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State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, speaks at a rally in East Austin in July. (Leila Saidane | KUT News)<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\tState Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, speaks at a rally in East Austin in July. (Leila Saidane | KUT News)<\/p>\n
Faith has been central to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico\u2019s messaging to voters, and while that\u2019s par for the course in Texas politics, constituents may be more accustomed to hearing Republicans court the religious vote.<\/p>\n
Joseph Locke, a historian and author of One State Under God: A History of Religion in Texas, says politics and religion have long been intertwined in the Lone Star state.<\/p>\n
Locke spoke to KERA\u2019s Ron Corning about why Talarico\u2019s messaging was so effective in the primary<\/a> and how it could impact the general election in November.<\/p>\n This interview has been edited for length and clarity. <\/p>\n I feel like James Talarico is holding up a mirror to many who are maybe on that far-Christian-right and they\u2019re looking into it and they are not liking what they\u2019re seeing. Is that accurate?<\/p>\n I think that\u2019s the perfect metaphor for what Talarico is doing by not just alighting or stepping away from the religious politics of Texas. His grounding in his Christian faith allows for a conversation that we really haven\u2019t had before. Are these politicians drawing from a historical faith? Are they grounded in a historical tradition? Is their Christianity the Christianity that Texans recognize?<\/p>\n Talarico\u2019s candidacy has done more than anyone\u2019s over the past several decades to really let us step back and assess the kind of religious politics that have taken over the state in a more holistic manner.<\/p>\n Is James Talarico\u2019s campaign a sign that Texans are rejecting Christian nationalism?<\/p>\n It might be. I don\u2019t think we quite know yet the broad appeal of Talarico across the state of Texas. We know that it\u2019s resonated nationally. We know it\u2019s resonated among Democrats. I think the test in November will be to see how effective this message is in the larger electorate in Texas.<\/p>\n While Talarico\u2019s speaking to that far religious right and threading that needle, he promotes progressive policies that you could argue follow more closely with the teachings of Jesus \u2014 whether that\u2019s caring for those who have less, health care for all, taxing billionaires, etc. What do you make of all of that?<\/p>\n It\u2019s interesting. His repeated messages about Christ and redemption and loving your neighbor is very much harkening back to religious politics you have seen in Texas.<\/p>\n The civil rights movement and the populist movement of farmers and tenants and sharecroppers in the earlier part of the 20th century and late 19th century were geared toward this kind of economic message. You see it in LBJ\u2019s candidacy and in the 30s, 40s and 50s, this harkening back to a New Deal politics that Johnson brings with him to Washington. It\u2019s really only since the 1970s and 80s, with the rise of the Christian right, that this economic, more compassionate message begins to get pushed away.<\/p>\n Even George W. Bush really brought this to the forefront with his time in the governor\u2019s mansion in the late 90s. He was speaking of this kind of Christian compassion, this willingness to engage with religious organizations that were geared toward welfare programs. It\u2019s really only been in this last couple of decades that it\u2019s shifted entirely to culture war and issues surrounding sexuality, bathrooms, trans issues, and things like that.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not new for the Black church to embrace Christian messaging around politics. Is Talarico also drawing on that a bit?<\/p>\n Absolutely. In Texas in the 1950s and 60s, like much of the South, energy for the civil rights movement came out of the churches. It\u2019s no accident that Martin Luther King was a pastor. Black Dallas Baptist churches was where you saw the energy and the leadership. It\u2019s where you saw the organizing of civil rights campaigns and that has always been there. In fact, you often found white Christians and white Baptists complaining about this, arguing that it was a violation of separation of church and state and we needed to restore an earlier vision. But that Black tradition continues into the 70s and 80s, which you can find across pulpits in Texas.<\/p>\n You have also seen this with white Texans. It\u2019s a tradition that we\u2019ve kind of forgotten about, but campaigns for economic justice and civil rights have come from white churches as well. James Talarico\u2019s Presbyterian Church in Austin advances causes like this. In Dallas, the Cathedral of Hope is a sprawling church ministering to LGBTQ parishioners. It\u2019s there, it just doesn\u2019t have much of a political voice.<\/p>\n Talarico did well in parts of southern Texas along the border. Do you think his message broke through to Hispanic voters?<\/p>\n 100%. Right now on the border, it\u2019s Catholic churches are ministering to refugees. When migrants come across and they don\u2019t have resources, they don\u2019t have food, when they were taken and released and need shelter \u2014 it is Catholic churches that are doing that. There is an element of compassion that is entirely missed from this world of walls and razor wire and ICE raids we\u2019ve seen in Minneapolis and across the country. We still need to see how this plays out in November, but I think this would resonate in border counties among Tejanos who have this rich Catholic tradition of social justice.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen politics play out across the country in different ways. When a message is successful, it gets replicated, it becomes part of the campaign strategy. If James Talarico proves that his messaging around faith in this way was a winning strategy, we\u2019ll see it elsewhere won\u2019t we?<\/p>\n I think so. Talarico has mentioned that red-state Democrats have to operate differently than blue-state Democrats. What works in New York or California won\u2019t necessarily work in Texas. I think Talarico is a test of whether Texas religious traditions resonate in a way they might not elsewhere and I think we\u2019ll see in November how that plays out.<\/p>\n Ron Corning is the host of KERA\u2019s forthcoming talk show, NTX Now. Got a tip? Email Ron at rcorning@kera.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n