Deep in the Heart of Texas: Combating Billionaire Christian Nationalists in the Bible Belt

https://globalextremism.org/post/deep-in-the-heart-of-texas/



Judge Fred Biery’s gavel fell on August 20th, 2025. Eleven Texas school districts wouldn’t have to display the Ten Commandments in their classrooms. Not yet, anyway. Attorney General Ken Paxton fired back within hours. Every other district in the state would comply with the law regardless, requiring 16-by-20-inch posters declaring Christian religious law for children of all faiths. This isn’t just another church-state skirmish. It’s a bold advance of Christian nationalism — a movement that doesn’t just want to influence government policy, but to explicitly ground American law and society in biblical principles and Christianity.

Christian nationalism demands that the government actively promote Christian doctrine and prioritize the interests of Christian citizens. And in Texas, Christian nationalism is growing like a weed, fertilized by Trump’s implementation of Project 2025 policies. The men behind the curtain of this Christian nationalist surge are two West Texas oil billionaires who preach from Sunday pulpits and have spent $45 million since 2000 reshaping state government for their theological vision.

Standing against them is James Talarico, a 36-year-old seminary student and state representative from Austin who splits his time between fighting their bills at the Texas Capitol and studying scripture in the evenings. He earns $600 a month in his political role. Talarico’s path to this theological battlefield runs through public school classrooms where he worked as a teacher in the educational system that Christian nationalists now target for transformation. His faith credentials run deep: his grandfather was a Baptist preacher in South Texas, he’s attended the same church since age two, and now pursues a Master’s of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary while teaching Sunday school.

It’s an unlikely holy war. Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks versus James Talarico. Two sides that read the same Bible, attend the same type of churches, and claim the same savior, yet couldn’t disagree more about what it means to be Christian in America. Talarico opposes them not despite his faith, but because of it. Where they see a divine mandate for political control, he sees a betrayal of the Gospel. Where they demand government-enforced religion, he preaches Christianity that changes hearts, not laws. This is what happens when billionaires decide they’re prophets. And when a seminary student refuses to let them hijack his religion.

The Goat Shed Prophet................

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