Texas 'Christians' (old testament republicans) are vile creatures. They live their lives on the premise and the 'promise' that they can do the vilest things and as long as they ask jesus for forgiveness, their sins get washed clean at the end of their lives.
I had to sit through a dinner with a couple of prime exemplars of this a few years ago. Their personal lives were filthy with adultery among other deadly sins but they had the taste of jesus on their lips.
It's been a while, but I've worked side-by-side with a lot of Christians doing NGO volunteer work. I wouldn't paint them with a broad brush.
My read on what we're seeing with the white Christian nationalists is more about the decline in traditional denominations like Roman Catholics, Methodists and Disciples of Christ and the move toward more charismatic, non-denominational Pentecostal-affiliated churches.
The traditional denominations were more aligned with social justice gospel and good works, and their clergy were more likely to be formally trained. The non-denominational churches still do some "good works", but it is often more likely to be within their own church or for the purpose of growing their own church, and their ministers are less likely to have been educated in theology.
During the time that I did volunteer work, I saw some of that change. Early in my career, I would find myself working with professionals who were doing their social gospel work specified by the catechism or the Book of Discipline. Thirty years later, I found myself working with people who claimed to be teaching themselves Aramaic because they didn't trust elitist translators of the Bible, and they would often introduce themselves at orientation with phrases like, "Hi! My name is Tiffany and I'm from Alabama and I love Jesus!".
I can't say that I understand where the nationalism came from. It seems to have originated from a few pastors in the Falwell generation who were more interested in perversions like "prosperity gospel". It does seem to have gotten completely off the rails in the Trump era, which is why we're seeing the megachurch grifters camped out at the White House, and the plethora of sexual abuse convictions of pastors in churches. And it is definitely showing itself in Republican primaries in both the candidates that are running for office and the voters who are showing up to vote for them.
For example, Paxton's powerbase is in a megachurch he attends in Collin County, Texas, outside of Dallas. The Texas Legislature changed the laws a while back so that corrupt public officials were not investigated by prosecutors in Austin and instead were investigated by their local district attorney. Many local officials in Collin County attend the same church as Paxton and were friends of Paxton. Those officials claimed that they didn't have money in the county budget to prosecute Paxton for his crimes, so he was able to remain as the Texas State Attorney General for years before the charges were quietly dropped. And of course,
Paxton's political career has been underwritten by a group of wealthy evangelicals like Tim Dunn. Dunn also financed primary candidates to run against all of the members of the Texas Legislature who tried to impeach Paxton.
This the reason that previous generations were so adamant about separation of church and state. Politics is a corrupt business. The reason that we're seeing so much moral rot in our society has a lot to do with the mixing of religion and politics.
Talarico is very retro-Christian. His message is very centered on speaking in the language that evangelicals understand and- you are right in this- he focuses heavily on the Beatitudes and sections of the New Testament that speak to younger Christians. It's going to be interesting to see how the Texas Senate race plays out.
It's definitely been a long time since I heard a Democratic politician speak like this:
