Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico faces new scrutiny after undercover video showed his pastor and self-described mentor telling atheists "we're on the same team", raising fresh questions about how the candidate's faith squares with his church's leadership.

Rev. Jim Rigby, who has led St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin since the 1980s, appears in footage obtained by Breitbart News preparing to speak at an event for the Freedom From Religion Foundation. In the video, Rigby addresses people who reject organized religion and tells them plainly that his church has room for them.

Rigby's own words leave little ambiguity about where he stands. In the video, he says:

"If you love humanity and love nature and that's why you hate religion then we're on the same team."

He goes further, acknowledging that his positions have put him at odds with his own denomination. Rigby states he has been "on trial within the denomination for LGBT stuff, abortion and non-theist," and adds: "We had an atheist join the church but that's not a big deal here."

That matters because Talarico, who is running against Republican Ken Paxton in a closely watched U.S. Senate contest this November, has leaned heavily on his Christian faith as a campaign credential. A New York Times profile published in June described Talarico attending St. Andrews since he was a toddler. In that profile, Talarico called Rigby "my pastor in every sense of the word" and described Rigby and his grandfather as "the biggest influences on me as a Christian, as a human being."

Rigby baptized Talarico. He officiated the wedding of Talarico's parents. This is not a casual acquaintance, it is the deepest spiritual relationship Talarico has publicly claimed.

Rigby avoids the word 'God', and calls male pronouns for the divine a kind of 'violence'

The New York Times profile, as cited in the Breitbart report, paints an even fuller picture of Rigby's theology. Rigby does not use male pronouns for God, saying it is a kind of "violence" to imply to a girl that her brother is more like God than she is. He does not use the word "Lord" because it conjures a wealthy, European, male God. He said he does not much care for the word "God" itself but will use it on occasion, preferring synonyms, because "it's going to mean something different to everybody."

For a candidate selling himself to Texas voters as a man of faith, the spiritual guide behind that faith holds views that most churchgoing Texans would find unrecognizable.

Talarico is not the only Democrat who has faced questions about concealing or softening radical positions before an election. A Michigan Democrat recently scrubbed hundreds of radical posts before facing voters in a swing district, a pattern that suggests the party knows its base positions are liabilities in competitive races.

A second minister says the church is 'not a worshipping church'

Rigby is not the only church leader captured on camera making statements that cut against Talarico's faith-forward campaign image. Rev. Babs Miller, the minister to the parish at St. Andrews, also appears in the undercover footage. Miller states flatly: "I don't have a need for a God."

Miller says she thinks there is "something out there that holds all this together," but she does not see it as a God. She also tells the camera: "We are not a worshipping church."

In a separate video reported by the Daily Wire, Miller goes even further, directly undermining Talarico's political positioning. She says Talarico is "playing a political game" and offers a blunt prediction:

"I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he'll change his tune back to where he was."

That quote, from a minister inside Talarico's own church, is the kind of statement that campaign operatives dread. It is not opposition research from Ken Paxton's team. It is a firsthand assessment from someone who has watched Talarico up close.

The broader pattern of Democrats breaking from their stated positions under electoral pressure has become a recurring feature of recent cycles. Vulnerable House Democrats broke with their party on a women's sports vote as midterm pressure mounted, another sign that the party's left flank creates liabilities its candidates scramble to manage.

Talarico already tried to walk back his 'God is non-binary' remarks

This is not the first time Talarico's religious statements have drawn scrutiny. In a September interview, Talarico attempted to walk back previous statements in which he described God as non-binary. He acknowledged the phrasing was provocative:

"I was being provocative with that statement, I get that. What I was trying to say is that you can't use human categories to define God."

The walkback might have put the issue to rest, except that the undercover footage now shows the people closest to Talarico's spiritual life expressing views that go well beyond "provocative." A pastor who tells atheists they are on his team, a minister who says she has no need for God, and a church that by its own minister's description is "not a worshipping church", these are not ambiguous theological positions. They are a direct contradiction of the traditional Christian faith Talarico claims to represent on the campaign trail.

Democrats have struggled with internal contradictions on multiple fronts. Two Democrats who crossed party lines to rescue a procedural vote faced punishment from their own caucus, a reminder that the party enforces ideological conformity even as individual candidates try to present moderate faces to voters.

FFRF: the group Rigby was preparing to address

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, where Rigby was preparing to speak in the undercover footage, describes itself as the nation's largest "freethought association," claiming nearly 42,000 members who identify as "atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree." The organization's stated view is that "Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion."

Rigby's appearance at an FFRF event is consistent with the theological positions he expresses in the video. But for Talarico, who has built his Senate candidacy partly on his identity as a lifelong Christian shaped by his church, the connection between his pastor and an explicitly atheist organization creates a credibility problem that no amount of rhetorical finesse can easily resolve.

The gap between what candidates say and what their records reveal is a recurring liability for Democrats in competitive seats. Most House Democrats walked away from a popular stock-trading ban because of a voter ID provision, a vote that showed where the party's real priorities sit when the cameras are off.

A credibility problem Talarico built himself

Talarico chose to make his faith central to his political identity. He named Rigby as his pastor and mentor. He described St. Andrews as the church that shaped him. He cited Rigby alongside his grandfather as the two people who most influenced him as a Christian and a human being. No one forced those associations on him.

Now the pastor he elevated speaks at atheist gatherings and tells nonbelievers they are on the same team. The minister at his church says she has no need for God and that the congregation does not worship. And that same minister says on camera that Talarico is playing a political game and will revert to his real positions after the election.

Texas voters heading to the polls in November to choose between Talarico and Paxton now have footage, not opposition spin, not secondhand reporting, but the candidate's own spiritual advisors in their own words, to weigh against the faith Talarico has asked them to trust.

When a man's own pastor says the atheists are on his team, voters are entitled to ask which team the candidate is really on.