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

by Tim Alberta

The enemies aren’t those outside of the Church; it’s people in your church who don’t think exactly the way you do.”

It asked Americans of all faith backgrounds to answer the question: 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. This trend line was steady since the days of Bill Clinton’s impeachment: Conservative Christians still believed character was a prerequisite for public office.

“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.”

Didn’t he worry that if people saw him getting the easy things wrong, they might suspect he’s also getting the hard things wrong? Things like salvation and sanctification?

“Our goal should be to save souls, not to save America. The reality is, we can’t save America anyway, unless we’re saving those souls first,” he said to Burkhard. “We can fight for America all day long, but if we don’t save the people here, it won’t matter.”

If pastors were doing their job—going deep in the word, discipling their flocks, stressing scripture and prayer above social media and talk radio—their people wouldn’t need to be infantilized with explicit partisan endorsements. Those Christians would know how to vote biblically, because they would know their Bible.

OOF

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.

The problem is, the first two commands Thomas cited—love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you—are simply incompatible with the culture-warrior mentality so many otherwise kind and benevolent evangelicals have adopted. The public doesn’t see their support of single moms or their donations to African clean-water initiatives. What they do see is a belligerence that overshadows those good deeds and in fact makes the possibility of them seem remote.

It’s a funny thing about loving your enemies: Once you love them, they cease to be your enemies.

Slavery would not have been abolished by bumper stickers and annual marches with hashtags. The struggle for civil rights was powered by people who were unrelenting in their on-the-ground activism, who toiled in the trenches without reward, who did dangerous and unpleasant work with humility and grace. These fights were waged block by block, city by city, to rally public consciousness to the cause. There were no shortcuts to legislating a more just society. More often than not, winning a political battle first requires winning the public argument.

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. (One has to wonder, if these women had complied with the Jewish norms of the day, which forbade women from instructing men in public spaces, would there even be a Church?)

My dad always used to say that humans were designed for worship; whether or not we believe in any higher power, we are predisposed to making gods out of athletes, entertainers, politicians, anyone who can dazzle or inspire or fill us with awe.

“I didn’t have any grand vision for this. I’ve never had a grand vision for anything. I’ve just tried to be obedient,”

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.