American politics Archives

The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory, Tim Alberta. New York: HarperCollins, 2023.

Summary: A several years-long study of why much of the evangelical movement turned to hard right, nationalist politics, ignoring character and embracing the pursuit of power to enforce its vision of American greatness.

Tim Alberta, a writer for The Atlantic, who had written articles critical of the former president, was stunned in the summer of 2019 when his father, an evangelical pastor outside Detroit, died suddenly of a heart attack. What stunned him even more was that a number of people at his father’s funeral, instead of offering comfort and condolences, took him to task for what he had written. One, a family friend, left him a letter accusing him of being a traitor. Subsequently, conversations with his father’s successor, Chris Winans, told a tale of controversy during COVID over church closures, mask mandates and more. Winans watched many depart for a church down the road preaching a political gospel people wanted to hear instead of the counter-cultural gospel of Jesus Pastor Winans preached.

All this set Alberta on a cross-country quest to understand what was happening in much of American evangelicalism, from a tent church in the South, to the ministry of Robert Jeffress, to the campus of Liberty University. Alberta remains a faithful Christian and this book is not an exvangelical hatchet job. Much of the book allows leaders in their own words to talk about their embrace of an American greatness gospel, motivated by an idea of reclaiming a white vision of America in the 1950’s, even as boomers from that era began to die off and the actual population of the country became far more culturally diverse. He questions the flip-flop from the excoriation of Bill Clinton for his moral failures to the embrace of a president just as flawed, if not more so. He received no good answers, just the justification that the needs of the hour required such a man. Some interviewees expressed quiet reservations not reflected in their subsequent public rhetoric.

He also chronicles the stories of the wounded. Russell Moore was a former leader of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Church, a man of impeccable religious conservatism who nevertheless opposed the former president and also stood up against sexual abuse in the church against its executive leadership. He was forced out and left the denomination. David French, fought for religious liberty cases on university campuses and at one time wrote for the National Review. When he wrote against the former president, the threats became so bad, both he and his wife began carrying firearms. One of the most courageous was a Liberty University professor, popular with students being fired for not obeying the administration. He refused to resign, accept a severance package and sign a non-disclosure agreement. He offers an account of Rachael Denhollander, fighting for anti-abuse policies in the Southern Baptist Church while forced out of her own congregation.

He portrays his own father’s embrace of the culture wars and efforts to reclaim American greatness, and how the seeds that bore fruit in 2015 were sown many years earlier through Falwell’s Moral Majority and Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition. Combine that with congregations nourished on talk radio and conservative cable news networks and you had a populace discipled, not by the gospel of Jesus but by the gospel of America. Instead of a vision for a global kingdom of God, what mattered was the kingdom of America. Instead of zeal for the greatness of God, it was zeal for the greatness of America. In short, what Alberta portrays is political idolatry in the guise of Christianity.

What’s troubling to see is people from rural pastors to Jerry Falwell, Jr., using this gospel to build their own kingdoms, drawing off people from other congregations with the lure of their false gospel. For some, there is power and glory in their nearness to earthly political power. And while all this is happening, many Gen Z children are heading for the exits, and many others as well.

Alberta concludes where he began, at the church his father once pastored. He’s heartened to find that, despite all the wounds, Chris Winans has persisted, pursuing a strategy of “pull, don’t push” with his people, offering sound teaching to make them question their own beliefs. The church had replaced its losses and was leaning into a vision of faithful presence in the culture rather than “owning the libs.” He entertains the hope, even as he wonders how this all will work out that this “hidden gospel,” hidden in quiet acts of everyday faithfulness will lead to a new revealing of Christ.

Jesus said we cannot believe in both God and Mammon. This is the kind of choice and the kind of divide that runs through the accounts of this book. I’m increasingly struck through recent reading that the draw of Mammon is the belief that it works. That seems the only justification people offer for embracing a political faith so opposite the teaching of scripture. What is not said is that in so doing we are saying that we don’t believe in the way of Jesus, the way of loving enemies, of expanding the reach of his rule to “sinners,” Samaritans, and even Gentiles, and walking the way of the cross. Are we willing to persist in what is foolish and weak, believing it reflects the power and wisdom of God?

Part of the challenge is that our attention, on social and news media, is on the gospel of Mammon. During his remarks at his father’s funeral, and in a recent interview, Alberta repeatedly offers the challenge that if we claim to place Jesus first, that we spend more time in scripture, in reading nourishing Christian books and taking in podcasts and sermons, than listening to the media of Mammon. Perhaps, in this season of Lent, fasting from this media and feasting on the word of God may be a start. Hopefully, it will remind us whose kingdom, power, and glory we are called to seek.

The Death of Politics, Peter Wehner. New York: HarperCollins, 2019.

Summary: A book that explores the noble calling of politics, the causes of the deep divisions reflected in the 2016 election and the years that followed, and what must be restored if the American experiment is to endure.

Peter Wehner, I believe, represents a significant swath of the American population that is deeply concerned by our current political divisions and the transformation of our political processes into hyper-partisanship, vitriol-laden discourse, and a disregard for truth, for the meaning of our words. At least I would like to believe that is the case. Perhaps Wehner just represents me and a few others.

Peter Wehner is an op-ed writer for the New York Times, perhaps enough of a qualification for many to write him off without a second look. That would be sad, because before this, he served in three Republican administrations going back to Ronald Reagan. The fact that those of his party would probably repudiate him today reflects the transformation of our politics that resulted from the election of our former president, whose election had been opposed in a number of Wehner’s opinion pieces.

Given all this, Wehner begins his book with a surprising assertion–that politics is a noble calling–perhaps not quite as surprising if one considers his background. He describes our current moment as a “slough of despond” and a “mess” but he argues that it is not a time to give way to cynicism or wallow in the slough but to recover what is noble in the imperfect practice of politics.

First though, he traces how we ended up in the current mess, attributing it to rapid demographic and cultural change, middle class economic anxiety, a politics of contempt all around, and the failures of our governing class. The ethnic and religious makeup of the country has changed. The day has come when those who are white and Christian are no longer in the majority, the wages of workers in the middle class have fallen, and our political leaders seem to be out of touch in their elite bastions.

Wehner then considers three political philosophers who have shaped the American experiment: Aristotle, John Locke, and perhaps America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. To these he attributes ideas like no ruler being above the law, that participation in a political community is essential to a healthy state, that human freedom and equality are not granted by the state but inherent, that governments govern by the consent of the governed, that it is not the state’s business to shape souls, and that fighting for justice does not abrogate the need to recognize the dignity of those who oppose us. Wehner maintains we need to reaffirm these foundations and the dangers of deviating from them.

Faith and politics is the subject of his fourth chapter. It is here that Wehner’s own deep Christian faith is evident, but not of one aligned with partisans. He discusses the moral basis religion has brought to American life at its best, ranging from civil rights to the Bush administration’s AIDS relief efforts in Africa. He observes the disjunct of evangelicals’ excoriation of a Democrat’s sexual failures while looking the other way in 2016. He argues that the ends don’t justify the means and contends that Christians need to focus on what Jesus actually taught, for the need of a coherent political vision rather than a stance on a few issues, a shift from a politics of revenge to one of reconciliation, and for the treatment of all our citizens as “neighbors.’ He argues that we need a gospel culture rather than a political culture within the church.

As he looks to the healing of our culture, it begins with words. We need to realize the power of words to stir us to either principled effort of unholy actions. He’s blunt in his denunciation of the culture of lying in the previous administration and the chilling phrase of “post-truth.” He contends that we all have a role in the restoration of integrity in our words from politicians to journalists to citizens who test claims for truthfulness, not only of the other political party but our own.

Wehner has not given up on the possibility of civility in our politics, of moderation and compromise in our policies (at least as of 2019). What I wish he could answer is how he would energize the “moderate middle” against energetic progressive and nationalistic partisans. I think he is hoping for the extremes to move to the middle, and I think this is highly unlikely in our heavily gerrymandered states where one’s base is all one needs to be elected. I personally have less hope that this will change our politics, but, like other virtues, I believe civility is its own reward, and part of Christian character that enjoys the favor of God, if not our political adversaries. But even here, Wehner holds out an interesting hope in the concept of the Second Friend (drawn from C. S. Lewis). These are not the First Friends who share our outlook but the person who shares our interest but comes at them in opposing ways with opposing conclusions. They force us to better thinking and action.

His final chapter offers a case for hope, drawn from his own political experiences–both the low and high points. He reminds us that we have never had perfect politicians–flawed leaders have led us in times of war and peace. He’s not arguing for the pretty, but the possible–a politics that works.

I found myself wondering if this would have been written differently after the contentious year of 2020 and the events of January 6, 2021. I wonder if he would have written with greater urgency. I would not have changed the argument though. Events since he has written only underscore the urgency of a return to the values he espouses. I think his plea for a return to the foundations of our democratic republic would have been stronger, foundations I believe partisans on both ends of our political spectrum are ready to jettison for their political ends. We need his call for honorable means in the pursuit of our political ends. When we allow ends to justify our means we will find that the fruits of victory will be poisoned fruit. The health of our politics and the democratic experiment will always be the worse for it.