Kingdom Harbor

Stephen Colbert hosts outspoken Christian seminarian and Texas State Rep. James Talarico for an online-exclusive interview that touches on the issues raised in Talarico’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for Senate including the separation of church and state, the dangers of consolidated corporate-owned media, and the fabricated culture wars pushed by Republicans in states like Texas.

After watching, also consider Joel Lawrence’s thoughtful reminder and warning that I would echo below.

By Joel Lawrence:

Today, I watched the interview that Stephen Colbert did with James Talarico. You probably heard, but the interview was pulled by CBS, ostensibly due to a violation of the FCC’s “equal time” rule. 

I’m not interested in commenting on the pulling of the interview. Many others have offered that commentary today. Instead, I want to make some observations on the content of the interview, and what it reveals about the question of Christianity and politics in America today.  

Talarico is running for the senate as a progressive Democrat. He is also a Presbyterian seminarian. In the interview, he laid out a progressive vision of politics deeply rooted in a progressive vision of Christianity. 

Talarico spoke of the call to obey Jesus’s teachings. He spoke of the importance of allowing those teachings to shape political life. He spoke of how Jesus’s teachings demand the separation of church and state. He laid out his vision for America rooted in the implementation of Christian faith in American life. 

Talarico’s vision is quite different in policy than Trump’s vision. It is quite different in tone than Trump’s tone. It is quite different in posture than Trump’s posture.

But…it is not different in method than Trump’s method. 

Talarico lays out a vision that is a leftist version of Christian Nationalism. Talarico believes that the teachings of Jesus provide a blueprint for shaping the culture. It is a vision that believes that Jesus is a source of ideas that should be adopted by and enforced in America. It is a vision that, even as it makes room for people of other faiths, believes that America should be shaped by (his) Christian vision. In other words, his vision is of America as a Christian nation.  

Progressives may argue: But his Jesus is the right Jesus! His Jesus is the good Jesus! He represents the teachings of Jesus that SHOULD be followed! Trump’s Jesus is not Jesus. It is a counterfeit Jesus. 

But here’s the issue, and it is an issue on the left as much as on the right: Jesus didn’t come to give us a set of teachings that can then be translated into political ideologies. Jesus didn’t come as a political consultant to provide America with policy plans. Inevitably, Talarico’s Jesus, like Trump’s, divorces the teachings of Jesus from Jesus, and then uses them as means to our own political, ideological ends. 

Jesus doesn’t call us to follow his teachings. He calls us to follow him. And following Jesus cannot be contained by a set of teachings that yield a political ideology. 

Talarico’s vision is quite different than Trump’s. But Talarico’s vision, like Trump’s, makes the fundamental mistake of separating Jesus from his teachings, isolating the teachings we prefer, and making them into a political ideology. 

Ultimately, it is rooted in the same error as right-wing Christian Nationalism: It lacks an ecclesiology, and so sees the nation-state as the means of God’s rule in the world. It views Jesus as a dispenser of general morality, but not as the Messiah, the one who forms a new humanity who belong to the eschatological reign of Christ, and are ambassadors of the Holy Nation.