An undercover video obtained by Breitbart News shows Rev. Jim Rigby, the longtime pastor and mentor of Texas Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, telling an audience that atheists are welcome in his congregation, saying, “if you love humanity and love nature and that’s why you hate religion then we’re on the same team.”
Talarico has attended St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin since he was a toddler, and Rigby has led the congregation since the 1980s, according to a New York Times profile. Talarico has described Rigby as “my pastor in every sense of the word,” and said Rigby, along with his own grandfather, are “the biggest influences on me as a Christian, as a human being.” Rigby baptized Talarico and officiated the wedding of Talarico’s parents.
The video was recorded as Rigby prepared to speak at an event for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group that describes itself as the nation’s largest “freethought association,” with nearly 42,000 members it calls atheists, agnostics and skeptics.
“I’ve been on trial within the denomination for LGBT stuff, abortion and non-theist… We had an atheist join the church but that’s not a big deal here,” Rigby said in the footage.
According to the Times report, Rigby avoids using male pronouns for God, saying it is a kind of “violence” to suggest to a girl that her brother is more like God than she is. He also avoids the word “Lord,” which he says conjures a wealthy, European, male image of God, and said he does not much care for the word “God” itself, preferring synonyms because “it’s going to mean something different to everybody.”
Also appearing in the undercover video is Rev. Babs Miller, who serves as Minister to the Parish at St. Andrews. Miller said, “I don’t have a need for a God,” adding she believes there is “something out there that holds all this together” but does not see it as a God. “We are not a worshipping church,” she said.
Miller separately said on video that she believes Talarico is playing a political game, stating, “I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he’ll change his tune back to where he was.”
Talarico has since tried to clarify earlier remarks in which he suggested God was non-binary. “I was being provocative with that statement, I get that. What I was trying to say is that you can’t use human categories to define God,” he said in an interview.
Talarico is running against Republican Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate seat in November, a contest that has drawn national attention.
