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

by Tim Alberta

“I see the way Liberty University has been run. I’ve seen where you came from, and how it was a struggle, and how it is right now. Our country has the same potential, if we ever wanted to do something about it,” Trump said, referencing Liberty’s financial turnaround, but not its underlying spiritual mission.

For his part, Falwell lauded Trump as “one of the greatest visionaries of our time” and “one of the most influential political leaders in the United States.” In front of his students, the university president saluted Trump for having “single-handedly forced President Obama to release his birth certificate,” and then awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Not long after that ordeal, Liberty blocked campus networks from accessing the website of Lynchburg’s newspaper, the News & Advocate, after it reported on the school’s reliance on federal financial aid. Eventually Falwell seized editorial control of Liberty’s student-run newspaper, the Champion, regularly censoring criticisms of his own views and favored political figures.

Trump had campaigned in ways that would make Barabbas blush: calling Mexican immigrants rapists; insulting the looks of his opponents and spreading malicious lies about their family members; encouraging violence at his campaign rallies; openly flirting with white nationalists and proposing a ban on Muslims entering the country. Most foreign and grating to the ears of the faithful, Trump had boasted that he’d never needed to ask for God’s forgiveness. With a dozen other candidates in the race, several of whom were decent, Bible-believing Christians, DeMoss could not fathom why Falwell was using his influence to put Trump over the top.

Pointing to a particularly grotesque recent episode—Trump’s refusal to disavow the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke—DeMoss told the Post: “I think a lot of what we’ve seen from Donald Trump will prove to be difficult to explain by evangelicals who have backed him.”

For Falwell to be embarrassed by the photo would have required a capacity for embarrassment. The ensuing years would suggest that no such capacity exists.

Early in his presidency, Prevo told Scott Lamb, Liberty’s then–chief communications officer, in a recorded phone call that electing Republicans to office was one of the university’s “main goals.” (This fit a pattern, under Prevo, of Liberty boosting Republican causes; Lamb would later publicly accuse the school of violating its 501(c)(3) status.)

“When Jesus said that a man should leave his father and mother, it wasn’t just about getting married and starting a new family,” Olson told me. “It was an instruction, I think, to challenge the things you’re taught in your upbringing—with the things you’re taught in your upbringing.”

I could relate. And so, too, I told Olson, could many of the Christians I’d met in my journeys. Despite our different labels and traditions, we were crumbling under the weight of a shared spiritual legacy. We were saddled with a heritage that felt unsustainable; we were handed down an identity that no longer fit.

Still, he was startled by the scale of the devastation. No matter the type of church he would visit—affiliated or independent, rural or suburban, auditorium or roadside chapel—it was coming apart.

Suddenly Moore began to understand the quiet faith of his father. Having grown up as the pastor’s son in Jim Crow–era Mississippi, Gary Moore had seen things inside the church that haunted him.

The pendulum swung with sudden speed: 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. Leading SBC seminaries took heterodox (and to some, heretical) positions on issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and women serving in leadership.

Southern Baptists were rebranding themselves as theologically pure, embracing the concept of “biblical inerrancy” and taking hard-line, literalist positions on anything pertaining to the intersection of scripture and culture.

“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.”

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.)

Southern Baptist worshippers could, at that time, live with criticisms of Trump himself. But the notion that they were in the wrong by promoting his candidacy—according to a denominational leader whose salary was paid by their collection plates—was unforgivable.

There was an unspoken understanding at Christ Covenant: Nobody was here for a cable news panel. They were coming to church to be discipled, not demagogued. Scripture was going to dictate their interpretation of the world, not the other way around.

“I just do not believe that we as conservative Christians can expect him to stand strong for the issues that are important to us,” Jeffress told reporters. “I really am not nearly as concerned about a candidate’s fiscal policy or immigration policy as I am about where they stand on biblical issues.”

It had happened so organically that he could not precisely account for it: Jeffress no longer cared about fighting evil with good. He just wanted to fight evil—period.

Could a politician who behaved immorally in their personal life still perform their public duties with integrity? Only 30 percent of white evangelicals said yes, the lowest of any group surveyed.

the Public Religion Research Institute released a new survey that asked the same exact question. This time, incredibly, 72 percent of white evangelicals responded that, yes, a politician who behaved immorally in their personal life could still perform their public duties with integrity.

When I asked him to explain it—to make sense of how millions of evangelicals, himself included, had so casually discarded the code that guided their political engagement for a generation—Jeffress offered two words. They were the same words I’d heard Trump speak to evangelical audiences during his presidency. Words that Jeffress, no doubt, had whispered into the president’s ear. “Under siege.”

In early 2017, a month into Trump’s presidency, the Public Religion Research Institute asked a sample of Americans which religious group they thought faced more discrimination in the United States, Muslims or Christians. The general public was twice as likely to pick Muslims in response; non-religious respondents were three times as likely. Both white Catholics and white mainline Protestants agreed, in overwhelming fashion, that Muslims face more discrimination in the United States than Christians. Only one group of respondents dissented from this view: white evangelicals.

The judicial branch, French wrote in The Dispatch, had “expanded the autonomy of religious organizations to hire and fire employees . . . protected churches time and again from discriminatory regulations . . . [and] expanded the ability of religious institutions to receive state funds.”

Even if society is more antagonistic toward the Church today than at any time in U.S. history, our status remains the envy of Christians the world over. Believers aren’t getting rounded up and imprisoned here. Churches aren’t being monitored or censored. Pastors aren’t being coerced to do the bidding of the state.

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 the end, it was revealing that Jeffress felt the need to fabricate these threats to the Church. Far more revealing, however, was that he saw the persecution of Christians as sufficient to justify behavior that is antithetical to what Christ taught.

“All of the things tearing us apart are rectified when we understand this message,” Ryken said. “Not just as something that defines who people are when they receive it, but also defines who we are when we give it.”

With Christians soon to be a minority in the United States, the question shouldn’t be how best to fight back and reclaim their lost status. Rather, Dickson said, the question should be how Christians might “lose well”—carrying themselves in ways that reflect the hope and confidence and great love found in the gospel.

“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.”

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.

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.

“Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”

The public hasn’t turned against Christians because they act better than the rest of the world, she said. The public has turned against Christians because they act worse than the rest of the world.

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“As I sat there and cried, God said to me, through His Holy Spirit, ‘You’re not angry because he rejected me. You’re angry because he rejected you,’” Bunker recalled. “And I was embarrassed. Because it was true.”

Showing grace, she said, is easy when you’re winning. It’s much harder when you’re losing.

The next generation of would-be believers, Bunker warned, is watching us. “They want to know if we love Jesus first”—more than money, more than social status, more than a political party, more than a country.

“Here’s the reality. The last few years, I and many others have expressed concern that people of God seem to be radiating something other than the gospel in too many places in too many ways,” Stetzer said.

Reflecting on the sum total of his scholarship, Bacote said he felt confident sharing two basic observations about evangelicalism in the United States. The first is that too many American Christians are woefully under-discipled. The second—a by-product of the first—is that too many American Christians think of themselves as American Christians. “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?”

“They need help to understand that you can care for your country without worshipping your country,” Bacote said. “They also need help to understand that you can care for your country and seek good for your neighbors. Just because other people are getting something, doesn’t mean you’re losing something.”

So, I asked Dickson, what was it that finally brought him to America? “This,” he said, gesturing around us, as if to synopsize the themes of the Amplify conference. “The division, the anxiety, the fear about losing power and status. It’s entirely why I’m here.”

These days, even in Australia, if someone asks if you’re an ‘evangelical,’ they don’t mean: Are you mild-mannered, intellectually incisive, Bible expounding, pastorally warm? No, they mean: Are you right-wing?”

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.

“This is how you lose people. How you gain people is, you pick a tribe, raise the flag, and be really loud about it. That’s how you gain a bunch of numbers. That is so easy to do. And it cheapens the gospel.”

“The Bible definitely portrays a spiritual battle that’s ongoing. The problem is, a lot of Christians believe they’re engaging in that battle by promoting a political platform, and they treat that political battle as if the kingdom of God is at stake,” Winans told me. “But the kingdom of God isn’t at stake. The Bible clearly tells us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood. What Christ accomplished on the cross is not threatened by Donald Trump losing an election.”

aims. He is an avowed Christian nationalist who favors theocratic rule; moreover, he is a so-called Dominionist, someone who believes Christians should control not only the government but also the media, the education system, and other cultural institutions. This is what the “American Restoration Tour” was all about: restoring a version of America that never existed.

Over the past few years, almost every evangelical I’d questioned about the commingling of politics and religion responded with some variation of “salt and light.” The difficulty is, biblical scholars have never agreed on what, exactly, Jesus meant by this. Surely He was encouraging Christians to be distinct—to flavor this world, to shine in its darkness. But people like Connelly were taking it a step further. They supposed—and preached with absolute certainty—that we should be distinct by fighting for Christian values inside America’s secular political arena.

For many years, Wright and his wife were members of a nearby congregation, SouthBrook, that was “more liberal.” (By this, Wright told me, he meant that the church did not engage in political campaigning.)

The way for Christianity to permeate the culture, he insisted, was by tackling these great debates of our time: abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism. I didn’t bother questioning why Connelly always listed the same narrow set of topics; the answer was apparent. Talking about other clear-cut biblical issues—such as caring for the poor and welcoming the refugee and refusing the temptation of wealth—did not animate the conservative base ahead of an election.

Connelly’s organization was called “Faith Wins,” but what did that even mean? Could faith really win or lose something? It all just felt so trivial. If we believe that Jesus has defeated death, why are we consumed with winning a political campaign? Why should we care that we’re losing power on this earth when God has the power to forgive sins and save souls? And why should we obsess over America when Jesus has gifted us citizenship in heaven?