Tim Alberta has written what I believe is the most important book on contemporary Christianity in America today. With solid research and extensive interviews across significant breadth and depth, Alberta has produced a book that every person (not just Christian) seeking to understand what happened and is happening in America, should read.
Intrepid in his writing and faithful to biblical truth, Alberta illuminates the mess that we see from across the miles, and provides wisdom and insight to why and how things have come to be.
Here are some excerpts I found especially helpful:
Everything that Satan offered Jesus in the wilderness—to give Him power over all the kingdoms of the world and the glory that comes with it—Jesus rejected. Why? Because the only authentic version of those things belongs to God. What the devil tempted Jesus with two thousand years ago, and what he tempts us with today, are cheap counterfeits.
God has His own kingdom; no nation in this world can compare.
God has His own power; no amount of political, cultural, or social influence can compare.
God has His own glory; no exaltation of earthly beings can compare.
These are non-negotiable to the Christian faith.
Jesus frames the decision in explicitly binary terms: We can serve and worship God or we can serve and worship the gods of this world. Too many American evangelicals have tried to do both.
And the consequences for the Church have been devastating.
Christians are always falling short of God’s standard. I have been an offender of the worst sort. If not for grace-His unlimited, unconditional grace-I would be condemned in my sins, doomed to permanent separation from my Creator. But grace is precisely the gift I have received, and, along with me, countless millions of Christians around the world. Perfection is not our mandate. Sanctification, the process by which sinners become more and more like Christ, is what God demands of us. And what that process requires, most fundamentally, is the rejection of one’s worldly identity.
There was justifiable alarm among many Christians when Trump clinched the GOP presidential nomination. The immorality in his personal life aside, Trump had spent his campaign inciting hatred against his critics, hurling vicious ad hominem insults at his opponents, boasting of his never having asked God’s forgiveness, and generally behaving in ways that were antithetical to the example of Christ.
If Trump possessed any of what Paul dubbed “the fruit of the spirit” (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control), it wasn’t hanging low enough to be picked.
When I asked about the concern he’d once voiced to me —that some Christians had crossed the line in conflating politics and faith – Jeffress said he agreed. Some of Trump’s evangelical followers, he said, were “acting like nutcases” when they stormed the Capitol and spread conspiracy theories about vaccines. He called it a case of misplaced priorities.
“They think they’re following in his footsteps-they don’t mean Jesus, they mean Donald Trump,” Jeffress clarified, chuckling. “But Trump, I could tell you for sure, he took the vaccine.
[Australian pastor Dickson:] “But we keep on hearing about American evangelicalism in our media reports. And what happens in America matters. 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?” These were the international symptoms of America’s illness.
And indeed the illness is infectious and easily spread across borders. Conspiracy theories that originated from the US, which are still proliferating today, about Ivermectin and the cover-up on its ‘effectiveness’ has spread to Australia, and regurgitated to us in Singapore by friends.
Dickson continues to make these important points:
“I’ve spent time with underground pastors in China and the amazing thing about them is how cheerful they are,” he said. “I’ve been with pastors who have all been to prison-one of them three times. But they’re not afraid, they’re not paranoid. They are genuinely cheerful. Because they think, ‘Well, if I go to prison, there will be more people for me to preach the gospel to.””
It makes for an unflattering comparison, he told me, with the attitude of the American Church. Much of what drives evangelicals here is “fear that we’re losing our country, fear that we’re losing our power,” Dickson said. “And it’s so unhealthy. We should think of ourselves as eager dinner guests at someone else’s banquet.
We are happy to be there, happy to share our perspective. But we are always respectful, always humble, because this isn’t our home.” [End of quote from Dickson.]
Humility doesn’t come easy to the American evangelical.
The self-importance that accompanies citizenship in the world’s mightiest nation is trouble enough, never mind when it’s augmented by the certainty of exclusive membership in the afterlife. We are an immodest and excessively indulged people. We have grown so accustomed to our advantages-to our prosperity and our worldly position-that we feel entitled to them.
The way to vanquish that entitlement, Dickson said, is by doing the lowliest thing imaginable: studying the scriptures with PhD-type rigor and kindergarten-level vulnerability.
I really appreciated the honest, no-holds barred reflection on all that had gone wrong, both in the past and in recent times.
Would a serious Christian see fit, I wondered, to condone this brutish behavior in any other area of life? Would they condone vicious ad hominem attacks if they were launched at the office? Would they condone the use of vulgarities and violent innuendo inside theirhome? Would they condone blatant abuses of power at their local school or nonprofit or church?
If the answer is no, then why do they accept it in politics? Because politics is about the ends, not the means. Since the ends are about power-the power to legislate, the power to investigate, the power to accumulate more power-the means are inherently defensible, even if they are, by any other measure, utterly indefensible.
This compartmentalization of standards is toxic to the credibility of the Christian witness.
Alberta then talks about Floodgate, a church in Michigan pastored by Bolin, who saw a flood of new attendees after 2021.
The real embarrassment was Bolin himself. Introduced at the beginning of the program as the “rock star” who disobeyed the government, the pastor seemed intent on showing just how uncouth one could be in the pulpit. Bolin began by suggesting that COVID-19 was “possibly being manipulated with the funding and blessing of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the man who put us in masks.”
When he heard scattered boos, Bolin egged on the crowd: “That’s right, go ahead!” The sanctuary filled with vicious jeers. A minute later, the pastor was boasting about how far he’d taken his insults of Governor Whitmer. “Probably the most egregious thing I ever did,” Bolin said, chuckling, “was I did do a Nazi salute and called her ‘Whitler.'” I scanned the sanctuary. Not a single person seemed to register any objection, or even surprise, at this pastor boasting that he’d done a Nazi salute from the pulpit.
Ultimately, it’s not just what they say, but how they behave that is the Christian’s witness. If they are characterised by violence and seek power at all costs, what kind of poor opposite to Jesus are they?
Thomas and Ed Dobson acknowledged, in the pages of their book, that they had not ushered in the sort of kingdom-on-earth spiritual utopia about which they and so many American evangelicals fantasized. In fact, there was evidence to suggest that the country was angrier, more antagonistic, more fearful, more divided-less Christlike-because of the Moral Majority. If Jesus was known for hating sin and loving sinners, American evangelicals were known for hating both. The movement’s short-term electoral gains had come at a steep cost. Not only had the culture moved further away from them; the Church had sacrificed its distinctiveness in the process. “We think it is time to admit that because we are using the wrong weapons, we are losing the battle,” Thomas and Dobson wrote.
What they called for was radical: “unilateral disarmament” by the religious right. Christians need not be “political quietists or separatists,” they wrote, but a wholesale reestablishing of boundaries and priorities was in order. The Moral Majority’s use of shameless scare tactics had tempted the masses of American churchgoers to put their faith in princes and mortal men.
This “seduction by power,” the authors wrote, was sabotaging the message of Christ.
This book was a reminder and warning, that we must always fix our eyes on Jesus, not on gaining earthly power. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this earth, and we must not aim to establish a theocracy in whichever country we live in.
Sure, we have to be good witnesses for our faith, standing up for what is right, living honourably, advocating for the freedom and room to hold and practice our beliefs. But we cannot do this by preaching violence, acting violently, grasping power with money and at all costs. Instead, we must align our character and behaviour to that of the Saviour whom we profess to give our lives to. Loving others, even our enemies, seeking to peaceably live and concretely help and benefit those who are in need. Instead of holding placards or insulting those who choose to get abortions, let us be counted amongst those who help those who choose to keep their babies. Instead of campaigning and using money to gain power, let us use humility and contentment to win over a watching world.
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