James Talarico’s Unconvincing Christian Progressivism

You have to admire the timing. James Talarico, a Texas state representative running for Senate, has discovered that Jesus Christ holds the same positions as the 2026 Democratic Party. What a coincidence. The same Jesus who thundered against hypocrisy and called himself the way, the truth, and the life turns out to be a reliable Democratic primary voter.

Now, Talarico is clearly a sincere guy. He talks about his faith with real warmth, and that's not nothing in a party that has spent the last decade treating religious voters as rubes. But sincerity is not the same as sound theology. His argument seems to be that because Jesus cared about the poor, Jesus must therefore support the full progressive agenda. That leap is doing a lot of work. It reduces the Son of God to a policy position paper, and it conveniently ignores the parts of the Gospel that don't fit the platform. The parts about sin, repentance, and the narrow road tend to get left.