Talarico Called Teaching Bible Stories ‘Propaganda’

A 2025 video of James Talarico, the Texas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee and a Christian seminarian, is circulating again. It puts his views on Scripture in Texas classrooms at the center of the Senate race. Fox News reports that the clip, in which Talarico discusses Bible-related instruction in Texas schools, resurfaced this week¹. Fox News reported that Talarico criticized teaching Bible stories as historical fact in schools.

According to the same Fox News report, Sen. Ted Cruz retweeted the clip with a two-word reply: “Um, wut?”¹

The fight at the heart of the clip is Talarico’s opposition to legislation he said would require schools to teach Bible stories as historical fact¹. He recounted that fight in the 2025 conversation as one of his battles in the Texas Legislature.

“Christian Bible stories as historical fact, as the only truth to our youngest students.”

Caption versus record

What he did say carries its own weight. Fox News reports that Talarico aimed his criticism at a state curriculum and the young students it would reach. That distinction does not soften his words: he called the effort “propaganda” and “indoctrination,” and parents deserve to weigh that judgment in its actual setting¹.

His words, dated

The remarks came during “Faithfully,” a Center for American Progress Action Fund conversation about religion and politics with Talarico, then a Democratic Texas state representative. The event announcement said he would discuss how religion informs politics and the separation of church and state. It named Interfaith Alliance as partner and CAP Action Senior Fellow Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons as moderator². The virtual discussion took place August 10, 2025.

Fox News reports that the host asked Talarico about his legislative battles with “Christian Nationalists”. In reply, Talarico singled out the “most insidious” legislation he had fought to stop while serving in Texas government¹.

He described “a new state curriculum” “that would teach Christian Bible stories as historical fact, as the only truth to our youngest students.”¹

Then came the line that traveled: to “push propaganda, to push indoctrination on those youngest students,” he said, “is deeply immoral and should trouble all of us.”¹

Talarico aimed the words “propaganda” and “indoctrination” at the effort to put that material before the youngest students¹.

1. winter 2024Castle said Bluebonnet was adopted
2. November 2024A TEA presentation described Bluebonnet as one option available to Texas schools
3. August 10, 2025Talarico’s remarks were recorded during the “Faithfully” discussion

What Bluebonnet teaches

The state’s own records fill in the picture. A November 2024 agency presentation called it “one HQIM option available to Texas schools” and said school systems keep “flexibility and final authority to choose the instructional materials.” The same presentation said publishers must offer parent portals for instructional-materials transparency³.

Mary Elizabeth Castle of Texas Values described Bluebonnet as an English language arts curriculum adopted in winter 2024 that helped students understand Bible references in historical speeches and common stories. Castle said those references were meant to improve reading comprehension, while Hiram Sasser of First Liberty argued that the Bible’s influence on Western culture makes it important literature and history. Castle also said a majority of parents and stakeholders who testified supported the curriculum, and that it passed at the State Board of Education¹.

Parents have a direct stake in that difference, because a curriculum’s treatment of Scripture touches the beliefs they teach at home and the authority they hold over their children’s education.

Faith in the race

Talarico’s campaign answered by pointing to his faith. After the clip resurfaced, the campaign said he opposes powerful people using Scripture for political purposes and described him as a Christian seminarian devoted to Jesus’ teachings¹. His campaign’s faith page presents him as a Presbyterian seminarian studying to become a pastor and says his faith leads him to reject Christian nationalism and support democracy⁴.

The classroom is a recurring front for him. The Texas Tribune reports that Talarico criticized a Texas law requiring donated copies of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, saying, “It’s using political power to elevate one religious tradition over all the others.”⁵

His Republican opponent stands on the other side of that line. The Texas Tribune describes the Senate campaigns of Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton as competing accounts of God’s role in America, and reports that Paxton wants the Bible opened, the Ten Commandments displayed and prayers lifted up in Texas classrooms. At a July campaign rally in McAllen, Paxton said the differences between the two men include family: “One of them is family.”⁵

The contest now turns on which account of faith, and of what children may learn about it in school, Texas families recognize as their own.

What families should demand

For families who raise their children in Scripture, his words show contempt for the faith they pass down at home. Parents who read those stories to their children as true are not propagandists, and a classroom that honors them is not committing indoctrination. The stakes belong to families, not to the fight over a caption on a clip that went viral¹. Before Texans choose their next senator, voters should make Talarico say plainly what he believes schools may teach their children about the Bible.

Sources

1. James Talarico slammed by Ted Cruz over criticizing bible-related education | Fox News
2. Faithfully: A Conversation About Religion and Politics With Rep. James Talarico - Center for American Progress Action
3. Bluebonnet Learning Edition 1 November 20, 2024
4. Freedom, Family & Faith - Talarico for Texas
5. Paxton, Talarico tap contrary versions of God and Christianity