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

by Tim Alberta

“And I said, ‘One hundred percent. All of them. I don’t know of a single church that’s not affected by this.’”

Whereas the SBC had since its founding been regarded as deeply conservative, by the early 1970s it had earned a reputation for being socially progressive.

Rogers became the denomination’s president, and together with his allies set about purging the Southern Baptist Convention of liberal voices, from seminaries to churches to its national leadership.

“But by the nineties, being a real Christian meant voting Republican. And suddenly, the easiest way to reach people, by far, was through political identification.”

“People saw that Christianity was a means to an end, and they realized they could get to that end without Christianity,” Moore said. “We were no longer distinctive. The focus was on values and worldview and identity in ways that obscured the distinctiveness of the message itself.”

Trump’s candidacy from the jump, believing that his hateful rhetoric was unbecoming of anyone who called themselves a Christian (which Trump did, though he declined to cite a favorite passage from scripture, saying he found the entire Bible “very special”).

“By their fruits ye shall know them,” Jerry Falwell Jr. declared. “Donald’s Trump’s life has borne fruit.”

“Winning at politics while losing the gospel is not a win,” he added, sending evangelical Twitter into a frenzy. “Trading in the gospel of Jesus Christ for political power is not liberty but slavery.”

“Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians,” a linguistic distinction understood by anyone approximating a churchgoer.

Trump told one Iowa Republican official: “You know, these so-called Christians hanging around with Ted are some real pieces of shit.” (In private over the coming years, he would use even more colorful language to describe the evangelical community.)

It was the SBC that in 1998 responded to Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky by passing a resolution that famously stated: “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.”

One afternoon in February 2021, Samuel Moore, Russell’s fifteen-year-old son, confronted his mother, demanding to know if his father was having an affair. Why else, the son asked, would there be such intense scrutiny of him?

“There’s something I still don’t understand,” Samuel replied. “Why do we want to be a part of this?”

“vote out the infidels who would deny God and His word.” The phrasing could not have been coincidental. Criswell, his teacher, had called the northern Christians who fought segregation “infidels.” Four decades later, Jeffress was affixing that label to the politicians in his town—many of whom surely identified as Christians—who refused to join his crusade against a pair of library books.

He attacked the Catholic Church. He attacked the gay community. He attacked Oprah Winfrey. Most Americans still didn’t know the name Robert Jeffress. And then he started attacking Mitt Romney.

“I don’t think it’s Donald Trump or the Republican Party or Christian nationalism that’s keeping people from accepting the gospel. They just provide a convenient excuse,” Jeffress told me. “I think at the end of the day, it’s all about a person’s personal relationship with God. He can come up with all kind of intellectual reasons for not accepting the gospel—‘look at this hypocrite over here’ and so forth—but I think deep down, there’s a personal reason he doesn’t come to faith in Christ. The reason a lot of seekers never find God is the same reason that

“There’s a lot of clouds hanging over our country right now. Very dark clouds,” the former president had somberly announced at the service. Instead of pivoting to declare the good news of great joy (you know, about the baby in the manger), Trump concluded: “But we will come back bigger and better and stronger than ever before.” The worship center filled with cheers.

Only one group of respondents dissented from this view: white evangelicals.

“When I addressed the National Religious Broadcasters [a few months ago], the title of my message was ‘When Persecution Comes.’ I talked about how the same persecution that our brothers and sisters in Christ are experiencing around the world is coming to the shores of America,” Jeffress said. “I talked about the first instance of persecution, in the Book of Acts, and how persecution was always incremental. It started with verbal admonishments, then light scouring, then imprisonment, and then beheading.”

And I think you’re seeing that happen in America. I believe there’s evidence that the Biden administration has weaponized the Internal Revenue Service to come after churches.”

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first,” Jesus told His disciples, according to the Book of John. “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.”

The notion that some conjectural bullying of the American Church is a defense for the indefensible—while Christians worldwide are being harassed and hunted and even killed for their faith—would be comical if it weren’t so calamitous.

“I do think some of what we’ve categorized as Christian suffering is not suffering for righteousness. We’re supposed to be suffering for doing God’s will and what His word prescribes to do, not because government goes against my preferences.”

Actually, the problem with Christianity is that it’s wicked.’”

What sets Wheaton apart is its distinctive approach to the culture. Unlike so many other right-wing Christian colleges, Wheaton has long been known for its relatively placid disposition when it comes to politics and current events.

At present, Dickson said, the American Church is suffering from “bully syndrome.” Too many Christians are swaggering around and picking on marginalized people and generally acting like jerks because they’re angry and apprehensive.

“Sometimes, friends, losses turn out to be wins in disguise,” Dickson said in a soft voice. He paused. “After all, we’re the death and resurrection people.”

Paul wrote something that Dates described as “the most absurd” sentence in the Bible. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel,” Paul wrote, “because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.”

So listen, make a little room for a child of God. Make a little room for a misfit. Make a little room for that single mother . . . . Make a little room for that kid who is mentally burdened with their sexuality. Because here’s the reality: We can be mad all we want, at the quote-unquote liberal agenda, but unless the people of the gospel have a better way, we have nothing to talk about.”

Today is a different story. The fractures in society, Stetzer told us, are making the Church weaker. Everyone around me nodded in agreement.

This idea, promoted by the likes of Robert Jeffress, that the Church’s unpopularity has nothing to do with its ugly behavior, simply does not pass the smell test.

Center for Applied Christian Ethics. This is Wheaton’s de facto arm of civic and cultural engagement.

“Who’s preaching to them about idolatry? I mean, really, in evangelical churches, how many sermons are people hearing about idolatry of any kind, much less national idolatry?”

What Bacote wants to do—what he wants his students, who are mostly current and prospective pastors, to do—is challenge these people the way that Jesus challenged His disciples. “They need help to understand that you can care for your country without worshipping your country,”

Just because other people are getting something, doesn’t mean you’re losing something.”

“Because there’s not this politically zealous evangelicalism in Australia and Britain. It’s just never been that way,”

“It’s the fact that people don’t peg me as either Republican or Democrat because I can’t fit into those categories. They don’t even know what our categories are. I mean, conservatives in Australia support universal health care. So do evangelicals. I come from a country where a levy of 1.5 percent of my salary runs the whole medical system for everyone. Hospitals are free, doctors are free. But that makes you a socialist here.”

I laughed, too. Those were the good old days, I told Dickson, when American evangelicals squabbled over things like socialized medicine. At present the Church was imploding over the legitimacy of our elections system; the question of whether to confront racism in society; the etiquette of wearing masks during a lethal pandemic; the morality of vaccines; and the existence of a satanic cult of Democrats who cannibalize kids.

Much of what drives evangelicals here is “fear that we’re losing our country, fear that we’re losing our power,” Dickson said. “And it’s so unhealthy. We should think of ourselves as eager dinner guests at someone else’s banquet. We are happy to be there, happy to share our perspective. But we are always respectful, always humble, because this isn’t our home.”

I didn’t see a single person carrying a Bible.

Bolin told me, releasing a belly laugh. He thought Trump was a charlatan, a lifelong Democrat who was defrauding conservative voters. “And all the attacks, the crudeness of his speech—I found it to be rather repulsive,” Bolin said.

Because of those two issues alone—the life issue, and the remaking of the judiciary—I admire the man.”

Nancy grumbled that Democrats had done more to restrict Christians from worshipping during COVID-19 than they had done to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing the southern border. “They’re spreading all over the country, and they’re carrying all kinds of diseases, and they’re being moved under the cover of night,” she said. “And look who’s doing it: the Catholic Church.”

He said he never intended for his rants about Biden or the 2020 election—which are “nonessentials”—to be taken with the seriousness of his statements about Jesus, which are the “essentials” people should be coming to church for.

“I do make a separation between our religious perspective and our political perspective,” Bolin told me. “I don’t view political statements as being infallible.”

Ohio was the only state in the union with a motto (“With God All Things Are Possible”) lifted directly from the scriptures.

Chad Connelly.

Barton claimed that Connelly’s group worked with 312 churches in Virginia to identify 77,000 congregants who had never voted before. Barton built up to a dramatic reveal: “Youngkin won by 66,000 votes.” The crowd buzzed with delight.

It was the same story, Barton said, in “heavily progressive” places around the country: St. Paul, Denver, Boise, and elsewhere.

Barton, who once served as vice chairman of the Texas GOP—and who had quietly built a super PAC to aid Ted Cruz’s presidential run in 2016—had long been known for hiding his political agenda behind a scholarly veneer. Not anymore.