Talarico's PCUSA pastor questions Resurrection, likens Communion to 'being breastfed' by Gnostic goddess

Resurfaced sermons from the Rev. Jim Rigby show the longtime pastor and spiritual mentor of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico questioning the historicity of the Resurrection and likening the Lord's Supper to breastfeeding from a Gnostic goddess.

Rigby, who has pastored St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) near Austin, Texas, for nearly 40 years, claimed in his sermon on Easter Sunday in 2023 that while "it's very possible" that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, "it's also possible that His body was stolen."

"It's possible the disciples stole [the body] to keep the Romans from getting a hold of it," Rigby said in the sermon, repeating a theory that Matthew 28:11-15 dismissed as a lie concocted by the chief priests. "It's possible the Romans took it because they were afraid of the resurrection on the third day."

Echoing a claim he has espoused before that the Resurrection could be a mythological symbol for deeper truths, Rigby continued: "The question I want to ask you is: do you want to live your life based on a maybe? Do you want to just bet your entire life that [sic] what somebody a long time ago told you, because somebody told them that? Or is it possible that the symbols are calling you to a deeper understanding of the human condition?"

Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico’s pastor (PCUSA) preaches during his Easter sermon that Jesus NEVER rose bodily from the dead and that he does NOT believe in a literal resurrection. pic.twitter.com/Z6ZH7hMJXg

— Protestia (@Protestia) September 21, 2026

Earlier in the sermon, Rigby based his line of reasoning on the fact that the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark end at Mark 16:8, which recounts Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Salome, fleeing from the tomb in terror after "a young man ... clothed in a long white garment" tells them that Jesus has risen. Many scholars maintain that Mark 16:9-20, which tells of Jesus appearing again to Mary Magdalene and delivering the Great Commission to the remaining 11 disciples, differs from Mark's writing style and was likely added later.

Rigby claimed the fact that Mark doesn't explicitly identify the young man at the tomb as an angel opens the possibility that the story was tapping into secret teachings espoused by the ancient "mystery religions," and that later interpretations of the man as an angel were symbolic.

"In Mark, which was the first of the Gospels, it wasn't an angel," he said. "It was just some guy in white, which is — I've pointed out before, in the mystery religions, that's someone who's been initiated in a cave, right? So in the Christian story, when you see the cave and you see a person in white, they're trying to give you a gift about your own life."

"The symbols were never meant to be taken literally," he later said.

Rigby has long been publicly questioning the foundational claim of Christianity while promoting Gnostic doctrines. Gnosticism, from the Greek word "gnosis" for "knowledge," was the first major heresy Christianity faced, and generally taught that salvation was found in secret, esoteric knowledge. According to Gnosticism, the physical world was not redeemed by the Resurrection, but rather something to be escaped.

Gnostics believed the Resurrection was not a physical reality, but rather something purely spiritual or symbolic, which is a teaching the apostle Paul explicitly rebuked in 1 Corinthians 15:14-19 when he argued such would mean Christians "are of all people most to be pitied."

In a lengthy, sarcastic Facebook post on Christmas Day in 2015, Rigby echoed the Gnostic framing of the Resurrection by claiming it was simply "a poem about the whole life process" while mocking Christians who take the story literally.

"We don't have to be loving or kind like Jesus to be saved from God's wrath. In fact we don't have to do a single thing Jesus commanded us to do. All that matters is that we admit that we are worthless trash, but that Jesus likes us anyway," he wrote at the time. "Oh, and we have to LITERALLY believe Jesus' corpse got up. If you believe all the above you will get to be with God in heaven. Let's just hope God has a handle on that anger problem by now."

Rigby's apparently Gnostic tendencies also appear to have influenced his views on gender and God's revealed nature. In another Facebook post he made during the Christmas season in 2022, he called Jesus "the magical baby," suggested the Virgin Birth is misogynistic and used the Nativity story to condemn gendered descriptions of God, claiming instead that "the transcendent does not need to have a gender."

Last week, he was found to have recently promoted an "inclusive" translation of the Bible that strips the text of gendered language for God, including Jesus’ titles as Lord, Son of Man and Son of God.

In another sermon from Nov. 9, 2025, Rigby likened the Lord's Supper to breastfeeding from Sophia, the central feminine divine figure in Gnosticism whose name means "wisdom" in Greek. A clip of the sermon has gone viral on social media, prompting some X users to compare Rigby's "feminine" theology to the Canaanite goddess Asherah, whose worship by the apostate Israelites stoked outrage from Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah.

"In a bit, we're going to have Communion together to realize that in the goddess religion, the blood that was being talked about was the blood of birth. The eating of the goddess was being breastfed. It wasn't cannibalizing a guy," he said.

"So when Jesus was trying to share these images, the people knew what He was saying. They knew Sophia. We've forgotten it. But if we put Sophia back into the equation, then we realize Communion is not a magic act. It's Jesus putting His own death in the context of this cosmic rebirth," he continued.

In a shocking clip, James Talarico’s pastor interprets Communion through ancient divine-feminine and mother-goddess imagery, claiming that eating the divine represents breastfeeding:

“In the goddess religion, the blood that was being talked about was the blood of birth. The… pic.twitter.com/lrUcOuZAD2

— ???????????? ???????????? ???????? ???????????????????????????? ???????? (@creation247) September 18, 2026

Rigby's theology appears to have profoundly influenced Talarico's worldview, and Talarico has described the pastor as a spiritual mentor who encouraged him to pursue a political career. In 2022, Talarico also mentioned Sophia in a sermon he delivered at St. Andrew's that claimed Jesus "was a feminist" while citing the heretical Gnostic Gospel of Thomas as authoritative.

In his now-famous Texas House speech in 2021 opposing a bill requiring students to play on sports teams that align with their biology, Talarico claimed that the law would drive trans-identifying children to suicide and that God Himself is non-binary, which is a Gnostic idea.

"God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between," said Talarico, who holds a slight lead over his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, according to a recent NBC 5 Dallas/Telemundo Station Group poll.