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

by Tim Alberta

The problem is, blessings often become indistinguishable from entitlements.

“At its root, we’re talking about idolatry. America has become an idol to some of these people,” Winans said. “If you believe that God is in covenant with America, then you believe—and I’ve heard lots of people say this explicitly—that we’re a new Israel. You believe the sorts of promises made to Israel are applicable to this country; you view America as a covenant that needs to be protected. You have to fight for America as if salvation itself hangs in the balance. At that point, you understand yourself as an American first and most fundamentally. And that is a terrible misunderstanding of who we’re called to be.”

“The freedoms in our Bill of Rights, we like to call them ‘God-given.’ Now, think about what that means in the context of gun control,” he said. “If someone’s trying to take away something God has given you, well, shoot, that’s pretty upsetting! But is there a God-given right to bear arms? Or is it a cultural right? If I went to the U.K., or most other places in the world, they would say it’s a cultural right. In America, many Christians believe it’s a God-given right. So, you can see how, even in that one small example, we start running into problems.”

But many of those same people have nonetheless allowed their national identity to shape their faith identity instead of the other way around.

he believed that the constant attacks on Trump’s character were ipso facto an attack on the character of people like himself, which I think, at some subconscious level, created a permission structure for him to ignore the shows of depravity.

Inspired by the likes of Billy Graham, they gravitated toward a broader, more modern Christianity less about rules and more about relationships; it was joyful and civic-minded and proudly pro-American.

Patriotism divorced from piety is futile, after all; those who win the world but lose their souls are champions of nothing.

The Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling in Engel v. Vitale, which banned prayer in public schools, inflamed the intensifying fights over curriculum relating to evolution, history, and human sexuality.

Even before they became personal friends, Schaeffer had sold Falwell on the need to partner with “co-belligerents,” people of different beliefs but shared objectives.

That which had animated the party for much of its modern history—an educated, moneyed, socially moderate, culturally coastal sensibility—was suddenly and unceremoniously out of style. Moving forward, passing muster in the GOP would require talking as much about abortion as economics. It would mean campaigning more from the pulpits of southern churches and less inside the parlors of northeastern country clubs.