“Our church was really active in LGBTQ rights in the ’90s. We caught some attention by letting an atheist join our church in the 2000s; and then in the 2010s, again stirred some controversy by housing an undocumented family, a mother and son, who were close to being deported by ICE,” he said.

“That was the tradition that I was brought up in. It’s what led me to teach public school students on the west side of San Antonio, led me to run an education nonprofit and then led me to run for office,” added Talarico, who is narrowly leading Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate race, according to a recent poll.

Talarico was apparently referring to when Rigby prompted outrage in 2005 when he permitted Robert Jensen to join the church despite openly denying a belief in God and the divinity of Jesus Christ. The membership was in violation of the PCUSA’s standards, which, as a denomination, maintain that “baptism and a public profession of faith in Jesus as Lord are the visible signs of entrance into the active membership of the church.”

Jensen, who now serves as emeritus professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in a 2006 article titled “Why I Am a Christian (Sort Of …)” that his desire to join St. Andrew’s was “more a political than a theological act,” which caused an uproar within the PCUSA when it was picked up by The Houston Chronicle.

When the issue of Jensen’s membership ultimately came before the presbytery, they voted 155-114 to instruct Rigby to remove Jensen from the roll of active membership and place him instead on the baptismal roll, typically reserved for children awaiting confirmation. Rigby acknowledged at the time that even he was surprised by “the intensity and tone of the condemnations” regarding Jensen’s membership.

Rigby also openly defied the PCUSA’s former prohibition on same-sex marriage and ordination since the 1990s, though he was never subject to the formal ecclesiastical trial that he said he wanted. In 1995, when the PCUSA’s Book of Order still limited ordination to those living in fidelity in heterosexual marriage or chastity in singleness, Rigby began refusing to wear his clerical robe or share the Lord’s Supper at presbytery meetings to protest that the Lord’s table was “not open to all,” The Austin Chronicle reported.

During his 2023 interview with Texas Impact, Talarico went on to denounce Christians in Texas pushing an ideology he dubbed “Christian nationalism” or “Christofascism,” which he alleged is “subverting our democracy” and “perverting our faith.” Legislative examples he offered of such an ideology included state laws mandating the Ten Commandments in Texas public schools and allowing schools to replace guidance counselors with chaplains, as well as the state’s school voucher program.

State laws restricting abortion and prohibiting the castration of minors, which he called “gender-affirming healthcare to trans children,” were also symptoms of Christians making an idol of the political power that Satan offered Jesus Christ in the wilderness, Talarico claimed.

“All of these ideologies stem from this Christofascism movement, which essentially, like I said, is just using faith to exercise raw political social and economic power,” he said. “I think it’s dangerous to all of us, but particularly to those who are marginalized and oppressed in our state.”

Talarico has repeatedly used the term “Christofascism,” including in a sermon he delivered at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in 2022. He defined the word at the time as any form of Christianity “that worships power — social power, political power, economic power — in the name of Christ.”

Talarico has faced pushback for implying that Evangelical Christians are sinful in seeking political representation of their views.

In an op-ed for WORLD published in March in response to New York Times columnist David French calling Talarico “one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler dismissed the idea that liberal Christians such as Talarico are any less desirous of the political power they often accuse so-called “Christian nationalists” of coveting.

“[Talarico] is a talented politician who is running as a ‘faith-forward’ candidate while condemning conservatives for running as ‘faith-forward’ candidates, and he condemns evangelical Christians for attempting to influence politics while he seeks to establish his own religious liberalism as law. Talarico wants to divide voters just as much as Donald Trump, but on different grounds and along different lines,” Mohler wrote.