Jesus Is the Only Way, and the GOP Just Said So Out Loud

At the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, pastors openly proclaimed Jesus as the only way while Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico offered a strikingly different vision of Christianity, revealing a sharp theological divide over faith, politics and religious pluralism.

By EEW Magazine Online News Editors

Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell speaks at the 2024 Republican National Convention, one month after Donald Trump visited his 180 Church in Detroit. (Credit: Getty Images)

Pastor Lorenzo Sewell was two minutes into his "Enough Is Enough" sermon when the sweat started showing on his forehead.

Standing on the American Airlines Center stage in Dallas Wednesday night, the senior pastor of 180 Church in Detroit told a stadium of Republicans that November's midterms amount to spiritual warfare.

"Not today, Satan," he said. "You will not steal our country."

Then he proudly invoked the highest name. "He's got the only name given among men whereby we must be saved, and that's the name of Jesus," Sewell said, pointing the room to Acts 4:12. "If you believe in that name, put your hands together and give your great God great glory!"

The supercharged atmosphere was reminiscent of a southern revival in a packed out storefront church.

Sewell, who delivered the benediction at President Donald Trump's second inauguration, hosted him at 180 Church in 2024 and also spoke at that year's convention in Milwaukee, invoked Psalm 24 in a charismatic cadence reminiscent of Pentecostal traditions in the Black church.

He closed with a call to fight "for the soul of a nation" and had the crowd roaring on its feet before his two and a half minutes at the podium ended.

Pastor Jack Graham opened the night's program with the invocation. Graham is senior pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, a Plano 40,000-member megachurch, and served two terms as president of the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 2000s. Trump named him to his Religious Liberty Commission, and the two have been allies for years. Graham asked God for "spiritual rebirth" and a "spiritual revolution," tying the prayer to the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding.

The overt use of the name of Jesus, along with loud declarations that He is Lord and the only way, points to a trend within the Republican Party.

Republicans seem less shy about endorsing and embracing Judeo-Christian values and perspectives, unashamedly bringing those beliefs onto a national stage.

A Pew Research survey conducted in April found that 27 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners want the federal government to declare Christianity the nation's official religion, while another 55 percent want the government to promote Christian moral values.

President Donald Trump speaks at the 2026 Republican Convention in Dallas on Sept. 9, 2026, as supporters wave American flags behind him. (Credit: Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune)

Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, those figures are 8 percent and 32 percent, respectively. Pew also found that 45 percent of Republicans say the Bible should carry more weight than the will of the people when the two conflict over U.S. law.

This election cycle, faith and Christianity have moved front and center in both parties.

Texas Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate running against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, has built his own campaign on Scripture, though his views don't align with conservative Christian values and themes. On theology, he has argued that Christianity doesn't hold the sole claim to truth, a direct contradiction of Scripture's emphatic claim that Jesus is the only way to truth and the Father.

Texas state Rep. James Talarico waves to supporters in Austin on March 4, 2026, after winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. (Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Talarico told podcaster Ezra Klein last year that he sees Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism as circling the same truth Christianity points to. On the Texas House floor in 2021, while opposing a bill restricting transgender athletes, he said, "God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary." During a separate legislative debate that year, he argued there are six biological sexes.

Both lines became attack-ad fodder, and Talarico revisited them directly this week. In a Fox News interview conducted in Dallas as the convention ran nearby, he said he'd "missed the mark" on the sex comment. He now affirms there are two sexes while noting that a small share of people have genetic differences.

On the nonbinary remark, he said he'd been "being provocative" and that his actual point was that no human category fully captures God.

He doesn't see his view as controversial theology. Scripture doesn't dispute that God is beyond full human description. What it doesn't support is borrowing "nonbinary," a modern framework built to describe human gender identity, and applying it to God as though that settles a political argument about people.

Talarico holds a firm view on where church ends and state begins. According to him, when government elevates one religious tradition over others, it is using its "power to dominate our neighbors instead of loving them as ourselves." He also opposes measures like the Texas law requiring public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, which his opponent, Paxton, has defended in court.

Sewell had already told the Dallas crowd Jesus is the only name by which anyone can be saved. From there, he moved straight into asking that room to fight for the nation. Talarico stood a few miles away saying government has no business preaching anybody's gospel, his own included.

Both men would tell you they're speaking as Christians. Only one party consistently platforms those who challenge pluralism and preach the biblical mandate that Jesus is the only way.

At issue is a divide that hinges on whether Christians who tie their faith to their politics will embrace the word of a politician whose views contradict the Word of the Creator.

Trends and polls will continue to reveal who is winning the Christian ideological war.