Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism is a work of journalism rather than scholarship, but it is nevertheless of considerable interest and value to both scholars and general readers. And while thoroughly researched, it is also a deeply personal book that emerges as a lament over the state of Evangelical Protestant Christianity in the United States. Currently a staff writer for The Atlantic, in the prologue Alberta explains that he was raised as the son of an Evangelical pastor in Michigan and then pursued a secular journalistic career, focused mostly on politics. While his own religious beliefs remained broadly Evangelical in nature, Alberta did not give them much serious attention until two factors converged: Donald Trump’s Evangelical-assisted dominance of the Republican Party, and the death of his father. This conjunction of events convinced Alberta to turn his critical eye from American politics to American religion, and in particular to examine his own tradition of faith.
Thus, Alberta writes as an insider to Evangelical Christianity but does not hide his dismay and horror—even disgust and rage—over what has happened to many of its American churches and institutions during the past decade. To this extent the book functions as a passionate journalistic exposé rather than a neutral scholarly analysis, and as commentary on current events rather than a sustained historical or sociological study. In addition to Trump, another major player in the volume is the COVID-19 pandemic and the way that many Evangelicals reacted to it through the lens of conspiracy theories and medical misinformation, resisting governmental guidelines and viewing them as part of a coordinated left-wing plot to control and eventually shut down their congregations.
From Alberta’s perspective, three of the primary characteristics of contemporary American Evangelicalism are not familiar markers such as the authority of Scripture, emphasis on Christ’s atoning death, conservative morality, or awaiting the Second Coming, but an intense obsession with conspiracy theories from discredited sources, a paranoid persecution-complex, and inflamed resentment toward other forms of belief and practice. A fourth feature is Christian nationalism, and tying them all together is what Alberta perceives as the still-inexplicable uncritical devotion to—and almost worship of—Donald Trump, especially given how he represents everything that earlier generations of Evangelicals condemned and rejected. To Alberta’s chagrin, all five of these characteristics are what American Evangelicals are now associated with and known for embracing.
To gain insight into this dramatic development, Alberta set out to investigate, and when possible personally interview, many leading figures in American Evangelicalism. He does this to identify the sources from which this new extremism has emerged to supplant the older form of Evangelical Christianity, although as the book progresses it becomes clear that Alberta is engaging with Fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and Charismatic Christianity as well, and almost entirely in a White context. Therefore, the book contains chapters focused on the Falwells and Liberty University, Robert Jeffress and First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, Bill Bolin and FloodGate Church, David Barton and the American Restoration Tour, Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition, Paula White and the Road to Majority, Greg Locke and the Global Vision Bible Church, Stephen Strang and Charisma Media, Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA, and the ubiquitous Eric Metaxas.
But it also includes chapters on prominent Evangelical leaders who have fought as hard as they could against these developments, often at great personal cost, such as Russell Moore, John Dickson, Cal Thomas, Brian Zahnd, David French, and Daniel Darling. And toward the end of this unsurprisingly male-dominated narrative, Alberta pays tribute to Rachael Denhollander and Julie Roys, two female activists who used legal training and journalistic acumen to take on the misogyny and abusiveness of many Evangelical leaders and institutions, particularly within the Southern Baptist Convention.
This volume provides an invaluable window into a hugely influential and yet often self-enclosed world in which many millions of White American Christians exist, practically cut off from conversation with other religious traditions and political convictions. Indeed, one of the insights Alberta provides, almost incidentally, involves the extent to which most of the Evangelicals he writes about have apparently no real awareness that serious Christian alternatives exist to their own beliefs, such as the Black Church tradition, various liberation theologies, mainline Protestantism, and Catholicism, among others. They simply do not exist as live options in the eyes of Alberta’s subjects. This narrowness is largely due to the authoritarian right-wing leaders listed above, and arguably represents an ecumenical constriction in the Evangelical worldview compared to previous generations, which at least theoretically valued learned clergy and scholarly expertise over sound bites and ressentiment. For example, Alberta marvels at the massive influence of Charlie Kirk, especially considering his youth and the fact that he lacks an undergraduate degree, ordination, or any academic or pastoral experience. Here, Alberta writes, spin has decisively triumphed over substance.
One of the most poignant aspects of this book is found in Alberta’s depictions of embattled moderate Evangelical pastors seeking to maintain some degree of normalcy and spiritual health in their congregations against both spontaneous and organized attempts to assimilate or overthrow them during the COVID pandemic and Trump presidency. These interviews with less well-known local figures who resisted politicizing their ministry against immense pressure to succumb are valuable records of an extraordinarily difficult time in American religious life. And despite the apocalyptic content, the book ends on a comparatively hopeful note, as Alberta documents some success on the part of those seeking to contain the extremist damage.
Again, while Alberta eschews objective neutrality, and whether they agree with his various claims and conclusions or not, both scholars and students of American Protestantism will find much helpful material in this provocative volume, especially the many personal interviews with leading figures across the wide spectrum of the Evangelical movement. It is a record worth reading.
Robert MacSwain is an associate professor of theology at the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, USA.
Robert MacSwain
Date Of Review:
October 26, 2024
