The Christianism Of The LeftMeet James Talarico, the next generation's religious crusader for woke illiberalism.
The fusion of religion and politics — the norm for almost all human civilizations until liberalism came along — is having a moment in the sun right now. We are, after all, fighting a new war started by fundamentalist Jews against fundamentalist Muslims alongside fundamentalist Christians. Lovely apocalypse we’re having, innit? But this is not, pace Hitch, a reason for abandoning faith. For some of us, it is, rather, a reason to save faith from the logic of power, where it is always corrupted. That was the original promise of America: the separation of church and state. (It was also, I’d argue, the anti-political theme of the Gospels — but that’s another story.) A couple of decades ago I called the fusion of evangelicalism and Republican politics in America “Christianism” (political) — to distinguish it from Christianity (spiritual). Deducing from the Gospels the need to vote Republican, lower taxes, drill baby drill, ban abortion, hate homosexuals, and defend wars of aggression made no sense to me. But the fusion of Christianity and politics isn’t exclusively right-wing. You can invoke God to defend anything, after all. And a new left-Christianism has emerged in the 21st century that is a mirror image of the right’s. Left-Christians have come to adorn their churches with transqueer and BLM flags, treat NPR as the Holy Office, adopt language — “white supremacy,” “cis-heterosexism,” “patriarchy” — directly from critical theory, and interpret Scripture to mandate higher taxes, DEI, abortion on demand, and open borders. I find that Christianism just as toxic to faith and politics. Which brings me to James Talarico, the Christianist running for Senate in Texas. After defeating the race-baiting Jasmine Crockett, the MSM is framing him as a “moderate”. To be sure, I’d vote for Talarico in an instant if I were a Texan (restraining the mad king is vital this fall). He’s also a clear speaker, a man of real faith (Democrats need more like him), and a man rightly revolted by the indecency of Trump. He engages Trump voters, including Joe Rogan, and was one of very few Dems to call out Biden’s disastrous record on immigration. All awesome. But he is also a defiantly woke Christianist: a man fusing the agenda of the far left with Christian theology. He was brought up in Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, a woke congregation in deep-blue Austin, where the Gospel about Peter’s denial of Jesus last week was followed thus:
This is not atypical in many liberal churches, where prayers for an end to “white supremacy” are routine. So it is no surprise to find that Talarico went to seminary “because I had a pretty big crisis of faith in our political system.” (My italics.) Nor is it surprising that when asked to offer an invocation as a pastor in the Texas legislature, he began:
And in Talarico’s church of woke, Jesus’s teachings are identical to that of a left-wing Democrat of precisely March 2026:
According to Talarico, Jesus would have been particularly upset by the end of Roe vs Wade:
Really? This is the same Talarico who says that Jesus said nothing about gays and so we should not bring him into the discussion. But Jesus didn’t talk about 20th century American judicial philosophy either, did he? In another amazing tidbit, Talarico used the Annunciation — God’s telling Mary she would bear His only son — as a teaching moment about “consent” in sex. That’s a scene from Portlandia. On race, Talarico believes that original sin and your original skin are one and the same:
The only way this argument works is by an understanding of society as entirely a function of oppressive “systems”, which liberal norms only mask and perpetuate. That’s (atheist) critical race theory, where racial fatalism always trumps hope. But not Christianity, in which all of us are simply human and always redeemable. In the church of woke, there is also a sacred caste, and Talarico is their tribune. The saints are the oppressed, made saintly by who they are and not how they act. (There’s a lot of predestination in wokeness.) You may have noticed that in Talarico’s quote about Roe vs Wade, he refers to women as “our neighbors with a uterus.” When he occasionally slips and uses the w-word, he wants us to know “it should not be understood as an exhaustive term, but rather as a lens through which to understand, examine, and interrogate patriarchy.” Nothing, of course, is more sacred in the church of woke than trans. “God is nonbinary,” Talarico has declared, and “there are six sexes” Only six? He favors irreversible sex changes for children before puberty, sports where our neighbors with uteruses compete against our neighbors without them, and strongly believes that “our trans community needs abortion care too.” “Abortion care.” Like many fundamentalists, Talarico also bungles the science. Here he is saying that not transing a child before puberty risks suicide — which even the trans activists have stopped saying because it’s a lie — and that the rate of intersex conditions is the same as that for green eyes. Around two percent of humans have green eyes; only 0.02 percent have DSDs. Trusting your religion over science is no better on the left than on the right. When once asked to think of people he loved beyond family and friends, Talarico replied: “I love ... the trans children who showed up yesterday at the state capitol to advocate for their humanity.” I’ve borrowed Eric Kaufmann’s term “sacralization” to describe how the woke view the oppressed, but Talarico openly declares that, for him, “trans children … are perfect. They are beautiful and they are sacred.” In many ways, wokeness is best seen as a fusion of neo-Marxist critical theory and New England Christian puritanism: a very American religious movement dressed up in distressingly political garb. This left-Christianism is as fundamentalist and as illiberal as any political evangelicalism. And that’s why the Democrats are not going to adjust one iota on culture-war issues. They are just going to tell the voters to ignore them because they don’t matter. This is Talarico’s core message:
It doesn’t seem to occur to Talarico that voters care about both economics and culture, prices and pronouns — that both matter. That’s surely what we have learned in the Trump years. And then you realize the Democrats have learned nothing in the Trump years. Because their religion requires it. (Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: a fierce but friendly debate with Eli Lake over Israel and the war; many many dissents over my views on the war; eight notable quotes from the week in news, including an Yglesias Award for Dan Savage; 17 pieces on Substack we recommend on a variety of topics; a Mental Health Break of a ska version of Rage Against the Machine; a towering window in Tel Aviv; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!) A paid subscriber writes:
If you’d like to balance out some of the cancelled subs, please do! We always publish opposing views to mine, which makes cancellation a bit much. A new subscriber just paid up “because people are complex, and our conversations should be too.” Back On The Dishcast: Eli Lake On The War!
Eli is a journalist and an old friend. He’s a former senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast and Newsweek, and a former columnist for the Bloomberg View. He’s now a reporter for The Free Press, a contributing editor at Commentary Magazine, and the host of his own podcast, Breaking History. He’s one of the most dogged defenders of Israel in America. Who better to slug it out with? Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the double standard of US aid to Israel and NATO, and escalation of settlements in the West Bank. That link also takes you to commentary on our pods with Kathryn Paige Harden and Sally Quinn, plus a ton of dissent and other debate on the war in the Middle East. Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Matt Goodwin on the political earthquake in the UK, Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power, Derek Thompson on abundance, Jonah Goldberg on the state of conservatism, Tom Holland on the Christian roots of liberalism, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy in a liberal democracy, and Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism.” As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com. Dissents Of The WeekA reader responds to my latest column on the war:
In my column I specifically denied any notion of conspiracy. This is a normal domestic lobby practicing politics very, very effectively. For the sake of Israel. Two more dissents, with my replies, are here. Many more are on the pod page. As always, please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. And follow more Dish debate in my Notes feed. In The ‘StacksThis is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the dire situation in Hormuz, new speech threats in UK, and signs that the kids aren’t doing well. Below is one example, followed by a brand new substack:
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The Christianism Of The Left
March 13, 2026
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