‘The Office’ Alum Rainn Wilson Calls Out GOP Critics of James Talarico’s Christianity

Rainn Wilson is defending Texas Senate candidate James Talarico‘s Christianity — and taking aim at the Democrat’s Republican critics in the process.

The former Office star, 60, said Talarico’s brand of faith is “achingly close” to that of Jesus Christ, during the Thursday, August 20 episode of his podcast, Soul Boom, according to a report Fox News Digital published on August 23.

Wilson made the comments alongside New York Times journalist Ezra Klein, and the pair accused Texas GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton and his supporters of hypocrisy for repeatedly attacking Talarico, 37, despite their own “aggressively professed Christianity,” the outlet reported.

“Whenever I watch these attacks, I think, ‘You all would have hated Jesus Christ,'” Klein, 42, said, as reported by Fox News Digital. “You would have found him to be the most annoying, weepy, worrying about the wrong people — the outsiders, the outcasts.”

“‘Grow a pair, Jesus,'” Wilson joked in response.

The outlet reported that Klein, who is Jewish, and Wilson, who practices the Bahá’í Faith, said they weren’t criticizing Christians as a whole, with Wilson calling many of them among the most “caring” and “compassionate” people he’s met.

“That’s why I frame this around Talarico, because Talarico is Christian. That’s the point, that it is his Christianity they hate,” Klein said on the podcast.

“His brand of Christianity, which is so, so achingly close to Jesus’ brand of Christianity,” Wilson responded.

According to the article, Christian author Frank Turek pushed back on Wilson’s comparison in a statement calling it a “war” on who Jesus really was. “Calling James Talarico’s brand of Christianity ‘achingly close’ to Jesus’ reveals a social-justice lens so thick that people no longer care to interpret Jesus on his own terms, but would rather reimagine him on theirs,” Turek, 64, said, per the report.

During the podcast, the pair also argued that modern Christianity has grown fixated on sexuality while ignoring greed. “It is … harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. And then you’re cutting taxes on the rich and obsessed with who’s [expletive] whom,” Klein said, per the outlet.

“Yeah, Jesus didn’t talk about who’s [expletive] whom. He really didn’t. The hypocrisy of contemporary Christianity is astonishing,” Wilson said, per the report.

Talarico has frequently spoken about his faith on the campaign trail and has faced criticism over his support for abortion rights and transgender rights, which critics argue conflicts with his Christian beliefs, Fox News Digital reported.