James Talarico spent his entire Texas Senate campaign wrapped in the language of Christian faith.
Now undercover footage from his longtime church is raising questions his campaign hasn’t had to answer yet.
And what that camera caught inside St. Andrew’s Presbyterian in Austin will leave a lot of Texas voters cold.
What the Camera Caught Inside St. Andrew’s
The Daily Caller sent an undercover journalist into St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin — the church James Talarico has long called home — and what that journalist recorded in August tells a story Talarico’s campaign would rather not discuss.
The footage shows a new member named Larry receiving a copy of something called the “Inclusive Bible” during a church service. An unidentified woman hands it to him in front of the congregation.
“It’s the Bible that we use at this church,” she says in the video. “It’s been rewritten so that there is only inclusive language and that it doesn’t use the gender-fueled language that the King James Version uses.”
The applause that followed tells you everything about what kind of institution this is.
Rev Jim Rigby, head pastor at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian for more than 35 years and described as a spiritual mentor to Talarico, confirmed the practice directly to the undercover journalist. The church “typically” hands out the translation when people join, Rigby said on camera.
His description of the book was illuminating. “It’s good on the gender stuff,” Rigby said in the video. “The more, like, metaphysical stuff, it’s not a very good translation, if that makes sense. I think it’s really important to have a good translation so you can let go of the stupid stuff.”
Parts of the traditional Bible, in the estimation of Talarico’s pastor and mentor, are “stupid stuff.”
What the “Inclusive Bible” Actually Does to Scripture
The translation in question was first published in 2007 by a group called Priests for Equality. It bills itself as the “first egalitarian” Bible, according to the Christian Post.
What it actually does to the text goes well beyond swapping pronouns. The translators describe it as a “re-imagining” of Scripture intended to find “new and non-sexist ways” to express biblical language.
That means “Son of God” — the title Scripture applies to Jesus Christ and one of the foundational declarations of Christian faith — gets replaced. In its place, the translation substitutes terms like “Only Begotten,” “God’s Own,” and “Eternally Begotten.”
The word “Lord” gets the same treatment. The translators call it “sexist” and “classist,” so it disappears.
“Father” is also removed or replaced, along with other traditional gendered references to God that have been part of Christian worship for two thousand years.
This isn’t a minor editorial adjustment. The Christian faith holds that Jesus is the Son of God — not God’s abstract property, not something “eternally begotten” in a vague cosmic sense divorced from the relational language Scripture actually uses. The Incarnation, the Resurrection, the entire structure of Christian belief rests on that specific identity. Scrubbing those terms from the text and handing the result to new church members as the church’s official Bible isn’t a translation choice. It’s a theological statement.
And it’s the statement Talarico’s church makes to every person who walks through its doors.
A second video released separately shows Rigby going further. According to Breitbart, the undercover footage captures the pastor saying that if you love humanity and love nature and that is why you hate religion, “we’re on the same team.”
Worth sitting with that one for a moment. The head pastor of the church James Talarico calls his spiritual home is openly recruiting people who hate religion. Not people who are spiritually curious. Not people who are skeptical or searching. People who hate religion.
Why This Matters Beyond Talarico’s Church Membership
Talarico has built his entire Senate campaign on his identity as a Christian. He quotes Scripture in debates. He talks about his faith in interviews. He earned a master’s degree in theological studies from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. His campaign video was reportedly filmed in front of a church-like building.
The pitch to Texas voters, in short, has been: trust this man because he is a Christian who takes his faith seriously.
But the church that shaped him, the pastor he calls a spiritual mentor, and the Bible they hand to new members — that’s the actual record. Not the carefully produced campaign content, but the footage of what happens inside those walls when the cameras aren’t supposed to be rolling.
Democrats who invoke Jesus to sell their policy agenda tend to do so selectively. They pick the passages about welcoming strangers and caring for the poor, which they translate into arguments for open borders and government expansion. They skip the parts about the nature of God, the sanctity of life in the womb, and the created order of male and female. The “Inclusive Bible” being distributed at Talarico’s church takes that selective approach to its logical extreme — it simply rewrites the text itself to eliminate the parts the translators find inconvenient or offensive.
Scripture does not describe Jesus as a vaguely spiritual figure whose title can be updated to suit modern sensibilities. It names him the Son of God. That’s not gendered language to be purged from a politically improved edition of the Bible — it’s the theological core of Christianity. Democrats who claim to speak for Christian values while attending churches that literally rewrite that core aren’t engaging in faith. They’re engaging in branding.
And this surfaces at a moment when Talarico’s race against Attorney General Ken Paxton sits within striking distance, according to polls. The Texas Senate race has drawn national attention, and Talarico has tried to position himself as the kind of Democrat who can speak to Texans in their own cultural language. The Christianity he’s been selling on the trail is apparently the kind that requires a rewritten Bible to be comfortable with.
The editorial guidelines governing coverage of this race note that the GOP establishment’s reluctance to fully invest in Paxton after he defeated incumbent John Cornyn stands in sharp contrast to how Democrat institutional leadership moves to accommodate its nominees. Cornyn, who supported amnesty measures and championed gun control legislation backed by President Biden, has declined to raise money for Paxton. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have been slow to invest the kind of television spending that a competitive seat typically demands — a posture that looks a lot like payback for President Trump’s decision to back Paxton in the primary.
The Michigan comparison keeps coming up for good reason. After Abdul El-Sayed defeated the establishment-backed candidate in that state’s Senate primary, Chuck Schumer and top Democrats moved to accommodate the progressive winner rather than withhold support. The Republican establishment’s approach to Paxton looks less like strategic caution and more like an institution that would rather see a Democrat win than hand a MAGA senator the seat.
Against that backdrop, footage of Talarico’s pastor dismissing traditional biblical language as “stupid stuff” and handing out a Bible that erases “Son of God” should be the kind of thing a fully invested Republican Party puts in front of every Texas voter between now and election day.
But that would require the Republican establishment to actually want to win.
Sources: Breitbart News, “Watch: Talarico’s Church Gives New Members Bible that Erases ‘Son of God’ from Jesus’s Name,” September 18, 2026; The Daily Caller (undercover video reporting); Christian Post