A recent appearance by James Talarico on late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show has highlighted the Texas Democrat’s effort to challenge the Republican Party not only on policy, but also on religious grounds.

Talarico has a chance to become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas in decades. His campaign could help restore policies favorable to immigrants and other groups opposed by Donald Trump and his allies. But the deeper threat to Republicans, the commentary argues, is a Democrat who can quote scripture with authority while using it to support pro-immigrant reforms and criticize what he describes as the GOP’s authoritarian project.

Rather than focusing only on the results of Republican policies, Talarico questions their intent by holding them against the principles of the Christian faith.

“The kind of religion that says you can treat people however you want as long as you have a personal relationship with Jesus is an abomination,” Talarico told Jimmy Kimmel last month. “It is a cancer on the body of Christ.”

He continued: “Scripture tells us that you can’t love God and hate other people. You can’t love God and abuse the immigrant. You can’t love God and oppress the poor. You can’t love God and bully the outcast. We spend so much time looking for God out there that we miss God in the person sitting right next to us, in that neighbor, who bears the divine image. I was brought up to believe that in the face of a neighbor, we glimpse the face of God.”

The argument, as presented in the commentary, is that no one can legitimately claim to be a Christian while ignoring, dismissing or profaning the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. Attempts to justify such conduct by professing “belief in Christ” are described as an obscenity in God’s eyes.

The commentary says it is difficult to identify another Democrat who has called the religion practiced by the Republican Party’s most powerful faction “an abomination.” It also notes that Talarico is leading his evangelical opponent, Ken Paxton, by four points, according to a new Times poll.

White evangelicals began taking control of the Republican Party about half a century ago. Since then, the GOP has increasingly justified nearly every position, particularly on abortion, in religious terms that emphasize belief while minimizing works. Christians have debated since the time of Christ which of the two is more important. Evangelicals eventually settled on faith, treating works as evidence of redemption achieved through faith rather than as a requirement for salvation.

The commentary describes “faith alone” as a conservative interpretation of the Gospels that serves the interests of the ruling class. In this view, people are not asked to challenge the status quo to bring the Kingdom of God to earth; they are asked to wait patiently for a reward in the afterlife. Loving one’s neighbor can therefore appear to be an option instead of a commandment.

Talarico, who is both a seminarian and a Senate candidate, has framed his response in practical terms. “Don’t tell me what you believe,” he frequently says. “Show me what you do, and I’ll tell you what you believe.”

His campaign is therefore presented as both a political and theological argument—more specifically, a liberal theological argument that is gaining traction. The religious conservatives who control Texas are portrayed as corrupt not only as politicians, but also as Christians. Talarico is not saying that Republicans themselves are “a cancer on the body of Christ”; he is saying that their religion is. His broader claim is that they are politically wrong because they are religiously wrong.

The commentary argues that Talarico’s sincerity and command of scripture make him particularly threatening. For decades, white evangelicals established their interpretation of the Gospels as “The Truth.” That strategy worked until they fully aligned themselves with a criminal president, the commentary says. Since then, Trump’s sad has exposed the political limits of the belief that people can treat others however they want as long as they maintain a personal relationship with Jesus.

Talarico’s message is that Christians must return to first principles: getting right with God by getting right with their neighbors.

The potential effect on Republican credibility can be seen in the response from Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas and an “outspoken evangelical Christian.” On Twitter last month, Patrick commented on a video of Talarico and wrote: “James Talarico said, ‘You can’t call yourself a Christian and reject the stranger seeking asylum at our southern border.’ James Talarico is too radical for Texas.”

That statement raises a question about whether Patrick—who tells anyone willing to listen that he is “Christian first, conservative second and Republican third”—has actually read the Bible. The commentary notes that Jesus was an immigrant and spoke clearly about the consequences of rejecting immigrants.

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matthew 25:45). Those who fail to do so will be “cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). The verses come from the passage in Matthew in which Jesus describes how people will be judged by their treatment of “the least of these.”

If Talarico, who is literally quoting Jesus, is too radical for Texas, the argument goes, then Jesus is too. That would mark “the beginning of the end of ‘the religious right.’”

Greg Sargent of The New Republic recently wrote that Trump’s barbarism has “opened space for new moral arguments, a new consensus.” Sargent said Talarico has used that opening to argue that immigration is a positive good and that immigration policy should be humane and just.

The commentary agrees with Sargent but says his focus is too narrow. Trump’s barbarism, it argues, has done more than create room for individual policy changes. It has opened space for a new social movement based on a revival of the Christian faith—a “new social gospel”—with Talarico positioning himself as one of its leading voices.

Talarico told Kimmel: “Matthew 25 tells us Christians exactly how we’re gonna be judged and how we’re gonna be saved – by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. I often wonder what would Jesus do if he visited the US Senate. I think he would tell the senators on the floor: ‘depart from me. I was hungry and you cut my food assistance. I was sick and you kicked me off Medicaid. I was a stranger and you deported me and my family.’

“‘And then I think he would flip over those fancy desks on the floor of the US Senate and demand that we take care of all of our neighbors, especially the least of these.’”

With the campaign against Paxton underway, the Texas Senate race now stands as the most immediate arena in which this scripture-grounded challenge to the religious right will be tested.

Source: https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/of-religious-right/