On a recent Sunday morning at St. Andrew\u2019s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, Jim Rigby asked his congregation to share what came to mind when he mentioned the Apostle Paul, the major Christian figure to whom 13 books in the Bible are attributed. They cheerfully complied:<\/p>\n
\u201cVillain!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHomophobic!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a jerk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul\u2019s attributed writings include passages seen as encouraging wives to submit to their husbands and instructing them to be quiet in church, and others condemning same-sex sexual behavior as sinful.<\/p>\n
Mr. Rigby acknowledged the trouble. But in a sermon that also cited the Bhagavad Gita and the Buddha, he nudged his congregation to reconsider the apostle, one of the most important in the early Christian church. \u201cAristotle and Plato, they were creeps, too, in modern times,\u201d Mr. Rigby said. \u201cBut do we want to learn from our ancestors or not?\u201d<\/p>\n
One longtime member of St. Andrew\u2019s was not there, although he had attended the previous weekend: James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate. Mr. Rigby, who has led St. Andrew\u2019s since the 1980s and is a well-known activist locally, has suddenly become a key to understanding Mr. Talarico, a candidate who aims to be the first Democrat to win statewide office in Texas in a generation.<\/p>\n
In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Talarico described Mr. Rigby and St. Andrew\u2019s, along with his grandfather, who was the pastor of several Baptist churches in South Texas in the late 1960s, as \u201cthe biggest influences on me as a Christian, as a human being.\u201d Mr. Rigby baptized Mr. Talarico as a toddler, and married his parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is my pastor in every sense of the word,\u201d Mr. Talarico said of Mr. Rigby. \u201cNot that we agree on everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI think every Christian disagrees with their pastor. And the beautiful thing about Dr. Jim is that he welcomes and encourages that.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 37, Mr. Talarico has become one of the Democratic Party\u2019s fastest-rising stars in part by talking about his identity as a Christian. Unlike some politicians who forge politically strategic relationships with faith leaders deep into their careers, Mr. Talarico has an authentic lifelong relationship with a local pastor, and speaks easily about his personal faith.<\/p>\n
As the Democratic base becomes increasingly secular, Mr. Talarico\u2019s faith-forward approach is unusual for a white Democrat. And it seems to be working. He won a competitive primary in March and outpaced<\/a> his Republican rivals in fund-raising. Some polls before the Republican runoff last week put him ahead of the state\u2019s scandal-plagued attorney general, Ken Paxton, whom some analysts in the state see as a relatively weak opponent<\/a>.<\/p>\n But as the race intensifies, Mr. Talarico\u2019s religious identity is also coming under new scrutiny. He is a seminary student at Mr. Rigby\u2019s alma mater, a progressive institution in Austin. And he has injected unusually complex theological arguments into discussions of progressive policy. In return, political and theological conservatives have called Mr. Talarico a heretic, compared him to the serpent in the Garden of Eden and suggested he could be the Antichrist.<\/p>\n By his own account, Mr. Rigby has been a major influence and inspiration. And now, Mr. Talarico\u2019s opponents are also turning a critical eye \u200bto the pastor. They are finding a spiritual leader whose views on political issues like immigration and abortion, but also questions like the historical truth of the resurrection of Jesus, are out of step with the teachings of many other churches.<\/p>\n Mr. Rigby\u2019s theology and his rhetoric reflect what would be heard at many Mainline and progressive Christian churches across the country. But in Texas, where conservative evangelicalism looms large, they are rarely visible on platforms like the ones Mr. Talarico now occupies.<\/p>\n Mr. Rigby does not use male pronouns for God, for example, because it is a kind of \u201cviolence\u201d to imply to a girl that her brother is more like God than she is, he said in an interview after the service. He does not use the word \u201cLord,\u201d because it conjures a wealthy, European, male God, he said. For that matter, he added, he does not much care for the word \u201cGod.\u201d He uses it on occasion, he said, but he tries to use synonyms, because \u201cit\u2019s going to mean something different to everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n In his sermon that morning, he had referred to \u201cthe creative impulse of the universe,\u201d which \u201ccan be called God, but it doesn\u2019t have to be called God.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico uses the terms \u201cLord\u201d and \u201cGod\u201d and, he said, has no issue with using male pronouns to refer to God. He sees the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t believe in a progressive or conservative Christianity; I believe in a biblical Christianity,\u201d Mr. Talarico said. \u201cMy faith is rooted in Scripture and the teachings of Jesus Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico\u2019s politics, as he has defined them in his Senate campaign, start with the biblical command to love God and love your neighbor. Those principles, as he sees it, have implications for public policy on abortion, immigration, the separation of church and state, and \u201ceconomic justice\u201d that elevates the interests of the poor and the oppressed over those of the wealthy and powerful. His campaign slogan, \u201cIt\u2019s time to start flipping tables,\u201d is a reference to a passage in the Bible where Jesus displays righteous anger.<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico\u2019s knack for couching progressive policy arguments directly in Christian teachings stood out early in his career as a state representative. In Texas, it meant he was frequently doing so in exchanges with Republicans who interpreted those same teachings to opposing ends.<\/p>\n Now under a national spotlight, Mr. Talarico is igniting heated public theological debates, and drawing sharp attacks from politicians on the right while being championed by progressive Christians who have long lived in the shadow of conservatives.<\/p>\n \u201cJames Talarico is a very dangerous person not only for the state of Texas, but for the United States of America,\u201d said Jason Rapert, a former Republican state senator in Arkansas and the president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. He explained that by articulating \u201capostate\u201d views on the campaign trail, Mr. Talarico was \u201cspreading misinformation and falsehood.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve Toth, a conservative pastor who has served with Mr. Talarico in the Texas House, has called him \u201ca demonic presence in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico, who is on leave from his studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, often veers into the theological weeds in a way that other politicians who talk about their faith do not. His interpretation of a central passage from Galatians in the New Testament<\/a> that says \u201cnor is there male and female\u201d under Christ has led some critics to believe he is suggesting that the verse dismantles not just inequalities in status or worth, but the concept of gender differences at all.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen anybody do this before, so in one sense, hats off, James,\u201d said Josh Howerton, the pastor of a large North Texas evangelical church, in a video reacting to Mr. Talarico\u2019s interpretation. \u201cIn another sense, I want to bang the microphone against my head.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico said he had been purposefully \u201ca little provocative,\u201d but his larger argument had been misunderstood. \u201cThere are clear differences between men and women,\u201d he said. His point was that \u201cyou can\u2019t define God using human categories because God is so much bigger than that.\u201d<\/p>\n Jamie Wilder, a seventh-generation Texan who lives in Dallas, bristles at the warm reception Mr. Talarico has received from some reporters and opinion writers outside Texas, but acknowledged that some conservative Christians in Texas, exhausted by abrasive political rhetoric, may be attracted to Mr. Talarico\u2019s conciliatory tone at first.<\/p>\n But Mr. Wilder, who has written critically of Mr. Talarico<\/a>, said the attraction may fade after they hear Mr. Talarico\u2019s past progressive comments, such as asserting that \u201cour trans community needs abortion care, too,\u201d as he did in a 2022 sermon at St. Andrew\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cThat dog\u2019s not going to hunt in Texas,\u201d Mr. Wilder said.<\/p>\n On the Sunday after Easter, the service at St. Andrew\u2019s opened as usual with a song. \u201cEvery life-giving path is welcome here,\u201d the congregation sang. \u201cWe are different and the same, naming Holy many names.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Rigby baptized a baby, and welcomed a family of four as new members, handing them a new copy of the Inclusive Bible, an unusual feminist translation St. Andrew\u2019s has used since the 1990s. In Genesis, instead of writing that God created a man, Adam, the translation refers first to an \u201cearth creature.\u201d It often uses the term \u201ckindom\u201d of God in place of \u201ckingdom,\u201d which it deems classist.<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico said he uses his father\u2019s copy of the Revised Standard Version, a mainstream translation, for his personal use, not the Inclusive Bible.<\/p>\n Among the congregation \u2014 about 240 people that Sunday \u2014 were multiple people who had been drawn to the church by hearing about it from Mr. Talarico\u2019s public appearances. The church\u2019s in-person attendance has risen by about 50 people on an average Sunday over the last year, Mr. Rigby said. David Rackley, a leader, said the church now had a budget surplus for the first time in decades, and possibly ever.<\/p>\n Jonathan Westerfield, a visitor, had contacted Mr. Talarico\u2019s campaign to see if he was preaching anywhere that Sunday. When he learned that he wasn\u2019t, he decided to come to St. Andrew\u2019s to hear from \u201cthe guy behind the guy\u201d \u2014 Mr. Rigby.<\/p>\n \u201cI could see myself coming back here,\u201d he said. He brought along his father, a pastor who compared Mr. Talarico to Jimmy Carter \u2014 a good thing, he hastened to add.<\/p>\n Jim Hall, an M.B.A. student, heard Mr. Talarico interviewed by Joe Rogan last year and had \u201cnever heard Christianity described that way.\u201d He had attended several times with his wife, and that week brought along his brother.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s the reason I know about this church,\u201d said Emma Borders, who carried a water bottle with a Talarico sticker on it and another sticker criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement in colorful language.<\/p>\n Ms. Borders, who is the finance director for Austin Young Democrats, was raised as a Southern Baptist in East Texas. But she hadn\u2019t attended church in more than a decade when she came across a sermon Mr. Talarico preached on Easter last year<\/a>. She sobbed as she watched Mr. Talarico speak about \u201cextinguishing evil with love,\u201d and about finding Jesus in the immigrant, the protester, the vulnerable older adult.<\/p>\n She attended St. Andrew\u2019s for the first time last fall, and eventually started volunteering with the church\u2019s homeless ministry and its food pantry.<\/p>\n \u201cNow you couldn\u2019t drag me out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico\u2019s views are not unusual in some Mainline denominations, the tradition that dominated the American religious and cultural landscape in the middle of the last century.<\/p>\n But today, denominations including Mr. Talarico\u2019s, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), have shrunk and splintered<\/a> over debates on sexuality and Scripture. Of the 1 percent of the adult population that belongs to Mr. Talarico\u2019s denomination, just 9 percent are under 30, and nearly half are 65 or older, according to the Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n All that has left the Mainline essentially invisible to some Americans, including many conservatives who may have little exposure to the liberal Christian worldview.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re at a particular time in American culture where people are surprised by nonevangelical expressions of Protestant theology,\u201d said Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress focusing on religion.<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico\u2019s grandfather, Jimmy Causey, whom he cites frequently as an inspiration, was the pastor of three Baptist churches in South Texas in the late 1960s, Mr. Causey told The New York Times recently in his first interview about his grandson\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n Mr. Causey, 86, said he found himself on the \u201cmoderate\u201d side during what critics call the \u201cfundamentalist takeover\u201d of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s, although he was no longer a church pastor by then. The slow-motion split introduced new political and theological tensions into the denomination.<\/p>\n \u201cThe conservatives believed that the Bible was dictated by God to the writers of the Bible and that every word of it was to be taken as the literal word of God,\u201d Mr. Causey recalled. \u201cI just never could swallow that line.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Talarico said that he and his grandfather \u201cbelieve the Bible is the word of God,\u201d and, at the same time, that \u201cGod does not intend for every word to be read literally.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Causey has visited St. Andrew\u2019s over the years and likes Mr. Rigby, he said. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, they can figure out their own belief system, and it\u2019ll be OK with me,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Mr. Rigby played a critical role in his own denomination\u2019s move to the left. In the early 2000s, he strategically provoked a showdown over sexuality first by ordaining a lesbian as an elder at his church, and then by officiating dozens of same-sex unions. The charges in his ecclesiastical trials were dismissed on technicalities, but he was vindicated in the end: The denomination approved the ordination of noncelibate gay men and lesbians in 2011, and formally allowed same-sex marriage in 2014<\/a>, before the Supreme Court made it legal nationwide.<\/p>\n Over the years, the pastor has protested and testified against abortion restrictions, executions, private prisons, and religious exemptions for discrimination based on sexuality and gender identity, among many other causes. In 2017, he was arrested at a demonstration<\/a> for immigrant rights.<\/p>\n