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

by Tim Alberta

most evangelicals are craven hypocrites who adhere only to selective biblical teachings, wield their faith as a weapon of cultural warfare, and only pretend to care about righteousness when it suits their political interests. So, it’s no surprise they would ally themselves with the likes of Donald Trump!”

the Christians who willfully jettisoned their credibility while voting for Trump—people who embraced the charge of being reactionary hypocrites, still fuming about Bill Clinton’s character as they jumped at the chance to go slumming with a playboy turned president.

“fundamental disconnect” between Christians who view issues through the eyes of Jesus versus Christians who process everything through a partisan political filter.

Derived from the Greek euangelion, which means “good news” or “gospel,” the English word evangelical was typically used to distinguish reformed Protestants, with their revivalist aims, from the staid customs of Catholicism. (Indeed, Martin Luther invoked the Latin translation of the term when breaking from the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century.) During the first so-called Great Awakening in colonial America, clergymen shared a conviction to evangelize the masses—believing and unbelieving alike—with a purifying fervor. By the early nineteenth century, evangelicalism had become “by far the dominant expression of Christianity in the overwhelmingly Protestant United States,” according to the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College.

In 1989, a British scholar named David Bebbington posited that evangelicals were distinct because of four principal characteristics: Biblicism (treating scripture as the essential word of God); Crucicentrism (stressing that Jesus’s death makes atonement for mankind possible); Conversionism (believing that sinners must be born again and continually transformed into Christlikeness); and Activism (sharing the gospel as an outward sign of that inward transformation). This framework—now commonly called the “Bebbington quadrilateral”—was widely embraced, including by the National Association of Evangelicals. But it also drew its share of criticisms. Efforts to formulate a more effective definition have failed time and again. To the present day there remains no real consensus around what it means to be an “evangelical.”

By the 1980s, with the rise of the Moral Majority, a religious marker was transforming into a partisan movement. “Evangelical” soon became synonymous with “conservative Christian,” and eventually with “white conservative Republican.”

God has His own kingdom; no nation in this world can compare. God has His own power; no amount of political, cultural, or social influence can compare. God has His own glory; no exaltation of earthly beings can compare.

Jesus frames the decision in explicitly binary terms: We can serve and worship God or we can serve and worship the gods of this world. Too many American evangelicals have tried to do both. And the consequences for the Church have been devastating.

The crisis of American evangelicalism comes down to an obsession with that worldly identity. Instead of fixing our eyes on the unseen, “since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal,” as Paul writes in Second Corinthians, we have become fixated on the here and now. Instead of seeing ourselves as exiles in a metaphorical Babylon, the way Peter describes the first-century Christians living in Rome, we have embraced our imperial citizenship. Instead of fleeing the temptation to rule all the world, like Jesus did, we have made deals with the devil.

Evangelical leaders embraced Trump’s shortcomings. At a meeting of more than five hundred prominent Christian conservatives in June 2016 at the Marriott Marquis hotel in New York City, Trump was introduced by the likes of Franklin Graham (son of famed evangelist Billy Graham) and Mike Huckabee (a Baptist preacher turned populist Arkansas governor turned Fox News host turned Trinity Broadcasting Network host) as the latest in a long tradition of flawed men who were being used by God to advance His purposes. The blueprint was obvious enough: Because the scriptures were filled with examples of great leaders who had grave personal failings, Trump could be considered an imperfect instrument of God’s perfect design for America. Talking with attendees at the Marriott that day, I heard unceasing comparisons to David, to Solomon, and to King Cyrus, the Persian leader who protected the Israelite people despite not personally worshipping their Lord.

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways,” Pence would say, quoting God’s voice in the Second Book of Chronicles, “then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” The crowd would roar in response. It was a risky application of scripture. God is speaking in that passage to Solomon, the king of Israel, after the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem. This is a specific word of forewarning, issued at a uniquely sacred moment, from God to the ruler of His covenant nation. For Pence to appropriate this language and apply it in the context of an American political campaign dozens of centuries later meant one of two things: Either the Republican nominee for vice president didn’t know his Bible history; or he did, and he believed that God’s relationship with Israel was somehow parallel to God’s relationship with the United States. Pence knew his Bible history. “A LOT OF PEOPLE BELIEVE THERE WAS A RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF this country. A biblical conception of this country,” Pastor Winans told me. “And that’s the source of a lot of our problems.”

First, most of America’s founding fathers believed in some deity, and many were devout Christians, drawing their revolutionary inspiration from the scriptures. Second, the founders wanted nothing to do with theocracy. Many of their families had fled religious persecution in Europe; they knew the threat posed by what George Washington, several weeks into his presidency in 1789, described in a letter to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia as “the horrors of spiritual tyranny.” Washington was hardly alone: From skeptics like Benjamin Franklin to committed Christians like John Jay, the founders shared John Adams’s view that America was conceived not “under the influence of Heaven” or in conversation with the Creator, but rather by using “reason and the senses.” That is not the biblical story of Israel. “God established Israel through the means of a covenant with Him,” Winans explained, unpacking the Old Testament narrative. “This was God’s chosen nation, created for God’s chosen people, living by God’s chosen laws.”

the chosen people repeatedly strayed from those chosen laws—instead honoring the codes, customs, and gods of other nations—God allowed the destruction of ancient Israel. Through hundreds of years of exile and oppression, the Jewish people yearned for a return to this covenant relationship. It was Jesus of Nazareth, a carpenter’s son raised in the Roman-occupied province of Galilee, who came to deliver the news: The old kingdom was gone for good. In its place, He promised something even better—a kingd...

offering—of grace, salvation, citizenship in an eternal kingdom—ought to be enough to quell the temporal desires of those who identify as Christians. But it often isn’t, Winans said, and for the same reason that God’s covenant wasn’t enough for the ancient Israelites thousands of years earlier. “God’s people have always been tempted to be like the rest of the nations. It was true back then, and it’s true now,” Winans told me. “There’s a pretty consistent pattern in scripture of what that looks like: I want to be in power, I want to have influence, I want to be prosperous, I want to have security. And even if God gives me some of those things, I’ll try to achieve even more through worldly means.”

given the miraculous nature of America’s defeat of Great Britain, its rise to superpower status, and its legacy of spreading freedom and democracy (and yes, Christianity) across the globe—it’s easy to see why so many evangelicals believe that our country is divinely blessed. The problem is, blessings often become indistinguishable from entitlements. Once we become convinced that God has blessed something, that something can become an object of jealousy, obsession—even worship.

conditions in America are especially ripe for national idolatry. “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.”

“Once they finally understood, after Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead and ascended into heaven, it changed their faith,” Winans said. “And here’s the thing. The word faith is not just about belief; faith is about allegiance. When you declare faith in Jesus, you transfer your allegiance. In the first-century Roman context, that’s what they did: They transferred their allegiance away from Caesar, and the gods of Rome, and certain laws of the Jewish leaders, and pledged allegiance to Jesus.”

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine,” he wrote. “Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

“We take a long view of human nature. Christianity is about changing the way we look at ourselves and look at other people. If you have any kind of racist ideas, as a Christian, you can confront those sins, repent, and become more like Christ,” Torres explained to me. “Think about the British slave trader who wrote ‘Amazing Grace.’ You know—I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.”

Indeed, the “things of man” Peter worried about twenty centuries ago are the same things that preoccupy us today: wealth, prestige, control. All of this, Torres said, competes with Jesus for our hearts. Everything to which we attach significance in this life—family, country, politics, bodily health, even the clothes we wear and the food we eat—can become a substitute religion. “Whatever is tempting you to go astray, to sin, you can go full-bore, like Jesus did, and call it ‘Satan.’ Tell it to get behind you. You can say that to your temptation, say that to your sin,” Torres told his congregation. “Because you know what ‘get behind me’ means? It means, ‘I’m not following you.’ It means I’m going to follow Christ.”

“Donald Trump is the only candidate who has dealt almost exclusively in the politics of personal insult,” he said. “The bullying tactics of personal insult have no defense—and certainly not for anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ. That’s what’s disturbing to so many people. It’s not [the] Christ-like behavior that Liberty has spent 40 years promoting with its students.”

“Absolutely unbelievable,” he tweeted in response to Falwell Jr. Moore knew there was no climbing down from that comment. And so, having spent the past six months holding back, he let it rip. “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.”

there would be no trouble. As it happens, some pastors have openly flouted this regulation for years, all but begging the IRS to come after them. The government has done exactly nothing in response. Jeffress knows this better than most. Numerous high-profile churches in Texas, including several in the Dallas area, are notorious for their brazen defiance of the Johnson Amendment. (The Texas Tribune has reported on this extensively.) Not only was the Biden administration not coming after churches; the Biden administration was actively looking the other way as churches broke the law.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus went out of His way to explain that believers should welcome this maltreatment. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,” He said, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Christians volunteered to live in a negative world. Christians signed up to be under siege. 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.

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. “Every teacher will tell you, the bully on the playground is usually the most insecure boy. It’s a compensation mechanism. If the boy were truly confident, he wouldn’t need to throw his weight around,” Dickson said. “It’s the same with the Church. The bully Church is the insecure Church.”

History would agree. The emperor Nero, who infamously scapegoated Christians for the burning of Rome, set the precedent for centuries of imperial persecution. He murdered the followers of Jesus en masse: beheadings, crucifixions, death by lion, and other public displays of savagery. It was during Nero’s reign that Paul traversed the empire, preaching that a carpenter’s son from rural Galilee had established a kingdom that surpassed anything Rome could ever hope to be. Paul paid the price for renouncing his allegiance to the rulers of this world. After years of being beaten, tortured, imprisoned, and placed under house arrest, he was executed by the state of Rome. And he wasn’t the only one. Consider the case of Peter, the right-hand disciple of Jesus. In his first epistle, Peter writes from Rome to the Christians in Asia Minor—modern-day Turkey—who were suffering for their faith. He beseeches them to rejoice in their torment. Peter teaches them that suffering brings us closer to Jesus; that to suffer is to be cleansed by a refining “fire” that rids Christians of the impulses, attitudes, and identities they once possessed.

component of Peter’s letter. After comforting these early Christians, Peter admonishes them not to allow this persecution to change the way they witness to the world. Specifically, he tells them to show goodness to the very people who are persecuting them. Bunker read from First Peter, chapter

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.”

Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton, asked us to think back to the 1960s and early 1970s. There was “division all around us”: the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.; the Kent State shooting and deadly rioting in cities nationwide; the Watergate break-in and needless bloodshed of Vietnam; the drug-culture explosion and pornography epidemic and Roe v. Wade ruling. “And then 1976 was called ‘the year of the evangelical,’” Stetzer said, shrugging, as if to say, go figure.

By remaining shallow in the scriptures, Bacote said, too many American Christians have avoided a necessary showdown between their own base cultural proclivities and God’s perfect standard. When Christians are discipled primarily by society, inevitably they look to scripture for affirmation of their habits and behaviors and political views. “But if the Bible is the word of God, then God ought to be interrogating those things. That’s why Jesus came: to fix your vertical relationship with God,” Bacote said. “He wants your whole life. He wants to transform who you are.”

“Actually, it isn’t just the accent,” the professor decided, correcting himself and turning serious. “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.”

“My academic specialty is the first century to sixth century,” he explained. “You know, Nietzsche accused the Christians of having a slave mentality. He thought that’s what gave them their ethic of humility. But the data is exactly the opposite. The Christians of the first few centuries, especially, were so confident Jesus was Lord that they could be quite rude in mocking the gods and so on. They were confident and cheerful; even when they’re locked up in prison, they’re singing hymns, they’re writing letters encouraging others.” This was not performative in nature; members of the early Church didn’t behave this way to prove a point. Rather, these people who lived in such close proximity to the time of the eyewitnesses—and some were themselves eyewitnesses—acted out of a euphoria rooted in absolute certainty. They had zero doubts that Jesus, the rabbi who’d been publicly executed, was later seen alive, and were so giddy about spreading the news that they couldn’t be bothered to care about their circumstances otherwise.

Humility doesn’t come easy to the American evangelical. The self-importance that accompanies citizenship in the world’s mightiest nation is trouble enough, never mind when it’s augmented by the certainty of exclusive membership in the afterlife. We are an immodest and excessively indulged people. We have grown so accustomed to our advantages—to our prosperity and our worldly position—that we feel entitled to them.

Unsavory alliances would need to be forged. Sordid tactics would need to be embraced. The first step toward preserving Christian values, it seemed, was to do away with Christian values.

There’s a reason that scripture warns so often and so forcefully against fear: It is just as powerful as faith. But whereas faith keeps our eyes steadily fixed on the eternal, fear disrupts us, disorients us, drives us to prioritize the here and now. Faith is about preserving our place in the body of Christ; fear is about protecting our own flesh and blood. Peter was doing the impossible—walking on the Sea of Galilee, just like Jesus—until the wind started whipping around him. Then he got scared and immediately began to sink. “You of little faith,” Jesus said in that moment, grabbing Peter’s hand and pulling him up. “Why did you doubt?”

bankruptcy—spiritual and otherwise—happens slowly and then all at once. In 2016, Christians condoned their preferred candidate talking on the Access Hollywood tape about grabbing women by their vaginas, because the election was a binary choice and the Supreme Court was at stake; by 2022 Christians walked around wearing “Fuck Joe Biden” on their chests because in politics the rules of decency, never mind the maxims of Christianity, do not apply. This was what bothered me most about the Road to Majority conference. If Jesus warned us that what comes out of our mouths reveals what resides in our hearts, how can we shrug off lies and hate speech as mere political rhetoric? If Christians are called to reflect the awesome power of a God who renews minds and transforms hearts—who dwells within us, seeking our complete devotion to Him, commanding us to lead lives of truth and love that might shine His light in a darkened world—how can there be a special exemption for politics?

“The Book of Isaiah says that God views all the nations of the world as nothing but a drop in the bucket. All means all,” Thomas told me. “Now, has America been uniquely blessed? Sure. But it could also be uniquely cursed. You better be careful, because patriotism quickly turns into idolatry. There’s more than one way to be an idol worshipper. In the Old Testament, you had Moloch and child sacrifices and all this stuff. But Satan is subtle. We don’t have statues now; we have political parties and presidential candidates.”

good place to start, Moore suggested, is for Christians to worry less about perceived enemies and more about supposed allies. I knew just what he meant: Today’s evangelicalism preaches bitterness toward unbelievers and bottomless grace for churchgoing Christians, yet the New Testament model is exactly the opposite, stressing strict accountability for those inside the Church and abounding charity to those outside it.

If the Church is to practice the teachings of Christ, Barth wrote, it must be “an unreliable ally” to every social, political, and government order of this world.

This English phrase “from above” is translated from the Greek anōthen, a word used throughout the New Testament in reference to that which is established by God and comes from heaven. This makes for an astonishing rebuke to Pilate. Even though the Roman governor will decide whether He lives or dies, Jesus is telling him that God set these events into motion from the beginning of time; that He cast Pilate in these proceedings as an actor who would read lines from a divine script; that neither Rome nor its rulers have inherent power of their own. Jesus’s words to Pilate echo throughout all of scripture. True power is not reflected in kingdoms, administrations, or campaigns, because these things are counterfeits of God’s original, supreme authority. The power to raise taxes is not the power to raise Jesus from the dead; the power to seat senators is not the power to seat Jesus at the right hand of the Father. Every biblical reference to power—every prayer, every reflection, every instruction—affirms that God is all-powerful,

George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and 1984, said differentiated patriotism from nationalism. “Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally,” Orwell wrote. “Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.”

There is a warning issued repeatedly in the scriptures, about boasting not in one’s own accomplishments but boasting only in the knowledge and glorification of God. That word, glory, can seem vague in certain biblical contexts. But typically, derived from the Hebrew kavod, it implies weight, importance, heaviness—something of substantial value. When Christians achieve something of substantial value, be it a megachurch or a publishing empire, the impulse to self-glorify can become overpowering. But it must be resisted. Because the dynamic is very much binary: You can glorify God or glorify yourself, but not both.