A resurfaced video of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico has drawn renewed attention after he said Christians, Muslims and Jews worship the same God and emphasized similarities among the Abrahamic faiths.
The clip, shared on X by Lone Star Liberty PAC, came from Talarico’s 2024 appearance on the progressive podcast “The Weekend Show.” During the interview, Talarico said that “Christians and Muslims and Jews all worship the same God.”
“Muslims love Jesus. They love Moses and Abraham. We are all branches on the same tree as the Abrahamic faiths,” he added. “It’s heartbreaking to watch extremists, whether they are Christian nationalists or whether they are the Taliban or al Qaeda, perverting these beautiful traditions that have so much in common.”
In the longer version of the podcast episode, Talarico described what he viewed as the distortion of major religious traditions as “a tale as old as time.” He nevertheless argued that “It doesn’t mean that we don’t have an obligation to speak out against it and reclaim these traditions for their original values of peace and love and justice.”
Talarico also told listeners that “We can’t always put our faith in each other,” before arguing that people need to ground themselves in something beyond human relationships. “Whether you call that God, whether you call it the cosmos, whether you call it love or justice, that’s where we’ve got to root ourselves,” he said.
He encouraged people who “do not belong to some kind of community that is rooted … in that deeper well … of love and compassion” to “find that.” Talarico added that “It doesn’t have to be a church, doesn’t have to be a synagogue or a mosque or a temple,” and cited “a yoga group” or “a book club” as other places where people might develop community.
The Texas lawmaker also devoted part of the discussion to concerns about “Christian nationalism,” accusing Republicans of elevating “abortion and homosexuality the two most important issues for religious voters when both of those issues don’t appear in the Bible … when both of those issues never come out of the mouth of Jesus.”
Talarico further linked the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the possibility of a “national ban on abortion” to what he described as a “Christian Taliban” that is “perverting my beloved religious tradition and using that to subvert our American democracy.”
The Senate candidate has voiced similar views in other interviews in recent months. During a Jan. 13 appearance on “The Ezra Klein Show,” Talarico argued that other religions contain the “same truth” as Christianity and said the United States is “not a Christian nation,” The Christian Post previously reported.
In another recent interview on the “Politics War Room” podcast, hosted by James Carville and Al Hunt, Talarico said some atheists are “more Christ-like than” certain Christian lawmakers with whom he serves in the Texas Legislature.
Talarico, a Texas state legislator and Presbyterian seminarian, has previously faced criticism from Christian leaders over his interpretation of Scripture and public comments on religious and social issues. Among those remarks was his assertion that “the Bible is silent on abortion,” a statement that prompted pushback from Christian figures in the United States.
