I was born and raised an evangelical Southern Baptist.
I no longer worship in that denomination, and circumstances have forced me to be wary of the word “evangelical,’ which can mean any number of different things—some of which I find myself in disagreement with. But the family I love still worships within that tradition, and as a result I remain deeply familiar with that milieu.
That familiarity has been the source of a profound and faith-testing sorrow, grief, and shock to me over the past several decades as I’ve witnessed the evolution of the evangelical church into what it has now become.
When I was growing up in college, I remember being reprimanded by both church and family when I resisted voting for then-candidate George W. Bush: to not vote at all, I was told, or to vote for another candidate, was not Christian behavior. Bordered on sin. I found myself bewildered by the level of ire I faced, the sheer anger and frustration. While I believed my faith should inform my vote, I found myself uneasy that the church might demand I vote against my own spiritual misgivings.
Still, it did not occur to me at the time that this was unusual: that there might be other schools of thought on the matter, or that mixing faith and politics in this particular way might bear dangerous fruit. Instead, I sat with my troubled thoughts and watched as evangelical Christianity evolved into a tradition with which I could no longer, in good conscience, identify myself.
I wasn’t alone. Beth Moore left, many years later, and so did Russell Moore, and so did many, many men and women like me. Some of those who didn’t leave voluntarily, like Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, got kicked out instead. Some stayed in a desperate effort to transform the church from within. And along the way, the evangelical church continued to transform into an unrecognizable political entity.
Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism strives to make sense of this transformation, and what it means for American evangelicals and for American Christianity.
Alberta himself is a man of faith who grew up in an evangelical tradition, and this makes for a refreshingly authentic account. To read a thoughtful critique of the evangelical church from a man who sees much to love in it, who was raised in it and admires people in it, matters: Alberta is as fair as he is incisive, and his faith—as well as the bewildered, haunting sadness that emerges from his experience—registers with those of us who have lived this experience.
Moreover, Alberta’s faith gives him a rich humanness that allows him to approach the subjects of his critique with gentleness and humanity. Many Christian nationalists render themselves as caricatures of faith-and-country, relying on spectacle and wild claims to keep their audiences coming back for more; Alberta teases out the humanness in these men, revealing their complexity even when they remain unrepentant and unwilling to reflect.
The book itself sets out to answer a single question: how in the world did we get here? Through the lens of his own experience with his father’s church, Alberta explores the evolution of evangelical Christianity from the Moral Majority to its current incarnation in the age of Donald Trump. No touchstone of evangelical Christianity is left unexamined: Alberta considers the creation and administration of Liberty University, the abuse scandals in the Southern Baptist Convention, the rise of Christian nationalism and its attendant pastors, the election of Donald Trump to the presidency (with the support of the evangelical vote), and the evangelical culture wars.
The two key assertions in the book haunted me for days: that the state of evangelical Christianity has emerged from a church that idolizes America over Christ, and that the state of evangelical Christianity hearkens back to a frightening lack of spiritual formation.
Examining the rhetoric of Christian nationalism and evangelicals who are “all in” to recreate God’s kingdom on earth through the presidency of Donald Trump, Alberta gently but deftly points out a lack of Scriptural substance and Biblical understanding. Drawing on interviews with theologians, scholars, and key evangelical figures, he identifies failures in catechesis that have emerged as fault lines in the evangelical church, permitting Christians to worship at the feet of a president rather than a Savior; to ignore the dictates of Scripture to love and serve one’s neighbor; and to identify Christian America as a country to “fight for” rather than to identify God’s Kingdom as already present and Christ’s victory as complete.
The book, I must admit, can be bleak.
Alberta is thorough. Two-thirds of the way through I found myself profoundly depressed by the sheer scale of it all: the lies told and believed in the name of Christ, the political pageantry now being taught in some churches at the expense of the Word, the loss of pastors and spiritual leaders overwhelmed by congregations who demand political performances rather than spiritual formation, the rotting fruit that has emerged from a frightening idolatry. The parade of men using the name of Christ to financially and politically profit in ways that directly undercut the commands of God (or only promote a select few at the expense of others) turns my stomach.
But hope is not lost. The book—written before the current presidency—also reveals the hopes of those who believe that this may be a necessary purging of the church, a dark struggle before daybreak. Russell Moore and others have hope for an evangelical future that emphasizes spiritual formation, brings believers back to spiritual rather than political truths, and inspires a new generation. Key figures are forming groups to support beleaguered pastors and promote strong catechesis in the church.
Will this be enough? I’m not sure. The deep fissures within evangelicalism will require much work to heal, and much self-awareness, now lacking, before the church itself can move forward. For this reason, perhaps, the book does not offer pat answers, though it does offer hope.
Because in Christ, there is always hope.
Only God knows what will ultimately become of the evangelical church in America. But reading this book, I felt less alone and less overwhelmed. I’m not the only one shocked and grieved by the current state of affairs in American evangelicalism. But there are laborers in Christ who hope to build a better church out of the ashes, to breathe life into dry bones once the current smoldering flames have burnt themselves to embers.
I no longer worship in that tradition, but I pray that God helps those who labor to make something better. I pray that the vision for a new and better future for the church will come true.
Samaritan's Song 