#2352 - James Talarico

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. How are you, James?

James Talarico (0:13)

I'm doing well. How are you?

Joe Rogan (0:15)

Very good. Nice to meet you.

James Talarico (0:16)

It's nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

My pleasure. I found out about you from my friend Brian Simpson. He was in the green room of the Comedy Mothership, and he was telling me how excited he was about you. He said he watched some lecture.

I think it was probably, not a lecture, a speech you were giving about the Ten Commandments in schools. So then I watched it and I said, oh, okay, this is very interesting. So I thought we'd have a cool conversation.

James Talarico (0:42)

Yeah. Well, I'm just honored to be here. Thanks for including me.

Joe Rogan (0:47)

Thank you. I'm honored to have you. It's always interesting to see a person who is a Christian, who is not four of the Ten Commandments in schools.

James Talarico (0:59)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:00)

And I think you made a very compelling argument.

James Talarico (1:03)

Yeah. I've gotten that a lot. People who are like, you're in seminary, you're studying to become a minister, why wouldn't you want the Ten Commandments in every classroom? So I recognize that it's kind of a weird position to be in. But I grew up in a tradition that cherished the separation of church and state, not just because it protects the church or protects democracy, but it is what allows this democracy to happen where we can all have different faith traditions and live together in peace. So any attempt to erode that boundary, I feel like I have a special obligation to speak out against it. So I told my colleagues that I thought the bill was unconstitutional, that the bill was un-American. But I went one step further and I said I thought the bill was un-Christian, which again probably sounds weird to people. But in all of Jesus' teachings, he's always focused on the outsider, the outcast, the person who's left out or the person who's different. And so as a Christian, I think my concern is for the Muslim kid and the Jewish kid, the Hindu kid, the atheist kid who's sitting in a classroom, who now has a poster on the wall, forced by the government that says, your religion is inferior or you're not welcome here. And I just think if Jesus saw that, he would weep for those students and would demand that we love them as ourselves. And so that's why I kind of spoke out against the bill on theological grounds, not just constitutional grounds.

Joe Rogan (2:35)

So what is the bill? Can you explain?

SPEAKER_3 (2:37)

Yeah.

James Talarico (2:38)

So the bill forces every teacher in the state to display the 10 Commandments in their classrooms.

Joe Rogan (2:43)

Is this even in private schools?

James Talarico (2:44)

It's only public schools. Because that's really where we have authority as the state legislature. And the bill, this is going to sound weird, but it even specifies how big the poster is, the dimensions of it, it has to be in a conspicuous place. It's basically the size of a sheet of paper, regular sheet of paper. The idea is they didn't want anyone to make it too small to where someone wouldn't read it. But the bill says that the school doesn't have to spend money on it, it can be donated. And that sounds fine to most people until you realize there's this huge network of Christian nationalist organizations that are already preparing to flood every school with these Ten Commandments posters for all of their classrooms. So the donation thing sounds like it's kind of innocuous until you realize that the donations are already ready to go from all these outside groups so there's going to be legal challenges of course but you know if it's not struck down on the courts every teacher is going to have to put up the Ten Commandments in their classroom against their wills even if they don't want to. I mean I just again speaking as a Christian if we have to force people to put up a poster to me that means that we have a dead religion, a religion that no longer moves people, a religion that no longer speaks to people's hearts. If we have to prove our legitimacy by micromanaging what teachers put up in their classroom, I mean that to me that means we have a real crisis in our faith. We should be leading by example, not by mandate.

Joe Rogan (4:16)