4 things to know about Senate candidate James Talarico's PCUSA pastor: 'Wolf in sheep's clothing'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Monday, March 02, 2026

1. Presbytery complaints for affirming LGBT ordination, marriage: 'I want to be on trial'

Rigby welcomed the repeated formal complaints against him to his presbytery for openly defying the PCUSA's former prohibition on homosexual marriage and ordination since the 1990s, though he was never subject to formal ecclesiastical trial.

In 1995, when the PCUSA's Book of Order still limited ordination to those living in fidelity in heterosexual marriage or chastity in singleness, Rigby took to refusing to wear his clerical robe or share the Lord's Supper at presbytery meetings in protest that the Lord's table was "not open to all," according to The Austin Chronicle.

"And that's going to take place until the church ends its discrimination against gays and lesbians," he told the outlet at the time, which noted he "intends to ignore edicts" from the denomination over the issue.

The congregation of St. Andrew's voted to keep Rigby as pastor in the 1990s, but the controversy upended the church and some of its original core members consequently left, which Rigby noted in 1995 "was devastating, financially," The Austin Chronicle reported.

When a college freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, with the support of his pastor and a Presbyterian attorney, filed a formal complaint with the presbytery against Rigby for conducting approximately 50 same-sex union blessing ceremonies on the school's campus in 2004, Rigby met with the student to tighten his case in an attempt to force a trial, according to The Austin Chronicle.

"It's what needs to happen," Rigby said at the time, expressing hope that he would get "a public hearing before my peers."

"I want to be on trial for conducting same-sex unions — period. I want to be able to say, 'Show me in the Scriptures where it's wrong.' Jesus never even talked about this," said Rigby, whose claim that Jesus Christ had nothing to say on the issue was recently echoed by Talarico during an interview with Stephen Colbert that got 9 million views on YouTube.

"Either they have to strip me of my ordination, or the church has to change," Rigby said in 2004. He was ultimately exonerated by a presbytery investigating committee over the UT Austin incident.

Rigby's position ultimately prevailed in the PCUSA. In 2011, a majority of the PCUSA's presbyteries approved an amendment allowing the ordination of openly LGBT people. The same took place regarding same-sex marriage in 2015, which coincided with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.