The Kingdom Is Not Of This World

Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

When journalist Tim Alberta chronicles the corruption of American Evangelicals, he writes from both an insider and outsider perspective. He commences this, his second book, with that most conventional of Evangelical theological devices, the testimony. That is, he recounts his Christian journey to date, to verify his “born again” credentials. Son of a Michigan pastor, Alberta grew up surrounded by Christianity and church culture, and absorbed it into his bones.

But like many young American Christians, he believed the principles Christianity taught him, and that created a paradox. He witnessed the gulf between the teachings proclaimed from Sunday pulpits, and the lives Christians actually lived. Too many American Christians are discipled by talk radio and basic cable, not Jesus. Things reached a peak when he delivered his father’s eulogy—and got castigated for not being Republican enough in the pulpit.

Alberta did something most disillusioned young Christians can’t do. Already possessing journalism credentials, he undertook an investigation of American Christendom. (The “White” part of that equation goes mostly unspoken.) He visits revivalist preachers like Greg Locke, whose pro-Trump homilies have become a YouTube sensation, and Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor whom others have described as Donald Trump’s pastor.

He also visits pastors, and invested lay Christians, whose witness against Christian dominionism has sometimes helped reverse this march. Russell Moore, a former ranking theologian in the Southern Baptist Convention, left the denomination when too many denominational leaders cared more about Donald Trump and COVID-19 than discipleship. Activist Rachel Denhollander became both loved and hated when she advocated for survivors of clergy abuse and religious trauma.

This book recounts a religion torn between conflicting forces. Some Christians love America, support the existing political order, and literally use the Constitution as a theological heuristic. Others take seriously Christ’s commands to embrace the downtrodden and heal the wounded. One recalls, reading this book, that Jesus quarreled most fiercely with temple priests and congregational elders, because religion is frequently the death of spirituality.

Tim Alberta

Alberta crisscrosses America—and even, briefly, Europe—to better understand the combined forces turning Evangelicalism into a “state religion.” The conditions he finds are frequently bleak. Revivalist preachers cultivate large followings by ginning fear of an ill-defined “other” who threatens the social order, and parishioners who believe that order is God-given. Many Christians seemingly worship their own fears of uncertainty and disempowerment.

Others, seemingly, embrace uncertainty and disempowerment. While fearmongers pay publicists to flood American culture with their message, other Christians prefer to work quietly, receiving reward not from public acclaim, but from the healing they see blooming around them. These Christians generally don’t seek mass audiences and, in Alberta’s telling, sometimes feel uncomfortable when they do accrue notice. But they, and the work they do, still exist.

Intermittently, Alberta acknowledges a third contributing factor: a media landscape driven by a perverse incentive structure, which gets ratings and sells advertising by pandering to audiences’ paranoia. Anger drives cable TV ratings and YouTube clicks. There’s an entire argument brewing here about how what serves owners’ pocketbooks frequently doesn’t serve the common good, an argument Alberta doesn’t engage because it exceeds his scope. But it’s there.

This reciprocal relationship between media attention and leaders appealing to White anger, comes with a price. Alberta notes that Christianity, which once held primacy in American spirituality, is dwindling rapidly; if current trends continue, Christianity will be a minority religion in two generations. Even once-secure bastions of Evangelicalism, like Liberty University (to which Alberta returns), have become battlegrounds of American identity.

Tellingly, the leaders profiting from this arrangement don’t believe their own hokum. Jerry Falwell Jr.’s apostasy at Liberty has become almost legendary. But the leaders Alberta interviews reveal great personal doubt they don’t share with parishioners. Greg Locke admits he doesn’t believe his online nationalist paranoia, but it draws numbers. Robert Jeffress admits doubts about Trump that he daren’t speak aloud in public.

Evangelical Christianity, like America itself, teeters between extremes. Some leaders get rich and accrue large flocks by appealing to True Believers’ worst instincts. Others prefer hard work, honesty, and relative anonymity. The worst Christian examples are also the most readily visible, ensuring that the existing system preserves itself. But while the system leadership remains intact, ordinary believers, who can’t see the good work being done quietly, leave the fold altogether.

Alberta ends optimistically, suggesting the quieter Christians may be ultimately ascendent. But their triumph won’t come quickly. Things are likely to get markedly worse, and paranoia more widespread, before things get any better.