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Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D) has made no secret of the impact that Jim Rigby, the pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, has had on his thinking.
Talarico, the Texas Democrat now battling state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) for a seat in the U.S. Senate, told the New York Times, for instance, that Rigby was one of “the biggest influences on [him] as a Christian, as a human being.”
'This false shepherd managed to deny virtually every key doctrine of Christianity in less than two minutes.'
“He is my pastor in every sense of the word,” added Talarico, a part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has fought to keep the Bible out of school; attempted to use Scripture to justify abortion; taken money from an associate of dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein; concern-mongered about traditional Christian views; and voted against sparing kids from sex-rejection mutilations.
Hidden-camera footage exclusively obtained by Blaze News appears to show that the pastor who shaped Talarico’s worldview doesn’t think too highly of evangelical Christians.
In a video dated Aug. 30, Rigby was asked by a person off-camera, “What’s wrong with evangelical Christians? Like, how do they read what they read, they claim what they claim?”
RELATED: Talarico's pivot from 'God is nonbinary' is all just an act, admits minister at his church
The woke pastor says in response, according to the video, “My guess is that they’re people who are just not that smart in, like, abstract thinking, which is where a lot of the liberal stuff and the principles of human rights and all that stuff comes up — it’s like they just, it doesn’t show up on their radar.”
“They panic when that stuff is laid out in front of them,” Rigby stated further, according to the video. “They know there’s something they’re not seeing. It’s like they have black and white vision and somebody’s showing them [a] color photograph or something like that.”
Rigby appears to believe that President Donald Trump and even Adolf Hitler have exploited evangelicals and their allegedly simple way of thinking for political gain, claiming in the video that "what Hitler did and what Trump is doing is play off of that."
The purported Christian pastor apparently complained further about evangelicals’ beliefs in the supernatural, specifically in hell, angels, and demons, suggesting that such beliefs are irrational.
“The church is a huge part of the problem — teaching people from the cradle that things are true because you believe them,” Rigby says, according to the video.
“A belief in hell shuts everything down, because when you think that you could be tortured for all eternity, and you believe in demons and angels and stuff like this, you can’t stay rational for long.”
Rigby adds, according to the video, “If you think that supernatural beings are affecting things, good logic wouldn’t make any sense.”
According to the most recent Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study, 27% of adults in Texas identify as evangelical Protestants.
Evangelicals are, however, hardly the only Christians who believe in the existence of hell, angels, and demons.
A 2021 Pew survey found that 62% of all American adults and 69% of all American Christians believe in hell. A 2023 Gallup survey found that 69% of Americans believe in angels and 58% believe in the devil.
“It's not surprising an open and avowed heretic like James Talarico goes to a church led by fellow heretics,” BlazeTV host Steve Deace said in a statement to Blaze News, after reviewing the footage. “What is surprising, though, is how this false shepherd managed to deny virtually every key doctrine of Christianity in less than two minutes.”
“You have to be really committed to doctrines of demons and detesting Christ and His Word to display that level of deception masquerading as conviction,” added Deace.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Rigby has issued plenty of other remarks that Talarico might want to distance himself from in the final months of his campaign. The pastor, who expressed hope that Talarico would follow in his footsteps at St. Andrew’s, has, for instance, made headlines for calling for a “true jihad” at a pro-Palestine rally; rejected belief in a literal resurrection; repeatedly cast doubt on whether Christ rose from the dead; emphasized that he doesn’t “believe Christianity is the only way, or even the best way for many people”; and expressed discomfort with the use of the word “God.”
Rigby and the Talarico campaign did not respond to requests for comment from Blaze News.
While supportive of Talarico, his message, and his candidacy, Rigby noted earlier this year, “I do not speak for him and he owes no one an explanation for things I have said.”
Despite noting that they do not speak with one voice, Rigby’s influence on Talarico is unmistakable — particularly in his eagerness to criticize Christians and mainstream Christianity.
Talarico noted, for example, in a March 2021 episode of the “Activist Theology” podcast that despite always getting "drawn back" in, “I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity.”
Paxton has stressed that Talarico "is a threat to our values, our way of life, and the future of Texas."
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