Everyone gets to pick a pronoun. God does not.
That is the rule at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian in Austin, the church that baptized James Talarico, married his parents, and still claims him as a son.
Undercover video from August shows what they put in a new member’s hands: The Inclusive Bible, a 2007 rewrite that strips “Son of God” and “Son of Man” off Jesus and treats “the Lord” as sexist and classist.
Pastor Jim Rigby, Talarico’s longtime mentor, told an undercover journalist the church “typically” gives that edition when people join.
“It’s good on the gender stuff,” he said, according to a video posted on X by Amber Duke of The Daily Caller.
NEW: James Talarico’s longtime spiritual mentor, Rev. Jim Rigby, says his church provides copies of the “Inclusive Bible” to new members.
The “Inclusive Bible” strips the Bible of “gendered language.” It refuses to call Jesus the Son of God and describes traditional translations as “sexist” and “classist.”
— Amber Duke (@ambermarieduke) September 17, 2026
For the “metaphysical stuff,” he admitted, “it’s not a very good translation.” Then: you need a good translation “so you can let go of the stupid stuff.”
A woman handing a copy to a newcomer named Larry said it out loud. “It’s been rewritten so that there is only inclusive language and that it doesn’t use the gender-fueled language that the King James Version uses.”
Priests for Equality, the group behind it, swaps “Lord” for “Most High” and “Sovereign One.” “Father” becomes “Abba” or “Loving God.” Christ’s titles become “Only Begotten,” “God’s Own,” “Eternally Begotten.”
Texas Scorecard notes the church’s own line: calling God male is “perhaps the most sexist comment a person can make.” A minister in related footage said the “vast majority” of the flock would call themselves agnostic or atheist.
So let us get this straight. The gender-crazy set at Talarico’s church will affirm any identity a teenager invents, but will not affirm the identity God used when He spoke.
It is true that God, as an infinite being, does not have a biological sex. He still revealed Himself as Father. The Son of Man still took flesh as a man.
That is not a drafting error. There is a spiritual purpose in the sexes you cannot edit out with a committee and a thesaurus.
C.S. Lewis saw this coming. In “Priestesses in the Church?” he wrote that if the masculine language is disposable, either Scripture is not inspired or the imagery is arbitrary. Both options, he said, are an argument against Christianity, not for a nicer one.
Tinker with the sexed language and you do not get a broader church. You get “a different religion.” The Western Journal recently walked through that essay when Netflix cast a woman as Aslan. The same logic applies to a pew Bible that will not say Son.
Talarico has already played this game. In 2021, he told the Texas House that “God is non-binary.”
He recently walked that and other lines back and called his previous rhetoric “cringey” and “deliberately provocative” as he seeks the U.S. Senate seat previously held by John Cornyn.
He is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and the church that formed him is not a footnote, but a factory for radicalism.
Talarico has called himself a “Christian who hates Christianity.”
He is among a congregation that treats the Father’s name as violence and the Son’s title as optional. These are people who are replacing Scripture with a welcome packet of heresy, and they are leading people astray.
Is this the twisted brand of so-called Christianity Texans want to send to Washington?
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