Tim Alberta Presents The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals In An Age of Extremism

 

Tim Alberta is the chief political correspondent for POLITICO Magazine and the author of The New York Times and Washington Post best-seller, American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Donald Trump. And,

The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: Evangelicals in the Age of Political Extremism...

The pastor quoted one of my favorite verses, Mark 8:36. “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world,” Jesus asked, “yet forfeit their soul?”

LOOKING BACK, ZAHND IS GRATEFUL FOR LOSING MUCH OF HIS CONGREGATION all those years ago. Downsizing so dramatically allowed the pastor to connect with his people more intimately, to make sure everyone was on board with his mission and his message. This not only made for a healthier church; it insulated Word of Life from the turmoil of the Trump era. In fact, Zahnd told me, at a moment when many of his clergy counterparts were bleeding members from their churches, Word of Life was experiencing real growth for the first time in over a decade. The chief explanation: YouTube. This was not a COVID-specific phenomenon; Word of Life had begun streaming its services online years before the pandemic arrived. Zahnd was skeptical of the practice at first. He believed in gathering physically, in taking communion as one body, in the power of corporate worship. He wasn’t terribly interested in pastoring people thousands of miles away. But then he got to know some of them. He listened to their stories, heard their prayers. Online church wasn’t their preference, either. They would love to join a solid, unified, kingdom-first congregation in their community. “They just can’t find one,” Zahnd told me. “These people feel like they have nowhere to go. I just heard from someone yesterday who lives in Texas; apparently, the county she lives in voted for Trump in a higher percentage in 2020 than any other county in America. And she told me, ‘Pastor, I cannot find a normal church.’ What do I say to that?” Zahnd is happy, on some interim basis, to offer an online community to the displaced masses. But it’s not a sustainable solution to the problem of “normal church” scarcity. These people watching Zahnd online—particularly the less seasoned believers—need a permanent home. They need a pastor to love and disciple them; they need a church family to grow alongside them and hold them accountable. To this end, Zahnd is trying to help the only way he knows how: by mentoring young preachers. “I had these four pastors here yesterday, from a fairly large church in Oregon,” Zahnd said. “And I told them, ‘You’re going to have to lean into the great tradition. Don’t allow your preaching to be driven by the news cycles. Start paying attention to the Revised Common Lectionary; preach from that. Pay attention to the liturgical calendar; preach from that.’” Hours earlier, at the Word of Life entrance, a kindly old gentleman had handed me a church bulletin. The first thing I noticed was the date: “November 6, 2022. Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost.” Zahnd’s church observes days tied to the deaths of saints, sacred moments from scripture, and the onset of seasons such as Lent and Advent. American holidays—Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day—are not recognized. “What do those dates have to do with us?” Zahnd said with a shrug. “We’re the Church.” It’s not easy to break away from American traditions, Zahnd said. But if evangelicals are to regain lost standing, it’s necessary. “Christianity is inherently countercultural. That’s how it thrives. When it tries to become a dominant culture, it becomes corrupted. That’s been the case from the very beginning,” Zahnd said. “This is one major difference between Islam and Christianity. Islam has designs on running the world; it’s a system of government. Christianity is nothing like that. The gospels and the epistles have no vision of Christianity being a dominant religion or culture.” The Bible, as Zahnd pointed out, is written primarily from the perspective of the underdog: Hebrew slaves fleeing Egypt, Jews exiled to Babylon, Christians living under Roman occupation. This is why Paul implored his fellow first-century believers—especially those in Rome who lived under a brutal regime—to both submit to their governing authorities and stay loyal to the kingdom built by Christ. It stands to reason that American evangelicals, themselves born into the bosom of imperial might, can’t quite relate to Paul and his pleas for humility, or Peter and his enthusiasm for suffering, never mind that poor vagrant preacher from Nazareth and his egalitarian rhetoric. The last shall be first? What kind of socialist indoctrination is that? “You see, the kingdom of God isn’t real to most of these people. They can’t perceive it,” Zahnd said. “What’s real is America. What’s real is this tawdry world of partisan politics, this winner-takes-all blood sport. So, they keep charging into the fray, and the temptation to bow down to the devil to gain control over the kingdoms of this world becomes more and more irresistible.” Zahnd has studied the rise and fall of Christian civilizations; he understands that, as the Book of Ecclesiastes tells us, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Still, it’s hard for him to accept just how quickly this particular American experiment went south. When he created Word of Life Church at age twenty-two, riding high on the generational momentum of the Jesus Movement, he was convinced that the United States was experiencing a real-time revival. Forty years later, he is witnessing the sort of crash that will be studied by pastors in the centuries to come. “I think about it every day. I can’t believe it came to this,” Zahnd said. “I’m totally baffled by it. I’m not depressed; I’m not unhappy. I’m just baffled.” The pastor was quick to clarify something. He’s not baffled by the 1,500 people who left his church almost two decades ago. He’s not baffled by the people who go to Greg Locke’s circus tent or listen to Paula White’s podcasts or buy VIP tickets to Mike Flynn’s ReAwaken America rally. These people are called sheep for a reason. No, Zahnd is baffled by the so-called shepherds. Scripture says God demands more from these Christian leaders. And yet, whether it’s Strang platforming the MyPillow lunatic, or Liberty University’s leadership trading evangelism for electioneering, or the pastor down the road in St. Louis, a onetime friend who now leads his Sunday services with a fifteen-minute political segment called “Ron’s Rants,” Zahnd sees a reckless abdication of duty on the part of the people in charge. They are, as Jesus said of the Pharisees, blind guides, leading their followers to fall into a pit. “You are forming your people in anger and hate. You are helping to intensify their capacity to hate other people,” Zahnd said. “You are giving them permission to carry around this permanent rage.” I countered by telling Zahnd what these pastors would say about him—that he’s woke, that he’s lukewarm, that he’s a coward for not taking a stand and fighting to advance biblical principles in a broken world. “Taking a stand,” Zahnd scoffed. “There’s this false assumption of action we’re called to take. The task of the Church is simply to be the Church. All of this high-blown rhetoric about changing the world—we don’t need to change the world. We’re not called to change the world. We’re called to be the world already changed by Christ. That’s how we’re salt; that’s how we’re light.” He looked incredulous. “I talk about Jesus all the time. I talk about Jesus constantly. But I talk about Jesus in the context of His kingdom,” Zahnd said. “The idea that Jesus is some mascot for the donkeys or the elephants—it’s a catastrophe for the gospel.” The pastor told me he was offended—not upset, or hurt, or angry, but offended—by what the American Church had become. God does not tolerate idols competing for His glory, Zahnd said, and neither should anyone who claims to worship Him. “You can take up the sword of Caesar or you can take up the cross of Jesus,” Zahnd told me. “You have to choose.”

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Many of you know that I've been reading a lot of non-fiction books. It has never been about politics for me, although I have developed an interest in keeping up with what is going on in America... For most of my time over the last decade, I have devoted all of my time in providing reviews for books. Requests for those reviews came from both individual authors and from PR agencies, publishers, and even Author's Den for whom I provided reviews when they initially began to include that benefit on their site... I've lived, slept, and eaten through hundreds of books, mostly fiction, but some non-fiction. All of this is to quickly say that I had never heard of the author, Tim Alberta, which to me means that I would be better prepared to be objective in my review(s)... Some of you may have noted my post where I have been including more of my personal opinions within my reviews, hopefully to provide information, as well as to share my opinion on things of importance...

My first introduction to the past president was through a leaked video where he laughingly talked about grabbing women...and being able to get away with it because he was a celebrity. Well, I had some choice words about that. I had never watched The Apprentice, and so I would not consider him a celebrity I had come to know. I believe that is a major advantage I had since I had no predisposition of the soon candidate. I was registered as an Independent. Being part of a political party bore no interest to me. As long as the country was functioning fairly smoothly, I figured that if I hadn't voted for a given election for various reasons, I had no right to complain... All that has now changed, of course and I have shared many of my thoughts and opinions here.

But my own concern began when I learned that the Evangelical Christians were backing/supporting Trump. I was astonished. Then when I was told that if I were a Christian, I had to be a Republican... Well, that was just not the way I had learned from history!

As I began to gather information for a review as I usually do, checking to see if a book trailer video was available, I discovered that there many, many videos about this particular author and his books. I chose the first three, based upon length and topic. Which leads me to the point that I also will be reading Alberta's first book during which time, the video about Joe Biden being the man for the time was made.

Alberta chose to write these books because he is an insider... His father was an Evangelical Pastor, and he had grown up in the church. On a broader sense, what that meant to me was that much of the conversations and church-related activities would have been known by the author, which was a very important factor to me. Because, I found, in starting to read his latest book, I was pulled back into my early years as a Christian woman. Through his extensive research, Alberta has reviewed the historical life of those from the Church who were actively involved as pastors of major churches, especially those with a television based audience...This, then, was my own beginning of how and when we evolved into where we are today.

The beginning of the Moral Majority by Jerry Falwell was one I remembered... I had also been involved at the beginning as the change was made to "separate the church and the state. Until I started to think of being a citizen of a larger country, I was first opposed to that, as naïvely as a simple Christian woman might automatically be. Thankfully, I was an individual who considered change logically... I had been approached as it related to having stores open on Sundays. My thought was first on the fact that many people had to work shifts, such as in a hospital, and might need to shop on Sunday, even if a Christian... And, of course, I remembered the stories about Jesus in his parables. So I supported, at least in my mind, the separation.

However when Falwell began his crusade within the political realm, I saw it as concerning. In the book, Alberta shares a personal story of a contributor, Olson, who was about to consider where he might go for higher education...

When it was his time to speak, however, Falwell warned the crowds that nothing was promised to them. America was under assault from secular liberal elites and godless government bureaucrats, and Christians needed to start fighting back. “The nation was intended to be a Christian nation by our founding fathers,” Falwell thundered. “This idea of ‘religion and politics don’t mix’ was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country!” Falwell offered a reading from the Second Book of Chronicles: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” When the program ended, fireworks spewed forth from the mountaintop, illuminating the flags and church steeples that dotted the landscape below. Everything Falwell was selling, Olson bought. “I fell in love,” he recalled decades later, “with the idea of Liberty.” That enthusiasm was soon curbed. When the Olsons returned to Lynchburg after Labor Day, excited to move their oldest son into his new home, they were dismayed to find themselves at a boarded-up hotel in a tough part of downtown. The condemned building was all that Liberty could offer its newest students. Olson flopped a mattress onto the floor and unloaded boxes of his clothing and books, assuring his parents that he would be fine. They drove off with tears in their eyes—not tears of joy, but tears of concern and bewilderment. The July Fourth celebration was suddenly a distant memory; this seedy neighborhood in downtown Lynchburg bore no resemblance to that bucolic scene on Liberty Mountain. Their son had signed up to be part of something he didn’t fully understand. Olson had reason to worry, too. He could not have known that Falwell would soon emerge as one of the most consequential figures of the late twentieth century; that his synthesizing of Christianity and conservatism would roil America’s political landscape and radicalize its Protestant subculture; that his small school in Lynchburg, Virginia, would eventually develop into a multibillion-dollar behemoth and, become the embodiment of both the great promise and wasted potential of the evangelical Church. None of this was conceivable to the college freshman sleeping in that condemned hotel. Studying his surroundings, Olson simply wanted to know: Did Falwell have a vision?

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Alberta reviews a number of those in high leadership of the Evangelical Church. Of course, I recognized Jim Bakker, who was now divorced and remarried but there in the crowd... I began to look for the one leader with whom I had been personally involved. Billy Graham. I am attended a number of his crusades in our area, even singing in the choir in one. Now I was wondering whether he, too, had succumbed to what was happening... Thankfully, I read:

The most celebrated evangelist of the twentieth century, Graham took his “crusades” to hundreds of nations and preached to millions of people. Whatever his initial political inclinations—warning against the evils of communism in the 1950s, allying himself with Richard Nixon in the 1960s—Graham grew openly suspicious of partisanship as his career wore on. He distanced himself from the religious right, eschewed the Moral Majority, and became known as “America’s pastor,” the man who met with and prayed over every U.S. president spanning nearly seventy years. Before his death, Graham repented for his early political activism, saying he’d “crossed the line” in ways that harmed his witness for Christ. Still, even in his most unscrupulous moments, Graham was a paragon compared to the self-seekers who would follow him, from the televangelists of the 1970s and ’80s all the way to the Ralph Reeds and Greg Lockes of today. There was no foaming, mad-as-hell partisanship to be found at a Graham rally. There certainly were no guns, no calls for violence, no swarms of people dressed—and visibly ready—for combat.

Indeed, I can remember the Spirit of God over us as George Beverly Shea would sing "How Great Thou Art..." On then would the call for coming forward to Learn more of Jesus... and we would sing in the choir as those individuals stayed and were meeting with Crusader staff as they learned just how to come to know and be saved by our Lord... However, Franklin Graham had become part of those individuals who were supporting Trump...and, I remember, I was shocked as, during Covid, I learned that Franklin's ministry received a subsidy from the Government! How, I wondered could this major evangelistic group have deserved a government grant?! Now I know...

Unfortunately, the book gets harder and harder to read... Soon the author takes us into rallies which were being held across the nation. I was reminded of how Jesus got angry, his only time, when money was being made as part of a religious event... And as I read, I found myself changing my own mind as book after book about Trump were being discussed and sold. I wanted them all Banned! Me, an Individual who speaks often about not banning books... Instead, all I could think was that they would surely be blasphemous! 

Here, too, was, perhaps the major reason that Trump is acting as he is now... He has purposely been made an idol, a leader--albeit--a cult leader, but one that has been firmly taken into the lives as republicans join with evangelicals to produce some type of pseudo-religion that has no correlation with the teachings of Jesus...

Franklin Graham even posed with him for photos at the White House. For that long-ago-troubled kid who dreamed of becoming Billy Graham—and who’d since been shunned by many of the most respected voices in evangelicalism—this must have felt like divine validation. Locke achieved this legitimacy without surrendering to the evangelical establishment. In fact, Locke made the evangelical establishment surrender to him. Prior to COVID-19, his delusional anti-leftist shtick made him an outcast in the evangelical world. But when the virus arrived, and the question of shutting down became a defining litmus test for churches nationwide, Locke went from pariah to prophet. As the country emerged from the fog of 2020, pastors who had defied the government—especially those pastors who made a show of it, then watched attendance double and donations triple as a result—learned what Locke already knew: This was the new normal. They had chosen a permanent side. They had committed themselves to something bigger than an individual public health policy. No longer could the culture wars be selected à la carte. Talking politics was now as much a part of church life as taking communion. “I don’t think there’s any going back,” Locke told me. “That train’s left the station.” Extremism in American churches is nothing new; recall Westboro Baptist Church, the Kansas congregation that achieved notoriety at the turn of the century by hoisting signs claiming that God hates Jews, gays, and dead soldiers. But Locke embodies a distinct Trump-era phenomenon. The most revealing part of my trip to Global Vision was the peculiar sort of indifference I felt at the end of the service. There was nothing sui generis--inique--about Locke. He said the same things I’d heard from other pastors on my trips around America. Atmospherics aside—it’s not every day you worship inside a tent next to a pistol-toting man wearing an Alex Jones shirt—the substance was familiar and predictable to the point of tedium. Of course, this would come as a shock to many self-respecting Christians who still want to believe that their pastors are nothing like Locke; that their churches are nothing like Global Vision; that they themselves are nothing like the people in that tent. These self-respecting Christians are in denial. It’s easy for evangelicals to dismiss Global Vision as an outlier, the same way they did Westboro Baptist. It’s much harder to scrutinize the extremism that has infiltrated their own churches and ponder its logical endpoint. In this environment, if a pastor begins to dabble in conspiracies and political deception, what guardrails exist to keep him from going off the grid altogether? And what if he does go off the grid—does it even register? Just as with our politics, there is no longer a clear line of demarcation between the fringe and the mainstream. Ten years ago, Global Vision would have been considered a cult. ...Locke preaches to 2.2 million Facebook followers and poses alongside Franklin Graham at the White House. Walking out of Global Vision, I wondered: How many pastors at smaller conservative churches—pastors like Bill Bolin at FloodGate in my hometown of Brighton—Michigan, would have felt uncomfortable sitting inside this tent listening to Locke? The answer, I suspected, was very few. Global Vision and FloodGate may be different in degree, but they are not different in kind. What binds them together—Locke and Bolin and the scores of other right-wing pastors I’d encountered over the past few years—is that they are now expected to be something more than mere church leaders. They are political handicappers, social commentators, media critics, information gatekeepers. And they have only themselves to blame: It turns out, when a pastor decides that churches should do more than just worship God, congregants decide that their pastor should do more than just preach. This might be precisely what some pastors had always hoped for, the opportunity to guide and shape every aspect of their congregants’ lives. But spiritually speaking, this is a doomed proposition. Pastors already struggle to provide all the answers written down inside their book. In a modern evangelical culture that punishes uncertainty—where weakness is wokeness, where indecision is the wrong decision—asking pastors to provide all the other answers is a recipe for institutional ruin. Because what their congregants crave, more and more, is not so much objective religious instruction but subjective religious justification, a clergy-endorsed rationale for living their lives in a manner that might otherwise feel unbecoming for a Christian. Down this path, disaster waits. The pastor who finds himself offering religious justification today might find himself inventing it tomorrow. In the darkest chapters of Church history—the Crusades and Inquisition, the slave trade and sexual abuse scandals—the common denominator has been a willingness on the part of Christian authority figures to distort scripture for what they perceive to be some greater good. This explains why, long after leaving Global Vision, I could not rid myself of its violent imagery—all the guns and the paramilitary gear and the swaggering talk of the Second Amendment. Locke swore this rhetoric was defensive in nature. That’s always the case, until it isn’t.

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This, then, is what I have learned from this writer. It is exactly as bad as I had thought it was...and...is! This is not whether or not I would recommend this book... This is about whether or not you, as the reader really want to know Jesus as Your Savior... Because, now I know why He said it would be hard to follow Him. Now I know that millions have chosen the easier way and created their own religion, while corrupting the scriptures that have been presented to new Christians for hundreds of years. The manipulation of news, lies, and, now we know more firmly, the scripture, for the power received through political fame...

Where is God's Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory in this choice?

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