I tested James Talarico against Matthew 7 before you vote (full guide)

His own church gave him away.

A minister at St. Andrew’s in Austin, who has known him since kindergarten, told a hidden camera that the man you see on TV will “change his tune back to where he was” the minute he’s elected.

Her words, not mine. And she was just getting warmed up.

I’m a science teacher, a medically retired Army medic, and a Christian, in that order on weekdays and the reverse on Sundays. I spend my evenings grading lab reports, so that’s what this is. A lab report. Every claim gets a source, every source gets checked, and every wrong answer gets the red pen. (I went through three red pens on this one. The school district is going to ask questions.)

If you’ve never read a word I’ve written about James Talarico, perfect. You don’t need to. Everything is right here. It’s long, so grab a coffee. I’ll try to keep you laughing so you make it to the end, because the end is where the good stuff is.

First, the ground rules, because somebody in the replies is already typing “judge not” with one thumb and holding a latte with the other.

I don’t get to grade James Talarico’s soul. Only God sees the heart, and I have enough trouble with my own. But Jesus didn’t leave us guessing about everything else. “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15-16, LSB).

Jesus didn’t say “you will know them by their campaign ads.” He said fruit. And Talarico’s fruit is public. It’s in the Texas House Journal. It’s in sermon manuscripts his own church posted online. It’s on Joe Rogan, Colbert, Kimmel, and Fox News. So I’m using the standard he says he follows, and I’m just reading the label on the produce.

He also volunteered for extra scrutiny. “Let not many of you become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a stricter judgment” (James 3:1). Talarico is a seminary student. He preaches from pulpits. He has taught theology to the Texas House and to millions of podcast listeners. He wants the teacher’s chair. That chair comes with a red pen, and today I brought several.

This is a fruit test, so we’ll run it like a botany lab. Sample one is the hidden camera. Sample two is his voting record. Sample three is what he teaches about the Bible, and sample four is the soil he grew up in. Then we read the results, and then, because I’m a teacher, he gets a report card.

Safety goggles on.

In September, an undercover Daily Wire journalist sat down with Rev. Babs Miller, the Minister to the Parish at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian in Austin. Talarico says he has attended that church since he was two years old. Miller has known him since kindergarten. She called him “Jimmy.”

The journalist mentioned that Talarico had walked back his famous line that “God is non-binary.” Miller’s response to the theology was one word: “Duh.” Then she explained the campaign, which was very generous of her.

“He’s getting some advice that I don’t think he should be following.”
“I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he’ll change his tune back to where he was.”
When the journalist said he has to play the game, she agreed: “That’s what his campaign has convinced him of.” His staff wants him to ease off “just for the next 50 weeks, whatever days.”
And my personal favorite: “I think it’s bad advice personally, but if it helps him win, okay.”

If it helps him win, okay. Folks, that’s the home team reading its own playbook out loud at the coin toss. Republicans didn’t even have to call the play.

Now, I grade fairly, so here’s the fine print. Miller’s guarantee is her prediction. She isn’t his campaign manager, and she can’t read his mind any better than I can. But she’s not the only witness, and the other two are worse for him.

The same outlet recorded a paid organizer with Texas Majority PAC, a group founded by Beto O’Rourke alumni, saying Talarico “does believe the things that he’s said before” and that the new messaging is about being more palatable to Republicans.

Then there’s Jim Rigby, his longtime pastor. Rigby baptized Talarico as a toddler, officiated his parents’ wedding, and gave the invocation at his 2019 swearing-in. On undercover video, Rigby said, “His campaign has distanced from me completely,” and blamed the advisors and the DNC people who show up the closer he gets to winning.

The man who poured the water on his head says the handlers are hiding the candidate from him. When your own baptism pastor needs a press pass to see you, the campaign has moved past moderating and into redecorating.

So let me be helpful here. Texans keep asking which James Talarico is the real one. Let me find someone who would know. Looking… Looking… Oh, here she is. The woman who has watched him since kindergarten. Her answer is to wait about 50 weeks. No rush, though.

Trying to get a straight answer out of this campaign is like trying to baptize a cat. Everybody gets wet, somebody gets scratched, and the cat still isn’t a Presbyterian.

SAMPLE TWO: THE VOTING RECORD

A campaign is poetry. A voting record is lab data. Poetry can rhyme “border” with “welcome mat.” Lab data has to sit still on the scale while you weigh it, and it doesn’t care how nice your PawPaw was. Here’s what he did in the Texas House, and then what he says on cable now.

GIRLS’ SPORTS AND PRIVATE SPACES

2021: He voted against HB 25, which requires public school athletes to compete on teams matching their biological sex. It passed, and Gov. Abbott signed it. On the House floor, Talarico called it “an immoral and hateful bill.”
2021: When a similar bill, SB 29, died on the floor, he posted that Democrats had “worked with our Democratic colleagues and trans activists to kill SB 29,” as reported by the Daily Signal.
August 2021, in committee: “trans girls are girls.”
2025: He voted against SB 8, which designates certain public spaces and facilities by sex. It passed anyway.
Sept. 9, 2026, on Fox News: “I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness.” He told the Texas Tribune he hasn’t changed his position.

He voted against the bill that protects fairness, and now he’d like partial credit for caring about fairness. That’s like voting against the fire department and then showing up at the fire with a squirt gun and a press release.

MEDICAL TRANSITION FOR MINORS

May 15, 2023: He voted against SB 14, the Texas law that bars puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for children under 18, along with public money to pay for them. He voted for all 18 Democratic amendments that failed. That year he called SB 14 one of the “three most dangerous” LGBTQ bills and described this care as important healthcare for transgender children, according to PolitiFact. At an August 2023 Pride panel he said he trusts parents and doctors, not politicians in Austin.
Sept. 9, 2026, on Fox News: Asked if he’d vote for a national ban on these surgeries for minors, he said, “Absolutely.” He added that he has “been consistent on this issue” and that the Texas bill was “overly broad.”

He’s been consistent, he says. I’ll give him that. He’s consistently on whichever side of the issue the camera is standing on.

And because I grade fairly: PolitiFact rated one Republican ad False for saying he “supported using taxpayer dollars for sex change surgeries on young children.” That ad overreached. But the same fact check confirms the vote, the “three most dangerous” line, and the Pride panel. When the real record is sitting on the fact checker’s own website, you don’t need to exaggerate it. You just need to read it out loud.

HOW MANY SEXES ARE THERE?

In 2021, he said there were six biological sexes.
Sept. 9, 2026, on Fox News: “I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements.” There are two, he says now, plus a small percentage of people with genetic variations.

I teach anatomy to high schoolers. This is chapter-one material. Going from six sexes to two in five years isn’t evolution. Evolution takes millions of years. This took one poll. The man is more confused than a chameleon in a bag of Skittles.

ABORTION

May 2021: He voted no on SB 8, the Texas Heartbeat Act.
On Joe Rogan in July 2025, he argued from Genesis 2:7 that life begins at first breath. Hold that thought. It gets its own grade in Sample Three, and it’s not a good one.

THE BORDER

2021: He voted against HB 9, $1.8 billion for border security.
2023: He voted no on HB 7, which created a Texas Border Protection Unit and funded border infrastructure. He voted against SB 3, which funded border barrier construction. He voted no on SB 4, which made illegal entry from a foreign nation a state crime.
2025: He voted against SB 8, a different SB 8 from the bathroom bill, which requires larger counties to sign 287(g) agreements with ICE.
Today: The border should be “like our front porch,” with “a giant welcome mat out front and a lock on the door.”

Lovely image. Really. I’d put it on a throw pillow. He just voted against buying the lock. Every single session. Slight oversight!

FAITH, SCHOOLS, AND PARENTS

May 2023: At a committee hearing on SB 1515, the bill to put the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms, he called it “unconstitutional,” “deeply un-Christian,” and “idolatrous.”
2025: He voted no on SB 10, the Ten Commandments bill that passed.
2023: He voted against SB 763, which allowed school chaplains.
2025: He voted no on SB 2, school choice. He voted no on SB 12, the Parents’ Bill of Rights. He voted no on SB 13, and in 2023 on HB 900, the library material bills.

So the man running as the Christian in this race voted against chaplains in schools, against the Ten Commandments on a classroom wall, and against parents’ rights. But please don’t miss his August ad, where his PawPaw, a Baptist preacher, teaches him to love God and love his neighbor. All hat and no cattle. And in this case, the hat came from PawPaw’s closet.

SHOWING UP FOR WORK

He joined the Texas House Democrats who left the state in 2021 to break quorum and block an election bill, and he did it again in 2025 over redistricting. Fleeing to another state so the Legislature can’t vote is a funny way to defend democracy. In the Army we had a word for leaving your post so the mission fails, and it wasn’t “patriot.” (Also, we’re a republic. Article IV, Section 4. I’ll wait.)
The Daily Signal reports he missed more than 800 House votes between May 2019 and May 2025.

WHAT HE SAYS HE’LL DO IN THE SENATE

On Fox News, he said the U.S. Supreme Court is “infected” with corruption and “needs to be overhauled.” He supports term limits for justices and is open to discussing adding more of them. The Constitution gives the Senate “Advice and Consent” on judges (Article II, Section 2). It doesn’t give the Senate permission to keep adding chairs until the scoreboard changes.

His own words sum up this sample better than mine can. “I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements.” James 1:8 describes the condition: “a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” He’s as steady as a weathervane in a Panhandle wind, and about as useful as a screen door on a submarine when you’re trying to figure out how he’ll actually vote.

SAMPLE THREE: WHAT HE TEACHES ABOUT THE BIBLE

This is the longest sample, because it matters most. When a politician gets a tax rate wrong, you lose money. When a teacher gets God wrong, people lose their way, and some of them don’t find it again.

So I’m grading his public Bible teaching one claim at a time, the way I’d grade a test. The claim goes up top. The red ink goes underneath. Pencils down.

CLAIM: “God is non-binary.”

On the floor of the Texas House in 2021, Talarico argued that Genesis uses a masculine word and a feminine word for God, so God is “both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary.” He now says he was “being provocative.”

THE GRADE: The feminine word is ruach, spirit. Grammatical gender is grammar. It isn’t biology. In German, das Madchen, a little girl, is grammatically neuter, and nobody in Berlin thinks little girls are furniture. The Spirit is feminine in Hebrew, neuter in Greek (pneuma), and masculine in Latin (spiritus). One Spirit, three grammatical genders. That’s how languages work, and a seminarian knows it. He was counting on a room full of legislators not knowing it.

The same chapter he quoted answers his own question: “So God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27, LSB). Jesus quoted that exact verse when He defined marriage (Matthew 19:4-6). Talarico read the chapter and walked right past the verse that settles it. That’s like reading the ingredients on a candy bar and missing the word “peanuts.” Ben Shapiro called the argument a “category error.” Ben was being polite. I’m a medic. I’m not that polite.

CLAIM: Life begins at first breath.

On Rogan, Talarico pointed to Genesis 2:7, where God breathes into Adam and he becomes a living being, and argued that life begins with the first breath.

THE GRADE: Adam was formed from dust as a grown man. Nobody gestated Adam. There was no baby shower. Eve didn’t knit him booties. Using Adam’s first breath to decide when a baby is alive is like using the Big Bang to set your oven timer.

Now read Luke. Luke was a physician, so he was careful with his words. When pregnant Mary visits Elizabeth, “the baby leaped in her womb” (Luke 1:41). The Greek word is brephos. Luke uses the exact same word for newborn Jesus lying in the manger (Luke 2:12, 16). Standard Greek lexicons define brephos as an unborn or a newborn child. Luke didn’t draw a line at the birth canal. Neither does David: “You wove me in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). Neither does Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). The Didache, one of the earliest Christian writings after the New Testament, says plainly not to murder a child by abortion (Didache 2:2).

And you don’t need a Bible for this one. Any standard embryology textbook dates a new human organism to fertilization. Breathing is something a living human does. It isn’t when one starts.

CLAIM: Mary consented, so creation requires consent, so that supports a pro-choice view.

THE GRADE: Gabriel didn’t ask. He announced: “you will conceive in your womb and bear a son” (Luke 1:31). There was no permission slip on a clipboard. Mary’s answer was surrender: “Behold, the slave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). He took the most beautiful act of submission in the whole Bible and turned it into a consent form.

CLAIM: The Bible doesn’t talk about abortion or homosexuality.

THE GRADE: We just covered the womb. On sexuality, see Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and 1 Timothy 1:10. People argue about interpretation all day long, and that’s fine. But saying the Bible is silent isn’t an interpretation. It’s a factual error, the kind that gets a red circle and a “see me after class.” When Jesus did define marriage, He went straight back to Genesis: male and female, one flesh (Matthew 19:4-6).

And watch how the silence works. When Jesus is silent on abortion, Talarico says that means it’s fine. When Jesus is silent on Medicaid, tax rates, and climate policy, Talarico somehow knows exactly how Jesus would vote. Funny how the silence always speaks Democrat.

CLAIM: “Christ taught love not rules.” (His own post, March 2021.)

THE GRADE: Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). In the Bible, love and rules aren’t rivals. The rules are what love does. I love my students, and I still won’t let them lick the lab equipment.

CLAIM: “The only people Jesus condemned were those who used religion to hurt others.” (His post, April 2025.)

THE GRADE: Jesus denounced entire cities “because they did not repent” (Matthew 11:20). He told a crowd, “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). He warned about “the eternal fire” in the same Matthew 25 that Talarico likes to quote for healthcare (Matthew 25:41). Jesus condemned unrepentant sin, full stop. The Pharisees just got the longest sermon about it.

CLAIM: We are saved by healing the sick.

At a church town hall in DeSoto on July 20, 2026, he asked what Jesus spent most of His time doing and answered his own question: “It’s not preaching. It’s not teaching. It is healing.” Then he said Matthew 25 shows “how we will be judged and how we will be saved,” by “healing the sick,” as reported by the Christian Post.

THE GRADE: Jesus told us why He came, so we don’t have to guess. “Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for” (Mark 1:38). And in Luke: “I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose” (Luke 4:43). The healings proved the message. They didn’t replace it.

Second problem. Matthew 25:36 says, “I was sick, and you visited Me.” Visited. Not healed, and definitely not “funded through a federal program.” It’s personal care for “the least of these brothers of Mine.”

Third problem, and this is the big one. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Salvation by works is the exact doctrine the Reformation fought over. He attends a Presbyterian church. John Calvin would have flunked him before he finished the sentence.

CLAIM: “When Jesus healed the sick, he didn’t ask for a deductible.” (His post, Sept. 27, 2026.)

THE GRADE: True. He also didn’t send the bill to Caesar. When Jesus fed the 5,000, He told the apostles, “You give them something to eat” (Mark 6:37). You. The disciples. Not Rome. And when the crowd chased Him across the lake the next day hoping for a second free lunch, Jesus called them on it: “you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled” (John 6:26). Paul made it simple: “if anyone is not willing to work, neither let him eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Jesus healed people so they could get up and go back to work. He ran a miracle ministry. He never opened a field office.

CLAIM: Galatians 3:28 is “pretty woke for the first century.” (He used it in his Easter 2025 sermon.)

THE GRADE: Read the chapter. Galatians 3 is about how a person gets right with God: by faith in Christ, not by ethnicity, legal status, or sex. The door is the same for everyone. Paul isn’t erasing the categories. If he were, he’d have to throw out his own instructions to husbands and wives in Ephesians 5:22-33. Same author, same Spirit, same Bible. Pulling one verse out of its chapter to preach the opposite of what the author taught has a name. In seminary it’s called prooftexting. In my classroom it’s called not reading the assignment.

CLAIM: All religions of love point to the same truth.

On Ezra Klein’s show, he described religions as different languages pointing to the same reality.

THE GRADE: Jesus disagreed: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). So did Peter: “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). You can be a pluralist in America. It’s a free country. You just can’t be a pluralist and claim to follow the Man who said John 14:6. That’s like calling yourself a vegan who only eats brisket. (Ken Paxton called him a vegan. Talarico says he eats meat now. Like I said, one poll.)

CLAIM: “God Is Not Christian.”

That was the actual title of his October 22, 2023 sermon on Christian nationalism. In it, he said Jesus is against anything that gets in the way of love between neighbors, “including religion.” In a recorded speech he’s also said God isn’t a noun, God is a verb, God isn’t a being but being itself.

THE GRADE: The God of the Bible has a name (Exodus 3:14). He speaks, makes covenants, forgives, and judges. Verbs can’t do any of that. Persons can. “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). A verb can’t become flesh, can’t be nailed to a cross, and can’t eat broiled fish with His friends after walking out of a tomb (Luke 24:42-43). God-as-a-verb deletes the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection in one sentence. That’s some efficient heresy. You’d almost admire it if it weren’t aimed at your kids. What he’s describing is the philosopher Paul Tillich wearing a clerical collar to a campaign rally.

CLAIM: “We’re all pieces of God.”

On Aug. 31, 2026, he quoted Dolly Parton approvingly: we’re all pieces of God, each an expression of a sacred mystery.

THE GRADE: I love Dolly. Her theology needs a red pen. Scripture draws a hard line between the Creator and what He created. Romans 1:25 describes people who “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” We’re made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). We’re not chips off the block.

THE SMALLER ERRORS, THE ONES A SEMINARIAN SHOULDN’T MAKE

His June 30, 2024 sermon manuscript, published by his church, shrinks 1 Timothy 6:10 into a warning about money itself. The verse says “the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil.” Paul is warning about a heart, not a dollar bill.
The same sermon treats Jubilee as a seven-year event. Leviticus 25 puts Jubilee in the fiftieth year. The seven-year debt release is Deuteronomy 15. They’re two different institutions, and that’s an easy one to look up.
In a 2022 sermon, he reportedly drew on the Gospel of Thomas, saying 22. Thomas isn’t in the Bible. Quoting it in a sermon is like citing a Wikipedia edit war on a lab report.
In his sermon against Christian nationalism, he said Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome. Constantine’s Edict of Milan in AD 313 made it legal. Theodosius I made it the state religion in AD 380, more than four decades after Constantine died. Any high school world history textbook covers this. I teach high schoolers. I’d know.
In his “Christian nationalism is on the rise” speech, he opened with Christian nationalists killing police officers on January 6. The D.C. Chief Medical Examiner ruled that Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes, strokes, the following day, while noting the events played a role in his condition. A speech about truth shouldn’t open with a claim the medical examiner already addressed.

That’s thirteen graded claims in one sample. You can hate my politics and still check every single one against the text. The grading sheet shows a seminary education with the hermeneutics of a fortune cookie, and a man who reads the Bible like a buffet line at Golden Corral. Heavy on the neighbor, light on the commandments, and no room on the plate for the Resurrection.

SAMPLE FOUR: THE SOIL

Any farmer in Texas will tell you that when the fruit’s off, you don’t yell at the tomato. You test the soil. Talarico calls Jim Rigby one of the biggest influences on his life. Rigby baptized him. Talarico grew up under this teaching and still preaches from this pulpit. So let’s test the soil.

I’m keeping the speakers separate. Rigby’s words are Rigby’s. Miller’s are Miller’s. Talarico answers for his own teaching, not theirs. And I’m going to correct each one with Scripture AND with plain secular history, because the truth doesn’t need a Bible to win this argument. It only needs one to be complete.

FROM JIM RIGBY, IN SERMONS HIS OWN CHURCH PUBLISHED ONLINE

The Resurrection. In his Easter 2026 sermon, Rigby compared a body rising from the grave with resurrection as an ongoing life process, and said of the bodily version: “It doesn’t work for me.” In an earlier Easter sermon, reported by the Christian Post, he floated the idea that the body may have been taken.

Correction: Paul wrote that if Christ has not been raised, “your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). Luke records the risen Jesus saying, “touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). As for the stolen body, that’s the oldest cover story in the book, and it’s literally in the book. Matthew 28:11-15 records the chief priests paying the guards to spread it. Rigby didn’t discover a new theory. He repeated a bribe from AD 33 and called it scholarship.

Jesus versus “Christ.” In a December 2025 sermon, Rigby separated Jesus, the human teacher, from Christ as a universal principle. He compared Christian and Hindu infancy stories and extended incarnation language to everyone in the room.

Correction: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). One Word, one flesh, one Man. Colossians 1 ties the whole cosmic Christ to one specific death: reconciliation “through the blood of His cross” (Colossians 1:20).

“Lord.” In October 2025, Rigby described calling Jesus “Lord” as foreign to who Jesus was, and told the congregation Jesus wants responsibility rather than obedience.

Correction: “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). The Lord confession and the Resurrection come as a matched set. Rigby sends both back.

Communion. In November 2025, Rigby connected the Lord’s Supper to Sophia, goddess traditions, birth blood, and breastfeeding imagery. In the same sermon, he recast John 14:6 as non-exclusive wisdom.

Correction: Paul passed down what the Supper means, and it isn’t vague: “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me… For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Corinthians 11:24-26). The Lord’s death. No goddess on the guest list.

The cross. In March 2026, Rigby told listeners they could keep or set aside traditional views of the atonement, and reinterpreted Easter psychologically.

Correction: Jesus said He came “to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Peter wrote that He “bore our sins in His body on the cross” (1 Peter 2:24). Isaiah saw it seven centuries ahead of time: “He was pierced through for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5). You can’t set aside the reason for the cross and keep the cross. After that it’s just two pieces of lumber, and Home Depot sells those.

Romans 1. In an April 2026 sermon titled “Defanging Romans,” Rigby recast Romans 1 as being about pagan cult abuses and argued the word “homosexual” wasn’t invented until the 1900s, so the Bible couldn’t be talking about it.

Correction, secular edition: Merriam-Webster dates the English word to 1891. So the history is wrong before we even open the Bible. The argument is wrong anyway. Paul described conduct, not a modern English label (Romans 1:26-27). Ancient people didn’t need our dictionary to describe what they saw. By that logic, nobody in the Bible could have committed “carjacking,” and Cain is off the hook for “homicide” because the word is Latin. If you’re confused after hearing that sermon, understand that’s by design. He’s muddying the water to make it look deep.

The guest list. In March 2025, St. Andrew’s hosted David Zuniga, who introduced himself as a Zen Buddhist priest, to preach a sermon titled “How to Be a Bodhisattva.” The writer Robert Jensen has written about joining St. Andrew’s as a member while rejecting traditional belief in God and Jesus. On undercover video, Rigby said he welcomes atheists to join, per Breitbart. And according to the Daily Caller, new members get handed The Inclusive Bible, a translation that swaps out traditional titles for God.

What’s next, the pastor compares the President to Hitler and calls evangelicals dim? Oh wait. I’m being told that’s on tape too. Blaze News published hidden-camera footage in which Rigby described evangelical Christians as not smart and compared Trump’s appeal to Hitler’s.

Correction: When Paul preached to the philosophers in Athens, he respected them enough to tell them the truth. God “is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent,” because He will judge the world through the Man He raised from the dead (Acts 17:30-31). Paul engaged other religions. He didn’t hand them the pulpit. And for the “evangelicals aren’t smart” crowd, Jesus already told the story of the man who prayed, “God, I thank You that I am not like other people” (Luke 18:11). Spoiler: the tax collector in the back row went home justified. The guy bragging about his IQ didn’t.

FROM REV. BABS MILLER, ON UNDERCOVER VIDEO PUBLISHED IN SEPTEMBER

“We have no way of knowing if Jesus really existed.”

Correction, secular edition: Tacitus, a Roman historian who couldn’t stand Christians, wrote around AD 116 that “Christus” was executed under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius (Annals 15.44). Josephus, a Jewish historian, wrote around AD 93 about “James, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ” (Antiquities 20.200). Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor, wrote around AD 112 that Christians sang hymns to Christ “as to a god” (Letters 10.96). Bart Ehrman, an agnostic scholar who built a whole career criticizing the New Testament, wrote a book titled Did Jesus Exist? His answer was yes. When the Bible’s toughest academic critic has more confidence in Jesus than the minister does, the problem isn’t the evidence.

Correction, Scripture edition: Paul, writing within about two decades of the cross, says he stayed with Peter and met “James, the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:18-19). Paul had dinner with Jesus’s brother. Neat trick for a man who might not have existed.

The virgin birth came from pagan myths.

Correction: Zeus showed up as a swan, a bull, and a shower of gold. Those are divine affairs, not virgin conceptions. The Greek gods were a reality show with thunderbolts. And it was Jewish scholars, centuries before Bethlehem, who translated Isaiah 7:14 into Greek with parthenos, virgin. First-century Jews were the last people on earth who would borrow from pagans. Josephus records crowds in Jerusalem baring their necks to Pilate’s soldiers rather than tolerate Roman images in their holy city. These were not people copying off Zeus’s homework.

Jesus “didn’t die to save our sins,” and the God of the Old Testament is “vengeful.”

Correction: At the Last Supper, Jesus said His blood was “poured out for many for forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). His words. Red letters, even. As for vengeful: when God introduced Himself to Moses, the first words out of His mouth were “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth” (Exodus 34:6). That’s the Old Testament God’s own self-introduction. He led with mercy. Somebody at St. Andrew’s skipped Exodus. Possibly all of it.

Take what you want and leave the rest, like a 12-step program. And a congregant’s believing relatives are clinging to “archaic rules.”

Correction: “You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it” (Deuteronomy 4:2). If I told my anatomy students to keep only the bones they like, somebody would skip the femur because it’s hard to spell, and the whole skeleton would end up on the floor. And to a minister telling a believer her family’s faith is outdated, Jesus said it would be better to have “a heavy millstone hung around his neck” than to make one of His little ones stumble (Matthew 18:6). “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Milk expires. Truth doesn’t.

Townhall reported that Miller described people in her church wishing the would-be assassin of President Trump had been more successful. She didn’t say it was her own wish, and the report doesn’t name anyone. I won’t put those words in anyone’s mouth. But a church where someone feels comfortable saying that out loud should spend a few Sundays in Romans 12: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse… Never take your own revenge” (Romans 12:14, 19).

“But Bski, Rigby and Miller aren’t the candidate.” Correct. Talarico answers for Talarico. But put their teaching next to his and look at the overlap. Miller says take what you want and leave the rest. Talarico keeps Galatians 3:28 and leaves Ephesians 5. He keeps Luke 1:38 and leaves Luke 1:41. He keeps Genesis 2:7 and leaves Genesis 1:27. He keeps “love your neighbor” and leaves John 14:6. He keeps Matthew 25:36 and leaves Ephesians 2:8-9. That’s one cafeteria tray, carried by a minister in the pulpit and a candidate on the campaign trail.

THE LAB RESULTS: THE FRUIT

Samples are in. Time to do what Jesus told us to do and grade the fruit.

In Matthew 7, the fruit of a false prophet starts with what he teaches and what it produces. Jesus follows it right away with the people who say “Lord, Lord” and don’t do “the will of My Father” (Matthew 7:21). Luke adds the diagnostic test: “out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). So we check the mouth, the record, and the soil.

The fruit of the teaching: thirteen public errors, every one of them bending the text toward the platform. God non-binary. Life at first breath. Salvation by healing. All religions as one truth. A sermon titled “God Is Not Christian.”

The fruit of the record: votes against the Ten Commandments, chaplains, parents’ rights, the Heartbeat Act, girls’ sports, and SB 14, followed by a Fox News makeover. Jesus said, “let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’” (Matthew 5:37). Talarico’s yes means “yes, until the general election.”

The fruit of the soil: a minister who isn’t sure Jesus existed, a pastor for whom the Resurrection “doesn’t work,” a Buddhist priest teaching the congregation how to become a bodhisattva, and a woman who has known him since kindergarten guaranteeing the moderate candidate is a costume.

Jude told the church to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 3). Once. For all. Not revised by committee. Not updated for the general election. Measured by the fruit he put on the table himself, what James Talarico teaches isn’t that faith. I didn’t invent that test. Jesus handed it to me, and I ran it on the public record. The good news is that this test has a retake policy. He can pass it with one honest sentence, and I’ll post it myself the day he says it.

THE CHAPTER HE SKIPS

Talarico leans hard on 1 John 4. “God is love” carries about half of his sermons. So let’s turn back two chapters. Same letter, same apostle.

John opens 1 John 2 with love: “The one who loves his brother abides in the Light” (1 John 2:10). That’s the part Talarico preaches, and it’s true.

Then, in the SAME chapter, John gives the test that keeps love from turning into a bumper sticker: “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:22-23, LSB).

John never lets you keep the love and drop the confession. They come as a set, like the bread and the cup. He was writing about teachers who sat in the church, used all the right vocabulary, and then walked away from what the apostles taught about the Son: “They went out from us, but they were not really of us” (1 John 2:19). He even tells you why he wrote it: “These things I have written to you about those who are trying to deceive you” (1 John 2:26).

And right in the middle of that chapter sits the campaign trap: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world… the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father” (1 John 2:15-16). A candidate willing to shelve what he believes for 50 weeks of votes has already told you which one he loves more.

I’m not putting James Talarico in verse 22. I can’t see his heart. But John gave every believer the test, and Talarico has never taken it in public. That’s the trouble with a costume. It covers everything except the answer.

One more verse, and this one’s for me: “the one who hates his brother is in the darkness” (1 John 2:11). I don’t hate James Talarico. I was a medic. The kindest thing you can do for a bleeding patient is not to tell him he looks great.

A WORD ON DANIEL 11

A few of you sent me Daniel 11:37-38. Easy, tiger. Daniel’s willful king is the end-times ruler who magnifies himself above every god. A Texas Senate nominee doesn’t qualify, and I’m not going to stretch a prophecy to win an argument. Stretching Scripture is the exact thing I’ve been grading him down for all day.

But the pattern in those verses is worth a look. That king “will show no regard for the gods of his fathers,” and instead “will honor a god whom his fathers did not know” (Daniel 11:37-38, LSB).

Talarico’s August ad stars his PawPaw, the Baptist preacher. His sermon says God is not Christian. His pastor’s Communion sermon reaches for Sophia. Whatever god that is, PawPaw didn’t preach him. Keep the grandfather, trade his God. No prophecy required. Just a wardrobe change.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Since the 50-week plan is now public, let’s at least make it honest. I propose the Campaign Promise Layaway Act. Every promise a candidate makes has to be printed on the yard sign with an expiration date, like a carton of milk. “Supports a national ban on surgeries for minors. Best by: Thanksgiving 2027.” When it spoils, voters get a full refund in conviction. Receipts required.

This is not a radical idea. It’s just common sense. His own church already printed the label.

HIS REPORT CARD

Every lab report ends with a grade. Here’s his, in pencil, so he can still change it.

Honesty with voters: F. His own minister says the new positions expire in about 50 weeks, and she was okay with it.
Consistency: D minus. “Absolutely” on Fox, “no” in Austin. Partial credit for admitting he “missed the mark.”
Bible knowledge: D. He can quote it fast. He just keeps stopping one verse early.
Church history: F. Constantine and Theodosius would both like a word.
Biology: F. Six sexes, then two, and life starts with breath. I’ve had freshmen do better on a pop quiz.
Showing up for work: Incomplete. He was in another state.
Public speaking: A. Credit where it’s due. The man can talk. So could the serpent in Genesis 3, and that went great for everybody.
Teacher comment: “James has delusions of adequacy. Talented, but he copies off whoever is sitting closest to the camera. Recommend summer school and the whole Gospel of John.”

QUESTIONS FOR

@jamestalarico

You want Texas to trust you as the Christian in this race. These should be easy for a seminarian.

Is Rev. Miller wrong that you’ll “change your tune back” after the election? Say so. By name.
In your first year in the Senate, will you vote for the national ban on surgeries for minors you told Fox you’d “absolutely” support, the same policy you voted against in Austin?
Did Jesus of Nazareth rise bodily from the dead? Yes or no.
Is Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Father, and the only way to Him (John 14:6)?
Are we saved by healing the sick, or by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9)?

1 John 2:22 isn’t a trick question. Neither is the Apostles’ Creed. I asked you in March whether you had the biblical grounding to answer me. I asked again in September. The silence has been loud enough to hear from Austin to El Paso. I’ve heard better answers on The Dating Game.

TO TEXAS

I pray for James Talarico. I pray for Jim Rigby and Babs Miller too. God turned Saul, a man hunting Christians, into Paul. Nobody is beyond reach, and I would be thrilled to be the first one to report a real conversion.

But a real conversion changes the heart. A campaign conversion changes the ad.

You’re going to hear all fall that Talarico is the real Christian in this race. The New York Times will tell you. Colbert will tell you. Ezra Klein will tell you. When the people who mock your faith the other 364 days of the year suddenly fall in love with one particular Christian, ask why. Usually it’s because his Christianity looks exactly like their platform with a few verses stapled on. So to the Talarico campaign: go sell that crazy somewhere else. Texas is all stocked up.

Ben Shapiro titled his October 10 show “Who is James Talarico?” The people who know him best already answered, on camera. Believe them.

Don’t take my word for it, and don’t take his. Check the House Journal. Read the sermons his own church published. Open the Book and read the WHOLE chapter, not the one verse on the mailer. The wolf is counting on you to stop at verse 10.

My earlier grading of his theology, if you want the extra credit:

mike bski

@BskiMike22802

Mar 10

WOLVES DO NOT BARK — THEY BLEAT

A Science Teacher’s Field Guide to Spotting a False Prophet in Campaign Clothing-Step in James Talarico
There is an old theological warning so obvious that most people have forgotten it matters. Jesus…

mike bski

@BskiMike22802

Sep 25

EVERY CONSERVATIVE AND EVERY TEXAN NEEDS TO READ THIS: JAMES TALARICO IS NOT BIBLICALLY GROUNDED!

EVERY CONSERVATIVE AND EVERY TEXAN NEEDS TO READ THIS: JAMES TALARICO IS NOT BIBLICALLY GROUNDED, AND HIS OWN PULPIT JUST PROVED IT
A science teacher reads the primary sources so you don’t get fooled…

But what do I know? I’m only a science teacher who knows the difference between evolution and a 50-week costume change.

Mike Borowski is a medically retired Army combat medic with 23 years of service, including a combat deployment to Iraq, and a high school Anatomy and Physics teacher at a high-need Career Technical district in Northeast Ohio — where he also wrote and published the textbooks for both courses. He runs “Bski’s Classroom,” a platform dedicated to cutting through political noise with data, history, and the kind of blunt honesty that comes from someone who has seen both war and the American classroom up close.

—

X (Twitter): x.com/BskiMike22802
Substack: substack.com/@bskimike22802
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@BskiMike22802
AFNN: https://afnn.us/author/mikeborowski/

If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.

Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA