The award-winning journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic
follows up his New York Times bestseller American Carnage with this
timely, rigorously reported, and deeply personal examination of the
divisions that threaten to destroy the American evangelical movement.
Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing--and least
understood--people living in America today. In his seminal new book,
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself
a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical preacher, paints an
expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical
movement. Through the eyes of televangelists and small-town preachers,
celebrity revivalists and everyday churchgoers, Alberta tells the story
of a faith cheapened by ephemeral fear, a promise corrupted by partisan
subterfuge, and a reputation stained by perpetual scandal.
For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom--a
land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant
with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing
nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry that trivializes
the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern
evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points
in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald
Trump's presidency and the Covid-19 pandemic only accelerated historical
trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty
sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country,
the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity,
journeying with readers through this strange new environment in which
loving your enemies is "woke" and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD.
Accessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement,
Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have
pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this
earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are
fighting--and the weapons of their warfare--to demonstrate the
disconnect from scripture: Contra the dictates of the New Testament,
today's believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes
fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and
fleeting. Lingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement
and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly
secularizing America that has come to distrust the evangelical church,
and weaves together present-day narratives of individual pastors and
their churches as they confront the twin challenges of lost status and
diminished standing.
Sifting through the wreckage--pastors broken, congregations battered,
believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political
schemes--Alberta asks: If the American evangelical movement has ceased
to glorify God, how long can it survive?
