Faith comes before politics. But you also have to get your faith right.

A widely watched interview offers vivid lessons on media skill and how we communicate Christian faith to the world

James Talarico (left), US Senate candidate from Texas, talks with CBS television network late-night show interviewer Stephen Colbert. One source says the interview attracted 85 million views on YouTube after Colbert claimed CBS would not let him show it on his program.

On February 17, an interview between James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Texas, and talk-show host Stephen Colbert appeared on YouTube. Christians everywhere—not just in the US—should watch the first 10 minutes. The interview provides a marvelous example of public-relations skill and should encourage deep reflection on how we express our faith publicly.

In the US, nearly all the attempts to connect Christian faith and politics come from the Republicans. Talarico, age 36, is trying to change that. He is a Presbyterian seminary graduate and state representative who frequently cites lessons learned from his grandfather, a Baptist pastor.

Talarico and Colbert seized a unique opportunity to publicize the interview. The Trump administration has been pressuring media outlets not to favor Democrats. Colbert’s television network, CBS, cautioned Colbert that doing an interview with a Democrat might result in government action. Colbert announced that CBS had prevented him from airing the Talarico interview on his show and instead released it only on YouTube. The resulting controversy drew national attention to the video, which accumulated 85 million views within three days.

The publicity might help Talarico win his Democratic primary tomorrow against his more liberal opponent, Jasmine Crockett. If so, he will face the Republican primary winner in a bruising, highly visible campaign, and his expressions of Christian faith will undoubtedly receive considerable scrutiny.

Talarico began with a carefully crafted political sound bite. When Colbert noted that this was the second time a Talarico media interview had generated threats, the Texan deftly responded, “I think that Donald Trump is worried that we’re about to flip Texas” (from electing Republicans to Democrats). He added, “This is the party that ran against cancel culture, and now they are trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top.”

Colbert then described conservative Christians in US politics, commonly called the “religious right,” as “largely a political movement that references Christianity.” Talarico responded:

For 50 years, the religious right has convinced a lot of our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage—two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible, two issues that Jesus never talked about. Jesus in Matthew 25 tells us exactly how we are going to be judged and how we are going to be saved: by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. Nothing about going to church, nothing about voting Republican. It was all about how you treat other people.

When Colbert asked why Talarico opposed the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools, he replied:

Because we are called to love all of our neighbors, including our Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh, agnostic, or atheist neighbors. Forcing our religion down their throats is not love. It’s why I’ve fought so hard for that sacred separation in our First Amendment. That boundary doesn’t just benefit the state, it also benefits the church. Because when the church gets too cozy with political power, it loses its prophetic voice, its ability to speak truth to power. … This separation between church and state is something we have to safeguard. I think we need someone in the US Senate who is going to confront Christian nationalism and tell the truth, which is that there is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. It is the worship of power in the name of Christ. It is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.

Colbert then made an insightful observation: “It is bad for my church or any religious organization to associate themselves with a political party. How must it diminish God to be associated with something so small as a present political party! Imagine that you managed to co-opt Christianity and convince everybody that Jesus is on your side. If you then lose the election, it sounds like you have a pretty weak Jesus.”

Talarico agreed and added that if people “try to fit God into a political party … you’ve got it reversed. … Right now, what you have is people baptizing their partisanship and calling that Christianity, when in reality your politics should grow out of your faith and not the other way around.”

Talarico packed a lot of powerful comments into a few minutes. He emphasized placing faith above any political allegiance, warned against using the force of law to impose our faith on others, and noted that the church must remain separate from the state for its own benefit, so as not to be co-opted. He also highlighted Christians’ obligation to welcome the stranger, at a time when the Trump administration has closed the door to refugees and has been scapegoating and stigmatizing immigrant groups.

But Talarico’s comments are problematic in two significant ways.

First, while pointing out that Christians should maintain a prophetic voice, Talarico seems to have closely and conveniently aligned his principles with Democratic party orthodoxy. Many would disagree with his claims that the Bible does not address abortion and gay marriage. His defense of abortion includes a creative argument that since Mary gave consent to become the mother of Jesus, other women should not be required to carry pregnancies they don’t want.

Second, Talarico’s expressions of Christianity seem to omit Jesus’s claim to be “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). His suggestion that Matthew 25 prescribes how we will be saved has some justification, since Jesus ends the parable by saying, “Then they [the ones who did not help those in need] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). But Talarico notably avoided any reference to Jesus’s sacrifice for our sins or to anything that makes Christianity unique. He made similarly inclusivist comments in a recent interview with Ezra Klein of the New York Times:

I believe Christianity points to the truth. I also think other religions of love point to the same truth. … I believe Jesus Christ reveals that reality to us. But I also think that other traditions reveal that reality in their own ways, with their own symbol structures. … I see these beautiful faith traditions as circling the same truth about the universe, about the cosmos. And that truth is inherently a mystery.

I understand that Talarico is in the middle of an intense political campaign that he would like to win. There may well be other aspects of his faith that he believes are not the right things to say two weeks before an election. If he wins the Democratic primary, he will probably have many opportunities to articulate more fully what his Christian commitment means.

We should be grateful any time someone makes faith a topic of popular discussion, and we should affirm Talarico’s well-stated warnings about how the church can fall into political captivity. But we should also take the opportunity to tell curious people that there is a deeper source of transforming power in Christian faith than what Talarico’s interviews reveal.