Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory is a great book. The author’s intended purpose is to investigate the errors that have allowed MAGA extremism to permeate the evangelical church. The book’s overall sentiment can be summarized by this quote from a passage where the author was interviewing Cal Thomas:
“When Trump mentioned Pence and the evangelical audience booed their brother in Christ, I said to myself, this is the final compromise,” Thomas told me. “Here is your brother. Here is a man who worships the Lord that you claim to worship. Here is a man who goes to church every Sunday. Here is a man who has had only one wife and never been accused of being unfaithful. And you’re booing him? As opposed to a serial adulterer? A man who uses the worst language you can think of and does every other thing you oppose? Explain that to me from a biblical perspective. Please.”
p. 203
Alberta’s intended audience is the Church. I am (now) an exvangelical. Alberta has admitted he has not “deconstructed”, though he writes, “Biblical Christianity requires a constant reassessing of one’s beliefs and biases; deconstruction is something that should be done every single day.” Even though I left the church a decade ago, I still harbor the culture of the church internally. It’s like my heritage. So I was able to identify with Alberta and understand where he was coming from.
This book is a great takedown of Trumpism and right-wing evangelicalism, if you can accommodate the author’s pro-life stance. He seems to be in the process of realizing that being single-issue voters is not the way we will get out of this mess. I just wish it had a different cover. There’s no way I could send a copy of this book to my dad, who really needs to read it. He’d probably throw it away on sight. It just looks so scary to an evangelical.
There have been a string of recent books on Christian nationalism coming from a Christian perspective. But I think we need more books that are a little more critical of evangelicalism itself and how it has brought us to this place. These authors are trying to say that Christian nationalism is not true Christianity. But others like Chrissy Stroop are pushing back against this stance. I think it’s a “No True Scotsman” fallacy to say that hard-core right-wing evangelicals are not true Christians.
@aaron I've been interested in reading this book to see what conclusions he comes to, if any, about the how those people referred to in the passage reconcile that dichotomy. It is just absolutely baffling.
I think the only way you can do it is if you’re a biblical prophecy nut and you think Trump is our Cyrus, chosen by God to lead the nation into an era of Christian Nationalism and that supersedes his unrighteousness. But that’s a big stretch. The Bible doesn’t say Trump is Cyrus so you have to have a middleman that you trust to tell you he is.