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

by Tim Alberta

“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.”

“WHEN YOUR IDOLS BEGIN TO DISAPPOINT YOU,” RUSSELL MOORE SAID, “it can lead you back to God.”

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.

It turns out, when a pastor decides that churches should do more than just worship God, congregants decide that their pastor should do more than just preach.

Moore chuckled. “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.”

The problem is, as Moore pointed out, “That vocal minority will always push around a timid majority. The people who care the most usually get what they want.”

“The one thing that’s unambiguous, where we can take direct instruction from Jesus, is on the how of politics—when it comes to loving our enemy, having humility, showing mercy, pursuing truth,” Chang told French. “And those hows, while being deeply biblical and pointing people to Jesus, also happen to be really congruent with the basic values of democracy and pluralism.”

“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.”

Christians are taught never to place their faith in man. Yet the heart, to quote John Calvin, is an idol-making factory.

“But somebody said to me once, ‘People love building houses; they don’t like paying for the housing inspector.’ And I think that’s right. Maybe that’s why all the houses are falling down.”