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You know Republicans are getting desperate about the Senate race in Texas when their media outlets begin trashing James Talarico’s pastor for saying many of the same things that white evangelicals have been saying for years.
Rev. Jim Rigby has been the head pastor at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin for over 35 years, so he’s very familiar with one of his longtime members, James Talarico, whom he baptized. Rigby has been a “major influence and inspiration” for the progressive Democrat, according to the New York Times, which published a profile on him back in June.
One of the big takeaways from that article was that Rigby prefers to use casual, inclusive language instead of traditional conservative rhetoric in part for audiences who may want nothing to do with Christianity:
Mr. Rigby does not use male pronouns for God, for example, because it is a kind of “violence” to imply to a girl that her brother is more like God than she is, he said in an interview after the service. He does not use the word “Lord,” because it conjures a wealthy, European, male God, he said. For that matter, he added, he does not much care for the word “God.” He uses it on occasion, he said, but he tries to use synonyms, because “it’s going to mean something different to everybody.”
None of that is particularly shocking. Rigby believes in a God—and Talarico certainly uses the word—but they’re both more interested in the implications of biblical teachings than just accepting what it literally says. Rigby is suggesting he doesn’t care what language you use because what you do matters a lot more than what you say. You can also draw a straight line from Rigby’s beliefs about pronouns to Talarico once saying “God is non-binary” because God shouldn’t be defined by a gender. (That, by the way, is something many conservative Christians believe, too.)
Now, because Republicans are having virtually no success finding serious problems with Talarico’s life, and desperately doing everything in their power to deflect attention from their wildly corrupt and cruel candidate Ken Paxton, they’re now focusing their outrage on Rigby and his church.
Perhaps the most laughable attempt comes from the right-wing website Breitbart. They posted an article with this SHOCKING headline:
Undercover video! A pastor who hates religion! This is catnip for conservatives who don’t understand how anything works.
The video itself is utterly meaningless. Rigby doesn’t know he’s being filmed, but he also doesn’t say anything worth writing home about. He tells the hidden videographer that he’s speaking at an event for the Freedom From Religion Foundation. (It’s actually the Austin chapter of the group and he was speaking about “Coalitions and Connections with Atheists.”)
Here’s the full extent of his comments:
Today I’m speaking at the Freedom From Religion Foundation. [Freedom From Religion?] Yeah. [And you’re a minister?] A Presbyterian minister. [Interesting.]
I work a lot with non-theists. ‘Cause to me, it’s like, if you love humanity and you love nature, and that’s why you hate religion, then we’re on the same team.
…
I’ve been on trial within the denomination for LGB[T]Q stuff and abortion and non-theist… We had an atheist join the church, and people had fits about that, but that’s not a big deal here.
To translate that, a Christian pastor says he’s willing to work with atheists because they often have similar goals (that aren’t theological). And of course he welcomes atheists to his church, presumably because they might discover God while they’re there, but even if they don’t, the more the merrier if they support his church’s goals.
Is that controversial? Not at all. Many white evangelical megachurches have “seeker services” specifically targeting non-religious people because they believe they can draw them closer to God.
If a conservative preacher said he welcomed atheists in his church, he would be praised for attracting them to his ministry. But when Rigby says it, he’s attacked.
What about the claim that he’s okay with people who “hate religion”?
That’s something you’ll also hear in megachurches. Pastors routinely trash “religion” because it’s all about rules; they want you to have a relationship with Jesus instead. Here’s Mark Driscoll saying that. Here’s scamvangelist Creflo Dollar saying it. Here’s another pastor. And another. Hell, 14 years ago, there was a viral video in Christian circles titled, “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.” It has 36 million views as of this writing.
So Rigby saying the exact same thing isn’t news at all… unless you’re in the business of taking innocuous comments and blowing them out of proportion because you work for a right-wing propaganda outlet.
Speaking of which, another propaganda outlet, the Daily Caller, had a different clip from the same “undercover” video. Their headline?
Caught on camera! Oh no!
Their video showed Rigby explaining how they give new members a copy of “The Inclusive Bible,” a translation that removes unnecessarily gendered and offensive language from the book. (So “the poor” become “people in need.” “Leper” become “a person with leprosy.”)
This is not breaking news. This did not require a hidden camera. The video even shows a clip of the service in which a person on stage announces a new member (so the congregation can welcome him) and says he’s being given “The Inclusive Bible” as a gift.
But if your job is to convince gullible, ignorant conservatives that this is True Investigative Journalism™, then I suppose pretending this was only discovered through secret footage is the way to go.
(It’s downright hilarious that in that video, Rigby even says that while he appreciates the inclusive language in that translation, he’s not a fan of the “metaphysical stuff.” Yet the Daily Caller downplays that in its headline. Because real journalists don’t work there.)
Meanwhile, none of these conservatives care that Trump sells an overpriced version of the Bible just to squeeze a little more cash out of MAGA Christians.
When these articles first began making the rounds, Rigby responded on Facebook. He said the hidden camera footage came from someone who pretended to be an atheist in order to get Rigby to speak more openly about how liberal he is:
STRANGE TIMES
Visitors and congregants coming to our first service Sunday had to drive past protestors claiming we aren’t a real church.
Our services are now visited by rightwing spies with hidden recorders pretending to be visitors. One of them posed as an atheist wondering if he would be welcome in our church. When a staff member attempted to reassure the man he would be welcome, he then edited the video to make us sound heretical.
As I read the Bible, the spies trying to trap people in their words were not the followers of Jesus, but the people who killed Jesus. And they killed him for very MAGA reasons, because they considered him a heretic and because he was a friend of sinners.
Let those who have ears, hear.
Real reporters don’t lie about who they are in order to get honest responses from their subjects. These are con artists only interested in promoting a cherry picked narrative while pretending they’re heroes for figuring out public information.
And the fact that they’re doing this to Rigby is a sign that the attacks against Talarico aren’t working. They can’t convince people that he’s not a devout Christian when every speech he delivers references his faith. They can’t pretend he’s corrupt, especially in the face of Paxton. So they’re trying to use his Christianity against him, attempting to convince conservatives that his faith—and his belief in Jesus—is somehow just as heretical as Islam and atheism.
None of it’s landing. Based on the comment threads on those websites, the only people they seem to be convincing are the MAGA cultists who were never going to vote for him anyway.
Why are they so afraid of Talarico? His message resonates with the electorate and threatens their stranglehold on the levers of power.
Oh man, CP has an anti-Talarico article at least once a week. Many are quite a stretch. I’ve inquired what Talarico’s veterinarian’s sister’s lawn service owner’s pastor thinks.