'Under the evangelical boot': Pastor’s son tells dire tale of church's right-wing takeover
Atlantic reporter Tim Alberta's new book "The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory" points to evangelical Christianity as a threat to the United States, New York Magazine sums up in its review.
Alberta grew up in a Michigan mega-church, Cornerstone, where his father was the lead pastor until his death. Alberta tells how the congregation slowly devolved into chaos as the new pastor refused to attack Joe Biden and the state's Democratic governor.
"A crusade to overturn the election result, led by a group of outspoken Christians — including Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, who was later censured by a judge after admitting to spreading numerous lies about election fraud, and author Eric Metaxas, who told fellow believers that martyrdom might be required to keep Trump in office — roiled the Cornerstone congregation," recalls Alberta in the book.
"A popular church leader was fired after it was discovered that she had been proselytizing for QAnon, the far-right online religion that depicts Trump as a messianic figure battling a satanic cabal of elites who cannibalize children for sustenance.
"When the church dismissed her, without announcing why, the departures came in droves."
He explains that this was merely one of many churches that were forced to choose between right-wing conspiracy theories and Christianity.
John Torres, the senior pastor of Goodwill Evangelical Presbyterian Church, enraged his congregation when he shared that he was reading "The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America," by Ibram X. Kendi.
“I went to this meeting with pastors of large churches in the EPC. And everyone’s telling the same story. Everyone’s got some of their members saying: ‘He’s woke. He’s teaching Critical Race Theory. He’s a liberal, a socialist, a Marxist,’” Torres told Alberta. “It was actually pretty funny. Because we’re all realizing these words don’t mean anything anymore. They’re just smears.”
While he was dismissive, credible threats followed, with Torres' wife fearing for the family's safety, Alberta reported.
Martin Sanders is the director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Alliance Theological Seminary in New York. Alberta describes him as "a longtime player in the evangelical movement." Speaking to the author, he explained that it isn't a shock that the churches with old, white evangelicals have become the source of "chaos."
"These are the congregations, he said, that have spent decades marinating in rhetoric of 'Armageddon for the Church, enemies coming for us,'" writes Alberta. "Sanders told us he has noticed a substantial shift in perception as to where the threat to Christianity originates."
While the "moral majority" gained clout and power in the 1980s, the message was one of a Christian holy war, he wrote.
"Leading voices on the religious right argued that Christ’s kingdom could be advanced only if American believers were willing to fight for it. By the time the Iron Curtain fell, and the United States was left standing as the world’s sole superpower, it was clear to evangelicals that the only enemy left to defeat was the one within," says Alberta.
Torres told him that the scary thing “is that the enemy is inside the Church.”
Sanders recalled a story from a friend, also a pastor, who called him to vent that a member of his church said they had to leave because "you’re not interpreting the Bible in light of the Constitution.”
The mission of the church has taken a back seat to the idea of "winning," the pastors agreed.
The New York Magazine review says that Alberta never fully resolves what the answer is, other than to say he's heartened by the few evangelicals left in the country who are "dismayed" by what the church has become.
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Writer Sarah Jones, also a child of the evangelical church, said that she had long ago left it but that she still has some family involved.
"American Evangelicals once struck their alliance with the right because they longed for power and feared the loss of it," she closes the review.
"Such a fate was to be avoided, no matter the cost. Now, it’s clear the costs are high indeed — for white Evangelicals and for the rest of us, too. We may benefit, temporarily, from a saner Evangelicalism, a tradition gripped less by Trump and more by spiritual concerns. But the most vulnerable citizens of this country will never be safe as long as millions believe there should be no right to abortion and no equality for LGBTQ+ people.
"Fail to acknowledge that and we’ll stay under the Evangelical boot for good."
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