Texas Senate candidate James Talarico called Christianity the 'most violent' religion in magazine profile

James Talarico, the Texas state representative and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, told The New Yorker that Christianity is the "most violent" religion and has done "more damage" to Islam than any other faith, a claim that sits uneasily beside his years-long effort to court Muslim voters and position himself as a man of deep Christian conviction running against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The characterization appeared in a Breitbart News report drawing on Talarico's March 2026 New Yorker profile, his social media history, floor speeches, church sermons, and a clip of remarks he delivered to the Pakistani American Council of Texas. Taken together, the record sketches a candidate who wields theological language as a political instrument, denouncing his own faith tradition as violent while simultaneously opposing border-security measures designed to screen travelers from terrorism-prone nations.

The contrast matters because the numbers point the other direction. Cato Institute data covering 1975 through 2025 show radical Islamic terrorism has killed at least 3,100 Americans on U.S. soil, accounted for 87 percent of terrorism-related deaths over the past fifty years, and claimed the lives of thousands more American soldiers overseas.

A pattern of statements, year by year

Talarico's public record on religion and immigration stretches back nearly a decade. In 2016 he wrote on Facebook that he was proud to campaign for Sean Hassan, whom he described as a "smart, progressive, Muslim-American," adding that he did so "just to p*** off" Trump.

When President Trump signed a January 2017 executive order restricting immigration from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, countries previously identified as particularly vulnerable to terrorism in part because of substandard internal record-keeping, Talarico posted again on Facebook:

"Proud to stand with our Muslim neighbors today. Texas is big enough for all of us. #NoBanNoWall."

By 2021 the Presbyterian seminarian had moved from social media solidarity to legislative action. He introduced House Bill 2039 to add imams to the list of religious officials authorized to perform marriage ceremonies in Texas. Insiya Aziz of Emgage Action helped write the bill and testified at a hearing on the measure. That same year, Talarico wrote on X that Texas had "the largest population of Muslims in the country."

He also delivered a 2021 invocation on the Texas House floor in which he prayed to "Holy Mystery," referenced the Torah, the Koran, the Gita, and the Dharma alongside the First Epistle of John, and closed by praying in "all your many names." Whatever one thinks of interfaith gestures, the prayer was a long way from the Christianity Talarico would later call the world's most violent religion.

Faith as a weapon, but only against the right

Talarico has repeatedly deployed theological language to attack conservative policy. During a 2025 legislative debate over a Texas law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, he called the measure "deeply unChristian" and said he did not want the government forcing religion "down my throats." He added that the proposal "does violence to both Christianity and Judaism."

At a 2024 South by Southwest appearance, he framed school vouchers as the product of a "Christian Nationalist movement," arguing that vouchers take tax dollars out of public schools and hand them to "unaccountable private schools." Talarico's "Christian nationalist" framing has drawn sustained pushback from parents who simply want educational choice.

In a 2022 church sermon, he addressed abortion restrictions by declaring that "every one of our neighbors with a uterus became the property of the state" and that "nothing, nothing is more unchristian than that." By May 2026, he went further, claiming in an interview that the Bible is "silent on abortion" and that abortion policy is not "a place for the state."

And in 2021, while opposing legislation to protect women's sports, Talarico announced on the House floor that "God is non-binary" and "trans children are God's children." Fox News reported that a viral video also captured him asking a congregation, "Did they teach you in Sunday school that Jesus Christ himself was a radical feminist?" Republicans, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, moved quickly to amplify those clips after his primary victory.

The mentor question

Talarico's theological orbit extends beyond his own statements. His mentor, Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, weighed in after an attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner by asserting that the MAGA movement's "heart" is the Confederacy and that the America it seeks to restore is "the Confederate States of America." Talarico has not publicly distanced himself from those remarks.

That silence fits a broader pattern. Democrats running in red or purple states increasingly lean on faith-based messaging to soften their progressive platforms. National Review's editors argued that Talarico's strategy amounts to offering "specious theological arguments about the nature of God" as "an overture to a pitch that includes support for infanticide and for men in women's bathrooms." The editorial concluded those arguments "ought to fall on deaf ears."

The approach is not unique to Texas. Damaging revelations about Democratic Senate candidates have surfaced in multiple states this cycle, raising questions about how carefully the party vets its nominees.

Courting Muslim voters while calling Christianity violent

Talarico's outreach to Muslim communities has been consistent and deliberate. In a clip provided to Breitbart News, he told the Pakistani American Council of Texas that Trump is "a threat to all of us" and that he stands with his "Muslim brothers and sisters." The event's date was not specified, but the remarks track with his long opposition to Trump-era immigration restrictions.

No one objects to a politician engaging with constituents of every faith. The issue is the intellectual framework Talarico has constructed around that engagement. He calls Christianity the most violent religion, a claim unsupported by the Cato Institute's own terrorism data, while simultaneously opposing the security screening of travelers from nations with documented terrorism vulnerabilities. He invokes Scripture to fight abortion restrictions, voucher programs, and women's sports protections, then insists the government should stay out of religion when conservatives put the Ten Commandments on a classroom wall.

The theology shifts to fit the politics. That is not conviction. It is convenience.

Talarico's willingness to weaponize religious language against his own faith tradition while seeking higher office sets a tone that Texas voters deserve to examine carefully before they cast a ballot.

What voters are left to weigh

The Senate race between Talarico and Ken Paxton will test whether a candidate can run as both a devout Christian and a critic who labels Christianity the world's most violent faith. Talarico's record, from the "No Ban No Wall" Facebook post to the "God is non-binary" floor speech to the New Yorker profile, is now public and searchable. Voters can read it for themselves.

Open questions remain. The full verbatim quotes from the New Yorker profile have not been reproduced in available reporting. The outcome of HB 2039 is unclear. And Talarico has not addressed the tension between calling Christianity violent and the Cato Institute's data showing radical Islamic terrorism responsible for 87 percent of terror-related deaths on American soil over half a century.

Democrats have grown fond of standing behind embattled nominees rather than confronting uncomfortable records. Whether national party leadership will answer for Talarico's statements, or simply hope Texas forgets, is a question the campaign trail will settle soon enough.

When a man running for the United States Senate tells a national magazine that his own religion is the most violent on earth, voters are entitled to wonder whose side he's really on.