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

by Tim Alberta

At one point, describing how atheism had led to mass violence in centuries past, Kirk, without a trace of self-awareness, announced to his audience, “God will not honor those that try to do big, majestic, and temporal things not in His name.”

If tens of millions of young people were as badly damaged as Myers and Kirk claimed, the only answer was Christ. Yet the tone and tenor of this conversation rendered Christ, or at least Christianity, thoroughly off-putting to anyone who might otherwise be interested in seeking Him.

When Jesus walked the earth, He went out of His way to minister to the broken and the shunned. He didn’t show mere mercy to the adulterer and the prostitute and the tax collector; he showed favoritism toward them because these were the people who needed him most. He showered affection on them, regardless of their lifestyles.

The scandal is that Christians, someplace deep in their hearts, possess that categorical, Christlike love. But they have been conditioned to subdue it. They have been taught to selectively practice habits that are meant to be universal. They have been acclimatized to applaud when Myers talks about the danger of dehumanizing people—like Hitler with “vermin” or abortionists with “fetuses”—but ignore the implications that challenge their own prejudices, like migrants as “aliens” or Democrats as “demons” or LGBTQ youth as the “lesbian in a wheelchair.”

Mike Evans, an original member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, told the Washington Post that Trump “used us to win the White House” and then turned Christians into cult members, “glorifying Donald Trump like he was an idol.”

David Lane, a veteran evangelical organizer whose email blasts reach many thousands of pastors and church leaders, wrote that Trump’s “vision of making America as a nation great again has been put on the sidelines, while the mission and the message are now subordinate to personal grievances and self-importance.”

“There’s been this amazing shift. It used to be the parents coming to me, worried sick about what their kids were watching and listening to, asking what they could do to pull them back,” he said. “Now, almost everywhere I go—this just happened at a church I visited the other night—it’s the kids coming to me. They say their evangelical parents have gone totally crazy, binge-watching Fox News or Newsmax or One America News, and they want to know how to pull them back.”

“I’m really tired of this talk about how these poor people don’t trust anything anymore. Oh no—you trust. You just trust all the wrong stuff. You trust awful people, with awful intentions, for no good reason other than they tell you what you want to hear,”

Moore worried that many pastors were simply ill equipped to meet the challenges of the times. They had gone to Bible college or seminary to study the scriptures; some had received advanced degrees, perhaps in divinity or counseling. But none of them had learned how to soothe tribal political tensions in their churches; none of them had been trained to navigate an ascendant nationalist excitability in their congregations. They were losing a game for which they had never practiced.

“We are losing our most stable people. In Mississippi right now, one out of every four Baptist churches are without pastors. A lot of these guys, they won’t say it in a room in front of people, but they’ll whisper to me afterward: ‘I’m not sure how much longer I can hang on,’”

Most pastors can’t count on a structure behind them to help, because those structures don’t exist anymore.”

“O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.”

The people he approached, while predominantly progressive in their personal views, were invested in issues of democracy, pluralism, national cohesiveness. In one particularly impactful meeting, after Chang began with a mea culpa—explaining that this was a problem of evangelicals’ own making, and a problem they were responsible for solving—the man across the table, a non-Christian, abruptly cut him off. “No, no, no. This isn’t just your problem. This is everyone’s problem,” the man told him. “The truth is, some of us have marginalized evangelicals. We have given them reason to be suspicious of us. This is our problem, too.”

This was precisely the type of moment Moore had been praying for—but he worried, almost immediately upon hearing the news of Asbury’s revival, that it would be hijacked by bad actors for the sake of their own agendas. Asbury refused to let that happen. When he called to check in with friends at the college, Moore was told that in an attempt to safeguard the beauty and sanctity of the occasion, school officials were guarding the campus against performance artists. That included Fox News: Carlson’s team had asked to broadcast a show live from the revival, Moore was informed, but the Asbury staff refused.

There was no upside to engaging in political discourse, because too many of their congregants simply could not observe the boundaries necessary to keep that discourse centered on Christ.

“There’s nothing wrong with presenting our views in the public square. If we really see the world as our mission field, then we should try to shape society as best we can,” Darling said. “But we can’t do it from a place of overrealized patriotism. We can’t do it from a place of red versus blue. We can’t do it from a place of fear. Because to those people watching from the outside, that’s the only thing they see—fear.”

“I think we’d all do well to remember: God’s plan for the ages has nothing to do with America. We need Him. He doesn’t need us.”

For a long time, Cutler told me, this represented just a rump portion of their firm’s business. “The Catholic Church scandal was a wake-up call for a lot of Americans, but not necessarily a lot of evangelicals,” Cutler said. “There was really a refusal to accept that this could be happening in their churches.”

That work was on display all throughout the exhibition hall. This was not the Road to Majority Conference or the ReAwaken America Tour; there were no kiosks selling miracle cures or militaristic slogans. Instead, sprawled out over some ten thousand square feet, the SBC exhibitors showcased causes more readily identifiable with Christ. One booth promoted the Prison Fellowship ministry, soliciting donations for an initiative that delivers gifts to the children of incarcerated persons at Christmastime. Another booth, sponsored by Voice of the Martyrs, offered education on the underground church in parts of Africa and the Middle East, and raised funds to support the frontline workers who were risking their lives to support Christians in hostile locations. Some organizations fought childhood poverty with their meal-packing operations; others battled online porn addiction with free software downloads. Talk of stopping human trafficking—the real thing, not those Reddit rumors targeting Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey—was everywhere. At one point, a crowd swarmed around the stall where SBC disaster relief officials signed up volunteers who would, at indeterminate times over the years to come, drop everything and rush to sites of devastation in the United States and abroad.

“Our disease in America is the same as anywhere else: sin. But in America, we’ve used our prosperity to hide it. I think we’ve grown accustomed to worshipping the blessings of God instead of the blesser,” he said. “Those blessings have become our god. That’s why you see Christians gripping on to the things of this world with sweaty palms. We’re too busy trying to stay on top, trying to be in charge of things, instead of being misfits who are saved by grace.”

Alas, the irony of it all. Churches had been so preoccupied with safeguarding their reputations that they behaved in ways that destroyed their reputations. It took generations of getting it wrong for pastors like Blalock to recognize that the best way to do right by the Church was doing right by the people hurt inside of it.

“But the Church is worth it. It’s worth enduring the slings and arrows,” he said. “Sometimes we treat people in ways that must make it hard for people to believe that we believe in the inerrancy and sufficiency of a book that says, ‘The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.’ I knew all of that coming into this. But praise God. I give thanks to Him for the things that happened before. Because now I look on Twitter, and see the things people say about me, and not only do I ignore it . . . but I get to the point where I can love them.”

“I still love corporate worship. Being in there, even though it’s painful, it was beautiful. I still love the singing and worshipping. I would love to trust the Church again,” she said. “But we’ve been hurt so many times, so many different ways. And at a certain point, I just can’t risk going—I can’t afford to lose my faith. I need to be closer to God, but I feel like every time I’ve been a part of a church, it just pushes me farther away.”

Two thousand years after Jesus told that parable, religious leaders were still failing to tend to their own, and outsiders were still showing the type of neighborly compassion that God requires of us. “When I went public with my story in 2018, it was the secular world that had my back. It was the secular world that believed me and supported me,” Woodson said. “It wasn’t the Church.”

“I used to have a hard time reconciling the God of the Old Testament—all that doom and gloom and anger—with the idea of a loving God,” Thigpen said. “But now, having lived this hell with the SBC, I like God’s anger and judgment. I understand it. I relate to it. I can see how betrayed God must have felt watching people mock His name with the way they treated each other.”

“They figured I would be a safe person to parade around. I was a godly woman, a homeschooling graduate, now homeschooling kids of my own, with a husband studying at the most conservative seminary in the country. And I had just extended forgiveness to this pedophile. Like I said, I was the evangelical darling,” Denhollander told me. “And so, they made me a household name. They expected that I would become the poster child for meek, submissive femininity. But they never considered what my theology would drive me to do next.”

The MacDonald episode was even more troubling. Red flags were becoming synonymous with the megachurch pastor. In addition to platforming controversial speakers at his many venues, MacDonald had earned a reputation for an abusive and domineering leadership style. In 2013, Harvest stunned its congregation by excommunicating former elders who’d written a letter raising serious character concerns about their pastor. Around that same time, World magazine reported that MacDonald, in addition to Jerry Jenkins—chairman of the board of trustees at Moody Bible Institute and coauthor of the Left Behind book series—had been frequenting casinos to play poker.

Despite being furnished with detailed firsthand allegations of Sills’s behavior, Baptist Press characterized his relationship with Lyell as a consensual affair. The Executive Committee wasn’t going to stand for Lyell, the denomination’s most accomplished woman, being turned into an avatar for the #MeToo movement. Its members took a calculated risk: They would paint her as an adulteress, squashing the sordid details of her statement to Baptist Press, and dare her to challenge the official published account of the denomination.

“Jen had a broken family, a broken childhood, a broken life, before she found the SBC. The SBC was the only home she ever knew—and they used that against her,” Denhollander told me. “Because she loved and trusted the SBC, she decided to let them break the story. Because she loved and trusted the SBC, she wouldn’t go to a secular outlet to correct the record. She was still trying to protect them—which is typical trauma response for a survivor. Trying not to be a burden, trying to be obedient, trying to be submissive. All she wanted to do was protect them. And nobody was willing to protect her.”

But the notion of excluding women from Church leadership seemed backward and decidedly unbiblical. It was Jesus who made the radical (by first-century standards) decision to reveal Himself, after rising from the dead, to groups of women. Not only that, Jesus deputized these women to go and announce to crowds of men—literally, preach to them—the world-changing news of His resurrection.

It’s true that Paul wrote in one letter that women should not teach men. It’s also true that Paul lauded in many letters the numerous women who worked alongside him in various ministry capacities, including teaching, which bolsters the scholarly argument that his instruction was specific to the one church he was writing.

Take John MacArthur. The California pastor, long a leader in the conservative-but-sane lane of modern evangelicalism—someone who spoke passionately about eternal priorities trumping earthly ones—more recently began merging into the fast lane of fringe political advocacy. When Roys broke open the story that MacArthur and his leadership team had fostered a culture of abuse, ignoring the physical mistreatment of women and children in their congregation, people were outraged at Roys. A small army of Christian bloggers and influencers descended on her website, pummeling her for having the temerity to report on an objectively horrifying episode: MacArthur had excommunicated a woman from the church for refusing to take back her child-abuser husband (who at the time was threatening to kill her and their kids and who is now incarcerated for aggravated child molestation, corporal injury to a child, and child abuse).

Jesus possessed a uniquely pessimistic view of human nature. Having taken on flesh to redeem a fallen mankind, He saw how people continually tried to justify themselves rather than repenting and seeking renewal in God’s grace. He especially saw this among religious people. There is a reason why Jesus is harder on the Pharisees than He is on the unbelieving masses. There is a reason why Paul demands we rebuke sinful church leaders “before everyone, so that the others may take warning.” Throughout scripture, God demands a greater accountability from those in positions of spiritual influence.

But if this were the case, then why include Paul’s epistles in the New Testament canon? His writings, after all, were known as “occasional”—letters in response to occasions inside of various churches. The occasions were messy: sex scandals, power struggles, personality clashes. Studying these missives centuries later, Church councils surely recognized how depictions of such contemptible conduct might diminish the notion of Christ’s transformative power.

“This criticism I hear about airing the Church’s dirty laundry—give me a break. God couldn’t care less about some pastor’s reputation. He cares about His reputation,” Roys told me. “This evangelical-industrial complex—making millions, getting famous, building some ‘brand,’ restoring wolves to prey on more sheep—it has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. And we’ve got to stop pretending it does.”

At Denhollander’s urging, the church opened a review of its policies and commissioned an outside firm to investigate the incident. Most remarkable was Broadmoor’s decision to publish a public statement—even featuring it on the landing page of the church’s website—that detailed the allegations, endorsed the credibility of the accuser, emphasized the Christian commitment to truth and transparency, offered resources for survivors to receive counseling, and provided instructions for victims to report their abuse moving forward.

For speaking truth about abuse and corruption in the Church, Denhollander has been shunned by many of her fellow believers. Her daughters, and millions of other girls coming of age in the Church, are watching closely. I asked her what she hopes they see. “Define your identity,” Denhollander replied. “If you do that, you will be able to stand up against abuses of your theology and speak out against your own community. You will be okay with not having a home, with not fitting in anywhere, because your identity is not tied to anything here.”

There were, as some of his professors liked to say, “two Liberties.” One was a presentable, outward-facing university that trained champions for Christ. The other was an insular, unstable, paranoid family business run by sycophants who weaponized spirituality against any person or idea that might threaten their hold on power.

Even knowing this, Olson told me, he was stunned by Godwin’s remarks to Liberty’s incoming batch of educators. “Ron gets up and says, ‘If you think you’re coming here to change things, think again. You need to fall in line with what we’re doing here—or leave,’” Olson recalled.

Olson had agreed to go on the record with me. In doing so, he was not simply stepping outside the cultlike cave of secrecy that had come to envelop the institution he once cherished. He was also throwing away his job; he was risking his future in academia, his family’s financial security, and some of his closest relationships. When I asked him why—was blowing the whistle on Liberty worth such personal suffering?—Olson sat in silence for a long time. “There’s this apocalyptic feeling in American Christianity right now,” he finally said. “And I’ve been thinking, maybe that’s a good thing. Apocalypse means revelation. Maybe it’s time all these hidden things were revealed.” He was referencing the Book of Luke, chapter twelve, when Jesus promises that the hypocrisy of the religious leaders would soon be exposed. “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known,” Jesus warned. “What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.”

The painful realization they would reach wasn’t simply that Liberty was no better—no holier, no more Christlike—than what they encountered in secular spaces. It was that Liberty was worse than the secular world.

Thousands of students packed into the Vines Center, a gorgeous facility in the center of Liberty’s bustling campus, arms raised and eyes closed as they sang praise to the Lord. “For if my God is for me / Then what have I to fear / And I will not deny Him / The glory that is His.” In fact, these Christians had plenty to fear, according to the day’s special Convocation speaker: Ron DeSantis.

In his half-hour-long address to America’s most influential Christian college, Florida’s governor made zero mention of Jesus. Instead, he boasted of bloody political crusades: how he’d shunned the advice of his party’s establishment, rejected any semblance of compromise with Democrats, pummeled the liberal media, and used the power of the state to punish partisan enemies.

Finally, twenty minutes into his speech, DeSantis declared that our constitutional freedoms are “a gift from Almighty God.” He told the Liberty students it was time for “a revival.” Of their faith? Of their commitment to following Christ’s example? No. Rather, DeSantis was calling for an American revival, a return to the Revolutionary-era struggle against big government.

But individual triumphs do not offset institutional tragedy. If a megachurch pastor is exposed for misconduct—if he and his staff are proven to be liars, bullies, scoundrels, enablers of abuse—then what good is the testimony of thousands of people who insist that the pastor brought them closer to Christ?

One must take a comically small view of God to believe that these people could not have drawn closer to Christ while attending another church—one not guilty of systemic misbehavior. After all, was it the pastor who had brought them closer to Christ or was it the work of the Holy Spirit? Does Jesus need the help of our broken institutions or do our broken institutions need the help of Jesus?

“That’s been the running theme for evangelicals: we’re always embattled, always fighting back. But what if we laid down our defense mechanisms? What if we reframed our relationship to creation, to our neighbors, to our enemies, in ways that are more closely aligned to the Sermon on the Mount? What if we were willing to lay down our power and our status to love others, even if that comes at cost to ourselves?”

When Olson said this, my mind flashed to a mid-nineteenth-century painting, The Light of the World, by William Holman Hunt. It had been my father’s favorite; after he died, I acquired a framed copy for my home office. The artwork depicts Jesus—a majestic cloak draped over His dirty garments, a golden crown placed over top of that excruciating coronet of thorns—standing outside a door. He is knocking. The door, as my dad pointed out to me when I was a little boy, has no handle on the outside. Jesus cannot open it. He needs to be let in. This is the nature of Christ’s relationship to man: He stands at the door and knocks, waiting patiently for us to accept Him. Accepting Jesus is not the end of a believer’s journey; it is the beginning. Once the door to our heart is opened, and Christ is welcomed inside, He tells us that it’s our turn to start knocking.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE CHURCH? For most of my life, I thought the answer was simple. The purpose of the Church is to make disciples of all the nations—first by sharing the gospel, then by baptizing unbelievers into faith, and ultimately by training followers of Jesus to become more and more like Him. This work is inherently self-perpetuating. Witnessing to the world is not enough. Converting unbelievers is not enough. Christians are called to help God’s family grow both quantitatively and qualitatively. This is the enduring purpose of the Church: to mold fallen mortals into citizens of a kingdom they have inherited, through the saving power of Jesus Christ, to the everlasting glory of God, so that they might go and make disciples of their own.

The share of white evangelicals who expressed support for certain ideas—that the government should declare Christianity the state religion; that being Christian is an important part of being an American; that God has called on Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of society—dwarfed that of white mainline Protestants, white Catholics, and Protestants of color. The research established a clear link between Christian nationalist ideology and racism, xenophobia, misogyny, authoritarian and anti-democratic sentiments, and an appetite for political violence.