Failure to make the case

An Oxford dictionary defines jeremiad as “a prophetic warning or lament of a country’s moral or social degradation, alluding to the biblical books of Jeremiah and Lamentations.” That’s what Atlantic journalist Tim Alberta wants to deliver in The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (Harper 2023). Weaving his personal story together with those of pastors, professors, and politicos, Alberta compares contemporary evangelicalism’s approach to politics to what he thinks is a Bible-based standard.

The author’s goal is to understand what he perceives as a shift in the center of evangelicalism toward a far-right attitude that prioritizes politics and loyalty to Donald Trump as the test of Biblical faithfulness. He reports that story through a series of chapter-length vignettes profiling evangelical colleges, conferences, and churches.

As he writes, Alberta often sees the worst in people. For instance, he accuses Mike Pence of “knowingly ­bastardiz[ing] a precious passage from the New Testament” in “a stunt that was nothing short of blasphemous” for his 2020 convention speech. (Pence mashed bits of 2 Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 12 together with a reference to Old Glory.) Alberta has a point: The freedom we find in Christ is very different from our American conception of political liberty. But Pence’s remark fits easily in the broad arc of presidential rhetoric. And Alberta later writes positively of Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock for “sp[eaking] eloquently” “with references to scripture while advocating for human rights.”

Alberta worries about a shift to apocalyptic rhetoric and extremism within evangelicalism, but he manages to engage in the same error with his own overwrought rhetoric. He dedicates a whole chapter to comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s despicable twisting of Russian Orthodoxy into the service of the state to Trump and Co.’s use of evangelicalism, warning that America treads dangerously close to establishing a Trumpy Christianity as the state religion-qua-ideology.

But Alberta’s central problem is that he tries to establish his thesis through anecdotal evidence. He cherry-­picks churches and conferences, finds exactly what he fears, then suggests this is typical. His picture misses out on the thousands of good churches focused on the gospel, the Christmas pageant, and the person in their small group fighting cancer—not Donald Trump’s supposed sainthood.

The book also never grapples with key questions like whether evangelical political engagement today is markedly different from the past. Evangelicals have always connected their faith to their votes, and have always had their hypocrites, grifters, and excesses along the way. If anything, one could argue today’s evangelicalism is less political than before: There is no Moral Majority or Christian Coalition leading the effort, and no pastor-pundit serving as its face like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or Jim Dobson.

Alberta also never asks whether evangelicalism is distinctly different in its political behavior from other branches of American Christianity. Is it more nakedly political or power hungry than liberal Episcopalian churches with their rainbow flags and BLM yard signs, African American churches that welcome Democratic candidates into their pulpits, or ardently pro-life Catholic parishes? Some of what he reports is disconcerting in insolation, but the book still reinforces a media double standard for evangelicalism.

Alberta offers some bracing critiques. He speaks some hard truths, pointing out epic failures of leadership and un-Christ-like behavior. Still, he fails to make his case, creating instead a false dichotomy, as though the only options are to follow Russell Moore or Jerry Falwell Jr. There is a third way: to agree with Trump or any candidate or party when they’re right, disagree when they’re wrong, and in general make prudential judgments with the consistent application of Biblical principles and practical wisdom.