The Office star Rainn Wilson has said the Christian faith expressed by Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is “achingly close” to the Christianity of Jesus.
Wilson made the comments during a discussion with New York Times journalist Ezra Klein on his Soul Boom podcast, as the pair discussed religion and the increasingly prominent role of Christianity in the Texas Senate race.
Talarico, a Texas state representative who has studied at a Presbyterian seminary, has frequently spoken about his Christian faith while advocating progressive political positions.
Klein criticised attacks on Talarico from Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton and his supporters, questioning whether their approach was consistent with their own public expressions of Christianity.
"Whenever I watch these attacks, I think, ‘You all would have hated Jesus Christ,’" Klein said. "You would have found him to be the most annoying, weepy, worrying about the wrong people — the outsiders, the outcasts…"
"'Grow a pair, Jesus,'" Wilson joked.
Klein, who is Jewish, and Wilson, who follows the Bahá'í Faith, stressed that they were not criticising Christians as a whole. Wilson said many Christians he had encountered were among the most caring and compassionate people he knew.
Klein also suggested it was Talarico's particular expression of Christianity that had contributed to the opposition he faced.
"Well, that's why I frame this around Talarico, because Talarico is Christian. That's the point, that it is his Christianity they hate," he said.
"His brand of Christianity, which is so, so achingly close to Jesus' brand of Christianity," Wilson responded.
Wilson and Klein also accused parts of contemporary American Christianity of focusing heavily on sexuality while giving insufficient attention to biblical teaching about wealth and greed.
"It is harder for a rich man to get — harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. And then you're cutting taxes on the rich and obsessed with who's f---ing whom," Klein said.
"Yeah. Jesus didn't talk about who's f---ing whom. He really didn't. The hypocrisy of contemporary Christianity is astonishing," Wilson replied.
Talarico's expression of Christianity has become a point of contention during his political rise.
He supports abortion rights and has previously opposed efforts to incorporate Bible material into the Texas public school curriculum, which as invited criticism from conservative Christians.
A video from 2025 which recently resurfaced showed Talarico criticising a state curriculum which he claimed would present Christian Bible stories as historical fact to young children.
"It was a new state curriculum that would teach Christian Bible stories as historical fact, as the only truth to our youngest students, and, I mean, kindergarten, first-graders," he said.
"These are kids who aren’t able to think for themselves yet. They haven’t formed their own worldviews."
He added that an effort "to push propaganda, to push indoctrination on those youngest students is deeply immoral and should trouble all of us."
Wilson's assessment of Talarico's Christianity has been challenged by Christian author and apologist Frank Turek.
In comments provided to Fox News Digital, Turek argued that Wilson was interpreting Jesus through a modern social-justice framework.
"Calling James Talarico's brand of Christianity ‘achingly close’ to Jesus's reveals a social-justice lens so thick that people no longer care to interpret Jesus on his own terms, but would rather reimagine him on theirs," he said.
Turek went on to criticise Talarico's positions on abortion, sexuality and Bible teaching in schools.
"To describe such a person's position as being ‘achingly close’ to Jesus is a war on the reality of who Jesus is, what He taught, and what it means to follow Him."
