'Woke Jesus' could steer evangelicals away from Trump: analysis

Bulwark Editor Jonathan Last said he did not see Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico coming. But now that the Presbyterian seminarian and former public-school teacher has survived the Democratic primary, the candidate offers a unique opportunity for Dems to grab voters they’ve been losing for decades.

“Last night, during our livestream, [Bulwark writer] Tim [Miller] said that if Talarico wins this Senate seat he becomes a top-tier candidate for 2028,” Last said. “I thought Tim was high — that this was like Republicans saying Glenn Youngkin was the future of the GOP in 2021. The more I think about it, the less crazy it seems.”

Last said Talarico “codes as moderate because he looks like a youth pastor and leads with his faith. But if you were grading him by issue sets, he sits closer to Bernie Sanders than, say, Tim Ryan,” said Last.

Coding is clearly important, judging by how effectively President Donald Trump coded until recently, said Last:

• 1.“Evangelicals saw Trump as their champion.
• 2.Manosphere types saw Trump as a fellow heathen who didn’t actually believe any of the Christian stuff.
• 3.Working-class voters saw him as an avenging angel against the corporate elites.
• 4.Wall Street saw him as the guy who would let them get away with murder.”

“The medium-term survival of liberal democracy hinges on Republican voters abandoning their authoritarian project. That’s the ballgame,” Last argued. “If they remain committed to the course they’re on, America will eventually become a supersized version of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.”

But “this authoritarian project is a river created from a number of inflows,” said Last, which includes “technological disruption, wealth concentration, the flowering of corruption, and – most particularly — Christian nationalism.

“Christian nationalism is not a type of Christianity; it’s a parasitic form of nationalism that infects Christianity, eats it from the inside, and creates a zombie nationalism that wears a Christian skinsuit,” said Last. In a secular nation, like Sweden, it would go nowhere, but the U.S. is a largely Christian society. “If Christian nationalism is a mind virus, America has something like 150 million potential hosts,” argued Last. “Not. Good.”

However, the teachings of Christ, which include loving God with all your heart, loving your neighbors, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and comforting the prisoner, are “diametrically opposed to the main thrust of Trumpism,” said Last. It clashes with a strongman who promises to persecute the vermin “poisoning the blood of the country.”

Jesus was woke, said Last. And “if Talarico can explain this reality to voters and make the Christian case for certain policy proposals, then maybe he can inoculate some American Christians against Christian nationalism.”

“Or at least force the Christian nationalists to take the mask off and admit that their project is really an ethno-nationalist affair,” he added.

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