this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
332 points (98.0% liked)

Not The Onion

21714 readers
1540 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, ableist, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/48166923

James Talarico has been found guilty of quoting Jesus. The sentence he uttered, according to right-wing media, was “demonic” and “blasphemous,” exposing him as a “fake Christian.” Talarico is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas on a platform The New Yorker recently described as basically the New Testament. One Newsmax host accused him of using fake Bible passages.

The passages in question are familiar ones, found in Matthew 22 and Matthew 25. Love God and love your neighbor. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the stranger. They are, in fact, in the Bible.

The right’s attacks on Talarico aren’t about him, or at least not entirely. They’re about a much older argument — one progressive Christianity has been losing in public for 50 years — about whose version of the faith gets to count as real. The answer to that question has consequences far beyond any Senate race. When Christianity becomes a tool of power rather than a challenge to it, it doesn’t just damage the church. It destabilizes democracy. We are watching that happen in real time.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] molehill_siesta@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

https://www.texasobserver.org/senate-james-talarico-presbyterian-christianity/

References a Colbert appearance, quoting and linking:

Talarico often says he learned from his Baptist preacher grandfather that Christians “follow a barefoot rabbi who gave us two commandments: Love God and love neighbor—because there is no love of God without love of neighbor.” That’s a reference to Matthew 22:36-40, one of Talarico’s go-to, and definitely non-“fake,” scripture passages. And as Talarico told Stephen Colbert, it has radical implications: We are to love our neighbor “regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation.” 

Another of Talarico’s go-to Gospel passages, Matthew 25:35-40, directly links love for Jesus with care for the hungry, the stranger, and the imprisoned. For many evangelicals, this passage refers mainly to a future end-times Tribulation. For Talarico, by contrast, it is manifestly current and intensely political. Here’s how he deploys it in the Colbert appearance:

“For 50 years, the religious right … convinced a lot of our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage … two issues that Jesus never talked about. Jesus in Matthew 25 tells us exactly how you and I and every one of our fellow believers [are] going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved: by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger.”

[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 7 hours ago

Awesome, thanks.