WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 202\
But also, Warnock in Georgia: Every county in Texas shifted blue last week.
Meanwhile, Kansas, home of Democratic (lady) governors, decided to let a Democratic senator escape the borders of the state.
In those two states, religious messaging was suddenly back in the year's election campaigns—religious messaging from Democratic candidates! Also, God had a plan in Texas, the governor-elect has said:
“I am a daughter of the Rio Grande Valley, where the people embody the work ethic and values of our great state, where no one would have imagined that one day, a little girl from the RGV would stand before you here as the next governor of the greatest state, Texas. But God had a plan, and the people of Texas had a plan, too.”
In terms of straight-ahead Americana, that was straight-ahead American speech. When Lauren Jackson sought to explain in the New York Times, she moved it on over to Georgia:
The Bible Chapter That Helps Explain the New Christian Left
Senator Raphael Warnock, a pastor from Georgia, has called himself a “Matthew 25 Christian” for years. It’s his boilerplate, invoked in response to questions about health care, immigration and even Fidel Castro.
In the New Testament’s book of Matthew, chapter 25, Jesus tells his disciples that if they offer care to the most vulnerable in society, they are also offering devotion to him. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” Jesus said, according to Matthew’s author. “I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
It’s a famous passage of scripture...
In the recent political context, it starts with Senator Warnock, she says. That takes us over to Georgia, home state to Dr. King, who filled his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, with references to his devotion to "the love ethic of Jesus."
Democrats have sometimes been a bit stand-offish with respect to these realms. More than once, it could be that Blue American eyes have rolled in the face of such testimony.
In this way, denizens of Blue America have sometimes looked for ways to encourage political defeat. As she continues, Jackson starts to describe what the heck she's talking about:
(Continued from above)
It’s a famous passage of scripture. It’s also a favorite reference for the new wave of religious Democrats heading to Washington. James Talarico of Texas, Adam Hamilton of Kansas and Sarah Trone Garriott of Iowa all wove the verses into their campaigns—and won.
If Christian nationalism is a shorthand for the dominant religious politics of the right, Matthew 25 may be the key to understanding the new religious left.
[...]
Several of the new Christian Democrats regularly cite scripture, and Matthew 25 in particular. Talarico used it to argue “that health care is a human right.” Hamilton applied it to make the case for welcoming immigrants.
And so on from there.
Jackson is citing "the new religious left" which helped the Democratic Party romp to a 12-point win in deep red Texas, along with a 5-point win in a state which hadn't sent a Democrat to the Senate in almost a hundred years. This suggests that there may be electoral power in Matthew 25.
Lauren Jackson's role at the New York Times is a bit hard to define. Officially, she herself is "a deputy editorial director for newsletters and the host of Believing."
In turn, Believing is "a weekly newsletter about how people live religion and spirituality now." As for Jackson herself, she's a former Rhodes scholar who grew up Mormon in Arkansas, as we Americans sometimes do.
On its face, Talarico's win in Texas may have been most surprising of all the wins last week. He hardly looks the part of the giant-slayer who could subdue that big, brawling, deep red state.
In this second report in the New York Times, Ruth Graham starts to explain the power, the force, of the messaging—messaging which comes live and direct from long American experience:
What Talarico’s Win Reveals About Christianity in Texas
James Talarico, a onetime Sunday school teacher, opened his acceptance speech on Tuesday night with a Bible story.
“I’m reminded of that story from Scripture of a shepherd boy who goes up against a giant,” he told an ebullient crowd in Austin, Texas. In the end, of course, the shepherd boy defeats the well-armed Goliath with only a slingshot.
Mr. Talarico slew his own giant this week, ending decades of Republican control in Texas with a decisive win that carried multiple other Democrats in the state to victory. He did it in part by speaking easily and openly about how his Christian beliefs inform his politics, starting with the biblical command to love God and “love thy neighbor,” as the sign on his lectern read on Tuesday night.
Talarico is only 37, but he plainly knows his brief. By all accounts, he was able to speak to many different people in Texas—people who fit within a complex cultural framework.
"More than a quarter of adult Texans are self-described evangelicals," Ruth Graham notes in her report. But then again, also this:
[T]he state is also home to progressive Protestants like Mr. Talarico, millions of Catholics, and politically active Black congregations, including one in Dallas whose pastor was elected to Congress as a Democrat this week.
Mr. Talarico, an eighth-generation Texan and onetime seminarian, understood all that. His own grandfather, once a Baptist preacher, found himself on the “moderate” side when conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s and ’80s, a move masterminded in Texas. Mr. Talarico was raised in a church that has been known locally for its progressive activism for decades.
In a town hall hosted by CNN in October, a voter from his hometown of Round Rock, Texas, pressed him “Christian to Christian” about provocative past statements like “God is nonbinary.”
“Do you believe that the Bible is the absolute source of truth and God’s final authoritative word, even when our culture says otherwise?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Talarico answered.
We ourselves don't understand the cosmos that way. As a matter of fact, we can't say that we understand the cosmos at all! But should it bother us here, on this sprawling campus, if someone can preach the virtue of kindness the way this young candidate did?
We Americans! Our three Great Awakenings don't get discussed much, but they're stone-cold Americana. Religious belief has worked in various ways over time. With Talarico from Texas joining Warnock from Georgia, is a new morning upon us?
We see a well-known Texan, online in today's Times, offering this overview about such matters. Try to ignore that headline:
You May All Go to Hell, and Tommy Lee Jones Will Go to Texas
[...]
Jones’s sense of humor reveals itself unexpectedly. Asked what he made of the dispute over a border wall in the Big Bend region, where Jones has spent considerable time both filming and living, he offered a characteristically terse, diplomatic response: “I don’t like bigotry, and I love people.”
Diplomatic, or inscrutable? Each reader gets to decide.
At any rate, We Blues! We've sometimes mocked religious people. On the extremely rare occasion, We Blues can almost seem to have tiny small shortcomings too.
Tomorrow: Frederick Douglass' ride
