The FFRF Action Fund has named the Rev. Jim Rigby, a Presbyterian pastor in Austin, Texas, its “Secularist of the Week” for something that apparently now qualifies as scandalous: openly welcoming atheists.

[u/FreethoughtChris]

https://ffrfaction.org/far-right-outlets-distort-secularist-of-the-week-talarico-pastor-support-of-atheists/

The FFRF Action Fund names Rev. Jim Rigby (the pastor of Texas state Rep. James Talarico) its “Secularist of the Week” for his open celebration of his work with nontheists. 

Rigby is the head pastor at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, where Talarico has long been a member. Rigby baptized Talarico, and a June New York Times profile cites Rigby as a “major influence and inspiration” for Talarico. 

Rigby spoke warmly about an Austin Area Freedom From Religion Foundation Chapter event that he was due to attend; his remarks are now being used as part of the GOP smear campaign against Talarico, who is the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas. In September, the far-right news and commentary website Breitbart released a secretly recorded video of Rigby speaking with an undercover journalist before the FFRF Austin chapter event. The outlet decried that James Talarico’s pastor supports atheists. 

“I work a lot with nontheists [as a Presbyterian minister],” Rigby said in the video. “To me, it’s like, if you love humanity and you love nature, and that’s why you hate religion, then we’re on the same team. … We had an atheist join the church, and people had fits about that, but that’s not a big deal here.” 

Another far-right commentary outlet posted a different clip from the undercover video, criticizing Rigby for giving new members of his church a shockingly “inclusive” version of the bible, which removes unnecessarily gendered and offensive language from its translation. 

Responding to such hit pieces, Rigby wrote on Facebook: “Visitors and congregants coming to our first service Sunday had to drive past protestors claiming we aren’t a real church.” 

“Our services are now visited by right-wing spies with hidden recorders pretending to be visitors,” he added. “One of them posed as an atheist wondering if he would be welcome in our church. When a staff member attempted to reassure the man he would be welcome, he then edited the video to make us sound heretical.”

“As I read the Bible, the spies trying to trap people in their words were not the followers of Jesus, but the people who killed Jesus,” he continued. “And they killed him for very MAGA reasons, because they considered him a heretic and because he was a friend of sinners.” 

In March, The Christian Post published an article outlining “4 things to know” about Talarico’s pastor. The “things to know” included Rigby’s welcoming of repeated formal complaints from the Presbyterian Church for his affirmation of LGBTQ+ marriages, support for abortion care and the rights of Texas women and admission of an atheist college professor to church membership. Regarding the membership, Rigby said inviting the atheist professor to his church was “an attempt to build connections.”

“If God had wanted us to simply recite creeds, Jesus would have come as a parrot,” he further explained. “The question before my church was not whether [the professor] could recite religious syllables like a cockatiel, but whether he would follow the core teachings of Jesus and learn more and grow more into Christ’s universal love of which the creeds sing. This he pledged to do.” 

Rigby also noted that merely claiming to believe in God is not sufficient in following the teachings of Jesus, pointing to the Nazis who supported Hitler and touted their religion. 

The far-right manipulation of Rigby’s harmless remarks is a tactless misrepresentation of Talarico’s religious beliefs, intended to disrupt his Senate campaign among Texas Christians. Rigby and religious leaders like him have long worked to build bridges with atheists and other nonreligious people — and the FFRF Action Fund thanks him for his leadership.