Can James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left?

 This is an edited transcript of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.

One of my obsessions over the last few years has been the role of attention in modern American politics: the way attention is a fundamental currency, the way it works differently than it did at other times when it was controlled by newspaper editorial boards. So I’ve been particularly interested in politicians who seem native to this attentional era, who seem to have figured something out.

We’ve talked a lot about how the Trump administration uses attention, how Zohran Mamdani uses attention. But somebody who has been breaking through over the past year in a very interesting way is James Talarico, a state representative from Texas.

Talarico is a little bit unusual for a Democrat. He’s a very forthright Christian politician. He roots his politics very fundamentally in a way you don’t often hear from Democrats in his faith.

Archival clip of James Talarico: Because there is no love of God without love of neighbor.

But Talarico began emerging as somebody who was breaking through on TikTok, Instagram and viral videos where he would talk about whether or not the Ten Commandments should be posted in schools, as a bill had proposed:

Archival clip of Talarico: This bill, to me, is not only unconstitutional, it’s not only un-American, I think it is also deeply un-Christian.

And the ways in which the Bible’s emphasis on helping the poor and the needy had been perverted by those who wanted to use religion as a tool of power and even greed:

Archival clip of Talarico: Jesus liberates, Christian nationalism controls. Jesus saves, Christian nationalism kills.

What was really surprising to many people is that he ended up on Joe Rogan’s podcast — the first significant Democrat that Rogan seemed interested in, in a very long time.

Archival clip of Joe Rogan: You need to run for president. [Laughter]. Because we need someone who’s actually a good person.

Now Talarico is running for Senate in Texas. He’s running in a primary with Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett for what will be one of the most important Senate elections in the country.

So I wanted to have Talarico on the show to talk to him about his faith, his politics and the way those two have come together in this attentional moment to allow him to say things in a language and within a framework that people seem to really want to hear, that people seem hungry for: a language of morality, and even of faith, at a time of incredible cruelty. And at a time when the radicalism of faith seems to have been perverted by the corruption of politics.

Ezra Klein: James Talarico, welcome to the show.

James Talarico: Thanks for having me.

So I wanted to start with your faith, because your politics is so rooted in your faith.

For you, what is the root or the experience of your belief? Is it learned for you? Is it embodied? Cerebral? Is it something you’ve always had? Or something you had to struggle to find?

All the above. [Chuckles.] So my granddad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas, in Corpus Christi and in Laredo, where my mom grew up. When I was real little, he told me that Christianity is a simple religion — not an easy religion, he would always clarify, but a simple religion — because Jesus gave us these two Commandments: To love God, our source, and to love our neighbors.

And so those two Commandments have really guided my life at its best moments, and it’s why I’m in public service. I was a public-school teacher, and now I’m a public official. That’s “loving my neighbor.” And it’s why I’m a seminary student studying to become a minister one day — that’s the “loving God” part. And both of them sustain each other, challenge each other, reinforce each other on a daily basis.

But you just slipped into how you live your faith, not what it is for you.

Yeah.

Has belief come easily to you?

Part of being a seminary student is studying Hebrew and Greek, so you can actually read Scripture in its original language. And one of the mind-blowing things that happened to me my first year of seminary is I was studying this word “faith.” In many translations, it is “belief” — the idea of believing in a concept or an idea — which makes sense in English, Western, translations.

But it can also be translated as “trust,” which to me is much more experiential: Trusting that love is going to get you through the hour, through the day, through your life. That love is going to carry all of us forward. That love will ultimately prevail, even when it’s temporarily defeated.

To me, that’s what my faith feels like. It feels like trust. Almost like when I learned how to swim at our neighborhood pool, and I remember my swim teacher telling me: Don’t fight the water. Let the water carry you.

There’s so much temptation in our lives to control our surroundings and control other people, and I think the opposite of that control is faith — that kind of trust, letting the universe hold you up — and not fighting it. That’s what it feels like for me, again, when I’m most faithful.