The stage is set for a Democratic Senate primary in Texas with one candidate who is trying to convince fellow Texans to love all their neighbors and one who refuses to turn the other cheek.
James Talarico is easygoing and noncombative. He has a smile to melt hearts. A Presbyterian minister, he embraces a Christian language of love and acceptance. He is a Social Gospel Christian.
Jasmine Crockett is the trash-talking Democrat who loves to take on President Donald Trump toe to toe. Combative, in your face, she stands in the Black prophetic tradition and is a member of a Baptist church.
Talarico and Crockett combine two of the most powerful religious spirits in American life: the white liberal Christian tradition rooted in seminary and scholarship, and the Black prophetic tradition rooted in activism and action.
Now Democratic voters in Texas will have to choose between the two.
James Talarico
Talarico currently is a state Democratic lawmaker. He says, “I really wanted to show up not as the politician, but as the pastor.” People are hungry, he told the crowd, “for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of fear, not a politics of hate, not a politics of violence, but a politics of love.”
He stands in the apostolic succession of Harry Emerson Fosdick, Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden, William Sloane Coffin and Will Campbell. As a Presbyterian he stands in the tradition of clergy in his denomination who were stalwarts in the Civil Rights Movement: J. Randolph Taylor, then pastor of Church of the Pilgrims in Washington, D.C., and Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the UPCUSA and chairman of the NCCC’s Commission on Religion and Race. He was unrivaled as an American church leader in racial justice and as a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement.
Talarico offers a sharp contrast from the Calvinism now attempting a takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. He’s more John Buchanan than Al Mohler. He’s more Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was still a Presbyterian when he preached. his famous sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”
Talarico has proclaimed his faith to advance liberal policies but uses the Bible as the moral reason why. Republicans are not accustomed to “Scripture-slinging” debates with Democratic lawmakers. Talarico goes line by line in the Scriptures to debate them.
“Talarico breaks the mold for Democratic candidates.”
Democrats seem to have forgotten the larger-than-life Franklin D. Roosevelt. He used more biblical citations than any president in history. He attempted to bring the Social Gospel of Jesus into government.
Talarico breaks the mold for Democratic candidates. His grassroots campaign faces headwinds from secular Democrats. He is in the unenviable position once occupied by preachers told by congregations not to talk about politics, sex or money. Now Talarico is being told not to talk about faith, God and Christianity.
Yet he is telling people the old, old story of Jesus. The question is: Can he tell it in new ways that connect with people? Is Christianity already too identified as fundamentalist?
Jasmine Crockett
Crockett is the daughter of a Baptist preacher from the Progressive National Baptist Convention. She speaks the justice language of the Baptist denomination formed in 1961 to advocate for Civil Rights, but she doesn’t talk like a preacher.
Her uphill battle is as complicated as that of women in every generation. Anne Richards is the last woman elected to a statewide office in Texas. She won the 1990 election for governor but only served one term after she was defeated by George W. Bush.
How many pundits think Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because a toxic masculinity edged her out at the finish line? How many people were not voting for Trump but voting against Clinton? Same with Kamala Harris, only with race throw into the equation.
Gender, sexism and racism played roles in both the 2016 and 2024 election.
Crockett takes on this bias. “What we need is for me to have a bigger voice,” she said at the start of her speech announcing her candidacy. “We need to make sure we are going to stop all the hell that is raining down on all our people.”
“She’s much more combative, and she’s much more polarizing,” said Matthew Wilson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Crockett’s boldest move is to speak “Black English” to potential voters. She runs the risk of sounding uneducated and uncouth, but she believes this is her best chance at connecting with voters.
Not everyone agrees. John McWhorter, an African America linguist at Columbia University, is outraged at the language Crockett uses. He expressed his disdain in the New York Times: “She crossed a line that even the saltiest speech should avoid.” That was when she called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, “Governor Hot Wheels.”
“Crockett hits all the right notes of the prophetic tradition of her father preacher.”
McWhorter concludes Crocket was “hitting way below the belt and helping bring our standards of civic exchange ever lower than they already are.”
Here’s the real rub: Donald Trump created the “vulgar presidency,” and MAGA worships him for his low, insulting rhetoric. But will a Black woman be granted the same privilege?
Crockett hits all the right notes of the prophetic tradition of her father preacher. Justice for all. Liberation theology. She is firmly grounded in the tradition of Gardner Taylor and Martin Luther King Jr. She has decided to put in speech the music of the Black community — the spirituals, the blues, jazz, hip-hop and rap.
By comparison, Talarico may appear too calm, too rationale, too sedate. Although his campaign fires the imagination of Democrats and some independents, he does so in measured tones that may appear even more sonorous when set against Crockett’s fiery rhetoric.
Deep in the heart of Texas, a political and theological debate is unfolding that could determine the next 40 years of our nation’s vision. This is a bold counterattack aimed at the heart of fundamentalism. The question is which approach will win the day.
Either way, imagine our nation embracing the vision of Jesus and the Social Gospel premised on rights, freedoms and democratic participation that at last bring to completion the Founding Fathers’ ideal of all human beings being created equal. And imagine the prophetic tradition of the Black Church finally breaking into the larger culture for good.
One of these visions will face off against a Republican Senate candidate this fall — a candidate who likely will be Sen. John Cornyn or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Related articles:
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Rep. James Talarico | Opinion by Greg Garrett
If you want to criticize Jasmine Crockett, you better criticize Trump first | Opinion by Rodney Kennedy
Texas midterms take a twist as another pastor enters the race