate."

Then he escalated. Talarico told the Austin congregation that Christian nationalists had distorted the figure of Jesus Christ beyond recognition:

"They've turned this humble rabbi into a gun-toting, gay-bashing, science-denying, money-loving, fear-mongering fascist. And it is incumbent upon all Christians to confront it and denounce it."

He cited the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, a push he described to replace Texas public schools with private Christian schools, and the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot as evidence that "Christian nationalism is on the rise" and that "we are closer than we think to a Christian theocracy."

Talarico also laid out a policy test for what a truly "Christian nation" would look like, one that conveniently mirrors the Democratic platform: "If this was truly a Christian nation, we would make sure every child in this state and in this country was housed, fed, clothed, educated, and insured."

And then the kicker: "If this was truly a Christian nation, we would never make it a Christian nation, because we know the table of fellowship is open to everybody, including our Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and atheist neighbors."

In other words, Talarico used a Christian pulpit to argue that a Christian nation is by definition un-Christian, a neat rhetorical circle that lets him invoke Scripture when it suits his politics and dismiss it when it doesn't.

"A Christian who hates Christianity"

The 2023 sermon was not an isolated moment. Two years earlier, in a 2021 podcast interview with Roberto Henderson-Espinoza, whom Talarico described as "a model for his faith" and whom the New York Post identified as a self-described "TransQueer, Latinx" activist theologian, Talarico offered a blunter summary of his relationship with the faith he now campaigns on.

"I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity," he said, adding that he "always gets drawn back into it."

That statement sits uneasily alongside a campaign that leans heavily on Talarico's seminary credentials. His spokesperson, JT Ennis, told the New York Post that Talarico "is a Christian seminarian who's dedicated his life to the teachings of Jesus Christ, fighting corruption when he sees it because there's nothing Christ-like about powerful people using scripture to justify hate and greed and score political points."

Ennis also took aim at Paxton, calling him a "billionaire-bought politician" who "attacks James for his faith." The spokesperson did not address the specific content of the sermon or the 2021 podcast remarks.

The pattern extends well beyond one sermon and one podcast. Fox News reported that a 2021 video shows Talarico on the Texas House floor declaring "God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary" while opposing a bill to ban men from competing in women's sports. In a separate committee hearing, Talarico claimed that "modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes; in fact, there are six." In 2020 tweets, he referred to racism as a "virus" spread by all White people regardless of whether they show "symptoms."

Talarico has since described some of his earlier remarks as "cringey" and said he "missed the mark on some of those old statements." But the 2023 sermon, delivered after that supposed course correction, suggests the pattern runs deeper than a few stray tweets.

A Senate race built on selective Scripture

Breitbart reported that Talarico was caught on video speaking to the Pakistani American Council of Texas, calling President Trump "a threat to all of us" and declaring solidarity with his "Muslim brothers and sisters." In the same vein, a New Yorker profile quoted Talarico claiming Christianity is the "most violent" religion and has done "more damage" than Islam, a claim Breitbart noted contradicts Cato Institute data showing radical Islamic terrorism killed more than 3,100 Americans since 1975.

The cumulative picture is not of a man wrestling honestly with his faith. It is of a politician who deploys Christianity as a rhetorical weapon, wielding it against conservatives when convenient, dismissing it as violent or hateful when that serves a different audience. National Review's Jeffrey Blehar put it plainly: "When the Texas candidate cites his Christianity, it's often in service of a trendy progressive position."

Talarico won his Democratic primary on March 4, 2026, defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett. But that victory did not unify the party. Crockett has refused to back Talarico and skipped the Texas Democratic convention, a sign that even within his own coalition, the seminary student's brand of faith-based politics generates more friction than fellowship.

Now Talarico faces Ken Paxton in a general election where every recorded sermon, every podcast clip, and every House floor speech becomes opposition research. The 1.2-point polling margin leaves no room for a candidate whose own words alienate the very voters he needs.

Texas voters who take their faith seriously, and who don't appreciate being called fascists from a church pulpit, will have a chance to respond at the ballot box. Questions about Talarico's judgment are piling up faster than his campaign can wave them away with talk of "loving your neighbor."

A candidate who calls himself "a Christian who hates Christianity" and then asks Christian voters for their trust is not offering faith. He is offering convenience, and hoping nobody checks the tape.