by Rodney Kennedy
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. He pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton (OH) – which is an American Baptist Church – for 13 years, after which he served as interim pastor of ABC USA churches in Illinois, Kansas, New York, and Pennsylvania. He is now a full-time writer, and lives in Louisiana. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, was the focus of this righting america interview. And for Kennedy’s most recent sermons and articles, see theprogessivepreacher.com.
In Texas, the plagues tend to be fire ants, armadillos and coyotes. A new plague has invaded with Ken Paxton’s primary win in the US Senate race. The Texas-size showdown between state Representative James Talarico and attorney general Ken Paxton in their Senate race is bringing out a plague of evangelical preachers comparable to one of the plagues of Moses.
The alleged biblical faith of evangelicals will demand center stage in this shootout. And it will not be nice, meek or mild.
The Democratic nominee, Talarico, is a Presbyterian seminarian, with deep commitment to the teachings of Jesus and the social gospel. Paxton is a MAGA darling, a Trump actor with an ethical rap sheet almost as long as the president.
Paxton has already issued his first ad: “Talarico threatens everything we hold dear.” I think he’s telling an accidental truth. The problem is what MAGA holds dear. They have been retreating from empathy. There are rumblings about Jesus being too meek and mild, too weak and woke.
When an evangelical makes an argument against a progressive Christian, for example, you will not hear him say, “I disagree with his interpretation.” Instead, you will hear that “He’s a heretic, a false teacher, a blasphemous prophet.”
After her sermon at the presidential inauguration worship at the National Cathedral, Bishop Budde was called a “demonic princess.” Rev. Franklin Graham claimed the cathedral was “taken over by gay activists,” Rep. Mike Collins, a Georgia Republican, published a post on X suggesting Budde, a U.S. citizen, should be deported.
Rev. Jack Graham, Southern Baptist pastor, was beside himself: “See the face and hear the voice of a woke ideologue who represents the reason apostate churches are dead and dying. This is religion at its worst. No Jesus. No Bible. No future.”
Seems hell has no fury like an evangelical confronted with the clear teaching of Jesus.
In 2016, when I wrote The Immaculate Mistake, I thought the best metaphor describing MAGA evangelicals was fire ants:
Writing off evangelicals as a bunch of dummies is like ignoring a small fire ant bed that suddenly appears in your back yard. Once the fire ants are at full strength, if you poke a stick in the mound, they will send out waves of warrior ants intent only in afflicting as much pain on your body as possible. They spread out in formations, covering the ground around the next in circular attacks within ten seconds of the alarm.
The outrage of MAGA evangelicals over the Senate campaign of James Talarico has brought the “fire ant” metaphor back into clear focus. It’s hard to determine if there are more fire ants or more Baptists in Texas, but either way the “warriors” of the Right are circling Talarico as if he has stuck a stick in the middle of their mound.
Paxton has already called Talarico a “vegan,” as if such an appellation equals membership in a satanic cult. A bemused Tallarico responded, “I’m an 8th-generation Texan and I have been eating bar-b-que my entire life.”
Inexplicably Paxton then labeled him a transgender candidate.
Speaking with a conservative podcast host earlier this month, Paxton complained that everything Talarico says “is as far from the gospel of Jesus Christ as could possibly be imagined,” and darkly alluded to Jesus’s remark that it would be better to tie a millstone around one’s neck and dive into the sea than to mislead God’s children.
Paxton sounds like President Trump claiming Talarico is “insulting to Jesus.” I wonder if Trump was wearing his Jesus costume when he made this ludicrous remark.
According to Allie Beth Stuckey, a Plano, Texas, native who is a popular evangelical writer and podcaster, “Talarico is a leftist atheist’s idea of a good Christian.” Stuckey, whose lack of theological understanding is only topped by her bad rhetoric, went on to proclaim that Talarico was “a progressive culture warrior in lockstep with the secular world,” completely “uninterested in foundational Christian principles like sin, repentance, or salvation.” Piling on, a spokesperson for the conservative group Turning Point USA accused Talarico of speaking “the language of an evangelical while completely undermining the central truth claims of the Scripture.”
Where are these off-the-wall accusations originating? Have they not heard Talarico insist on loving neighbors and enemies, not seeking revenge, and following the teachings of Jesus? These arguments are as disgusting as Paxton’s lack of character.
And it’s not even hot weather in Texas yet. The venom will increase exponentially between June and November – prime hot weather for fire ants in Texas.
Why such an outpouring of disdain for Talarico? To understand means returning to the scene of the Scopes Trial a century ago in Dayton, Tennessee. Clarence Darrow embarrassed fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan and Baltimore Sun news reporter H. L. Mencken made such fun of these Christians they disappeared from the public eye for decades. Since Scopes, evangelical resentment has grown deeper. In attacking Talarico, they are attacking a century of modernist, liberal and progressive Christians.
In this sense, I believe that the angst and anger of conservative evangelicals is more akin to that of young Saul, the zealous Pharisee, than it is to any kind of righteousness that derives from God. In Acts 9:1, Luke describes the pathos of Saul: “Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any that belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” This biblical description fits evangelical attitudes like a fine leather glove – an amalgamation of perceived persecution, bitterness, anger, revenge, and a need to strike out at the enemy.
Ellen Davis, Duke Divinity School, observes that “It is a sad fact of history that authoritative texts held in common but read differently are less likely to create mutual sympathy than bitter division between religious communities.” This is exactly what we see taking place in the attacks on Talarico.
Evangelical insistence on character and moral behavior has crashed right into a limit: their love for power. Lovers of the Ten Commandments, the holiness code of Leviticus, the moral strictures of some passages in Paul, have been driven to deny the necessity of integrity, truth-telling, moral conduct and ethical practices. Once you elect a president who committed adultery with a porn star and then paid to cover up the moment, the barn door has swung open and all the cattle in Texas are free on the range.
Paxton is small potatoes compared to Trump, but he’s riding Trump’s willingness to work his way through disobeying all the Ten Commandments. This means that evangelicals – who claim to be lovers of Jesus and followers of the Son of God – are scrambling to offer justifications and rationalizations for supporting candidates without a shred of moral character.
For instance, evangelical preacher Josh Howerton, attempts to push the camel through the eye of the needle: “Ken Paxton has personal baggage. I don’t deny that . . . [But] Here’s the truth: I would rather vote for almost anyone else who is going to at least advocate for conservative ‘policies’ over a literal heretic who wears my faith like a skin suit, advocates for policies that harm children, [and] endorses immorality.”
The problem, of course, is Howerton defines “faith” only from his Southern Baptist perspective, and his view departs significantly from the faith of the Christian Church across the centuries.
Talarico faces an army of evangelical apologists in the Texas senate race. Every MAGA preacher in Texas will stand on his fire ant hill believing he is on top of Mount Sinai delivering the thundering judgments of God to an ungodly people.
The angels in heaven will be laughing so hard they will be crying at these little would-be gods pontificating from their small mound of a Texas pest.
Rod, interesting article and, yes, many of the criticisms that fundagelical preachers level at Talarico are summative judgments without nuance. But there are factors that complicate the picture. (1) Talarico and his handlers have intentionally positioned himself in this segment of the campaign environment. So, while you name the central problem with the criticisms leveled at him, it should be no surprise that he is receiving this kind of attention. He intended to attract it and to leverage the kind of claims that the opposing party has used. (2) The other thing that I find interesting is that (as a biblical scholar), I find Talarico’s use of the Bible just as tendentious as the fundagelical crowd. The only difference being is that he reads a different set of priors into the biblical text. All of which leaves me feeling the same way I usually do when people on either end of the political spectrum appeal to their faith: “Leave us out of it. We don’t need your help and we can certainly do without your exegesis.”
Dear Frederick: Thanks for your insights. I have no quarrel with your analysis of Talarico’s biblical understanding. He is only a second-year seminarian. My primary interest here is the excess hyperbole of the attacks against him. “Heretic?” Really.
Perhaps you are right in your assertion Talarico, and his campaign managers know what they are doing. I am a bit skeptical here, but I understand what you are saying. That would require a different kind of article.
I am never opposed to people of faith making biblical arguments to augment political positions and I make allowances for how they usually bungle the effort. I think more “prophets” are required to speak to issues of politics on the basis of faith. I am not content with a secular rhetorical environment scrubbed of all faith. Talarico offers an alternative to the garden variety fundamentalism he is facing in Texas.
I find Paxton not only reprehensible but dangerous to any kind of Christian reading of the Bible and the ethical commitments expected of the followers of Jesus. That may blind me to Talarico’s flaws, but Paxton is simply not an option for me. Besides, I can’t vote in Texas.
I believe we are dealing here with people of “belief” unwilling to admit “practices” and behavior are more determinative for Christians. I am a social gospel disciple of Walter Rauschenbusch (with adjustments) and Washington Gladden. I miss some of late 19th evangelical fervor for social issues.
That means your suggestive corrections are received and incorporated in my future and frequent writings on this subject. I am not a biblical scholar but a rhetorical scholar. I have always accepted Walter Brueggemann’s insistence, “I do not believe the Bible points directly to any political policy or action …. I believe the Bible can frame questions according to the will and purpose of God as that will and purpose have been interpreted in the church in a long, interpretative tradition.” But in this case, I have picked a side and will continue to note the glaring rhetorical flaws in the evangelical attacks on Talarico which are as removed from a biblical perspective as hell from heaven.
Thanks for taking the time to make me think more deeply. Blessings, Rod