A Book Review: Tim Alberta's warning and gift to the Church.

 

A book review by Viola Larson

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

Author: Tim Alberta

Harper Collins: 2023

Writing in 2024 I intend, to focus on Jesus as Lord and the good news of redemption. Still, I see painful times ahead and believe there is a warning that needs to be given to Christians. It is about idolatry. Tim Alberta’s new book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory is to the Church a gift, a warning and a carrier of hope.

Alberta who is a political columnist for Atlantic, as well as a Christian, began his journey of writing his book after experiencing harassment at his father’s funeral. (His father had been an evangelical pastor.) After Alberta’s book American Carnage was published many of his fellow church members were unhappy with his views of Trump. He was given an insulting letter by a church elder. Alberta writes:

“I was part of an evil plot, the man wrote, to undermine God’s ordained leader of the United States. My criticisms of President Trump were tantamount to treason—against both God and country—and I should be ashamed of myself.

However, he assured me, there was hope. Jesus forgives and so does he. If I could use my journalism skills to investigate the “deep state” he wrote, uncovering the shadowy cabal that was sabotaging Trump’s presidency then I would be restored. He said he was praying for me.” [1]

This and other harassments sent Alberta on a journey, exploring the causes of such idolatry in the Church.

Some chapters in his book explore the roots as well as the present ideology of believers caught up in extreme loyalty to Trump. Those explorations cover a past that was itself a move away from the words and work of Jesus, including the formation of Liberty University. And a present which includes mega churches who with ultra-patriotic sermons and flag waving captured the loyalty of members of other churches that were attempting to protect their members from COVID by staying closed during the worst of the pandemic.

It should be pointed out that Alberta believes that those evangelicals who are a part of Maga not only idolize Trump, they, going beyond normal patriotism, idolize America—see America as a covenant nation meant, like Old Testament Israel, to obey scriptural laws. They do not see America as a pluralistic democracy and they tend to confuse that with their real biblical position as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Alberta has one chapter on Clay C lark and Michael Flynn’s Reawaken America Tour, a movement I sometimes follow and write about. His description of his experience in one meeting in Branson Missouri covers the nightmare well:

“Sitting in the second-floor gallery of the Mansion Theatre looking out across a standing-room—only crowd of people clad in garish cross necklaces and Qanon sweatshirts and red Maga hats, I could practically hear the voice of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, who declared sometime around 600 BC that the people of Israel possessed ‘no shame at all. ‘They had, Jeremiah said in one translation, ‘forgotten how to blush.’ In fifteen years of political journalism, I had witnessed political chicanery and skullduggery of every sort. Nothing could surprise me anymore; I was immune to outrage, bereft of the ability to recoil from iniquity. And then I discovered the Reawaken America Tour. [2]

Positioned here and there within various chapters are Christians who represent hope. One person is the pastor following Alberta’s father. Timid at first, fearful of those in his church who constantly pushed far right political issues including conspiracy theories, losing members during the COVID pandemic, Cris Winans grew mature, brave, and wiser. Alberta writes of how Winans begin to deal with the members of his church:

“Winans wanted to bring his congregation along to compel them to second-guess their extrabiblical desires. But make them think it was their own conviction. He would preach on godly character then play dumb when someone approached him afterward to admit they were rethinking their allegiance to certain politicians or pop-culture personalities; he would preach on the spiritual principle of discernment then offer a bemused shrug when someone confessed to him that they were beginning to doubt conspiracy theories or question information they’d been imbibing on social media.”[3]

A couple of the pages of hope are contained in one chapter with so much hope it is impossible to cover all in a short review. A conference at Wheaton College. Several outstanding speakers return the audience to the need for Christians to return to love and compassion for those outside the church. And there is a reminder that, yes the church was once persecuted greatly and in other parts of the world still is, but here in the West, in America, contrary to many evangelicals’ views. there is not that kind of persecution.

And additionally, there can be great ministry because of push back to the gospel. As one speaker, Laurel Bunker, reminds the audience of the world’s real need:

“The Black kids of the city of Chicago; the gay kids who struggle with suicidal ideation; the single mothers’ the prostitutes; the broken of society. The only way they will know is if we go.” … “they are not going to come to us. They don’t care about our steeples. They want to know, is my life redeemable? Does my life have purpose?”[4]

And then there is the chapter that covers an event in France where an Orthodox Ukrainian monk, Hovorun and Miroslav Volf, a well known theologian and poet, from what was once Yugoslavia, now at Yale, spoke covering the political religion that Vladimir Putin embraces as an excuse to keep power and enlarge it. While there is so much information in this chapter that is so thoughtful and helpful the discussion on civil religion versus political religion is particularly enlightening in regards to Trump, Maga and evangelicals who are pushing toward nationalism.

Alberta states that Hovorun notes that political religion is enforced by the state and gives examples of “Hitlerism, Nazism, and Communism.”[5] According to Alberta, Hovorum also stated, “In Trumpism, we are still dealing with civil religion—a form of civil religion. Its not yet political religion.” (Italics Alberta’s)

To take this further Hovorun points to what he believes is hopeful, political evangelicalism is “Christ-centric.” But Volf disagrees, his words “I’ve come to believe … that the Christ of the gospel is a moral stranger to us.”[6] 

There is more,, The book is full—as I said at first it is a warning and gift to the Church.

 

 

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[1] Alberta, The Kingdom, 9

[2] Ibid. 263.

[3] Ibid. 430.

[4] Ibid. 143.

[5] Ibid. 241.

[6] Ibid. 242.