Trading the Gospel for Political Power
Reviewed by Robert Crux | 8 October 2024 |
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism is a compelling and ultimately disheartening analysis of what happens when the church engages with political power.
Tim Alberta is a political journalist, but also a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor. His New York Times bestseller shows American evangelical churches struggling to navigate the territory between faith and politics, with politics becoming their substitute religion. He describes a faith that has been cheapened by fear, corrupted by right wing nationalist fervor, and is trading grace for political power.
A travelog of anger
The author builds his study on interviews with people who are knowledgeable about the changes in evangelicalism. He identifies two periods of cultural turmoil that caused many evangelicals to enter into politics for the first time.
The first was the Carter administration that resulted in the election of Reagan. The second was the Obama era, during which sweeping cultural changes created a sense of dread in the predominantly white evangelical base. By 2016, American Evangelicalism had been captured by the politics of white Christian nationalism and was ready to support Donald Trump.
The book has the feeling of a travelog, featuring a colorful cast of characters. Alberta discovers in his travels evangelical congregations that appear to be at war with themselves. Confusing culture war with holy war, some congregations have more guns than Bibles. Their pulpits host hucksters and conspiracy snake oil peddlers—selling and legitimizing anger.
Alberta interviews pastors struggling to cope with a vocal minority of congregants aggressively pushing back on any perceived departure from conservative—or all too often, Trumpian—political orthodoxy. Alberta asks celebrity pastor Robert Jeffress how so many evangelical leaders and congregants have been able to rationalize moral compromises with politicians. Jeffress replies simply that people feel “under siege” (116).
As a result, millions of conservative Christians and everyday churchgoers have made America God’s kingdom. They believe it is a land set apart for its people to be uniquely blessed and in a special covenant with God. Consequently their love for God is preempted by a love of country so strong that congregants come to church each week expecting a right-wing rant, their pastor demonizing all of those who don’t comply with their political and religious beliefs.
The Sermon on the Mount Jesus of the New Testament—the one who blesses peacemakers and the meek—has been replaced by a culture warrior Jesus who joins with conservatives to save America.
Pastors as political marketers
Greg Locke, a tent revivalist preacher from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, became an overnight evangelical celebrity by creating conspiracies and employing dehumanizing rhetoric. He declares that President Biden is a “sex-trafficking, demon-possessed mongrel” (218), and that the COVID pandemic was weaponized by the government to shut down the church (220).
Locke and other charismatic evangelical leaders are able to convince their worked-up congregants that governments are coming to subvert their faith. In some churches these political rants have become as normal as taking communion. Their mission to serve God, rather than earthly acclaim, has been upended by a right-wing political movement that views churches as a battlefield to be conquered (330).
Many of these pastors and leaders have embraced the political altar, exchanging a heavenly kingdom for an earthly culture war to “own the Democrats,” with hopes of obtaining power and privilege. Their anticipated glory will be fulfilled by winning the 2024 election for God, and remaking America into a great Christian nation under the flag of Christian nationalism.
Many use the political altar call as a marketing tool to grow their respective flocks into megachurches. By fabricating threats to the church, scaremongering about the “Johnson Amendment,” claiming persecution and marginalization, and justifying behaviors that were antithetical to what Jesus taught, opportunistic pastors raise millions of dollars for their churches, and attract attendees to church events that look more like political rallies.
A trail of destruction
While this is not the story of every evangelical church in America, it is impossible to read Alberta’s account without being struck by the wake of destruction left by Christian nationalism.
I was disturbed to read in one chapter of the horrible treatment some pastors have received for speaking out against the politicalization of Christianity. Pastors have been physically threatened by their parishioners because they were not committed enough to Donald Trump. Pastors’ commitment to Christ was questioned because of how they voted, or how they responded to political issues such as mask laws or gun control laws. These not-so-Christian tactics are employed by zealous political evangelicals to make sure their fellow colleagues fall in line with their quest for power.
While this book focuses primarily on Baptist or independent evangelicals, it should serve as a cautionary tale and warning to other Christian churches and denominations, including Seventh-day Adventists. It is not just evangelicals who have been prone to idolizing America and its politicians for political power. When the American flag gets wrapped around the cross and the pulpit in any Christian church, when politics is raised to the level of religion, we risk entering that dark forest of fear, and risk becoming obsessed with a worldly identity rather than with Christian identity.
The book should be read by Christians of all faiths as a warning against idolatry of a political gospel disconnected from Scripture. While the book offers no definitive path forward, it does hold up a mirror to American churches, asking us to contemplate our present condition and protect our credibility as spaces for faith in the biblical Jesus.
We all need a deep, introspective examination of our own church’s identity and mission. This book reminds us that our ultimate hope should be in Christ and eternity, not in this world or our country.
Robert D. Crux, Ed.S, worked as a teacher, principal, and superintendent of schools over a period of 35 years in Adventist education before retiring in 2016 to Lawton, Michigan, where he enjoys writing, reading, biking, model railroading, and, most of all, his grandchildren.
