Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico declared that “God is not a Christian” and compared evangelism to forcing alcohol on children in a 2023 sermon that has resurfaced as he campaigns against Republican Ken Paxton.

In the nearly 20-minute address titled “God Is Not Christian: Confronting Christian Nationalism,” delivered on October 22, 2023, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Talarico said: “There are so many pathways to the sacred. The Islamic mystic Rumi said, ‘Every religion has love, but love has no religion. God is so much bigger than our human categories.’ God is not a Presbyterian. God is not a Christian. God is not a noun at all. God is a verb. God is not a being. God is being itself. God is love.”

Talarico read a text from a mentor listing reasons “beer is better than religion,” including that no one knocks on doors to give beer away and that there are laws against forcing beer on minors. He then stated that Christian nationalism is a “cancer on our religion” and said he sometimes hesitates to identify as a Christian because of it.

“There is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism,” he said. “A religion of sharing became a religion of greed. A religion of peace became a religion of violence.”

Critics have described the remarks as downplaying the divinity of Jesus and rejecting the exclusivity of Christ as the path to God. Talarico, a leftist seminarian, faces an uphill race in heavily evangelical Texas, where a recent Fox News poll showed 78% of white evangelicals plan to vote against him.