James Talarico’s victory in the Texas Democratic Senate primary is bigger than state politics. Everyone keeps saying that about this race, but I’m starting to seriously believe the hype. Talarico has a lot of powerful qualities, but his unapologetic embrace of his Christian faith sets him apart from other rising Democratic stars — and it could maybe even help reshape American politics.
Before his Senate run, Talarico gained national attention as a state representative by rooting his opposition to Christian nationalism in his own Christian faith. During legislative battles over whether the Ten Commandments should be posted in public schools and guidance counselors should be replaced with unlicensed religious chaplains, he defended religious freedom without casting religion as the enemy.
For decades, Democrats have ceded religious language to Republicans. Republicans claim the mantle of faith, while Democrats too often respond by criticizing the GOP’s “God talk” and emphasize the separation of church and state. In the process, millions of progressive Americans have become politically voiceless, despite the fact that the majority of Democrats are people of faith themselves.
Talarico changes that.
Millions of progressive Americans have become politically voiceless, despite the fact that the majority of Democrats are people of faith themselves.
Even the conservative Washington Examiner took notice, writing, “Texas state Rep. James Talarico’s Senate bid is offering a vision of Christianity that fits comfortably within the Left — and giving Democrats uneasy with religion permission to engage with it on their own terms.”
He is not alone. If elected, Talarico would join divinity school graduates Rev. Raphael Warnock and Sen. Chris Coons, both of whom have urged Democrats to take religious engagement more seriously.
“For a generation, the Democratic Party of which I’m a member has steadily moved away from communities of faith,” Coons wrote in The Atlantic. “Like many Americans, I’m a progressive Democrat and a Christian. That’s why I know that progressive values aren’t just secular values. We can get to some of our most important public-policy priorities through both secular and scriptural routes.”
“The Democratic Party, in an effort to be inclusive, has sanitized their faithfulness, and left that purview to be claimed by the Republican Party,” Sen. Cory Booker told The New Yorker in a profile of Warnock, in which he praised the Georgian lawmaker’s “straightforward invocation of faith” on the campaign trail.
“The reason why I talk about faith is it motivates me,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said last month at a Center for American Progress Action event. His faith is why he’s “willing to get up no matter how mean and cruel the world has gotten and fight to make it just a little bit better.” The likely 2028 presidential candidate is also releasing a book centered on his faith.
Maintaining a secular democracy does not require banishing religion from public life. In fact, the opposite is true. Those who seek to replace secular democracy with authoritarian theocracy benefit when religion appears to belong to only one party.
Ending the “God Gap,” the perception that only Republicans care about faith, would fundamentally shift the political landscape. Talarico cannot do that alone. But his campaign shows how potentially powerful a religiously fluent, faith-forward Democrat can be. Now the question is whether he can reach the independents and Republicans who have written off Democrats as hostile to religion. In 2020, shortly after my book “Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity” was released, Talarico sent me a message. He introduced himself as a progressive Texas legislator who spoke often about his faith. I was delighted that my book had made it into the hands of a state legislator in my home state. And I’ve watched in amazement over these past five years as he’s become a political phenomenon because of, not despite of, his overt religiosity. Talarico’s message is not about moderating progressive commitments to win over religious conservatives. It is about courage. It is about saying plainly that support for LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive freedom, public education and church-state separation can flow directly from Christian faith. He’s openly Christian and firmly pluralistic. That does more than close a messaging gap: Talarico and those like him can change the terrain. When leaders speak about faith with confidence instead of defensiveness, they show that democracy and devotion are not in conflict. Whether Talarico wins the general election or not, his campaign has already demonstrated that a different kind of religious politics is possible.
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is vice president of programs and strategy at Interfaith Alliance and the author of "Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity." 
Full disclosure: Talarico’s political rise is personal for me. I am a 36-year-old from Texas, like Talarico. I have spent my entire life frustrated by the asymmetry of religion and politics almost always tilting right in the United States.