James Talarico’s Pastor Preaches a Gospel Without Christ

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The most revealing thing about the modern attempt to sell progressive politics through Christian language is how little Christianity must remain in the conversation before everyone is asked to applaud the performance as “spiritually refreshing.”

The New York Times profile of James Talarico and his pastor Jim Rigby gives us an almost perfect specimen of this modern perversion. Rigby rarely uses the word “God,” completely avoids the word “Lord,” rejects male pronouns for God, refers to the Annunciation as mythological, and leads a congregation where the Apostle Paul is dismissed as a villain, misogynist, and jerk, so that his congregation can leave each session feeling enlightened and affirmed—but spiritually impoverished.

This is modern Christianity after the Creed has been thinned into or completely replaced by moralistic therapeutic deism. It presents a wonderfully convenient deity for the modern man: a God who never demands repentance from sin, who validates all our feelings, desires, and preferences, and seldom contradicts certain political platforms.

The absurdity becomes even clearer when the Annunciation is used as an argument for abortion rights. Yes, you read that right: Talarico argues for the right to slaughter the unborn using Mary’s fiat.
Meanwhile, Luke’s Gospel presents Mary’s fiat as a willing yet completely obedient surrender to the Lord’s saving economy; it was far from a slogan for “bodily autonomy.” In fact, the eternal Word took flesh in her womb precisely because he wanted to save and redeem all human life from conception—not create the premise for abortuary slogans.

This kind of modern religion can sound deeply compassionate because it speaks constantly about the poor, the immigrant, women’s rights, and the oppressed; yet compassion detached from objective truth and divine revelation is nothing more than politically weaponized sentimentality that destroys souls en masse while manipulating voting decisions.

The Christian answer is far sturdier and far more powerful. Christ is not ancillary to politics or a historical symbol waiting to be co-opted by modern ideologies. He is Lord over all—and his revelation is absolute and unchangeable, even in the face of modern whims and social therapeutic coercion.

Therefore, every party, pastor, and voter must be judged beneath his cross and judgment seat. With that eternal perspective, the only Gospel worth preaching still begins and ends with the fullness of truth of Jesus Christ and his unchanging Catholic Church.