The Rise of the Christian Left in Texas

Alain Stephens is an investigative reporter covering gun violence, arms trafficking, and federal law enforcement. “Why do you wanna have a pep rally when people are hurting?” That was the question Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III posed at a September food drive in South Dallas, where volunteers were collecting groceries for struggling families. Across town, Republicans were holding a midterm convention. Haynes, a longtime Baptist pastor and Democratic congressional nominee, was introducing James Talarico, the party’s candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas. A month later, speaking at a Dallas megachurch, Talarico offered his own interpretation of Christian duty. “I try to love my neighbor through public policy,” the Presbyterian seminarian told the congregation. “I’m trying to make my neighbor’s life easier, better, less stressful.” Both men are making a deceptively simple argument in some of the staunchly staunch red-as-hell, Republican territory in America, one that might transcend the conventional wisdom about national campaigns and the millions poured into competing campaign war chests: When far-right policy translates into actual pain, at what point does intervening become a spiritual obligation? At Haynes’s Friendship-West Baptist Church , the ministry extends to legal services, immigration advocacy, counseling, economic justice, and food policy. When far-right policy translates into actual pain, at what point does intervening become a spiritual obligation? Elsewhere, hundreds of members of the clergy have joined protests against immigration enforcement , and some have been trained in direct action and civil resistance . By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use .