A pastor tied to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's Tennessee church declared on a podcast last week that he wants Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico dead. The remark, delivered during an episode of the Reformation Red Pill podcast, has injected ugly rhetoric into an already heated Texas Senate race.

Joshua Haymes, a former pastoral intern at the church led by Pastor Brooks Potteiger and a fellow congregant alongside Hegseth, made the statement directly, the San Antonio Current reported:

"I pray that God kills him. Ultimately, that means killing his heart and raising him up to new life in Christ. If it would not be within God's will to do so, stop him by any means necessary."

Potteiger, described as Hegseth's closest spiritual adviser, agreed on air. "Right, right," he said. "We want him crucified with Christ."

Both men referred to the 36-year-old Talarico as "a wolf," "a demon," and "a snake" throughout the episode. Haymes also categorized Talarico as a "public enemy" whom Christians "are not called to love."

The theology that started the fight

Talarico is not some passive target here. The Presbyterian seminarian has drawn sharp criticism from orthodox Christians for statements including the claim that "God is nonbinary." That kind of language does not sit well with anyone who takes historic Christian theology seriously, and it shouldn't. Projecting modern gender ideology onto the nature of God is not bold theology. It is fashionable distortion.

Talarico is running against Republican Sen. John Cornyn for his Senate seat, and polls reportedly show the race competitive, assuming Cornyn survives his GOP primary runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The Democrat has built his campaign around sermonizing about God's love and acceptance, a framing that conveniently sidesteps the parts of Scripture that make progressive audiences uncomfortable.

Conservative Christians are right to push back on that project. A candidate who weaponizes a selectively edited version of the faith to win votes deserves rigorous theological challenge.

This is not rigorous theological challenge

Praying for someone's death on a podcast is not that. Calling for someone to be stopped "by any means necessary" is not that. It is the kind of reckless language that hands your opponents a weapon while accomplishing nothing for the cause you claim to serve.

Haymes has a documented history of this. According to The Guardian, he has called for public executions, demanded capital punishment for adultery and abortion, claimed liberalism is a greater threat than neo-Nazism, and appeared to call for the drowning of Pride marchers. This is not the profile of a serious Christian thinker. It is the profile of someone who confuses volume with conviction.

Potteiger's church sits within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Its governing documents hold that homosexuality, premarital sex, and transgenderism are unbiblical, and state that women should not serve in the military. Those are positions with deep roots in traditional Christian thought. You do not need to threaten a political opponent's life to articulate them.

Who benefits from this?

James Talarico does. Every cycle, Democrats running in red or purple states pray for exactly this kind of gift: an opponent adjacent figure saying something so inflammatory that it drowns out the actual policy debate. Talarico's "God is nonbinary" theology, his progressive policy positions, his attempt to flip a Texas Senate seat blue; none of that gets scrutinized when the headline is about a pastor wanting him dead.

The connection to Hegseth makes the splash bigger. Potteiger led a prayer service at the Pentagon last May, where he reportedly hailed Trump as a divinely appointed leader. That proximity means every media outlet will treat this as a Hegseth story, not a fringe podcast story. The left-leaning press was never going to let that connection go unexploited.

Conservative Christians have every reason to oppose Talarico's candidacy and his theology on the merits. His version of Christianity strips the faith of its hard truths to make it palatable to a secular progressive audience. That argument wins in Texas. The argument that God should kill your political opponent does not.

The Texas Senate picture

The bigger story for conservatives should be the race itself. Cornyn faces a primary runoff against Ken Paxton, and whoever emerges will face a Democrat who is clearly building a campaign designed to peel off moderate evangelicals with feel-good religious language. That is a real threat worth taking seriously.

Taking it seriously means making the case against Talarico's theology and his politics with precision. It means exposing the gap between his "love and acceptance" branding and the progressive policy agenda he would carry to Washington. It does not mean handing him a martyr narrative on a podcast with a name like Reformation Red Pill.

The best way to defeat a bad idea is to name it clearly and let voters decide. Texas conservatives have the arguments. They do not need the threats.