It may come as no surprise that the Texas Senate candidate infamous for declaring that “God is nonbinary” attends a left-leaning church, but the religious home of James Talarico is so absurdly “woke” that Americans might be forgiven for questioning whether it is a church at all.
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, has repeatedly featured an LGBTQ “pride” flag hanging over the cross that stands at the front of the sanctuary.
This symbolism is telling on multiple levels. First, it obscures the symbol of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, seemingly prioritizing the rainbow flag over Christianity itself. Second, it embraces “pride,” which Christianity traditionally teaches as the great sin, the one sin that most separates us from God and from the humility of Jesus Christ. Third, it publicly embraces homosexual activity and transgender ideology, which directly run contrary to the plain teachings of scripture and the vast majority of the Christian tradition.
Yet the pride flag is hardly the only non-Christian symbol associated with St. Andrew’s Presbyterian. The Rev. Jim Rigby, the church’s pastor, told the Austin American-Statesman that the church’s stained-glass window intentionally features the Hindu/Buddhist symbol of a mandala, placing the cross inside it. He told the outlet that the Far Eastern symbol “is a reminder that we are but one voice in a larger choir consisting of our entire human family.” The church frequently uses a simplified mandala as one of its key symbols.
Rigby also allowed an avowed atheist to join the church’s membership roll, which led the church leaders to vote (155-114) to remove the atheist from the membership roll. The atheist compared the investigation to the Spanish Inquisition.
The church also suggested that it is replacing some crosses with non-Christian symbols.
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In 1993, St. Andrew’s installed 366 crosses on the church lawn to represent Texans who had died of HIV/AIDS in 1992. The church rededicated this “Field of Hope” in November, adding “wooden symbols to represent interfaith and atheist/agnostic solidarity,” alongside “crosses painted in different colors, with each color representing a different justice movement.”
St. Andrew’s Hub of Woke Activism
The church also launched a “Field of Hope” website, with twelve different pages to advocate various “Actions for Justice.” The website acts as a woke activist hub, directing visitors to a bevy of leftist causes.
The website’s “Global Solidarity” page supports a campaign to boycott products made in Israel, in the name of opposing “Apartheid.” It also promotes Jewish Voice for Peace, which has claimed that Israel’s actions inspired the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and which has led a protest that took over a congressional office building in 2024. U.S. Capitol Police arrested 248 protesters that day.
The website promotes “Immigrant + Refugee Rights,” “LGBTQIA+ Liberation,” “Gender + Reproductive Justice,” “Racial Justice,” “Environmental Justice,” and more.
The website directs visitors to volunteer at the Kind Clinic, which offers “gender-affirming care,” the experimental sex change operations that leave kids stunted, scarred, and often infertile. It directs them to the Lilith Fund, which bankrolls abortions. It promotes the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which leaders like Patrisse Cullors used to enrich themselves.
The “Environmental Justice” page promotes the Sunrise Movement, which encouraged donations to the Stop Cop City/Defend the Atlanta Forest effort, which featured agitators hurling Molotov cocktails at construction equipment, aiming to prevent the construction of a police training facility.
The “Safety for All” page promotes gun control groups, including Everytown for Gun Safety and March for Our Lives.
Churches have every right to take political stands on controversial issues, but this “Field of Hope” website looks less like a ministry and more like a miniature version of the vast leftist network I exposed in “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”
James Talarico’s Upside-Down Leftist Gospel
Regardless of the merit of Talarico’s political positions, his version of Christianity inverts a great deal of doctrine.
Talarico cited the so-called Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic tract that church leaders rightly rejected as a forgery, in part because it teaches heresy.
He falsely claimed that in the Gospel of Luke, the Archangel Gabriel “asks for Mary’s consent” to bear Jesus, suggesting the passage somehow justifies abortion.
He twisted Galatians 3 to suggest Paul was referring to transgender identity. He has falsely claimed that “the Bible doesn’t mention abortion at all.” (In fact, it arguably forbids the use of abortion drugs.) He has claimed that Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam are “circling the same truth” as Christianity, while Jesus claimed that he is “the way, the truth and the life,” and that “no one comes to the Father but through me” (John 14:6).
Last year, Talarico compared opposing President Donald Trump to Jesus flipping over tables in the Temple in Jerusalem.
He got the analogy exactly backwards. Jesus wasn’t confronting the secular political authorities—He was confronting the religious leaders who twisted His Father’s message. Were someone to follow Jesus’ example of flipping tables today, he wouldn’t visit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He might consider St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, instead.
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Today, even with President Trump’s victory, leftist elites have their tentacles in every aspect of our government.
The Daily Signal’s own Tyler O’Neil exposes this leftist cabal in his new book, The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.
In this book, O’Neil reveals how the Left’s NGO apparatus pursues its woke agenda, maneuvering like an octopus by circumventing Congress and entrenching its interests in the federal government.
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