Eight years ago, 14-year-old Leah Sharibu was kidnapped from her school in northern Nigeria by Islamic militants and dragged into captivity. She remains in captivity to this day because she refuses to renounce her Christian faith. 
Last month, the anniversary of her kidnapping received little acknowledgement except from a number of persecution watchdog organizations. While many have forgotten her story, Sharibu’s absence is felt every day by her family, who have not heard from her since the day of the kidnapping in February 2018. 
Sharibu was kidnapped by the Islamic State-West Africa Province (ISWAP) alongside 104 other girls from the Government Girls Science and Technical School in Yobe State on February 19, 2018. While most of the other girls have since been released, Sharibu has not been let go because she refuses to convert to Islam.  
Ryan Brown, the CEO of persecution watchdog Open Doors, told The Daily Wire that Sharibu was the only Christian in the group of kidnapped girls and was singled out because of her faith. Open Doors keeps in regular contact with Sharibu’s family and helps them celebrate her birthday every year. 
“With so much going on in our world, it&#8217;s easy to forget these things. It&#8217;s easy to move on to the next headline,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But for those that had been personally touched by these things, they can&#8217;t move on.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_1059647" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1059647" class="size-full wp-image-1059647" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1143782650.jpg" alt="TOPSHOT - Relatives of schoolgirl, Leah Sharibu abducted by Boko Haram Islamists hold cake to mark her 16th birthday and two years in captivity at the Unity Fountain in Abuja, on May 14, 2019. - Leah Sharibu was among over 100 schoolgirls abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School in Dapchi, northeast Nigeria on February 19, 2018. But while schoolmates had been freed, she was held back for refusing to denounce her religion. (Photo by KOLA SULAIMON / AFP)" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1143782650.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1143782650-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1143782650-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1143782650-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Sharibu&#8217;s family celebrates her birthday back in 2019. Credit: KOLA SULAIMON/AFP via Getty Images.</div>
Some reports suggest that Sharibu has been forced into marriages with her captors and had children, but those are difficult to confirm. Another woman kidnapped by Islamic militants who later escaped in 2024 confirmed that she encountered Sharibu during her time in captivity. 
Sharibu&#8217;s family says that the Nigerian government has done little to get her released, Brown told The Daily Wire.
“There have been Nigerian officials that have communicated and attempted to see Leah released and have said that they will do that, but the family has not been able to see any visible evidence that there&#8217;s been anything other than promises that were made. And so that has been a source of confusion and pain,” he said. 
The Islamic State-West Africa Province broke off from the militant Islamic group Boko Haram in 2015 and has since displaced or killed thousands in and around Nigeria, <a href="https://www.dni.gov/nctc/terrorist_groups/isis_west_africa.html">according</a> to American intelligence. The group has between 4,000 and 7,000 members and carries out military-style bombings, kidnappings, and targeted killings. 
Sharibu’s continued captivity is a brutal reminder of the reality many Christians face in Nigeria despite the government’s assurances that it protects Christians from violent attacks. 
Brown praised the Trump administration for <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/releases-statements/naming-nigeria-country-particular-concern-important-step-advance">designating</a> Nigeria as a country of particular concern over Christian persecution in November 2025. Shortly after, on Christmas Day, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-strikes-isis-targets-in-nigeria-on-christmas-day">ordered strikes</a> on ISIS targets in Nigeria, calling for the terrorists to stop “slaughtering of Christians.”
Brown said the problem of Christian persecution is real in Nigeria and that the government’s denial of the problem is inaccurate. He said there were examples of villages targeted by militants where all the churches were burned down, but the mosques were left standing. Even if there were arrests for violent acts, Brown said there were rarely prosecutions. 
“It&#8217;s difficult for any of us to know exactly what is going on there, but the end result is that whether it&#8217;s through omission or commission, there&#8217;s still a responsibility,” he said. “The Nigerian government needs to address those things, it needs to be able to respond to those types of situations.”
Facing increasing pressure from the Trump administration, Brown said that it looks like some of the militants behind killings of Christians over the summer might be prosecuted. 
“That is a huge step forward and one that we continue to advocate for and to ask the Nigerian government to not allow these individuals to act with impunity to make sure that there&#8217;s accountability for these acts of aggression,” he said. 
With growing pressure over its handling of Christian persecution, the Nigerian government has hired lobbyists to convince the American government that it is taking appropriate action to protect Christians. 
In December 2025, the DCI Group <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/1011620908/6278-Exhibit-AB-20251218-30">registered</a> with the Justice Department, notifying it that it was assisting the Nigerian government in “communicating its actions to protect Nigerian’s Christian communities and maintaining U.S support in countering West African jihadist groups and other destabilizing elements.”
Nigeria agreed to pay the consulting firm millions to resurrect its damaged image. So far, DCI has created pages called Secure Nigeria HQ across <a href="https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6278-Informational-Materials-20260311-8.pdf">X</a>, <a href="https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6278-Informational-Materials-20260311-7.pdf">Instagram</a>, and <a href="https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6278-Informational-Materials-20260311-3.pdf">Facebook</a>, according to filings with the Justice Department. The social media profiles have not yet been made public. 
<div id="attachment_1059627" style="width: 1563px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1059627" class="size-full wp-image-1059627" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-2.52.23-PM.png" alt="" width="1553" height="1063" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-2.52.23-PM.png 1553w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-2.52.23-PM-300x205.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-2.52.23-PM-842x576.png 842w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-2.52.23-PM-768x526.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-2.52.23-PM-1536x1051.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1553px) 100vw, 1553px" />Justice Department filing.</div>
Despite the efforts of the Nigerian government, the number of religious killings and kidnappings paints a more troubled picture. Of the 3,302 religiously motivated kidnappings that took place in 2025, 2,293 took place in Nigeria, Brown told The Daily Wire. 
Brown called for Americans to remember Sharibu’s parents in their prayers. 
“Knowing that there are others around the world that have not forgotten her daughter, that have not forgotten over this period of eight years, that her daughter has likely experienced a hell on earth, and to know that there are others who remember and that are continuing to lift [her] up in prayer, there is just such incredible encouragement.”

NIGERIA-UNREST-ISLAMISTS-KIDNAPPING

Eight Years After Islamic Terrorists Raided Her School, One Christian Girl Remains In Captivity

Boko Haram

Christian Persecution

Christianity

ISIS

Islam

Nigeria

Even as he grew famous for his martial arts prowess and adrenaline-pumping movies, Chuck Norris stayed true to his Christian faith and conservative political values for decades in a deeply liberal Hollywood.
Norris, who died Thursday, was the rare Christian conservative in Hollywood. He advocated for Republican politicians, supported gun rights, pushed for the Bible to be brought back into schools, and published a regular column at conservative website WorldNetDaily.
A devout Baptist, Norris spoke frequently about his faith, crediting both famed evangelist Billy Graham and his mother for shaping his beliefs. In his 2004 book, “Against All Odds: My Story,” Norris discussed his mom’s influence on his faith.
“She loves Jesus with all of her heart and soul and made sure we understood that,” Norris <a href="https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/chuck-norris-tells-how-gods-plan-was-bigger-than-his-own/">said</a> at the time. “She influenced me spiritually and instilled in me a sense of responsibility that carried over in my later adult life. She always told me ‘God has plans for you,’ and I didn’t know what she meant. I think I do now.”
He often talked about how his faith kept him going during difficult times and wrote in his 2004 book about how he turned to God when his wife went into preterm labor.
“I had earned millions of dollars over my lifetime,” Norris wrote. “I’d been a friend to several presidents, yet all the money in my bank account couldn’t help me now. &#8230; There was only one person to whom I could turn.”
As a public figure, Norris <a href="https://www.wnd.com/2007/04/41002/">advocated</a> for the Bible to be taught in public schools, working with the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools to lobby for biblical education.
Aside from his faith, Norris became known for his patriotism, advocacy for veterans, and conservative political beliefs. He took multiple trips overseas to visit with American service members, including to troops deployed in Southwest Asia and Iraq.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1063345" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-20-at-1.58.15-PM.png" alt="" width="1288" height="839" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-20-at-1.58.15-PM.png 1288w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-20-at-1.58.15-PM-300x195.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-20-at-1.58.15-PM-884x576.png 884w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-20-at-1.58.15-PM-768x500.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1288px) 100vw, 1288px" /></div>
Norris opposed gun control, speaking at the National Rifle Association’s national meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2010. He <a href="https://reason.com/2012/02/16/chuck-norris-r-lee-ermey/">worked</a> on a publicity campaign to get supporters of the Second Amendment registered to vote.
Active in Republican politics, Norris endorsed Mike Huckabee during the Republican primary for the 2008 presidential race.
<div id="attachment_1063347" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1063347" class="size-full wp-image-1063347" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-525598128.jpg" alt="Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee listens as actor Chuck Norris speaks, during a visit the New Hampshire Veteran's Home in Tilton. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and actor Chuck Norris visit the N.H. Veteran's Home in Tilton. Norris accompanied Mike Huckabee as Huckabee campaigned in New Hampshire. | Location: Tilton, New Hampshire, USA. " width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-525598128.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-525598128-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-525598128-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-525598128-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Credit: Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images.</div>
&#8220;My plan to secure the border? Two words: &#8216;Chuck Norris,&#8217;” Huckabee said in one ad from 2007.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
&#8220;My plan to secure the border? Two words: &#8216;Chuck Norris'&#8221; &#8211; Mike Huckabee, 2007 <a href="https://t.co/aS2DrExPZR">pic.twitter.com/aS2DrExPZR</a>
— Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) <a href="https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/2035001581234426315?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Huckabee would go on to win the Iowa caucus, fueled in part by Evangelical Christian voters like Norris. In 2012, Norris would endorse Newt Gingrich’s run for office before later supporting Mitt Romney’s bid against President Barack Obama.
While his preferred candidates didn’t win in 2008 or 2012, Norris <a href="https://www.wnd.com/2025/01/2-presidents-who-were-not-supposed-to-win-and-when-i-met-each-of-them/">wrote</a> about getting to meet two of his favorite presidents, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, both of whom he said were “not supposed to win.”
Norris said that Nancy Reagan’s assistant called his office and invited him to a celebrity tennis game at the White House. He said he accepted before remembering he had never played tennis before.
“When I hung up the phone, it dawned on me that I had never played tennis in my life! So, I hired a tennis teacher to give me 10 days of intensive lessons before I had to fly to Washington, D.C.,” Norris said. “It was a lot of fun playing in the White House tennis event. I had a great time. I didn&#8217;t play so great, but at least I didn&#8217;t embarrass myself.”
Norris said that he first met Trump back in 1974 at the World Martial Arts championships. At the time, Norris was retiring and moving on to pursue acting. He said that Trump “looked at me square in the eyes and said, ‘I have a feeling you are going to do well as an actor.’ Then, he simply turned around and walked off.”
The two later bumped into each other again at another wrestling event.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Donald Trump meets Chuck Norris at Wrestlemania VII in Los Angeles, California, March 1991.
35 years ago this week.
Rest in peace, Chuck. 🙏 <a href="https://t.co/DmT4u2FpBu">pic.twitter.com/DmT4u2FpBu</a>
— johnny maga (@johnnymaga) <a href="https://twitter.com/johnnymaga/status/2035004558221386163?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Norris also supported Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and took multiple trips to Israel. Netanyahu <a href="https://x.com/netanyahu/status/2035005998792950052?s=20">called</a> Norris &#8220;a great friend of Israel and a close personal friend.&#8221;
A native of Texas, Governor Greg Abbott said that his state had &#8220;lost a legend.&#8221;
“All of Texas mourns the passing of Chuck Norris. He was not only a martial arts champion, action icon, and the one and only Walker, Texas Ranger,” Abbott said. “But he electrified generations of conservatives. Giving them a passion and voice to fight for the principles that make America the greatest nation on earth. He embodied the toughness, grit, and patriotism that makes Texas supreme. Rest in peace, Chuck.”

2017 Wizard World Comic Con Philadelphia

RIP Chuck Norris: The Man Who Never Let Hollywood Smother His Beliefs

Celebrities

Hollywood

Mike Huckabee

U.S.

I don&#8217;t pray to Jesus. I never have. I was raised in a tradition that predates Christianity by a millennium, and when I pray — which I do, regularly, seriously — I do it in Hebrew, facing Jerusalem, according to a liturgy my ancestors carried through exile and persecution for thousands of years.
And I have absolutely zero problem with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth closing a Pentagon press briefing by <a href="https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4438625/secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-air-force-gen-da/">asking the American people</a> to pray &#8220;on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ&#8221; for the safety of our troops.
Not an iota of irritation. Not a teaspoon of tumult.
The outrage is a performance — and a particularly threadbare one, conjured in response to perhaps the most banal, good-faith, unambiguously decent request a public official has made in recent memory.
When Hegseth stood at that podium and invoked Christ&#8217;s name on behalf of men and women in harm&#8217;s way, he was drawing on something Americans have done since before there was an America. George Washington is remembered kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge. FDR led the entire nation in prayer on D-Day, asking God for strength and providence as young Americans stormed the beaches at Normandy. Patton once called his chaplain and asked, point blank, for a prayer for good weather. This is the tradition Hegseth reached for — long, deep, distinctly American — the instinct of a nation that has always understood that some moments call for more than a press release.
The critics sputtering this week would have you believe that a cabinet secretary expressing his Christian faith in public is somehow a threat. To whom, exactly — to me? I am one of the people they&#8217;d presumably be defending. I am a Jew in a country that is, by any honest accounting, a majority-Christian nation with a majority-Christian culture and a majority-Christian history. I have known this every day of my life. It has never made me feel like a second-class citizen, because that is not what minority rights actually mean.
Minority rights mean the government cannot compel me to convert. They mean I cannot be prosecuted for my religion, fired from a federal job because I observe Shabbat, or told to leave the country because I don&#8217;t accept the Nicene Creed. They mean I have the full protection of the law and the full dignity of citizenship regardless of my faith. That is the promise of America, and it is a magnificent one — imperfectly but genuinely kept.
What it does not mean is that we all must pretend America has no religious character. It does not mean a Christian official must sand his faith down to a fine, inoffensive powder before speaking in public. It does not mean that mentioning Jesus at a press conference is an act of aggression against anyone.
The conflation of those two things — genuine religious persecution versus a majoritarian culture expressing itself — is doing serious damage to our civic life. Every time a Christian politician prays in public, a certain class of commentator treats it as a prelude to theocracy. This is not only dishonest. It is, as a Jew, a little insulting. It flattens my actual history — a history of pogroms and inquisitions and gas chambers — and asks me to treat a Pentagon official&#8217;s invocation of Christ as a comparable offense. I decline.
There is something else worth saying here. Every Saturday morning, in synagogues across America — certainly in mine — we recite a prayer for the safety of the United States Armed Forces. We do this whether American troops are in active combat or not. We do this because we understand, in the marrow of our tradition, that the soldiers who stand between a free society and its enemies deserve our gratitude and our supplication before God. Pete Hegseth was asking the American people to do what Jews have been doing in shul every week for generations. I recognize the impulse. I share it.
And this: if the worst my government is guilty of is asking faithful Americans to bend their knee in prayer and petition God for the safety of our troops, I will recommit myself to that government every day, and twice on Saturday. More Americans engaging in prayer can only be a positive movement for the nation.
The faith Hegseth expressed — one that asks its adherents to appeal to God on behalf of soldiers who may not come home — is not my enemy. It never has been.
America is a country where Christians pray, where Christian faith shapes public life, where references to Jesus are woven into the culture from the Pledge to the presidency. That is not a grievance. It is simply what a majority-Christian democracy looks like. A proud, observant Jew — or a Muslim, or a Buddhist, or an atheist — can accept that reality without feeling diminished by it. In fact, intellectual honesty requires it.
The capacity to hold both things at once — to cherish the legal protections that shield the minority while accepting the cultural reality of the majority — is one of the more demanding things American pluralism asks of us. It is also non-negotiable. It is the deal.
Hegseth asked people to pray for our troops. I hope they do. I will be saying my own prayers for those soldiers — in my own tradition, as I do each day.
* * *
Daniella Greenbaum Davis is an Emmy-award winning producer and communications strategist. Follow her on X: @DGreenbaum
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Secretary Of War Hegseth And Joint Chiefs Chairman General Caine Hold Briefing On Iran War

I’m Jewish. I Have No Problem With Hegseth’s Prayer.

I'm Jewish. I Have No Problem With Hegseth's Prayer.

Jewish

Opinion

Pentagon

Pete Hegseth

Prayer

U.S. Military

War Secretary Pete Hegseth called on the American public to lift up members of the United States Armed Forces — particularly those who might be in harm&#8217;s way — and received immediate criticism from CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan. But Hegseth&#8217;s request is far from unprecedented.
&#8220;Please pray for them, every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2034605561983959295?s=20">Hegseth said</a>, closing out a Thursday morning press briefing on Iran alongside other military leaders.
Brennan, anchor of CBS&#8217; &#8220;Face the Nation,&#8221; responded by <a href="https://x.com/margbrennan/status/2034604792157192668">saying</a>, &#8220;The Secretary of Defense tells the American public to pray for our troops on bended knee and invoke Jesus&#8217; name &#8230;&#8221;
Brennan also accused the administration of using &#8220;religious references as justification for war,&#8221; responding to Hegseth&#8217;s comments describing the Iranian regime&#8217;s strategy as &#8220;a violent, messianic Islamist ideology chasing some sort of apocalyptic endgame.&#8221;
But prayer on the battlefield — and calls to prayer from both military and political leaders for those engaged in the fight — is nothing new.
On June 6, 1944, then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave a radio address during which he invited the American people to <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/prayer-d-day">join him in prayer</a> for the Allied Forces as they stormed the beaches near Normandy, France. He finished that prayer by asking them to pray continuously for those men, both day and night, until their objective had been reached.
&#8220;Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity,&#8221; Roosevelt began. &#8220;Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.&#8221;
Roosevelt went on to pray for strength and courage in battle and acknowledged that many of those for whom he prayed would not ever return home.
&#8220;Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer,&#8221; he concluded. &#8220;But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.&#8221;
Months later, with Allied efforts to liberate Europe well underway, <a href="https://www.historyonthenet.com/when-patton-enlisted-the-entire-third-army-to-pray-for-fair-weather">General George S. Patton</a> stood ready to lead his Third Army into battle — but the weather was a problem. In early December of 1944, just days before Patton arrived at the besieged town of Bastogne, Belgium, the general called Monsignor James H. O’Neill, the head chaplain: &#8220;This is General Patton; do you have a good prayer for weather? We must do something about those rains if we are to win the war.&#8221;
Patton&#8217;s deputy chief of staff, Colonel Paul Harkins, described the conversation that followed:
<blockquote>
Patton: &#8220;Chaplain, I want you to publish a prayer for good weather. I’m tired of these soldiers having to fight mud and floods as well as Germans. See if we can’t get God to work on our side.”
O’Neill: “Sir, it’s going to take a pretty thick rug for that kind of praying.”
Patton: “I don’t care if it takes a flying carpet. I want the praying done.”
O’Neill: “Yes, sir. May I say, General, that it usually isn’t a customary thing among men of my profession to pray for clear weather to kill fellow men.”
Patton: “Chaplain, are you trying to teach me theology or are you the Chaplain of the Third Army? I want a prayer.”
</blockquote>
The resulting prayer was printed on cards and distributed to as many of Patton&#8217;s men as possible: &#8220;Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.&#8221;
Patton later explained his emphasis on prayer to O&#8217;Neill, saying that he believed men could work and plan down to the last detail, but there was always an unknown factor in play: &#8220;I call it God. God has his part, or margin, in everything.&#8221;
&#8220;I wish you would put out a Training Letter on this subject of Prayer to all the chaplains; write about nothing else, just the importance of prayer,&#8221; Patton directed O&#8217;Neill. &#8220;Let me see it before you send it. We’ve got to get not only the chaplains but every man in the Third Army to pray. We must ask God to stop these rains. These rains are that margin that holds defeat or victory. If we all pray, it will be like what Dr. Carrel said, it will be like plugging in on a current whose source is in Heaven. I believe that prayer completes that circuit. It is power.&#8221;
When General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President of the United States, he too raised the nation and those alongside him in its leadership in private prayer. The <a style="font-size: 16px;" href="https://wallbuilders.com/resource/dwight-d-eisenhowers-inaugural-prayer/">handwritten words he prayed</a> before his inauguration in 1953 can be found at his presidential library.
&#8220;As we stand here, at this moment, my associates in the Executive Branch of government join me in beseeching that Thou will make full and complete our dedication to the service of the people in this throng and their fellow citizens everywhere. Give us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong and allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby and by the laws of this land,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the people, regardless of station, race or calling. May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those who hold to differing political beliefs, so that all may work for the good of our beloved country and for Thy glory. Amen.&#8221;
One of the most famous examples of such prayer might be as <a href="https://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/washington/prayer.html?srsltid=AfmBOoq3Fz4IWMbmDeWBfTzsQIhhby64psFLCaVW9wecIYn3p2rJrnsJ#google_vignette">much myth</a> as historical fact, but the story of then-General George Washington kneeling to pray at Valley Forge has nonetheless persisted as well. The story has several versions throughout history — none of which have ever been definitively confirmed or debunked — all suggesting that Washington knelt alone to pray for his beleaguered troops during the brutal winter as they camped just outside of Philadelphia. Different accounts claim that either the Marquis de Lafayette or a local resident happened upon the general in prayer, but the overall takeaway is the same: multiple accounts agree that Washington was known to leave the camp and spend time in solitude, whether that time was used for prayer or simply quiet reflection.

Hegseth Confirmation Hearing TW

Left Targets Hegseth For Asking Americans To Pray — The History Lesson They’re Ignoring

CBS News

Donald Trump

Dwight D. Eisenhower

George Patton

Iran

Media

Military

Politics

James Talarico is having a moment. The Texas state representative and Democratic Senate candidate has gone viral more times than most politicians manage to in a full career, partly because he’s young and articulate, and partly because he does something unusual for a Democrat: he talks about Jesus. A lot. 
He quotes Scripture on the House floor. Joe Rogan told him to run for president. The political media has decided Talarico represents something new: a Democrat who can finally speak Christian and counter their secular reputation.
I want to take that claim seriously because I think it deserves a serious answer. And the serious answer is: no, he doesn’t.
James Talarico simply stands for an old form of religious progressivism that is more interested in achieving progressive outcomes than holding sincerely to the Christian faith.
The question isn’t whether Talarico is personally sincere. I have no reason to doubt that he is. The question is whether his Christianity is doing any actual work in his politics and whether it functions as a theological foundation or is merely a rhetorical costume. When you look closely, the answer is pretty clearly the latter — Talarico’s Christianity is a Trojan horse with a progressive interior and a Christian exterior.
There is no progressive policy that Talarico’s Christianity hasn’t made peace with. Talarico supports abortion access, transgender ideology, expansive redistribution, and a vision of government robust enough to accomplish the full progressive policy agenda. He opposes the Ten Commandments in public schools and has described God as “nonbinary.” He attends a PCUSA church whose congregants celebrate being free from “<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/25/texas-senate-democratic-primary-crockett-talarico-christianity-faith-religion/">dusty old creeds and dogma</a>.” Now, here’s what’s interesting: you could arrive at every single one of those positions through standard secular progressive reasoning: appeals to autonomy, identity, equity, and the expansion of the administrative state. You don’t need the Bible to get there. You don’t need the atoning work of Jesus. Christianity is merely decorative. It’s a rhetorical add-on bolted onto a political program that was already fully assembled before Scripture even entered the room.
Here is what I mean when I say progressive Christianity wears Christianity as a skin suit. The framework is secular progressivism: identity politics, abortion, sexual revolutionary politics, and redistributionist economics. Christian language gets stitched over the top of it to make the whole thing look familiar to voters who grew up in church. It is smarmy and syrupy in its appeals to the “brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.” But the theological content has been hollowed out and replaced. What remains is a set of emotional associations strangely redolent with progressivism (funny how that happens, isn’t it?), and it goes something like this: Jesus loved people, therefore expand Medicaid; the prophets cared for the poor, therefore raise the marginal tax rate; love your neighbor, therefore no borders. The assertions don’t hold up when the Bible is used responsibly, but they feel right to people who want the warmth and consolation of faith without the theological demands that counter progressive orthodoxy.
But oddly, none of this actually works in the long run for the people who employ it. Liberals don’t need Christianity to reach the conclusions Talarico is reaching. They already have a fully operational secular moral vocabulary — rights, autonomy, justice, and equity — that gets them to the same place. So why bother with the theological window dressing? The answer is purely electoral. Democrats have been hemorrhaging religious voters for a generation, and they’re looking for a way to stop the bleeding. Talarico is the proposed solution.
But the solution has a structural problem, and sociology is rather clear about it. Liberal theological commitments corrode religious belief across generations. This isn’t a conservative talking point; it’s one of the better-documented findings in the sociology of religion. Churches that accommodate the surrounding culture’s moral assumptions tend to empty out within two or three generations. The children of progressive Christians disproportionately become religiously unaffiliated. Why? Because if Christianity is just a more emotional version of what MSNBC already told you, you don’t need to get up on Sunday morning to hear it. You do not have to tithe; you do not have to bear social scorn for holding to supposedly outmoded dogmas “on the wrong side of history.” 
Theological substance — creation, fall, redemption, resurrection, judgment, human dignity, sexual ethics, and the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ — is precisely what makes Christianity worth believing. Strip that away in the name of openness, and you’ve kept the brand while destroying the product. That Talarico is having a moment should surprise no one. Previous generations of religious progressives had their moment, too, and in time, it all ends the same way: churches mutating into art museums and social justice clubs.
What Talarico and the progressive Christian project are doing is trying to make the Democratic Party look religion-friendly while simultaneously denying religion its actual substance. This betrays what Christianity really is by transforming it into progressive sentiment. Orthodox Christians won’t be persuaded, because they can see the theology has been replaced. Secular progressives don’t need Christianity anyway, so the whole performance ends up as a media-fueled vanity project to bolster progressive politics.
Talarico may mean well. But Christianity isn’t a political tool. It’s a truth claim about reality at odds with the progressivism of his “Christianity.”
* * *
Andrew T. Walker serves as Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. You can follow him on X: @AndrewTWalker.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Texas Senate Candidate James Talarico Holds Campaign Rally In Houston On Eve Of Primary Election

Christianity As A Costume: What James Talarico Reveals About Progressive Religion

Democrats

James Talarico

Leftists

Progressivism

Transgender

A Lutheran minister looking for a promotion to Congress once claimed that challenges to the traditional definitions of men and women are “very threatening” to white men and downplayed concerns about the dangers of transgender ideology for women. 
Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democrat candidate for Iowa&#8217;s 3rd Congressional District, claimed that Evangelical Christians oppose “GLBTQ” ideology not because of theology, but racial angst, according to an October 2023 speech uncovered by The Daily Wire. Trone Garriott, a former state senator and minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, hopes to unseat incumbent Republican Rep. Zach Nunn.
During her <a href="https://www.iaumc.org/newsdetail/sen-rev-sarah-throne-garrett-encourages-laity-to-confront-christian-nationalism-18119210">speech</a> on &#8220;Christian Nationalism&#8221; at Ames First United Methodist Church, Trone Garriott argued that Evangelical Christians needed “threats” to react against to maintain their identity. 
“A new threat that we see today is the GLBTQ movement,” she said. “It&#8217;s a challenging of that status quo, of the way that things have been, of who&#8217;s a man and who&#8217;s woman and how relationships are. It&#8217;s very threatening to the idea of the white male, powerful figure, because it muddies the waters and makes things ambiguous and confusing.”
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Credit: Iowa Conference United Methodist Church
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“We see all kinds of responses happening in legislation and in community conflicts … a lot more emphasis on, you know, really funding and supporting the separation, the private schools, the parents&#8217; rights,&#8221; she said. &#8220;And within that, the parents&#8217; rights piece is used to enact book bans, sports bans about who can play and who can compete,” she said. 
Trone Garriott then suggested that laws to keep males out of female sports or protect kids from sexually explicit books were motivated by a misguided belief that “white men” are “responsible” for protecting women. 
“It&#8217;s really couched in the language of there&#8217;s a threat against women and white men are responsible to protect women from threats. So a lot of the legislation is about we&#8217;re going to protect these feminine, fragile, weak women and girls from a threat to their bodies, their persons, their identity in this way.”
During her time in the State Senate, Trone Garriott <a href="https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/SJNL/20220302_SJNL.pdf#page=4">voted against</a> a bill to keep boys out of girls’ sports and <a href="https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/SJNL/20230307_SJNL.pdf#page=26">opposed</a> a bill shielding children from transgender procedures. 
Republican spokesman Zach Kraft told The Daily Wire that Trone Garriott’s positions were out of step with Iowans. 
&#8220;Sarah Trone Garriott is a preacher of the woke gospel,” he said. “It is sickening to see her twist Christianity as a justification to force sex changes on young children. That may have been popular with her friends at Harvard, but Iowa voters will reject this radical lunatic.&#8221; 
Trone Garriott spent much of her speech attacking “white Christian men” and “white evangelical leaders,” an aggressive strategy in a state where white evangelicals compose a major voting bloc. She even attacked famed evangelist Billy Graham for having an “attractive, strong, macho guy persona.” 
She also challenged traditional Evangelical Christian understandings of Jesus Christ and the Bible. Her denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is much more liberal than its counterpart, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. 
 “There&#8217;s a lot of different ways to think about what Christ did on the cross,” she said during the speech. “There&#8217;s not just one way. It makes us wonder, well, who is this Christ?”
Trone Garriott said the Evangelical understanding of the Gospel was tainted by the “white patriarchy.” 
“What we see more and more is that the good news that a specific variety of Christianity is professing in the world is white patriarchy,” she said. “So white masculine power, violence, dominance, over and against.”
She also downplayed biblical writings of the Apostle Paul, calling  him a “great guy and all” but “a product of his time.”

MixCollage-13-Mar-2026-01-34-PM-4592

WATCH: Democrat Candidate Says Christians Who Oppose Trans Ideology Are Racist

2026 Midterms

Democrat

Racism

Wokeness

A recurring theme throughout Scripture is that those who are not following the Lord, who are, in fact, in open rebellion against him, will nevertheless claim to be his standard bearers in the hopes of harnessing his power for their cause.
We see it in 1 Samuel 4-5 when disobedient Israel decides to carry the Ark of the Covenant into battle, believing its presence will guarantee their victory.
We see it in Jeremiah 7 when the Israelites are sure that the Lord is on their side, despite their idol worship, because they possess the temple.
We see it in Acts 19 when seven men who know nothing of Christ try to cast out demons in his name and are left naked, bloody, and fleeing for their lives.
And we see it today in the Senate candidacy of James Talarico, the Democrats’ great white hope for convincing Texas voters that they, too, are representing Jesus in the public square.
The significant electoral advantage Republicans enjoy with Christians — colloquially known as the “God Gap” — has been an acknowledged problem for the Left since the 1990s. But after years of being broadly antagonistic toward faith, including <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/democrats-shift-language-on-israel-remove-god-given-from-platform" target="_blank" rel="noopener">removing</a> <a href="https://cbn.com/news/politics/exclusive-democratic-convention-meetings-omit-under-god-pledge-allegiance" target="_blank" rel="noopener">references</a> to God from their party platform and from the Pledge of Allegiance during caucus meetings, Democrats are suddenly realizing they may find more success if they don’t alienate every voter who ever darkened the door of a church.
To some degree, the most successful Democrats have always done this. Bill Clinton regularly trotted out his born-again bona fides. Barack Obama, too, referenced his church membership to allay concerns that he was hostile toward religion. And, of course, black candidates like Raphael Warnock not only use the language of faith to win votes, they use actual pulpits in Sunday services.
But Talarico, a member of the liberal mainline Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is doing something different. And it has the legacy media cheering.
Vox <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20260303235619/https:/www.vox.com/politics/480894/james-talarico-jasmine-crockett-faith-love-healing-texas-voters-senate-primary-democratic-religion-left" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a> that he is “reclaim[ing] Christianity from the Right” by teaching Democrats a “better way to talk about faith.” MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) <a href="https://www.ms.now/opinion/james-talarico-wins-senate-democratic-primary-christian-faith" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says</a> that his “unapologetic embrace of his Christian faith sets him apart from other rising Democratic stars.” And the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/us/politics/talarico-christian-religion-texas-senate.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">crows</a> that he “poses a new kind of threat to Republicans” through his “matter-of-fact critique of how faith has come to be expressed in the American church.”
What they mean by all of this is that Talarico is doing more than the time-honored tactic of simply claiming Christian identity to woo faith-friendly voters. He’s out on the campaign trail teaching doctrine. False doctrine.
In one heavily political sermon, Talarico <a href="https://x.com/Protestia/status/2029269294362628217?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">appealed to</a> a heretical Gnostic text, the Gospel of Thomas, to claim that Jesus is a “<a href="https://x.com/Protestia/status/2029264646167728143?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">radical feminist</a>” and Christianity is a “feminist religion.” He <a href="https://www.facebook.com/HerzogFoundation/videos/james-talarico-is-a-democratic-member-of-the-texas-house-of-representatives-who-/1259722596098165/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has described</a> God as &#8220;nonbinary” to explain his support for providing transgender surgeries and puberty blockers to children. On the Joe Rogan Experience, he cited Luke 1, in which the Angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will conceive the Messiah, to defend policy proposals like up-to-birth abortion, infanticide for babies who survive abortion, and opening abortion clinics in federal buildings.
&#8220;I say all this in the context of abortion,” Talarico <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jOGPvMftb8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Rogan</a>, “because before God comes over Mary, and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary’s consent … so to me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create.”
He added that Genesis 2:7 (“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”) — means that &#8220;life starts when you take your first breath.”
For someone who claims the mantle of Christ for his candidacy, Talarico shows remarkably little loyalty to him. On Ezra Klein, he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa6fiO2EgJ4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">endorsed universalism</a>, saying, “I believe Christianity points to the truth. I also think other religions of love point to the same truth. I think of different religious traditions as different languages.” In fact, Talarico doesn’t seem to view Jesus as a savior at all. During his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told the audience</a> one need not even be a Christian to get into Heaven.
&#8220;Jesus in Matthew 25 tells us exactly how you and I are going to be saved,” he said. “By feeding the hungry, by healing the sick &#8230; Nothing about going to church &#8230; nothing about even being a Christian.&#8221;
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Scripture will instantly spot how grossly Talarico distorts God’s word. The problem is, in a country where <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/survey-find-major-gaps-in-americans-religious-knowledge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fewer than half</a> of Americans can identify the four gospels, most don’t have that passing familiarity and can be easily duped.
Whether it be John Cornyn or Ken Paxton, Talarico’s Republican opponent in this race will certainly try to poke holes in his religious assertions, as will conservative pundits. But if it is only other politicos warning against him, the impression onlookers will very likely have is that these are simply political disagreements. That would be disastrous for the spiritual education of a public <a href="https://www.barna.com/research/belief-in-jesus-rises/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">increasingly interested</a> in Christianity. Because it is not political arguments he is making, but theological ones. And that is why the most public rebukes of Talarico must come from pastors.
The Bible gives clear commands in passages like Titus 1:9-11, Ephesians 5:11, and Jude 3 that shepherds must oppose false teachers and expose their errors to protect the flock. It also offers plenty of examples to follow.
From Jeremiah publicly condemning the false prophet Hananiah in the temple courtyard for making the people “trust in a lie,” to the Apostle Paul sarcastically calling out the Judaizers, to Jesus himself ferociously reproving the Pharisees, Scripture gives us picture after picture of watchmen on the walls sounding the alarm against false teaching. The need for that alarm is no less just because the false teaching happens to occur in the context of an election.
Many high-profile conservative pastors have shown little reticence in calling out President Donald Trump for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW9MCulXr1w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">misusing Scripture</a> on occasion, and they are right to do so. They are often less eager to “punch left” for fear of being seen as too political.
Yet the Left’s most sacredly held social positions — abortion on demand, sexual perversion as a protected identity — are in direct conflict with a text that tells us God knew us in the womb and calls it an abomination for a man to pretend to be a woman. It is not that the American church is becoming too political; it is that our policies have become so immoral that the church cannot stay silent.
Left-wing actors twisting Scripture out of all recognition to give spiritual legitimacy to their positions is a growing problem that shepherds will have to contend with in order to faithfully discharge their duties, no matter how Talarico’s race turns out.
Just last month, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQIlDy_dBgI" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that he vetoed a bill to protect children from transgender procedures because he’s a Christian and he’s following Christ’s command to love his neighbor. In July, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RepJeffries/videos/the-scripture-teaches-us-to-care-for-the-poor-the-sick-and-the-afflicted-%EF%B8%8F-matth/710975971700116/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">invoked</a> Matthew 25 in a floor speech opposing the budget bill.
Even the agitators who invaded Cities Church in St. Paul, profanely screaming in the faces of crying children about their white privilege, claimed they were following the model of Christ in turning over tables in the temple.
Before his death last year, John MacArthur, one of the foremost preachers of our era, did not hesitate to confront California Governor Gavin Newsom when he misused Scripture to defend his policies. In 2022, when Newsom began rolling out billboards that cited Matthew 25 to promote abortion, MacArthur issued an <a href="https://www.gty.org/blogs/B220928/an-open-letter-to-governor-newsom" target="_blank" rel="noopener">open letter</a>:
<blockquote>Almighty God says in His Word, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34). Scripture also teaches that it is the chief duty of any civic leader to reward those who do well and to punish evildoers (Romans 13:1–7). You have not only failed in that responsibility; you routinely turn it on its head, rewarding evildoers and punishing the righteous…
In mid-September, you revealed to the entire nation how thoroughly rebellious against God you are when you sponsored billboards across America promoting the slaughter of children, whom He creates in the womb (Psalm 139:13–16; Isaiah 45:9–12). You further compounded the wickedness of that murderous campaign with a reprehensible act of gross blasphemy, quoting the very words of Jesus from Mark 12:31 as if you could somehow twist His meaning and arrogate His name in favor of butchering unborn infants. You used the name and the words of Christ to promote the credo of Molech (Leviticus 20:1–5). It would be hard to imagine a greater sacrilege.</blockquote>
Charles Spurgeon didn’t hesitate either.
In the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were making inroads by selling the British working class on their theories. Though these were in the political realm, they crossed over into the religious. Thus Spurgeon, the most famous preacher of that era, felt duty-bound to address them, warning that embracing socialism would leave “all society shattered, and men wandering like monster icebergs on the sea, dashing against each other, and being at last utterly destroyed.” He then added a point, highlighting that the religious and the political often overlap: “Those who love the Church of God feel heavy at heart because the teachers of the people cause them to err. Even from a national point of view, men of foresight see cause for grave concern.”
Much more than any other Western nation, America is still broadly Christian, if not always in individual devotion, at least in cultural allegiance. The silver lining of moments like this, when false doctrine is being spread from such high places, is that it offers preachers of the truth an opportunity to gain new hearers.
I cannot remember a time when Christianity was being discussed and debated so broadly. The problem is, too much of that talk is not profitable and requires a sound teacher to offer a rebuttal. And pastors should be jealous of their territory, over which Caesar holds no authority or intimidation. If the wolf is a senator rather than a seminarian, you still confront and expel the wolf.
If you don’t, don’t be surprised when it devours a few of your sheep.

Texas State Representative Talarico Holds Primary Election Night Event

Pastors Have A Duty To Rebuke James Talarico

Churches

Texas

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1931-iran-war-fallout-two-islamic-terror-attacks-in-one-day?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
For years, American elites have told us a simple story about religion and reason: religious people are the crazy ones.
They are irrational, superstitious, emotionally needy, clinging to old myths in an age of science and sophistication. The serious people, we are told, are the secular people. The smart people have moved on. The enlightened people know better. Faith is for the weak, the backward, the unthinking. Religion is a crutch. Orthodoxy is neurosis. Church is for the people who cannot handle reality.
It is one of the most enduring prejudices in modern public life. And it is one of the most revealing.
Because when you look at the actual data, the picture is not merely more complicated than the stereotype. It is, in a very important way, the opposite of the stereotype.
According to <a href="https://x.com/howertonjosh/status/2032488566933131385">survey data</a> from the Pew American Trends Panel, the least crazy people in the country are conservative Christians who go to church weekly. The craziest people in the country are liberals who do not go to church. That is not the story we have been told for the last hundred years. It is certainly not the story we were told during the New Atheist moment, when public intellectuals and their admirers assured us that religion was the great enemy of reason, sanity, and civilization.
But the numbers point in another direction. Asked whether a doctor or health care provider had ever told them they had a mental health condition, the highest rates came from liberals with no religious attendance. The lowest rates came from conservatives who attended weekly religious services. One can quibble around the edges. One can offer caveats, and there are caveats. But one cannot escape the central fact: the people most committed to regular religious practice appear, by this measure, to be the least crazy, and the people most detached from religion appear to be the most crazy.
That does not prove every theological claim. It does not mean every churchgoer is mentally well or every secular person is mentally unwell. It does not justify cruelty toward people who struggle. But it does demolish a civilizational assumption that has shaped elite culture for generations.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1931-iran-war-fallout-two-islamic-terror-attacks-in-one-day?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1054531" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
What we were told, over and over again, is that religious people are crazy. They are illogical. They are irrational. They believe in “sky daddy” and other cartoon versions of religion invented by people who have no intention of grappling with what believers actually believe. The secularists do not want to deal with the substance of faith, because that would require argument. It is easier to sneer. Easier to reduce millennia of theology, metaphysics, and moral reasoning to a punchline. Easier to dismiss the churchgoing neighbor as simple-minded than to answer him.
And yet the data say the opposite. The religious people are the sanest people. The irreligious people are the craziest people.
That reversal matters for reasons beyond partisanship. It suggests that faith and reason do not stand in opposition after all. In fact, the Christian tradition has always insisted on precisely the opposite. The Gospel of Saint John begins not with sentimentality, not with anti-rational emotionalism, but with a profound metaphysical claim: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word, the Logos, is not merely speech. It is divine logic, divine reason, the intelligible order of reality itself.
That is why Christianity, properly understood, has never been a rebellion against reason. It has been a fulfillment of reason. Faith and reason go together. God is not the negation of logic. God is the source of logic. Orthodoxy is not a retreat from reality, it is an attempt to live in right relation to reality.
And perhaps that helps explain why the most orthodox believers are often the least crazy. A serious religious life imposes moral structure. It disciplines desire. It situates suffering within a larger frame of meaning. It teaches that man is not the measure of all things and that appetite is not destiny. It offers ritual, continuity, accountability, community, repentance, forgiveness, obligation, inheritance, transcendence. In a lonely, fragmented, hyper-individualistic culture, those are not small things. They are stabilizing things.
By contrast, a secular culture that severs itself from transcendence does not become neutral. It does not become merely rational. It often becomes disordered. If there is no higher truth, then the self becomes sovereign. If the self becomes sovereign, then every desire demands validation. If every desire demands validation, then limits feel like oppression. And if there are no limits, no sacred order, no given nature, no created purpose, then the person is left not liberated but untethered.
That is not sanity. That is confusion with better branding.
None of this means Christians should gloat. It is fine to dunk on the libs a little, but only if it is a loving dunk, one intended to bring them over rather than merely humiliate them. The deeper point here is not mockery. It is vindication. A great many people fell away from religion because they thought religion was for stupid people, for weak people, for crazy people. They assumed smart people had outgrown God. They assumed sanity belonged to the secular.
That just is not true.
Actually, the opposite appears to be true. The people most rooted in orthodox belief and weekly worship are often the least crazy people in the country. And the people who have spent decades mocking them from the commanding heights of culture are, by this measure at least, faring much worse.
The choir does need preaching sometimes. But this argument is not only for the choir. It is for the many people who have absorbed the modern prejudice against religion without ever seriously examining it. It is for those who have been told that faith is irrational, that church is for fools, that belief is a form of neurosis. The data do not merely complicate that prejudice. They shatter it.
Maybe the real madness is not believing in God. Maybe the real madness is building a culture on the assumption that man can remain sane after cutting himself off from truth, order, and the divine logic of the universe.

People praying and singing inside St. Paul Cathedral

Not The Crazy Ones: Why Churchgoing Is A Mark Of Sanity

Atheism

Catholic Church

Liberals

Michael Knowles

Religion

Secularism

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1930-president-trump-endorses-jake-paul">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
The New York Post published an article yesterday based on a new survey that&#8217;s just come out.
The headline reads:
<blockquote>‘Hotwifing’ — the sexy new couples trend that’s ‘strengthening’ marriages across the country</blockquote>
Now, to be clear, I don&#8217;t encourage you to read the article or the survey, but this is part of a broader cultural trend, a broader cultural normalization of polyamory, of “consensual non-monogamy.” That&#8217;s the new gross clinical jargon they use to sanitize their own perversions.
From the article:
<blockquote>Could ‘hotwifing’ save your marriage? 71% of kinky couples say loaning their wives out for that thing that only husbands and wives are supposed to do together strengthened their union.</blockquote>
Seventy-one percent. The overwhelming majority of these &#8220;kinky couples&#8221; say it strengthened their union. In reality, these are people whose unions are probably not all that strong to begin with. But they say — and these are people who are obviously very, very confused about a lot of things — that pimping out their beloved actually strengthened their union.
Color me a little bit skeptical.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Could &#8216;hotwifing&#8217; save your marriage? 71% of kinky couples say loaning their wives out for sex &#8216;strengthened&#8217; their union <a href="https://t.co/U2cynXcIlF">https://t.co/U2cynXcIlF</a> <a href="https://t.co/aA51Nem0Eu">pic.twitter.com/aA51Nem0Eu</a>
— New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/2031777390880309504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In any case, you hear a lot about this right now. When some people read this, they react in the old fuddy-duddy way: “Geez, these kids today. This is crazy. Can you believe what they&#8217;re doing now? In the olden days an inch of stocking was looked at as something shocking, but now anything goes.”
That&#8217;s the wrong approach. Because this is not novel. This is not an innovation. There&#8217;s nothing new about this. This is just paganism.
Our culture — the West, sometimes we describe our nation as a Christian nation — but even what we call the West is really a pale shadow of what we used to call Christendom, which was Christian civilization that thrived from roughly the age of Constantine up through the Protestant Revolution, which then starts to crack it up a little bit. But still you had a substantially Christian civilization, albeit amid wars of religion.
Then with the Peace of Westphalia and the Enlightenment, people tried to preserve Christianity but without taking religion all that seriously. You get into modernity and you&#8217;re really living on the fumes of Christendom. Soon enough that gives way to overt paganism.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1930-president-trump-endorses-jake-paul"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1054531" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" data-wp-editing="1" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Here’s what Tertullian, an early Christian writer and Father of the Church, has to say about how pagans versus Christians regarded sex. 
A great line from Tertullian in his &#8220;Apology&#8221;:
<blockquote>All things are common among us, except our wives. We give up our community where it is practiced alone by others who not only take possession of the wives of their friends but most tolerantly also accommodate their friends with theirs.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s a great observation — almost Chestertonian millennia earlier. He says: we Christians are different from the pagans in that we share everything except our wives, and the pagans share nothing with each other except their wives. They won’t share their money, they won’t share their food, they won’t share their resources, they might not share their time — but they will share their wives.
But we Christians are the opposite. We&#8217;ll give anything to each other except for our wives.
Saint Jerome has a famous line in his commentary on Hosea:
<blockquote>Rarely does a heretic love chastity.</blockquote>
Every so often there is a heresy that promotes chastity, but generally speaking you notice — especially in modern religion, with wacky pastors of weird breakaway schismatic churches — they’re always promoting strange sexual practices. That’s the one common thread among all the weird heretical forms of Christianity today.
Rarely does a heretic love chastity.
What this new study reveals — the one meant to shock us with a New York Post headline, “Can you believe 71% of these kinky couples say it’s actually great for their marriages when they cheat on each other?” — is not a new discovery about the present. It reveals how ignorant we are of the past.
This is what paganism was always like.
It&#8217;s amusing when people think they&#8217;ve discovered something new. These people promoting orgies and decadence and bacchanalia think they&#8217;ve discovered freedom. “In the old days people were uptight, but now we’re free. We have free love, we’re doing drugs, we’re polyamorous.”
It makes you think: wow, no one has ever thought of that before — doing drugs and behaving like degenerates. What innovators you are.
It just reveals how little we understand the past. We pretend we understand ancient paganism. We pretend we understand what Christianity replaced. We really don’t.
A great example of this is in the Bible. In Exodus, the Israelites leave Egypt, and Moses goes up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. Five seconds later, the Israelites abandon the God who led them out of Egypt and start worshiping a golden calf.
Moses comes down and essentially says: what are you doing? Stop worshiping this golden calf.
When people imagine that scene, they think the Israelites were just bowing down saying, “Oh golden calf, we worship you.” But that’s not really what was happening.
They were actually doing the same stuff modern pagans do. They were indulging in food and drink, engaging in all kinds of strange sexual behavior, revelry, and excess.
It’s the same pattern.
There is nothing new under the sun.
So when we come across these “new discoveries” about relationships and marriage and free love, what we’re really doing — wittingly or unwittingly — is rejecting Christianity, reverting to a kind of base, degraded paganism, and pretending that we’ve discovered some new revelation.
But it’s the opposite of a new revelation.
It’s the rejection of revelation.

Couple At A Restaurant Meal

‘Hotwifing’ Is Being Sold As A Marriage Booster — Yes, Really

Bible

Marriage

Paganism

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1929-iran-the-least-popular-war-ever-launched?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
Self-help guru Tim Ferriss, one of the biggest names in the modern “optimize your life” universe, has apparently just arrived at a conclusion I’ve been yelling about for years: self-help is very, very bad for you. Self-help is self-harm.
Now, I have to admit something up front: I don’t know much about Tim Ferriss. I’ve heard the name before. But I avoid all self-help. It should be clear to you by now that I don’t like self-help literature. It smells like a scam from 100 miles away.
I want to improve myself, yes. I want to improve. But the self-help stuff? No. 
When I was a teenager, I read a little bit of it like &#8220;The 48 Laws of Power&#8221; by Robert Greene. Or the really famous one by Dale Carnegie, &#8220;How to Win Friends and Influence People.&#8221; That’s the classic of the self-help category.
And, as I remember it, all it boils down to this: be nice to people and remember their names. 
That’s it. I just saved you ten bucks on Amazon. 
And I guess that’s good advice.
But a lot of the self-help stuff is pretty noxious. I’ve thought this for years. And apparently Tim Ferriss agrees — at least partially.
<h3>Ferriss’ “Road To Damascus” Moment</h3>
Ferriss seems to have had a Road to Damascus moment — not necessarily with a religious conversion, but with a recognition that what he’s been doing might be wrong.
According to an article in <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/09/tim-ferriss-self-help-may-be-harming-people/">The Telegraph</a> titled, “The self-help guru who decided he might be doing more harm than good,” Ferriss is confronting his most profound insight yet in his latest blog post, “The Self-Help Trap.” The piece is about 3,000 words. It’s got all the usual &#8220;optimization&#8221; language — optimizing is one of the words they all use.
Ferriss, now 48, asks whether his own industry might, with some important caveats, be making desperate people worse rather than better.
And then he says, quote:
<blockquote>“The older I get, the more I think that self-help can be a trap. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I say this after around 20 years of writing self-help, and a lifetime of consuming it &#8230; What if self-help itself is actually creating or amplifying unhappiness?”</blockquote>
Ferriss says modern self-help contains a &#8220;built-in flaw: to continually improve yourself, you must continually locate the ways you are broken.&#8221;
He gets so close. I love so much of what he’s saying — and then he totally misses the point. The point just goes right over his head. But he gets very close, and so I give him credit for the introspection.
Some people are reading this cynically: is he just doing a new kind of self-help? Has Self-help ruined your life? Read my new book: &#8220;Ten Easy Steps to Get Over Self-Help,&#8221; by Tim Ferriss! 
No. That&#8217;s not what he&#8217;s doing here. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think maybe he’s being sincere. He’s in the middle of his life’s journey, and he’s had this realization.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1929-iran-the-least-popular-war-ever-launched?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1054531" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
<h3>Self-Help Is A Trap And You Can See It In The People Who Buy It</h3>
Ferriss says, “I think self-help can be a trap.” That’s true.
The people who are most obsessed with self-help, in my experience, are the most messed up, depressed people.
And you might say, well, yeah — they’re messed up. They’re trying to get help.
Well, it ain’t working.
It’s like your friend or relative who’s been going to the therapist — usually just means drug dealer, but, you know, the psychiatrist — for 30 years. They never get any better. And maybe they get more dope, but they don’t ever get any better. 
And you say, hey, have you thought about trying something different?
And they say, oh, I couldn’t, I’m so messed up—could you imagine if I lost my psychiatrist?
Hold on. Maybe you’re going that backwards. Maybe your psychiatrist is actually not helping but even compounding the problem.
I think that’s what happens with self-help, but not for the reason Tim Ferriss gives.
<h3>The Problem Isn’t “Finding What’s Broken.” It’s Denying What’s Broken.</h3>
Ferriss says self-help has this in-built flaw: to continually improve yourself, you must continually look at the ways you are broken.
That’s not the problem.
You know what else impels you to continually reflect on the ways in which you’re broken? Christianity does that, when you examine your conscience, and especially when you go and confess your sins to a priest. You have to sit down and think of the number and kind of all the ways that you are broken.
The problem with self-help is that it doesn’t do that.
The whole premise of self-help, actually, is a denial of the fundamental ways in which we are broken, because self-help, at its root, I think, denies original sin.
The whole point is that you really can help yourself. And not just help yourself a little bit. You can save yourself. You can optimize your life.
And ultimately you can’t.
You can exercise. You can work-out. You can practice certain habits of virtue. But ultimately, you can’t save yourself.
This is what the Church formally declared when it condemned the heresy of Pelagius. The problem with self-help is it misses out on the best way you can help yourself, which is looking to Someone beyond yourself.
Not looking to Tim Ferriss. Not looking to Dale Carnegie. Not looking to whatever other guru is trending on the internet this week. But looking to Someone who is greater than you — who is so far beyond humanity and yet mysteriously takes on humanity, and so understands us intimately. Not only who created us, but who has lived as one of us — who is like us in all respects, except sin.
That’s what it’s about.
<h3>A Christian Offshoot With All The Fun Parts And None Of The Obligations</h3>
Just as liberalism is a perversion — it’s kind of a spin-off of Christianity that tries to keep all the fun parts of Christianity without any of the obligations and the duties and the limits — this is the same thing with self-help.
The self-help literature I’ve read, some of it, it spins out of Christianity, and it takes away all the limits and all the essential stuff. It takes away the parts that acknowledge that not only are you broken, but you’re so broken that there is essentially nothing you can do without grace.
So, if you want to read some self-help literature, a good writer on this would be Saint Thomas Aquinas, who points out that without grace, every human being will fall into mortal sin. And even if you’re in a state of grace, you’ll still fall into venial sin.
That’s how broken we are.
<h3>The Ferriss Moment We Should All Root For</h3>
Ferriss is close. He’s very close.
We’ve got to help Tim Ferriss be great.
Wouldn’t it be great if one of the big proponents of self-help actually turned people on to real help?
Because the trap isn’t noticing your flaws. The trap is believing you can fix the deepest ones alone — believing that the answer is always inside you, always one more habit, one more hack, one more optimization away.
And that’s not liberation.
That’s just a nicer-looking cage.

OMR Festival 2024 In Hamburg

Tim Ferriss Says Self-Help Is A Trap. He’s Right — But For The Wrong Reason.

Books

Psychology

Social Issues

A peculiar ritual has emerged on Sunday afternoons in online evangelical discourse. After the benediction, after the coffee, after lunch, some settle in to read David French at The New York Times. He is, after all, a self-proclaimed evangelical and political conservative (this, despite using his platform to repeatedly hector evangelicals for all their supposed shortcomings, namely, voting overwhelmingly for Donald Trump).
This past Sunday, French turned his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/opinion/james-talarico-christian-democrat-texas-primary.html">column</a> into something of a paean to James Talarico, the freshly minted Texas Democratic Senate nominee who has parlayed his Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary enrollment into a national brand. French called Talarico a “Christian X-ray” and reframed the country’s primary political divide not as Left versus Right but as decent versus indecent. The implication, apparently, is that a smiling seminarian who talks about love, who denies essential doctrines of the Christian faith, and who supports unfettered access to abortion and affirms gender ideology represents the decent side in opposition to “MAGA Christianity” that trades virtue for cruelty. In truth, Talarico is a walking caricature of the very worst elements of progressive Christianity, coupled with his Boy Scoutish looks and deep Southern folksiness.
To be fair to French, he does note his disagreements with Talarico. That caveat deserves acknowledgment. But a caveat buried in a column is not a serious engagement. It is a cover for a bait-and-switch that occurs later in the column. While espousing heresy is a grave error for Talarico, only slightly less severe is papering over doctrinal errors and legitimizing them on the pages of The New York Times, as French has done.
And French gets something else right before we can understand where he goes wrong. French has consistently and correctly argued that too many Christians have, at times, embraced a pragmatic ethic when evaluating Donald Trump. That is a real problem, and character defenses that are, in fact, indefensible can cheapen Christian witness. Paul’s instruction to Timothy is not optional: “Watch your life and doctrine closely” (1 Tim. 4:16). But in my estimate, I do not regard Donald Trump as a Christian (even while I maintain the importance of upholding good character for all politicians). The framing French relies upon is more acutely applied to Talarico than to Donald Trump. Doctrine and character go hand in glove. The Christian moral tradition has never treated them as divisible, even as we understand that on-the-ground politicians do not always neatly align with Christian desires. But what French is doing is far worse than the hypocrisy he accuses “MAGA Christians” of; he’s now embarking on a final phase of his transformation by downplaying doctrine and elevating practice, which is a historic trajectory seen in the journey toward theological progressivism.
And here is the difficulty. French is making, in his treatment of Talarico, the precise error he has spent years denouncing, an error that malforms Christianity as a packaged whole. He is accepting the appeal of a charming political figure while setting aside the doctrinal catastrophe underneath. He is doing with progressive Christianity exactly what he accuses MAGA Christians of doing with Donald Trump: trading away sound doctrine for the aesthetic satisfaction of a candidate who seems nicer, nay, “decent.” But consider: Talarico says, “God is non-binary.” He supports the dismemberment of unborn children in the name of reproductive freedom. He does all of this with the backing of Christian moralism. He publicly positions Christian faith as the engine for a progressive political program that would have been unrecognizable to any historic expression of the Christian tradition. This is not a candidate with some character flaws. This is a candidate whose stated theology repudiates the faith he claims to represent.
The Apostle Paul did not admonish his readers to focus solely on their ethics. He also admonished them to watch their doctrine, and to understand that the two cannot be disaggregated. Kindness is a genuine Christian virtue. It is not sufficient. A kind heretic is still a heretic. A man who speaks about Jesus with warmth while denying the moral order that Christ himself affirmed is not a Christian statesman. He is a wolf in a very well-pressed suit (Matt. 7:15). What French is doing in his column is making an unbiblical tradeoff—accepting the legitimacy of bankrupt doctrine under the ethics of character while accepting Talarico’s dubious, silver-tongued deceitfulness.
What is saddest about French’s column is not the argument itself, but what the argument reveals. There is a deep and corrosive bitterness driving it. His contempt for conservative Christians who have voted for Trump has mutated over time into something uglier: a reflexive and condescending derision of anyone who refuses to share his political judgments, dressed up as prophetic moral clarity. Let us all take a lesson that deep-seated rage at Donald Trump and his Christian supporters does not justify placating doctrinal error. When you begin describing a progressive politician who affirms abortion as a “Christian X-ray” that illuminates the failures of orthodox Christians, you have not elevated your commentary. You have descended into trollish editorializing with a more elite platform.
And here is the frustrating thing: none of this requires choosing between character and moral substance. Christians are perfectly capable of walking and chewing gum. We can and should refuse to excuse indefensible behavior from any politician, Republican or Democrat. We can acknowledge that character matters across the board. And we can simultaneously recognize that there are genuine, serious moral asymmetries between the two major party platforms on questions near and dear to evangelicals, namely abortion, human dignity, and religious liberty. Recognizing those asymmetries is not capitulation to MAGA Christianity. It is an honest moral assessment of less-than-ideal political realities.
Progressive Christianity is not Christianity. Any movement, and any thirty-something seminarian, that denies the core doctrines of the Christian faith has not offered a fresh reading of the tradition. It has departed from the tradition. The tradition has a word for that departure. It is called heresy. And anyone, including certain New York Times columnists, who aids and abets such departures by insisting they still count as authentic Christianity, is not offering serious commentary on the Christian faith. It is offering theological malpractice to a very large audience.
* * *
Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Senate Candidate James Talarico Holds Primary Night Event

A Kind Heretic Is Still A Heretic

Abortion

Homosexuality

“Before we go further, we need to acknowledge that our trans community needs abortion care, too.” That’s what Texas Democratic Senate candidate and State Representative James Talarico <a href="https://x.com/Protestia/status/2029225998416245095">claims</a> in a video circulating on X, in which he preaches at a church about the intersection of transgenderism and abortion. To further his argument, Talarico claims that “our neighbors with a uterus” have become “the property of the state” via laws protecting unborn life.
This isn’t the kind of thing that Texas Christians hear in their churches, unless they’re going to one whose orthodoxy is determined by the Democratic Party.
Other bangers from that same <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?mibextid=wwXIfr&amp;v=422454413430414&amp;rdid=dVHm68J8e6TVbN9U">sermon</a> include: “Being Christian and being pro-choice are absolutely consistent, because Christianity is a feminist religion”, and “Did they teach you in Sunday school that Jesus Christ Himself was a radical feminist?”
It’s as if Democratic consultants who have no idea what a Christian believes asked an A.I. to create their perfect candidate. He’s clean-cut, well-mannered, and he’s out there on Sundays bringing the heresy.
Talarico is a leftist atheist&#8217;s idea of a good Christian: a progressive culture warrior in lockstep with the secular world and uninterested in foundational Christian principles like sin, repentance, or salvation.
The idea that it’s possible — and normal — for a person to change sexes, and that such a person deserves the right to murder her child, is theologically beyond the pale. It’s also political insanity in a state like Texas.
But we shouldn’t underestimate the possibility that Talarico’s lies could have some appeal among young people desperately searching for meaning in life.
While Bible-believing Christians will easily see that Talarico’s representation of Christianity is incompatible with Scripture, Americans less familiar with God’s Word are at risk of falling for his heresy hook, line, and sinker. Democrats are counting on this — and the only thing it will cost the people who listen is their souls.
For them, it’s a small price to pay to turn Texas Blue.
Unfortunately, Talarico has had help in spreading his gospel of manipulation to the masses — including via the most famous spiritual seeker in America, Joe Rogan. 
On a July 18, 2025, episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Talarico claimed that his pro-abortion views are informed by Mary’s choice to bear Jesus. The angel Gabriel, Talarico says, asked Mary “if this was something she wanted to do,” which apparently denotes the importance of consent to pregnancy.
If Mary had said no, presumably Jesus is destined not for the manger but for the same ash heap Talarico would consign so many other children.
Of course, the lawmaker’s presentation of the passage is entirely inaccurate. The angel asks Mary no such thing. Talarico’s attempt to use Mary’s acceptance of Jesus’s conception to justify legally poisoning and dismembering babies before birth isn’t idiotic; it’s intentionally and absurdly evil. Viewing Jesus’s advent in this way perverts the gospel: His miraculous arrival was a rescue mission to save us from our sin, not a politically convenient allegory about bodily autonomy.
In 2021, reacting to Texas’ ban on transing minors he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1016410325787907">said</a>, “Texas Republicans have passed their anti-trans bill.  Over and over Christians used scripture to justify bullying trans kids. I told them in my faith, God is non-binary.”
God refers to Himself repeatedly in the scriptures as King, Father, and Lord. The Creator of all things made us male and female (Gen. 1:27), making gender fluidity and “transitioning” genders both a scientific and Biblical impossibility.
Getting this wrong means misunderstanding both human nature and God Himself. And Talarico is smart enough to know he is getting it wrong on purpose.
On the political side, the outcomes of such positions are disastrous. Encouraging men, women, boys, and girls to mutilate their bodies and lie about their biology leads to the possibility of lifelong <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6626312/">sterility</a>, <a href="https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(24)00123-4/fulltext">mental instability</a>, and increased rates of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40250154/">suicide</a>. The insistence that males can become female and vice versa has set itself up as an enemy of free speech, parental rights, and child protection.
Abortion murders an innocent human being, and no one, including women who believe they’re men, should have the right to kill a baby.
In the Texas House, Talarico <a href="https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/177454/james-talarico">voted</a> against every measure to protect unborn babies, gender-deceived children, and parental rights. He is on the record supporting the abolition of prisons. “It’s hard to imagine a world without prisons,” he remarked. “But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”
Talarico is a radical in every sense, an unmitigated prophet of falsehood who seeks to twist the language of faith to serve his evil aims. That’s why the spiritual angle of Talarico’s platform is even more troubling than his politics. Not only does he defend extreme views, but he also weaves them into Christian theology, presenting a progressive form of Christian Nationalism wherein his newfangled interpretation of the Bible informs the law of the land.
See, Democrats don’t have a problem with the Bible, so long as they can just revise it and re-read it to support whatever they currently think about anything. That’s what you get with a candidate who knows just enough about Christianity to try to exploit it.
Unfortunately, Talarico’s pleading pastoral tone could prove persuasive to many — not only to voters, but to spiritual seekers. He claims to hold to Jesus’s words, but rejects all the words that conflict with his worldview. In Talarico’s framing, Jesus is not our Savior from sin and King of the universe; He is reduced to a mascot for left-wing causes, a means by which people can be manipulated into supporting Democrats’ policies.
In &#8220;Screwtape Letters,&#8221; C.S. Lewis warns against using Christianity as a means to the end of social justice. Screwtape, a demon, encourages this misuse of the faith, knowing it leads people away from Jesus, not toward Him:
“We do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything — even to social justice. For the Enemy [God] will not be used as a convenience.”
Talarico’s campaign must be defeated by voters and politicians, yes. But even more importantly, his message must be opposed by pastors and Christians. As toxic as his policies are for our country, the bigger threat is his theology, which is damning to our souls.
* * *
Allie Beth Stuckey is a conservative commentator, host of the podcast “Relatable,” and New York Times bestselling author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Empathy-Progressives-Christian-Compassion/dp/0593541944/ref=sr_1_1?crid=UANYF7F4G527&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SR4Z9YTZBiD-LIyJWIe2NqrPQSJrs7v_SeJwqdKhprgz4bRzXt9yi_yz87GrsiKreKNDkh5cktyvWqnwYqCvq-AAWTJyW9idmKxIIFSxmJU.Q-uGoH9skFCMDxfjq4I70mRhShGY4nULiXDRrFrj1Nw&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Toxic+Empathy%3A+How+Progressives&amp;qid=1749579102&amp;sprefix=toxic+empathy+how+progressives%2Caps%2C55&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion</a>“
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Talarico gpt

Democrat Strategists Asked ChatGPT To Create A Christian Candidate. They Got James Talarico.

Artificial Intelligence

U.S. Politics

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