When CBS’ Late Show host Stephen Colbert invited Texas Senate candidate James Talarico to be a guest this week, attorneys for the network advised that Donald Trump appointee Brendan Carr would likely consider Talarico’s appearance a violation of FCC rules. Colbert decided to host Talarico anyway, post the interview to YouTube and skewer the network that has already canceled his show for capitulating to the Trump administration’s intimidation tactics.
To date, the interview has had more than 8 million views on YouTube. The segment is titled, “Rep. James Talarico On Confronting Christian Nationalism, And Strange Days In The Texas State Legislature.”
Colbert and Talarico had good reason to highlight the problem of religious nationalism. For half a century in American public life, a political force has attempted to use Christian faith and “traditional values” to turn back the gains of the 20th century’s civil and human rights movements. Donald Trump came to power by successfully joining this so-called “Christian nationalism” with the reactionary fears of the Tea Party insurgency and the greed of emerging techno-feudalists. The MAGA coalition that made Donald Trump president would never have gained power without the religious nationalist movement that markets the GOP as “God’s Own Party.”
In the Democratic primary in Texas right now, both leading candidates have decided to call the Republicans’ bluff on their claim to Christian values. Talarico and his opponent in that race, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, are both Christians who can speak clearly about how faith informs their work for policies that lift up poor people, welcome immigrants, protect the vulnerable and ensure equal justice under law.
But they share a much more basic message that Trump’s regime is desperate to silence. Along with many Democrats, Republicans and Independents, they share a conviction that the agenda the Trump regime is pursuing in God’s name is antithetical to Christian values and our country’s Constitutional commitments. MAGA’s madness is not an alternative interpretation of Christianity. It is anti-Christ.
As preachers and teachers in the church, we have vowed to warn fellow Christians when our faith is distorted to misguide the faithful. This is why we joined more than 400 church leaders this week to begin the Christian season of Lent by challenging the distortion of Christianity that is used to justify policy violence in America today. With our fellow church leaders from dozens of Christian traditions, “we call on Christians to remember that we serve a mighty and awesome God, who is sovereign over nations and rulers.”
When it comes to the practice of public theology, there are certainly many issues of policy and governance on which Christians can and have disagreed. God is not a Republican or a Democrat. A wise public theology will always seek to conserve what is best in any society and, at the same time, liberally share it with as many people as possible. But Scripture is clear that nations will be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable—the poor, the immigrant and the sick. This is not a matter of individual charity, but public justice.
Love for our neighbors and for justice demands that we challenge authorities who claim that might makes right and that there is no greater power than their decrees. When they claim that the Constitution does not constrain them from knocking a door down and raiding someone’s home without a judicial warrant, they cannot claim God’s blessing. When they shoot someone down in the street and then lie to justify the murder, they cannot pretend to serve the divine law that says, “Thou shall not kill.” When they pretend that international law does not prevent them from taking over another sovereign nation and managing its resources as they see fit, they cannot pretend to be serving some higher law. When they abdicate their moral responsibility to care for the poor and vulnerable by spreading lies about “waste, fraud and abuse” and dramatically cutting essential government services, they cannot do so in Jesus’ name.
No, this is an attack on Christian faith and all of the children of God our faith calls us to love.
At a press availability on Capitol Hill, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) recently cited a string of biblical quotations in response to a reporter who asked him a simple question about how he squares Jesus’ command to “welcome the stranger” with ICE practices that have profiled non-white people, terrorized communities, warehoused thousands of people and resulted in dozens of unnecessary deaths. Johnson admitted that he did not have time to flesh out a full theological argument, but said he would be happy to have that debate anytime and anywhere.
We extended an invitation to Speaker Johnson to have that very debate at our national public theology conference at Yale University, April 12-14. Speaker Johnson’s office says he is unavailable those dates, so we have offered to host him at a time that works for his schedule. But we suspect we will not hear from him for the same reason the FCC has tried to silence James Talarico’s message on both The Late Show and The View. Without the unchallenged claim that they are operating with God’s blessing, the unpopular policy agenda of the Trump regime doesn’t have a chance.
To preach the gospel in this moral moment is to make sure every Christian believer knows that our faith doesn’t obligate them to support this extremism, but to oppose it by building a movement that guarantees freedom and justice for all.
Our Moral Moment w/ Bishop William Barber & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
As with all news-analysis and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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