In this excellent and timely book, we read about leaders of and within the evangelical movement – Jerry Falwell Sr. and Jr., Robert Jeffress, Paula White, Russell Moore, Rachel Denhollander, along with many others playing major roles but having less notoriety. Having read this book, the impact of the evangelical movement on this country — along with the tensions and conflicts within the movement — came into sharp focus. I would maintain that the evangelical movement has had, over the past two to three decades, culminating in our current period of MAGA Republicanism, as powerful and as profound an effect on this country as the civil rights movement had in the immediately prior decades. For this reason, this is an important book for anyone who values pluralistic democracy.
The book begins with a beautiful and compelling prologue, where the author sets the reader up for what is to come. In one passage, a life-long fellow congregant, elder and family friend who, upon hearing the author’s rejection of support for Trump, and having supplemented that rejection with advocacy for spiritual guidance and inspiration in accordance with Christ’s teachings, left a note for Alberta, whose father (by the way) was the long-time pastor of that church. The note read that Alberta was “part of an evil plot…to undermine God’s ordained leader of the United States…criticisms of Donald Trump were tantamount to treason – against both God and country.” The recounting of this experience provides a useful foundation for what follows.
Throughout the book, we learn about the author’s one-on-one interviews with most of the foremost evangelical leaders in the country. We also learn about how those ministers – even those with impeccable conservative credentials who towed the line and remained adherents to “Christ-like” teachings – lost members, many by the thousands. We learn about Russell Moore, formerly the President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, who went from “wunderkind to whipping boy” after openly pushing for reconciliation of racial tensions and transparency regarding sexual abuse within the SBC. We learn about small churches that became mega-churches and whose pastors became rich and famous in the process. Referring to one such “success” story (Robert Jeffress), the author exclaims, “his service to Jesus Christ was indistinguishable from his servitude to Donald Trump.”
The author does a superb job of laying out the timelines and progressions of the evangelical movement. Through his interviews and recounting of his attendance at many evangelical “services,” which were planned, organized, programmed and run more like political rallies than religious services, the reader can glean the motivations for the movement, but the author never entirely gets there himself. Towards the end of the book, there is some optimism. In spite of the nation moving as a whole in a more secular or agnostic direction, some of the churches most hurt by evangelical betrayal of the gospel were seeing a resurgence in membership. The author also provides hope regarding how sexual harassment was finally exposed and dealt with within the Church.
But even with some members returning for more spiritual grounding in traditional churches, those remaining hard line adherents, and their numbers remain substantial, were increasingly drawn to conspiracy theories, far-right autocratic tendencies and, for the growing number of Dominionists – those “hard-liners who seek to merge Church and State under biblical law” – they fervently embraced Donald Trump as the messiah who would save the nation and shepherd the United States into becoming the New Israel or New Jerusalem.
Some highlights:
Many of those who believe in the divine consecration of this country, also believe they are personally blessed. For these people, the prosperity gospel has resonance, equating personal success with God’s blessing and also providing an excuse for not caring about those disadvantaged who are not so blessed through faults of their own. The author provides a useful warning for these adherents: “The problem is, blessings often become indistinguishable from entitlements. Once we become convinced that God has blessed something, that something can become an object of jealousy, obsession – even worship.” To reinforce this point, idolatry among evangelicals is a major recurring theme in the book.
Throughout the book, the author seems to avoid directly tying any aspect of evangelical apostacy to racism. But he does allow for the possibility through his interviews. For example, John Torres, formerly a senior pastor at Goodwill Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Montgomery, New York, was a staunch conservative pastor, who nonetheless believed in the humanity of all people. He did not support Obama but viewed – to the mortification of his members – the election of Obama as progress. He also expressed his anger over the death of George Floyd. For these actions, he was rebuked and his church lost many members. His conclusion? He had a “nagging sense that racism dwelled someplace deep inside the heart of the evangelical Church.” Later on, Alberta quotes John Dickson, a professor at Wheaton: “Much of what drives evangelicals here is ‘fear that we’re losing our country, fear that we’re losing our power.” Asking who “our” country refers to and ‘to whom’ we are losing it to would have been a welcome follow up. Are we talking about non-Christians, non-evangelical Christians, or people of color, regardless of religious affiliation?
In Alberta’s attempt to explain why evangelicals are drawn to worldly, political power as opposed to spiritual power, he writes, “Simply put, many American evangelicals cannot let go. They cannot detach themselves from national identity or abandon the notion that fighting for America is fighting for God. Hence the creeping allure of ‘Christian Nationalism.” Again, he fails to dig deeper. It is almost like saying that a drug addict’s problem is they cannot let go of their addiction. But adding one word, thus ending the sentence with “White Christian Nationalism,” could go a long way in exposing the root causes for why so many are fear-mongering and spreading conspiracy theories instead of the gospel. That is supposed to be what evangelicalism is all about — considering oneself a disciple for spreading the “good news.” Instead, Alberta claims that by the nineteen nineties, “The term no longer conveyed much about biblical beliefs. It was mostly a proxy for cultural belonging.”
Another interesting part of this book recounts how the evangelical movement did not just sprout up overnight but developed over time. “The Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling in Engel v. Vitale, which banned prayer in public schools, inflamed the intensifying fights over curriculum relating to evolution, history and sexuality.” This may have been the genesis of the conservative backlash, culminating in the decision of Pentecostals, Baptists, Evangelicals, and others to join with Catholics in opposing abortion – seven years after the passage of Roe v. Wade. Not to equate the two, except that all movements must have a grassroots foundation, it struck me that the evangelical movement evolved in much the same way that the Civil Rights movement did – deliberately, very much through involvement in local churches, and slowly gaining momentum over time.
Having written about the encouraging news that some of the most abandoned Churches were regaining adherents, the author turns to the difficult task of dealing with sexual harassment and assault within the Church. The person he mostly focuses on in fighting this scourge is Rachel Denhollander who, as a child church member and later as a teenage gymnast, was a victim herself. She went on the become a leading change agent. Having played a leading role in the jailing of Larry Nasser, she became a darling of evangelical leadership – until, that is, she turned her attention to the Church. “In the four years that followed the Nasser verdict, Denhollander went from Esther to Jezebel,” but that did not deter her attacks on individual churches as well as the Southern Baptist Convention. Eventually she succeeded in getting positive reforms enacted (and sexual predators exposed and expelled from leadership).
The book ends on a note of qualified pessimism. Quoting a Times article, Alberta writes that 76% of white evangelicals believe Trump had committed no serious crimes, while a Marist survey showed that 81% of white evangelicals held a favorable opinion of Trump. “The exhaustion voters had expressed earlier…had since vanished.” In the meantime, “from an organizational standpoint, Christianity is in disarray. Pastors are becoming an endangered species.” He also writes about how the United Methodist Church was splintering. But he remains optimistic. As he does throughout the book, he looks to the teachings of Paul, challenging all adherents to keep the faith and “embrace the infinite.”
Even with hope, the author implies there is a struggle ahead, one that will take probably as much time and effort to overcome as it took to manifest in the first place. Correctly, Alberta suggests the ingredients for productive change. About a third of the way through the book he quotes Wendell Berry: “If change is to come, it will have to come from the margins.” Towards the end, he provides his own thoughts about what it will take, and in a quote reminiscent of Antonio Gramsci (regarding his writings on cultural hegemony), Alberta writes that “winning a political battle first requires winning a public argument.”
I highly recommend this book. Although sometimes overly Christian-centric, which one would expect, and regardless of whether the reader is looking through a religious or political lens, this book is thoroughly researched, well written, timely, relevant and well worth the effort.