A resurfaced video is going viral online that shows Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico attributing wokespeak gendered terms to the Christian God. In the clip, Talarico describes God using gendered and non-gendered language, saying, “God is both masculine & feminine & everything in between.”

In a separate portion of the video, he also refers to transgender children, saying, “[Trans children] are perfect, beautiful, & they are sacred.”

A second clip being shared alongside the first shows Talarico explicitly using the term “non-binary” in reference to God, according to the circulating posts. 

In traditional Christian teaching, God is most commonly referred to as “Father,” particularly in the teachings and prayers attributed to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The term is understood within mainstream doctrine as describing the relation between God and man, rather than being about any biological attribute of God.

While both the Old and New Testaments contain metaphorical imagery that uses maternal comparisons for God, these passagages in Isaiah and Matthew describe God in maternal terms, as well as imagery comparing God’s care to that of a mother hen gathering her chicks, respectively. Theologians across major Christian traditions note that these descriptions of God the Father are figurative language intended to communicate aspects of care, protection, and creation, as God does. 

Mainstream Christian doctrine also maintains that God is not a physical being and therefore is not defined by human categories of sex or biology, further separating it from Talarico’s interpretation that God can exist on a gender spectrum at all.