Faith has been at the center of this year’s U.S. Senate race in Texas, both candidates — the incumbent Baylor graduate Ken Paxton and newcomer James Talarico — making Christianity a centerpiece of their campaigns.
Few recent Texas races have been as openly fought over faith. Paxton has questioned whether his opponent can be considered a Christian at all. Talarico has accused Paxton of advancing Christian nationalism.
Both men claim a familiarity with God’s word and its intent, invoking scripture in support of their respective competing platforms. The Texas Tribune describes Talarico’s Jesus as one who advocates for the marginalized and downtrodden. Ken Paxton’s Jesus is a force protecting America from radical liberal ideals.
Yet if either person met the personification of their opponent’s Jesus, would they recognize him?
Our politics choose our God for us
Some voting Christians might like to believe that when they place their finger on the red letters of a Bible verse and absorb the message of ancient words, the teachings on the page speak directly to how they should decide at the polls. For instance, GotQuestions Ministries, a popular nonprofit Christian online educational resource, offers its own scriptural references to determine morality over abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights. Though it does not endorse a political party, it pulls seven different verses from the Old and New Testament to speak to these political issues.
“Bible-believing Christians should support pro-life issues and candidates,” the ministry says. “They should also support issues and candidates that oppose gay marriage and uphold the biblical and traditional understanding of marriage. Whether these two issues should trump all other issues is a matter of personal conviction.”
Data reveals, however, that a person’s political identity is the lens through which they interpret Bible verses – not the other way around.
“Instead of deciding who they will cast a ballot for based on their religious tradition, most Americans pick a church that lines up with their view of the political world,” political scientist Ryan Burge wrote in his book The Nones.
Not only do people pick a church that lines up with their worldview, but, according to Truett Theological Seminary professor Dr. Elizabeth Shively, they design a Jesus who matches their worldview.
“Our political tribe shapes us, and then we go to the Gospels and we’re looking for a Jesus who agrees with us,” she said. “And this is not just one political party, but I think that for a lot of Americans, political identity has become more central than religious identity… and I feel like when that happens, Jesus is more like a mascot than a lord.”
Nearly every American has had some measure of exposure to Christianity starting from childhood. According to Baylor professor Dr. Paul Froese, sociologist and director of the Baylor Religion Survey, it’s in a person’s late teens and 20s that they begin to deconstruct whatever beliefs (or non-beliefs) they were raised under, making their first real independent choices as adults.
“That is also the period of life where they are starting to develop a political identity,” he said. “And so in this period of time, they’re either creating a liberal or conservative identity, to a certain extent. And then what the research shows is, if you’ve established a conservative identity, then you will probably return to church. If you’ve established a liberal identity, you probably will not return to church.”
As described in recent studies, such as that published in 2023 by Walton Wider et. al, what causes someone to develop a political and then religious identity as a young adult involves that person’s background starting from childhood: economic, geographic, educational, gender identity factors, etc. Still, it’s not unheard of for siblings or friends raised in the same household or community, with identical social and economic upbringings, to diverge significantly in their beliefs. Froese explained that often one’s moral ideation is greatly influenced by those who show them support and friendship in their formative years.
“It happens in the head after it happens on the ground,” Froese said. “And what that means is, if you convert to another religion, probably what’s happening is you’re meeting people of that other religion. You are befriending them and they’re bringing you into the church … It’s a network phenomenon. So the people who leave the church are then in a network of people who don’t go to church, and the people who stay in church are with a network of people who went back to church.”
The epicenter of belief involves one’s attachment to other people, he stressed.
“So if you have good, positive, attached relationships with people who share your faith, your faith is going to be strong,” Froese said. “If you’re in conflict with people or you’re angry with people, the faith is going to be chaotic. You’re going to question things. You’re going to be confused.”
Customizing your personal Jesus
A 2012 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined dissonance between American Christians’ political views and the teachings of Jesus. It made the claim that it is a struggle for Christians on both sides of the political spectrum to maintain certain personal ideological beliefs while being aware of contradicting teachings in the Bible.
The study noted this tension is most apparent among people who identify with the Christian Right and the Republican Party, especially when considering the verse Matthew 25:40, which reads, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (NIV)
“However, in the decades since the New Deal, the Republican party, which has become ever more opposed to progressive taxation, expenditures for social services, lenient treatment of illegal immigrants and their families, and other policies designed to ease the burdens of the least fortunate, has enjoyed increasing electoral support from members of the Christian Right,” the authors wrote.
The study also notes that liberal Christians must contend with traditional church teachings that challenge their stances on social issues.
“They must reconcile their own, typically moderate views on matters such as abortion and gay rights with the traditional teachings of their church and the stern pronouncements of highly visible religious spokespersons, as well as the views of the majority of their fellow Christians,” it states.
The study also revealed that Americans of different political leanings held highly polarized views on how Jesus is characterized politically. Both sides admitted that Jesus was less conservative or liberal as they were in practice — i.e., each group of respondents was more intense in their own political ideology than Jesus was.
At the same time, Conservatives rated Jesus as more liberal than themselves on taxation and immigration, while liberals rated him as even more liberal than themselves on those issues.
“Our most dramatic finding involved the marked projection of (one’s) own views onto those attributed to Jesus,” the study said. “Indeed, the difference in the views that liberal and conservative participants claimed that Jesus would espouse were he alive today were almost as great as the difference that these groups reported with respect to their own views.”
Christianity in America has become so individualized, Froese explained, that everyone can develop their own personal Jesus. People speak to Jesus as a friend or therapist, sometimes even sharing slang or inside jokes in prayer. They can also choose which verses from Jesus speak to their feelings and experiences more than others.
“Jesus will, or at least according to the social theory, reflect your social position,” he said.
Froese and his colleague Christopher Bader authored a book in 2010 titled America’s Four Gods, in which they analyze quantitative data and argue that one’s view of God and Jesus as father figures reflects that person’s belief toward governmental solutions for issues. Respondents who saw God as more judgemental tended to believe social issues such as poverty require addressing from churches, not the government. People who believed God is not heavily judgemental were more likely to want secular solutions.
“At the end of the day, we are all ‘values’ and ‘pocketbook’ voters,” Froese and Bader wrote. “In general, your values reflect your God, and your God reflects your pocketbook. Lower economic status is strongly related to the belief that God harshly judges and is angry with the world. In turn, belief in a judgmental God (authoritative and critical) is related to the belief that the solution to poverty is personal faith or faith-based solutions and not government intervention.”
A person’s view of Jesus can also be reinforced by their peers. If the congregants surrounding a Christian take a collective stance on an issue, that person is likely not going to argue, Froese told The Baylor Line. They will either agree with their peers, or they will move to another church.
Christ’s characterization tends to vary in some specific ways between the political spectrums, according to Shively.
“I think Republican Christians can land on personal conversion, moral clarity, and religious liberty,” she theorized. “… Democratic-leaning Christians, I think, tend to emphasize Jesus as healer, as liberator, as the friend of outsiders and the marginalized, and there’s also good in that. Jesus is the one who ate with the tax collectors. He’s the one who touched lepers. He’s the one who welcomed foreigners. He brought good news to the poor. So I think for Democratic-leaning Christians, the emphasis falls on, maybe, compassion and justice and inclusion.”
Shively added a caveat — both sides are, arguably, correct in many ways. Both pictures of Jesus reflect traits and teachings found directly in the Gospels.
“I don’t think anybody’s inventing anything,” she said. “I think the distortion comes from what we choose to emphasize. I think each side holds up half of Jesus and then runs with it instead of holding up the whole thing. And that’s when we get distortions, I think, on both sides. We only take the parts of Jesus or take the parts of the Gospels that we like.”
Red or blue: Asking Jesus to vote
It may be impolite dinner talk to declare Jesus is a Democrat or a Republican, but plenty of Americans are ready to at least imply Christ would have a party affiliation were he physically walking the Earth in 2026.
Shively has studied and taught the New Testament for many years, with special interest in Jesus’ story as told through the book of Mark. Christ was a politically opinionated individual in early Rome, she said. But, he was not partisan.
“He wouldn’t join the factions of his day,” she explained. “He wouldn’t join people who wanted armed revolt. He wouldn’t join those who collaborated with Rome. He wouldn’t have joined the Pharisees or the Sadducees when they tried to trap him on taxes. I mean, this is familiar. He says, ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.’ And it can sound like a dodge, but I think it’s actually a really important claim. What Jesus is saying is that Caesar’s authority has limits, and God’s authority doesn’t. So give Caesar what is Caesar’s, what he has authority over, but give to God what he has authority over, which is everything.”
Jesus claiming to be the messiah, to be Lord, was a political statement at his time.
“This is a world where Caesar claimed to be Lord,” Shively said. “And Jesus announced a kingdom. I mean, he put this in political terms, right? He announced a kingdom.”
A person so impactful as Jesus remaining political but not partisan may seem a tough needle to thread, but Shively shared a modern example.
“Dolly Parton,” she stated. “Think about how she refused to be partisan — you know, political in a partisan way. People would try to press her on it and she would not get involved, but she was involved. She gave money and everybody claimed her … but that doesn’t mean that she didn’t stand for things. She stood for things, but she refused to side with any party. And I think that takes a lot of, I don’t know if ‘skill’ is the right word, but not to be partisan or not to feel like one party can claim you or one group of people can claim you, but to still have everyone feel like you’re ministering to them, that’s a gift that I think not a lot of people have.”
What’s there to shake hands over?
Froese and Bader closed their writings in America’s Four Gods opining the futility of convincing another religious person that most people worship the same God.
“The tragedy of our many Gods is that we fail to fully understand each other,” they stated. “Elites often benefit by exploiting these differences and mutual misunderstandings … the similarities of our Gods, namely the loving aspect, will keep our shared moral philosophy alive. A morality directly related to a loving God fosters respect for one another and charity and ensures that our differences will not spiral out of control.”
Froese argued that there is nothing about Jesus that people of differing political persuasions agree on fully because each person lives out the Bible uniquely.
“If you want to understand a religion, you don’t read the sacred text,” he told The Baylor Line. “You watch the people. Right? Because the Bible’s big and says a lot of stuff. How do I understand a Christian? I’m not going to read the Bible and then I’ll understand the Christian. No, no, no. I watch the Christian. What does a Christian do? Who are they with? That tells me about the religion. So in that sense, the religion is not in the sacred text, it’s in how people live it.”
Shively had a different take, suggesting that most practicing Christians agree on basic religious creeds surrounding Christ, such as his divinity and that he died on the cross and rose from the grave. She also believes that Christians agree on many of Jesus’ teachings, and that it’s in the application of those principles where gaps open up.
“Both sides would agree that Christians ought to care for the poor and the sick and the vulnerable,” she said. “Both would say that family matters. I think where the split is, and it’s a sharp split, is on how that all turns into law. How does that turn into policy? And I feel like the shared ground is real, and it’s bigger than the ground we fight over, or at least I wish we would recognize that.”
Shively hopes for a world where Talarico supporters and Paxton supporters find unity in claiming Jesus as Lord, not separating from what she sees as more “tangential” political battles.
“It’s going to take a move of the Holy Spirit, and also for people to maybe speak and act with humility, which I think on both sides of the political spectrum is rare,” she said.
