With all the attention surrounding James Talarico after his recent primary win, I want to share my thoughts on why I believe he is dangerous.
Because the media is hailing Talarico as a Bible scholar, and because he is a seminary student who often preaches in churches, many people view him as a trusted authority on God’s Word. While he certainly says some true things, I want to address some troubling statements he has made because I fear he is leading people astray.
First, after stating that Christianity “points to” the truth, Talarico went on to say “other religions of love point to the same truth.” Which religions? He specifically mentioned Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Islam as “circling the same truth about the universe, about the cosmos. And that truth is inherently a mystery.”
This is nothing new. This universalism may feel good because it is inclusive, but it is demonstrably false. These religions cannot all point to the “same truth” because they teach different things. Those religions do not agree on the question of origin (How did we get here?), the question of sin (What went wrong?), the question of salvation (How do we fix the problem?), or the question of where we are going (What happens when we die?). They don’t agree on the concept of the afterlife (is it heaven, paradise, or endless reincarnation?) They don’t even agree if there is a God, let alone who that God is. How can one possibly say they all point to the same truth?
No one who studies the teachings of Jesus can conclude that all religions teach the same thing, for Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).” Jesus’ claim to exclusivity is one of the main reasons the world hates Jesus. He doesn’t allow for that “all religions make it to heaven” heresy.
And for Talarico to say “truth is inherently a mystery” is likewise baffling in light of Jesus’ famous phrase that “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free (John 8:32).” There is nothing mysterious about the truth. We have it in the red letters. Every time Paul wrote about “the mystery,” he said the mystery has been revealed. What once was mysterious, or unknown, is now known thanks to the Gospel.
That is just one example of Talarico’s dangerous beliefs. As an ally who supports the homosexual agenda, he said Jesus never spoke against homosexuality. This is also false. In Matthew 19:4-6 Jesus said:
“Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
In context Jesus was teaching on divorce, but there is an important truth here. In affirming traditional heterosexual marriage, Jesus held this up as God’s way “from the beginning.” By supporting its opposite, Jesus did speak against homosexuality. People frequently criticize Christianity by saying “People don’t know what they are for, only what they’re against.” Well, here Jesus says what we are for—traditional marriage for one man and one woman. We are against homosexuality because we are for marriage as God intended.
In three verses Jesus used the terms male and female, father and mother, and man and wife. God designed it this way from the beginning, so it is unchanging. We cannot separate what God has joined. This not only speaks against homosexuality, but transgenderism and the belief in a hundred genders as well.
Of course progressives love Talarico’s position on this because it feels good and is inclusive (it appeals to more voters), but it is unbiblical.
A third disagreement I have with Talarico is on the abortion issue. He made the greatest leap of all time when he took the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary and used it to support the stopping of a beating heart inside the womb. Talarico said the Annunciation “is an affirmation” that “creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create.”
The only way to read this encounter in Scripture and come away being more prochoice is to read the Bible looking for ways to support your presupposition. Mary was called blessed and highly favored because she got to carry this life in her womb. When she visited her relative Elizabeth, her unborn son, John the Baptist, “leapt” in her womb at the news of Mary’s pregnancy. The Bible teaches in a multitude of places that all life is precious, and furthermore, Mary did not “create” this life. By her own admission, she had never been with a man. This child was placed in her by the Holy Spirit. Mary’s “consent” was irrelevant.
Talarico also said God is non-binary. He said this in opposition to a bill that would prevent boys from competing against girls in sports. God is most certainly not non-binary. We know God is spirit (John 4:24) and He does not have a physical body, although He does through the person of Jesus. God is bigger than anything we can imagine.
Yet at the same time, God always used gendered language for Himself. In the Hebrew and Greek there are masculine, feminine, and neutral pronouns, and God always chose masculine pronouns for Himself, and Jesus’ body was clearly male. God could have chosen gender-neutral pronouns, but He used masculine ones. Some will argue that Jesus compared himself to a mother hen, but that is simply a simile, a figure of speech used to show His compassion.
God is not non-binary. Even if, as some have said, Talarico just meant that God is bigger than we can understand (He doesn’t have X or Y chromosomes, or male anatomy), that still doesn’t make what he said right. In context Talarico spoke of God being non-binary as a defense of trans athletes competing in women’s sports. He was not using non-binary in a neutral “God-is-spirit” kind of way, but a “gender-is-a-social-construct-
In each of these cases what Talarico says is attractive, but all he is doing is twisting the Bible to use it for his own agenda. And each of these issues—the gay agenda, abortion, and the trans movement—are things that are black and white in Scripture.
Supporting Talarico will feel good for people of faith, especially those who are sick of the personal moral failures in the lives of many office holders. Jimmy Carter was elected because he was the opposite of Richard Nixon, and many will find Talarico a refreshing contrast to Donald Trump. He is Jimmy Carter 2.0, a clean-cut choir boy with a nice smile, speaking the language of the church, but espousing positions diametrically opposed to God’s Word.
Know what you are getting with Talarico: someone who supports killing babies in the womb for any reason; who supports men marrying men and women marrying women; who supports men using women’s restrooms and locker rooms, and competing against them in sports (which robs girls of trophies, scholarships, and spots on rosters), all while toting a Bible and claiming to speak for the God who opposes such practices.
Talarico belongs to a political party that has hitched its wagon to positions that are biblically untenable, so he has to couch his immoral positions in biblical language. Christians must be able to sift through the out of context references from the Bible and see him for who he really is—a wolf in sheep’s clothing, masquerading as a messenger of light.
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