A new member in Austin is handed a book that no longer calls Jesus the Son of God. The pastor on camera calls parts of older Bibles “stupid stuff.” The Senate race is a dead heat. The rest is what each side hopes you will not sit with for long.
On a Sunday in August 2026, a new member named Larry walked into St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin and left with a gift. A woman at the front named Martha. She handed him a copy of The Inclusive Bible. She told the room it was the book the church uses. She said it had been rewritten so it would not keep the “gender-fueled language” of the King James Version.
That scene is not a rumor from a group chat. It is on tape. The Daily Caller published the footage on 17 September 2026. The same week, a fresh Emerson College / Nexstar poll put Democrat James Talarico one point ahead of Republican Ken Paxton among likely voters. Faith is not a side story in this race. It is one of the few subjects both camps keep returning to, for opposite reasons.
What the camera caught, and what the church already printed
Rev. Jim Rigby has led St. Andrew’s for more than 35 years. He baptized Talarico. He married Talarico’s parents. He gave the prayer when Talarico took the oath in the Texas House. Talarico has said Rigby is his pastor “in every sense of the word.”
In the undercover talk, Rigby says the church “typically” gives the Inclusive Bible to people when they join. Then he draws a line that both his friends and his critics now quote:
“It’s good on the gender stuff. The more, like, metaphysical stuff, it’s not a very good translation, if that makes sense. I think it’s really important to have a good translation so you can let go of the stupid stuff.”
That last phrase is the one that travels. To a progressive Christian, “stupid stuff” can mean later church power, male rule, and English words that turn God into a landlord. To a traditional Christian, it sounds like a pastor telling a seeker that parts of the received text are disposable. Both readings start from the same sentence. Neither needs a fact-checker to invent a second sentence.
The church does not hide the policy. Its own page on inclusive language says God is not called “He” or “Father,” and not “She” or “Mother” either. It drops “King” and “Lord” because those words, the church says, make God male and hint at a rank that Jesus rejected. Read it in the church’s own words at staopen.org/inclusive-language. The FAQ adds another line that matters in a Senate race: the church is “Christ centered, yet we respect and learn from all religions of love,” and it hopes to teach children Bible stories “without sectarian dogma.” See the church FAQ.
So the undercover clip did not reveal a secret book in a locked cabinet. It showed a public rule being carried out in real time, with applause, for a man named Larry.
NEW: James Talarico's longtime spiritual mentor, Rev. Jim Rigby, says his church provides copies of the "Inclusive Bible" to new members.
— Amber Duke (@ambermarieduke) September 17, 2026
The "Inclusive Bible" strips the Bible of "gendered language." It refuses to call Jesus the Son of God and describes traditional… pic.twitter.com/R6Nf4SPisg
What this Bible actually changes
The Inclusive Bible is not a brand-new 2026 project. Priests for Equality, a project of the Quixote Center in Maryland, published it in 2007 as “the first egalitarian translation.” The group grew out of Catholic circles that fought for women’s ordination. You can still read the volume on the Internet Archive: archive.org copy.
The editors say they went further than swapping “he” for “they.” They call the work a “re-imagining.” In the notes they treat “the Lord” as a sexist and classist English stand-in for God’s name. They prefer YHWH, Most High, Almighty, or Sovereign One. For Jesus they step around “Son of God” and lean on “Only Begotten,” “God’s Own,” and “Eternally Begotten.” Texas Scorecard later flagged a sample from 1 Timothy where a line about men who practice homosexuality becomes language about people who “traffic in human flesh.” That is not a rumor either. It is a translation choice you can open and check.
Some posts now tag the book “WEF-approved.” That stamp is not on the title page. There is no Davos imprint, no Forum press release adopting this edition. What is real is a wider mood: global meetings, banks, and churches have spent a decade talking about “inclusion” as a moral test. The World Economic Forum has hosted faith-and-business panels and LGBTI workplace projects. That is documented. It is not the same thing as Klaus Schwab editing Matthew. Mixing the two makes a louder headline and a weaker case. The book’s paper trail runs through Priests for Equality and the Quixote Center, not through a Swiss guest list.
If you want the political rhyme rather than a forged stamp, look at how the same word — inclusion — now travels from a church welcome desk to a corporate code of conduct. That rhyme is worth sitting with. A forged stamp is not.
The mentor and the candidate
Talarico did not wander into this church last year for a photo. He grew up in it. A December 2025 Texas Monthly profile said he “took to Rigby at a young age.” The two went to protests together in the early 2000s. In a February 2024 talk with Good Faith Media, Talarico recalled Rigby’s line that love for God has to “grow into justice and move us from the sanctuary to the streets.” The Texas Tribune later quoted Talarico saying that politics, religion, and “causing trouble” were “intertwined and synonymous” in his childhood. Links: Good Faith Media interview and Texas Tribune.
Rigby’s public record is long and open. He was tried inside the Presbyterian Church in the 1990s over gay and lesbian clergy. He has said Jesus looks closer to a “loving atheist than an indifferent theologian.” Critics at the Christian Post compiled remarks in which he seemed to set aside the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection and compared fetal remains to extracted teeth. Read that roundup here: Christian Post profile. Supporters answer that he is doing what prophets do: strip the temple of later add-ons and keep the ethic of the poor.
The New York Times asked, in June 2026, whether Texas is ready for Talarico’s kind of Christianity. The piece noted that St. Andrew’s has used the Inclusive Bible since the 1990s, that Rigby rarely leans on the word “God,” and that Talarico, for his own reading, still uses his father’s Revised Standard Version. That last detail is easy to skip. It matters. A man can love a church, credit a mentor, and still keep a different book on the nightstand. Talarico has also said he does not agree with Rigby on everything. See the Times profile.
Then there are Talarico’s own lines, which no pastor can unsay for him. In a 2021 House debate he said “God is non-binary.” In March 2026 he called the line “cringey” and “deliberately provocative,” but still said it was not theologically wild because “God is beyond gender.” In 2021, on the Activist Theology podcast, he called himself a “Christian who hates Christianity.” On Joe Rogan’s show he argued that Scripture holds “a lot of biblical evidence” for a pro-choice stance. ABC and the Daily Caller both recorded the walk-back and the defense: ABC News, Daily Caller on Rogan and Scripture.
Paxton’s camp treats all of this as one file: a candidate who grew up in a church that rewrites the book, then asks Texas to trust him with the Senate. Talarico’s camp treats it as a smear against a church that welcomes people other pulpits shove out the door. Both files can be true at once. The voter still has to pick which file decides a vote.
What alternative outlets add — and where they overreach
Mass outlets often stop at “progressive church, inclusive language.” That is safe. It is also thin. The thicker record sits in the same week’s tapes.
Texas Scorecard reported that ministers at St. Andrew’s said a large share of the membership would call itself agnostic or atheist if asked, because they “don’t buy the religion that we got from the Puritans.” Breitbart published separate undercover audio of Rigby saying that if you love people and nature and that is why you hate religion, “we’re on the same team,” and that an atheist joining the church is “not a big deal here.” He has spoken at the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Those are his words, not a composite. Sources: Texas Scorecard, Breitbart.
The Daily Wire, a day earlier, released tape of Rev. Babs Miller, an out lesbian minister on the St. Andrew’s staff. Miller said Talarico was taking advice she would not take, and that she could “guarantee” he would “change his tune back” after an election. That is a claim about motive. Motive is the part a hidden microphone cannot prove. It can only record what a colleague believes. Treat it that way. The clip: Daily Wire, 16 September 2026.
Baptist News Global ran the other side in June, after an earlier Daily Wire church story. Rigby answered on Facebook under the title “On Being Eaten by Cannibal Clowns.” He said the church was being accused of funding abortions and running a summer camp for transgender youth, and he called the moment “unpleasant” and “fascinating.” He did not recant the inclusive-language rule. He framed the attack as politics wearing a collar. Read Baptist News Global.
The honest split is this. One side hears a church that kept the name Presbyterian while letting the creed, the titles of Jesus, and the maleness of God go soft, then raised a Senate candidate inside that weather. The other side hears a church that refused to make God a man with a crown, refused to treat gay and trans people as a problem to be fixed, and taught a child that faith without justice is a locked sanctuary. If you only read one of those sentences, you are not reading Texas. You are reading a team sheet.
Why a Bible fight belongs in a Senate race
Texas is not New England. Church language still moves votes. Paxton has called Talarico “weird” and has said Scripture is “pretty clear” that God is not non-binary. Talarico has spent 2026 sanding the sharpest edges: more talk of border security, a new line against surgery for minors, a public wince at his own 2021 phrasing. Polls have stayed inside the margin for months. The Texas Politics Project tracker, updated 17 September 2026, shows Emerson at Talarico 47, Paxton 46. Earlier summer surveys had them tied or Paxton up by one. Tracker: UT / Texas Politics Project.
That is why a gift Bible in North Austin is not only a church-newsletter item. If Talarico wins, he becomes the first Democrat in a generation to take statewide office in Texas. The people who raised him will be asked what they taught him. The people who oppose him will be asked why a book’s pronouns decide a Senate seat. Both questions are fair. Neither is settled by calling the other side evil.
Zoom out one click and the same fight appears in other rooms. When a school and a state agency treat a parent’s faith as a risk factor, families break. We wrote that story when a Massachusetts couple said they lost contact with their daughter after a secret social shift at school: Massachusetts Family Loses Teen After School’s Secret Transition Fight. When Texas police buy tools that can mimic a cell tower, the state that argues about God on Sunday is also building a map of phones on Monday: FalcoNet Spy Vans: What Texas Police Bought and Why It Matters. When Washington ties welfare money to reporting status, sermons about the stranger meet a statute: DOJ: States Must Report Illegal Immigrants or Lose Welfare Funds. And when people stitch every “inclusion” project to a single Davos plot, they should still have to show the document. We walked through that habit on the AI-risk file here: Anthropic 10% AI Risk: Warning, Race, or Depopulation Blueprint?.
None of those pieces prove that St. Andrew’s is a cell of a world government. They show the weather in which a rewritten Bible now feels, to some voters, like one more edit of the old world, and to other voters like basic decency arriving late.
The part that will not fit on a yard sign
Christians have argued about words for God since the first translations left Hebrew and Greek. “Lord” is already an English choice. So is “Father.” So is “kindom,” the Inclusive Bible’s stand-in for “kingdom.” A church that refuses male language is not inventing the idea that God is more than a man. The Hebrew Bible already uses images that are not only male. A church that refuses “Son of God” is doing something sharper. That title is not a medieval add-on in the same way “Lord” is. It sits in the oldest layers of Christian speech. Dropping it is not a font change. It is a claim about who Jesus is.
Rigby, on tape, admits the Inclusive Bible is weak on the “metaphysical stuff.” That is an unusual gift to his critics. He is saying the book is a tool for gender, not a full map of the mystery. His own members, if the other tapes are fair, may not want the mystery anyway. A congregation that can laugh at Paul, cite the Buddha, and welcome an atheist is not a secret cell. It is a known type of late-modern American church: thin on creed, thick on welcome, sure that kindness is the core and that dogma is the husk.
Talarico has to live in two rooms at once. In one room he is the seminarian who still reads the Revised Standard Version and talks about flipping tables, a line from the Gospels if you know the scene in the Temple. In the other room he is the candidate who must not sound like Austin to a voter in Lubbock. Miller’s tape says the second room is a costume. Talarico’s own walk-backs say the first room had some lines that were too hot for prime time. You can believe the costume theory. You can believe a man can grow. You cannot pretend the childhood church is irrelevant. He has never claimed it was.
The mystery, if you want one, is not a hidden council. It is simpler and harder. A republic still uses sacred speech to pick its officers. When the speech changes, the officers change, or the speech fight becomes the campaign. St. Andrew’s changed the speech on purpose, in public, for decades. Talarico is the first product of that speech who might sit in the Senate. That is the story. The rest is noise built around it.
What is solid, what is still open
Solid, as of 19 September 2026:
- Undercover video from August 2026 shows St. Andrew’s giving Larry the Inclusive Bible and calling it the church’s Bible.
- Rigby says the church typically does this for new members and that the translation is “good on the gender stuff” and useful for dropping “the stupid stuff.”
- The book’s own notes drop or recast “Lord” and “Son of God.” The publisher is Priests for Equality, 2007, not a 2026 Forum edition.
- Talarico’s life is tied to this congregation and to Rigby by baptism, family rites, protests, and his own interviews.
- The Senate race remains inside the margin. Emerson, fielded 12–14 September, had Talarico 47 and Paxton 46.
Still open:
- Whether Talarico privately uses or endorses the Inclusive Bible. He has said he reads a standard version at home.
- Whether a colleague’s guess about a post-election “tune” change is a plan or a fear.
- How many St. Andrew’s members would, in a real poll, call themselves atheist or agnostic.
- Whether Texas voters treat a church’s pronouns as a Senate issue or as a local taste they can ignore.
No outlet owns the last word. The tape is short. The book is on the shelf. The race is live. Read the primary pages before you let anyone, including this desk, finish the sentence for you.
Also cited: Christian Post · Breitbart · St. Andrew’s staff page · Texas poll tracker
Note for fact checkers: This article rests on named outlets, dated tapes, the church’s own web pages, and the 2007 Inclusive Bible text. The Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Breitbart, and Texas Scorecard lean right and use hidden cameras. The New York Times, Texas Tribune, Baptist News Global, and the church site lean the other way or speak for themselves. Hidden-camera work can miss tone and context. Official pages can miss practice. Where a claim is a pastor’s opinion, a colleague’s guess, or an online tag with no document (including “WEF-approved”), it is labeled as such. Readers should open the linked pages rather than trust any single desk, including this one.