American Christianity enjoys a great deal of power and influence at home and abroad. Is the church better for it? Is the world better for it? Or is Christian Nationalism just another idolatry—a temptation to take up the sword instead of taking up the cross? Journalist Tim Alberta (The Atlantic, POLITICO) joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of his new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Tim explains his reporting on American Evangelicalism from 2019 through 2023 as well as his own Christian faith and spiritual background. He also reflects on a variety of challenging issues that influence life far upstream from political theatre, including:
• how faith matures or erodes
• the impact of Constantinian Christianity and the Christian embrace of power, influence, and glory in American public life
• the difference between Christ and Christendom, and our allegiance to one or the other
• and the meaning and unique threat of idolatry—which takes on a unique form in contemporary American life.
Show Art
Grégoire Guérard, “The Arrest of Christ”, circa 1520-1522, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, France
About Tim Alberta
Visit Tim’s personal website (https://www.bytimalberta.com/) for more of his writing, or follow him on X/Twitter (https://twitter.com/timalberta) .
Tim Alberta is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. He formerly served as chief political correspondent for POLITICO. In 2019, he published the critically acclaimed book, “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump” (https://www.amazon.com/American-Carnage-Front-Republican-President/dp/006289644X) and co-moderated the year’s final Democratic presidential debate aired by PBS Newshour.
Hailing from Brighton, Michigan, Tim attended Schoolcraft College and later Michigan State University, where his plans to become a baseball writer were changed by a stint covering the legislature in Lansing. He went on to spend more than a decade in Washington, reporting for publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Hotline, National Journal and National Review. Having covered the biggest stories in national politics—the battles over health care and immigration on Capitol Hill; the election and presidency of Donald Trump; the ideological warfare between and within the two parties—Tim was eager for a new challenge.
In 2019, he moved home to Michigan. Rather than cover the 2020 campaign through the eyes of the candidates, Tim roved the country and reported from gun shows and farmers markets, black cookouts and white suburbs, crowded wholesale stores and shuttered small businesses. He wrote a regular “Letter to Washington” that kept upstream from politics, focusing less on manifest partisan divisions and more on elusive root causes: the hollowing out of communities, the diminished faith in vital institutions, the self-perpetuating cycle of cultural antagonism, the diverging economic realities for wealthy and working-class citizens, the rapid demographic makeover of America—and the corollary spikes in racism and xenophobia.
Tim joined The Atlantic in March 2021 with a mandate to keep roaming and writing and telling stories that strike at the heart of America’s discontent. His work has been featured in dozens of other publications nationwide, including Sports Illustrated and Vanity Fair, and he frequently appears as a commentator on television programs in the United States and around the world. Tim’s first book, “American Carnage,” debuted at No. 1 and No. 2 on the Washington Post and New York Times best-seller lists, respectively. He lives in southeast Michigan with his wife, three sons, and German Shepherd.
Show Notes
• Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-kingdom-the-power-and-the-glory-tim-alberta?variant=41012408516642)
• Intellectually re-examining the faith of childhood
• A generational disillusionment in today’s exit from Christianity
• Generational break in attitude & behavior
• Distance from the moral majority generation to evaluate critically
• Inverse relationship where the more one learns about Christ, the less they like Christianity
• The creation of the secular, evil “other”
• “They created this other, this outsider, this enemy that had to be defeated.”
• Current American Christianity is often looking to find our identities on the good side of zero-sum equation.
• Shrinking our theology into something pathetic and miniscule.
• St. Augustine, St. Paul, and C.S. Lewis
• “One way to find meaning is to locate an enemy.”
• From Cal Thomas’s Blinded by Might” —”Unless you have the power to right every wrong and cure every ill and what better way to do that than with An all powerful God on your side.”
• The church most often seems to thrive when it is at the margins.
• “We ca…
For the life of the world is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and culture visit us online at faith. yale.edu Friends hello and happy New Year before this episode I wanted to take a moment to extend our gratitude for contributing to our year-end matching campaign for the podcast with your help we did exceed our $10,000 goal for funding the podcast the Yale Center for Faith and culture is
A nonprofit organization and only 10% of our yearly budget comes from Yale so everything we do all the research teaching and programming like this podcast is made possible by the generosity of our friends and supporters who are donating regularly so thank you to everyone who made a gift toward this
Recent effort and if you’re still interested in giving you can do that anytime just head over to faith. yale.edu When Peter reaches for the sword in the garden Jesus says no no no no I’m going to the cross and that is the choice that we as Christians are faced with throughout human history all the way till present day we have a choice when we feel afraid when we feel insecure
When we feel persecuted do we reach for the sword and try to conquer our enemies or do we reach for the cross and try to live the way that Christ did and try to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us and it’s a pretty binary
Decision as far as I can tell it from my of scripture and I think Peter going on this Arc from being the guy who reached for the sword to being the guy who writes in First Peter that your suffering brings you closer to Jesus and
That you are to pray and love and show Grace to those who treat you terribly that story arc that character Arc I think is laying out a blueprint for us to follow and and sadly I think too many of us are are failing to follow it
This is for the life of the world a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our Humanity I’m Evan Rosa with the Yale Center for Faith and culture for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever amen Jesus taught us to pray that way
But for however many times those words are uttered on a daily basis around the world how do we understand them how do we live by them how do we enact them in contemporary America Our Guest today is journalist Tim Alberta and he wants us to pay much
More attention to that word Vine those three things the kingdom and the power and the glory those things belong to God Jesus teaches through the Lord’s Prayer the human beings do have a very historically conflicted relationship with kingdoms and power and Glory Tim Albert’s new book is an exploration of
How American evangelicals have approached the kingdom the power and the glory in an age of extremism he’s a staff writer at the Atlantic and was Chief political correspondent at Politico before that what I find interesting about Tim who grew up as a pastor’s kid and has remained a person
Of Christian conviction is his effort to understand the human phenomena Upstream of politics he’s looking for the root causes of the current political theater that we experience in headlines and social media every day and he’s identified several themes that show up regularly in his writing and in today’s
Episode the hollowing out of communities the diminished faith in vital institutions the self-perpetuating cycle of cultural antagonism the diverging economic realities for wealthy and workingclass citizens the rapid demographic makeover of America and the Cory spikes in racism and xenophobia so in this conversation surrounding his new book we talk about
The faith of childhood and how it matures or erods as we enter adulthood the challenge of dis illusionment with the church alongside faith in Christ the historical and cultural and spiritual impact of emperor Constantine on the Christian Embrace of power the Christian alignment with Party politics the difference between Christ and
Christendom and our allegiance to one or the other and the meaning and unique threat of idolatry in the Christian engagement of the Public Square which takes on a unique form and Contemporary American Life thanks for listening today friends Tim thanks so much for joining me on for
The life of the world it is my pleasure Evan thank you for having me uh having followed plenty of your journalism up until this book this book is a really fascinating look at the state of American Christianity and there is the atmosphere of religiosity in this country spirituality in this country
That for people who grew up with a Christian faith that was the language through which they tried to understand the world there’s fascinating ways that I’ve noticed people describe that early Faith so I I’m wondering if we could start there a little bit yeah you
Know as a pastor’s kid as a PK I always felt a little bit like I was rioting the coattails of my parents Faith a little bit and it was interesting like it probably wasn’t until College when I started to try to really explore and investigate and scrutinize on my own and
That was the best thing for me I I think my childhood was my dad was an atheist who had become a born again Christian in his late 20s in a very dramatic sort of conversion experience where he left behind the life he knew he was a finance
Year in New York and my mom was a journalist with ABC radio and they were like the yepy it kids uh you know living the socialite life and they abandoned all that and uh my dad went into Ministry and so I grew up not just in a
Christian home but in a home where everything revolved around Christ I mean it like the dinner table conversation the friends you spent time with uh the the the media that you would consume I mean all of it and I’m grateful for that upbringing it’s not something that I
Resent in any way but I think as I got older and started to have more exposure to what the world looked like outside of that bubble it was important for me to intellectually reexamine re-evaluate what I had been taught and the culture I’d come up in and the belief system
That ID inherited and ultimately as I said I think that was the best thing for me because I actually my faith grew much stronger as a result of it even as my disillusionment with the institutions of the church became more pronounced yeah that disillusion is a fascinating way to
To think about it I have you thought much about disillusionment as a trend that there does appear to be a little more widespread disillusionment with traditional Christianity from those who are kind of raised within it and I might also just preface to say like the part
Of my story that might be relevant here is I grew up a a sort of nominal Catholic faithful going to church every Sunday but it there was a conversion experience for me where the realities of spirituality or taking the Bible seriously or investing one’s mind in theological questions in a different way
Like using the history of Christian reflection for instance to start adding some sort of understanding where I I discovered that in college and attained the faith of my childhood but then found a new sense of excitement in biblical Christianity and yet I do need to report like there is a kind of disillusionment
That follows after having explored so so deeply the trappings of that religious culture around it and I’m recognizing a generational perspective on disillusionment that I’m that that’s where this is coming from where we are seeing a kind of exit from Christianity and yet Christianity remains plausible to me remains livable to me I’m
Wondering what what you’ve noticed about that disillusioning kind of thing and if it’s generational or how you would describe it I I do sense that a lot of it is generational and I write about in the book you know one of the consistent sources of surprise for me a pleasant
Surprise was whenever I would encounter younger Evangel or just younger Christians who had perhaps even abandoned the label of Evangelical they were in most cases not very different from their parents in terms of just like on paper if you ran the formula you know theologically culturally politically held to a lot of
The same just general inclinations but they had a really sharp break attitudinally behaviorally from their parents generation and I think that is the Great fracture that I’ve noticed generationally is like for example if you go hang around a Conservative Christian college and talk to a lot of
The student leaders there I mean they are in their bones still pretty conservative on cultural social issues political issues you know they would tend to lean Republican but like they want nothing to do with trumpism they want nothing to do with the Maga movement they want nothing to do with
Christian nationalism and I think that’s in part because was they have had the distance from the Moral Majority era to actually examine it critically and to recognize the damage that it’s done whereas you know my parents generation the Moral Majority generation I don’t think they had that distance and they
Didn’t have the ability the capacity necessarily to try and in real time to reckon with the damage that it might do I mean for every one Cal Thomas who has this this Epiphany and writes his book blinded my might where he says listen not only are we not advancing
Christianity in America we are actively harming Christianity in America right for every one Cal Thomas who sort of Saw The Light I think there are probably like 10,000 others who haven’t been able to see it but their kids can see it and their grandkids can see it I would also
Just add to the point you were making because it sounds like you and I were sort of traveling similar roads mhm there certainly does seem to be this almost inverse relationship between the more you learn about Christ the less you like about Christianity right fascinating thing you
Know it’s it’s because you’re able to see all of the divergences and it’s worth pointing out the kardian nature of that right maybe it’s not Christianity like per se maybe it’s that Christendom thing that that kard is pointing out the inability and the heavy heavy irony of an individual Christian to find Christ
In Christendom and how they really push so heavily or pull so heavily against one another maybe that’s even the wrong metaphor but Christendom for him is just the sort of like at root the ugliness of what kind of emerges when culture adopts Christ only the appearances thereof or
Something like that yeah yeah yeah I want to ask you about about to dig in a little bit about Cal Thomas because you quote this fitting quote that I think Jim Jordan mentions it that every morning I read the Bible and the New York Times so I can see what each side
Is up to and I want to take it there because like in this moment where we’re thinking about Christ versus Christianity the creation of sides and the creation of this Zero Sum battle I think this is important and I’m curious how you receive a line like that and how
You interpret it and and the setting up of these sides yeah well you know and this is nothing new of course right I mean as as Cal describes to me in this chapter in the book where Cal is helping to retrace The Arc of the Moral Majority
And how the seeds that were planted 50 years ago are are still being harvested today right and he talks about how fwell senior and the Moral Majority they really prayed upon the insecurities the anxieties the fears of Christians in this country but what they also did so successfully was they created this other
This Outsider this enemy that had to be defeated and they were always talking in terms of framing this Cosmic collision between the good God-fearing bible-believing Christian in America and the evil secular humanist liberal Progressive in America America who you know they were on a collision course and
It was just a matter of time and I think that narrative has proven so enduringly effective I mean it’s in many ways when we talk today about the Deep state or we talk about Trump promising retribution against his enemies or when Governors issued shutdown protocols during covid-19 that you know implicated houses
Of worship like all of that apocalyptic rhetoric is still alive and well today and I think obviously there are many problems with it but the big problem I have with it as it pertains to this Zero Sum Warfare as you framed it a minute ago Evan is it
Takes such a small view of God it it it it shrinks our theology into something so pathetic and minuscule you know who who would have thought that Augustine of Hippo would come to change millions of lives in the way that they think about their creator who would think that Saul
Of Tarsus would become the the inspiration for a movement in many ways that changed the world or at least a catalyst uh for this movement after Christ’s Resurrection who would think that you know this medieval history Professor who was an atheist at Oxford would become the great apologist of the
20th century like how do we know who our enemies really are and how do we know that God doesn’t have a plan that’s so much bigger and so much more magnificent than what we can possibly comprehend and yet every day it feels like in the American Christian context
We are so quick to push everything into this zerm formulation and find our identity as being on the good side of it right that that at least we’re fighting for the winning team here and not thinking at all about who we’re placing on the losing team as a result I mean
This is maybe the the glory side of it but also the kingdom side of it is that it looks from that angle someone’s looking for the fight someone’s looking for the glory someone’s looking for a kind of sense of meaning and so here’s one way to find meaning to locate an
Enemy and to tell yourself a story and to tell your tribe a story that that enemy is coming for you and they will destroy you if you don’t set your mind to to and I’ll again quote from blinded by might unless you have the power to
Write every wrong and cure every ill and what better way to do that than with an all powerful God on your side that’s it if you look back through history what you see dating back to Constantine is whenever Christians have fallen for this trap of needing to turn to the power of
The state when they’ve needed to accumulate uh cultural social political influence in order as they view it in order to sort of defeat their enemies it never ends well it not only does it not end well for them in their own time and place in their own sociological milu but
It it doesn’t end well for the gospel I mean what you tend to see historically is that when Christians are at the margins and and when they are distinctly countercultural the witness of Jesus Christ tends to thrive and so the health of the church in China today is so
Remarkable because it is being persecuted right I mean we can see this we can understand the relationship between this Lust For dominance in our in a society the inverse relationship between that Lust For dominance and the health of the church and yet we seem Paralyzed by it in the American context
I think because we are so used to having our cake and eating it too this idea of being at the margins is something that’s deeply uncomfortable to us I I want to park here on Constantine and I also want to refer back to the scriptural epigram
Of the book I love epigrams I feel like you know an author’s choice in an epigram is usually it’s measured and it’s weighed and there’s some like important statement about it now you chose a portion of the devil’s temptation of Christ from from the Gospel of Luke and specifically bringing
Christ all the way and after 40 days of fast or in the midst of 40 days of fasting the temptation to just gaze upon all the kingdoms of the earth and of course the temptation to just bow down and receive all all of those kingdoms and I find it interesting In This Moment
Like would one of those kingdoms have been Constantine’s Rome and yet you importantly point out the way that Christians since the age of Constantine I’m quoting have run anxiously into the arms of the state desperate to be protected by the rulers of their time and place and I think this
Is an important way to again look at that that important Paradox or maybe contradiction that’s here Christ versus Christianity or Christ versus Christendom Christ versus a kind of Earthly Kingdom or expression of of Christianity as an Earthly Kingdom with power and with might and with with all that comes along with
That you know one of the truly profound narrative arcs for me in scripture is that of Peter’s because of course on the night of his betrayal when Jesus is arrested Peter he reaches for his sword and he cuts off the ear of one of the officers and what does
Jesus do he rebukes him right says those who you know live by the sword will die by the sword he heals the man’s ear now what’s interesting about Peter is if you go back in the chronologically if you press rewind and go back he is the first to
Identify Jesus as the Messiah when Jesus says to his discip you know who do they say I am and they say well some say you’re Elijah some say you’re John the Baptist he says who do you say I am Peter says you’re the Christ right and then of course Jesus says blessed are
You Simon bar Jonah you know the Gates of Hell will not Prevail against the church all of this but then so that is this very famous scene we tend to forget what happens next and what happens next to me is incredibly important because Jesus then proceeds to explain to them
The plan that he will be handed over to the authorities that he will be killed by the state and that he will then be resurrected that this is necessary in order for God’s plan to be fulfilled and Peter says no no no no no that’s not the
Plan no way Jose you came here he the Bible the Bible even says that Peter pulled Jesus aside to rebuke him right right imagine that so in that moment Jesus fully God and fully man having taken on flesh to save the world from its sins tells them the plan and Peter’s
Like no no no no that’s not the plan don’t you know that you’re supposed to be a military ruler don’t you know that you’re supposed to slaughter the Romans don’t you know that you’re supposed to be a strong man you can’t what do you mean you’re gonna be killed by the state
Right and what does Jesus say to Peter he says to him get behind me Satan the in the reason I’m so fascinated by that is because in the epigraph of the book what you just quoted from when Satan offers Jesus power over all the kingdoms of the world Jesus uses the identical
Phraseology he says Get Behind Me Satan yeah so Peter is doing the exact same thing that Satan did Peter is saying to Jesus hey don’t you want to rule the world you you have the opportunity right here in front of you yeah but when Peter reaches for the sword in the garden
Jesus says no no no no I’m going to the cross and that is the choice that we as Christians are faced with throughout human history all the way till present day Evan we have a choice when we feel afraid when we feel insecure when we feel persecuted do we reach for the
Sword and try to conquer our enemies or do we reach for the cross and try to live the way that Christ did and try to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us and it’s a pretty binary decision as far as I can tell it from my
Reading of scripture and I think Peter going on this Arc from being the guy who reached for the sword to being the guy who writes in First Peter that your suffering brings you closer to Jesus and that you are to pray for and love and show Grace to those who treat you
Terribly that story arc that character Arc I think is laying out a blueprint for us to follow and and sadly I think too many of us are are failing to follow it yeah I mean we’re looking at one origin story for this kind of running to
Power in Peter we could look at another one in the form of constantinian Christianity and the kind of decision to just become Christian at a political level yeah I mean look we see this in a couple of different ways right I think in my travels and certainly since I
Wrote the book and since I’m in secular spaces talking with people who are trying to make sense of the Evangelical Christian approach toward politics and towards Trump specifically John Dixon at weaton college has a really good book about this called bullies and Saints where he in really
Unvarnished raw terms looks at both the amazing good things accomplished by Christians throughout world history and the terrible destructive awful things done by Christians throughout world history and almost without fail I mean I could be exaggerating or oversimplifying this but I don’t think I am almost without fail
Every single episode that John cites in that book as like the great crimes perpetrated by Christians it intersects with or is directly motivated by the lust for power and the desire to wield Christianity as a weapon against one’s enemies and this experiment with constantinian Christianity not just as a
State religion but as a societal litmus test of sorts right it ended really really really badly and what’s amazing well I mean look so what’s interesting is that what you see in and I will caveat this of course by saying that I am a a journalist and not a
Historian not a theologian but I I I try to dabble on those things as an amateur what you see in the first second and third centuries is this organic beautiful explosive growth of Christianity in in the ancient world and by the way it’s happening in the face of brutal oppression murderous oppression
You know OST ostracizing Believers marginalizing Believers pushing them to the periphery of society and yet in spite of those things or perhaps one could argue because of those things the strength of the church grows and the durability of the witness is enhanced and Christianity really gains a stronghold as this countercultural
Movement right first second third century and then you get to Constantine and whatever one thinks about the authenticity of Constantine’s conversion which we know is a matter of great dispute whatever one thinks about that the fact of the matter is that when Constantine then wields the power of
This state to impose Christianity and not only to impose Christianity but almost to use Christianity as a means to subjugating and dominating the the cultures around him what we see is that the the the vibrancy the health of the early church it starts to wither right and we see that people
Begin to make the same recognition Evan that they’re making you know 17 centuries later or wherever we are today which is that is Christianity an end or is it a means to an end and I think that is one of the really dangerous external perceptions it it’s not without reason
That people reach that conclusion when they study from Constantine to today the ways in which some Christians have attempted to to I’ve used the word subjugate already but it’s like the best word that comes to mind right like that there are these Zero Sum cultural and political skirmishes and there has to be
A winner and there has to be a loser this is a finite uh a finite equation and therefore you look in Your Arsenal what is the best weapon we have to subjugate our opponents our enemies when Christianity becomes the weapon of choice then people on the outside
Looking in have reason to say well hold on a second is Christianity the ultimate end here salvation eternal life or is it just a means to that end and unfortunately whenever we’ve had these moments like the constantinian moment where where faith in Christ it becomes
Less of an end and more of a mean that’s when you see the strength of the witness and our ability to preach the gospel to the outside world in a compelling and authentic Way start to diminish it’s a kind of sad I irony to me that there’s
That bumper sticker that I’m sure you’ve seen in the past it’s Lord save me from your followers and the sad irony of course being that it’s not just don’t bother me anymore from one perspective it’s save me from the way they wield power as well save me from the violent
Mechanism of using Christianity as a means to retain and keep that power this is to come back a little bit more to that potential opposition between Christ and Christianity because I think this is to also speak to some of the disillusionment if there is disillusionment it is less so with
Christ as the figure we know from the bible let alone the cosmic Christ that might be construed as the very loving Creator and the Moe of being that we are all a part of that there’s this despite that appeal despite that acknowledgement despite the appreciation of words of
Love and peace and teachings that that lead to flourishing there is nonetheless a desire now to be saved from his followers and saved from a kind of Christianity that has really gone the way of Constantine and embraced and accepted the mechanisms of political power that you see at the level of the
Nation which too often resorts to violence Amen brother because look I will tell you Evan for all this talk of being under siege all this talk of Christianity in the crosshairs all this talk of persecution I have spent the last month in deeply secular spaces with decidedly secular individuals and I have point
Every conversation I’ve had both on the air and off the air or on the podcast recording then after the podcast recording every conversation I’ve had I’ve redirected back to Jesus and do you know what I’ve encountered H what not hostility not judgment not refractory don’t Bible thump in front of
Meh you know what I’ve encountered I’ve encountered a lot of curiosity I’ve encountered a lot of huh that’s interesting I didn’t know that or huh I’d forgotten about that I mean it’s easy to forget about the teachings of Christ if you are preoccupied with the Crusades of
Christianity right I mean I I hesitate to use the word Crusades because of the historical connotation but if all of what you see from Christians in the the culture is political conquests and culture wars and identitarian conflict you’re not seeing Christ and if you’re not seeing Christ
Then Christianity is reduced to a sad caricature something that’s hollowed out of its of all of its substance right I think Miroslav says that and I quote him at one point in the book talking about the ways in which Christianity has been wielded as a military tool and how when
You see people in a military setting slaughtering enemies appealing to the almighty in the process that that is not Christianity that is a symbol of Christianity that is externally visible but it is hollowed out of all of its spiritual significance and substance and I think what’s so fascinating to me is
To your point man when you talk to people meet them where they are and talk to them about Jesus I don’t feel marginalized I don’t feel ostracized I don’t feel persecuted I’ve been blown away in in the best way possible because the Jesus that you and I can describe to
Them is such a breath of fresh air because they had long ago stopped associating Christianity with anything resembling the message of Christ himself it’s it’s a fascinating trajectory that you get to that point something to step back and just kind of Marvel at and wonder and I don’t know how Jesus
Followers I don’t know how Christians who want to stay Christian who want to pass on faith to their children you know it’s difficult to both inhabit that kind of culture and also retain a kind of commitment to the core elements that are there because it does appear that
Whenever you you try to systematize it whenever you try to build a sense of influence or whenever you try to wield power of some kind there’s constantly that Temptation there which is to say that we’re always tempted to make it that means you know the familiar
Definition of an idol that comes to mind and I don’t think this is the Webster’s definition but what I’ve learned growing up what my pastor today I’ve heard him use almost identical language is that an idol is something that starts as a good and healthy thing but then becomes the
Ultimate thing and so when you think about the idolatry of politics and the idolatry of nation and the idolatry of cultural Supremacy or whatever right like political engagement doing your Civic obligations even if that means running for office or being a part of a campaign or whatever like those things
Are perfectly fine they’re they’re good things you have every right as a Christian to make your voice heard in the Public Square but when it becomes the ultimate thing when it becomes an obsession with winning and with having to exert this Authority and dominate the political system that becomes an idol
You know the same thing for nation right like you can love America you can be grateful to be born here you can get all the feels when the national anthem plays before a baseball game right like nothing wrong with any of that but when the nation of America when the Kingdom
Of America that’s when we talk really when we’re talking about like Christendom in this context when American Christendom this Kingdom when it starts to become a source of idolatry and you feel as though the fate of God’s plan for the ages hinges on the next election in this country well then you
Have an idolatry problem you’ve lost sight of your true Kingdom you’ve lost sight of your true citizenship and so I think that’s what you’re describing right is this tension between the degree to which our love for or our engagement with some of these things is good and normal and commendable until it’s not
And then we cross over into territory that becomes really dangerous and not just dangerous for the purposes of living in a pluralistic society but dangerous to the gospel itself it diminishes The credibility of the witness Nation as Idol is minent in your book as you were interviewing people as
You are kind of hearing about this what are some of the expressions of that idolatry because I don’t think any of them want to identify it as such right like they would be very resistant to that they would have a different story to tell there but I find what you’re
Saying compelling and yet I also want to understand the mentality about someone who may well be caught up in this kind of dilemma which is serve God or serve the idol and I’m not saying that you’re being overly judgmental about it it’s an observation about what happens at a systems level at
A sociological level when you think about it through the lens of some of these Christian teachings around idolatry and they’re not just Christian teachings they’re Jewish teachings about idolatry as well there’s obviously the desire to find an embodiment of God to be near it to be nested near it whether
It’s a golden calf or a nation or political power or influence it’s always tempting to believe that God gave it to you that God is somehow in it that God has baptized it and blessed it for you well look you really teed it up particularly with this idea of
Baptizing the American Experience I mean there’s this expression that I Came Upon some years ago in in Reading called baptizing the past and this idea that well you know George Washington was was literally baptized in the icy Rivers at Valley Forge and and that’s God gave him
The ability to defeat the British right which of course there is zero historical documentation of and in fact some of the chaplain who were with that regimen apparently wrote they confirmed and nothing like that ever happened right but we baptized the past you know in the case of David Barton the pseudo
Historian who goes around preaching to church congre ations all around the country about how we really were born as a Christian Nation and how separation of church and state is a myth and that we need to reclaim our Christian founding before it’s too late David Barton his
Famously had this book that he wrote on Thomas Jefferson which was like really an impressive exercise in baptizing the past casting Jefferson as this God-fearing epicurian humanitarian when in fact he was all just the opposite on all these fronts that is baptizing the past the attempts to paint Abraham
Lincoln as some super devout Bible quoting Christian who saved the country and preserved God’s divine plan for America when in fact he was known to be sort of a deist at best who was fond of mocking revivalists at the time and by the way as I say in the book have no
Doubt that hundreds of years from now there will be people who look at the pictures of Donald Trump and Paula White praying inside the Oval Office and they’ll do the same thing right they will say well this was proof this guy was obviously a Believer we have a
Tendency to do that thing that baptizing the past thing I think that’s one part of it yeah the other part of it that I find to be uniquely problematic and sometimes just downright gross is this willful merging of scripture with the American Mythos so you know
When Mike Pence a couple of years ago he was giving the nomination acceptance speech at the 2020 Republican convention and he quoted the letter to the Hebrews which says you know let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfector of our faith and instead pence in his speech he said
Let’s fix our eyes on Old Glory so substituting Old Glory for Jesus right amazing that that’s the sort of thing that becomes like okay hold on a second again you can love your country you can get te eyed during the Olympic gold medal ceremony whatever like that’s fine there’s nothing wrong with loving
America but substituting bastardizing scripture substituting Old Glory for Jesus that’s problematic on a number of different fronts right and what I encountered in my reporting trips was a lot of that thing where there there was this effortless synthesizing of scripture with americanism even when the two are
Actually very much in conflict and they don’t mesh together at all but there was this effort to to make them one and the same yeah there’s language there right there’s like the language of Glory it feels poetic in a moment I’m sure to The Listener at that nomination right
Because they are seeing look and it’s in your title so I want to ask about the words of the title of course there is a sort of heavenly glory and and there is a weight of Glory right to quote CS Lewis like kind of invested in all of us
As those created in the image of God and there might be the feeling of Glory in these National stories and there might be a real sense of Glory in the concept of democracy and freedom and there’s this desire to do it but then it’s when they overlap in that very interesting hinge
Point right that you would substitute the flag for Jesus as Old Glory it’s just a it’s a sight to behold and it’s so linguistically based it’s using a kind of language a poetic language it’s using like a rhetorical flourish to try to do that inspiring work so I wondered
Why the kingdom and the power and the glory which is reminiscent of course of of a prayer that I know and why language what is the role of language in all of this yeah well you know the title itself it’s funny I was recently looking through all these bins in my parents’
Basement trying to find some photos of us when we were kids at at a couple of the churches where my parents served before they put down roots in southeast Michigan where I where I live now and where I grew up and I was going through all these bins and I found this
Collection of drawings and scribblings that I had made in the pews that my parents must have kept from over the years on all these little like purple Pew cards right and one of them was really striking I don’t know how old I was but maybe seven or eight years old
And on the front of it I had drawn a picture of my dad in his robes at the pulpit and it said you know like Reverend Alberta and he’s holding a Bible and on the back I’d written The Lord’s Prayer and at the bottom those words were all in caps the kingdom the
Power and the glory forever and my wife was like kind of stunned when I showed her that because I had I’ve talked to her about how those words since I was I mean talk about the power of words right and I’m a journalist so I care a lot
About words it’s words mean a great deal to me and so I’ve thought about those words my whole life I mean every Sunday when we would recite the Apostles Creed and then the Lord’s Prayer and then do the doxology in that was our tradition in our church I would always be
Lingering on that phrase for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever yeah and what struck me as I was doing all of my reporting here over a period of about four years was how the degree to which we view America as a kingdom can be
Okay the degree to which we seek power political cultural Social Power can be okay the degree to which we glorify ourselves boy I mean it can be okay but it is a fine line I mean even as I make the rounds doing dozens of podcasts and
TV shows like I am sure burdened by the idea of keeping Christ at the Forefront and not getting caught up in the sound of my own voice or my own celebrity or whatever right like I’m I’m trying to sell books and I’m trying to sell books
So that I can try to point people to Jesus and so you have to do these things but it’s a really slippery slope I mean I think a lot of us can where we recognize how fragile how vulnerable we are to crossing over and letting a good
Thing become a not so good thing what consumes my thinking in the context of the book is how the possessive thine thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory right in other words and your point a minute ago about the warnings of idolatry in the Old Testament is so spot
On I mean there are very few thematic through lines in scripture Old Testament and New Testament Epistles and Psalms and narrative and poetry all of it the whole Bible is is one big warning against idolatry like we see it over and over and over again yeah so this idea that thine is the
Kingdom well if thine is the kingdom and if that’s the Kingdom of Heaven you know Jesus says it’s like a treasure planted in a field and the man who found it he ran off he sold everything he had and he took the money and he came back and he
Bought the field right he purchased the field because now that was the only thing that mattered yeah so if that kingdom is the only thing that matters can there be any other Kingdom to compete I think the answer is no and if the power that we have renewed in Christ
The power of a resurrected Christ to atone on the cross for the Brokenness and the sin of all of humanity and to reconcile us and to justify us before God if that power that belongs to God exists then can we have any other power that even compares or competes and if the glory
Of God the maker of heaven and Earth the Alpha and the Omega the glory of God if that exists then can there be any other Glory at all it’s a bit of a play on words because I do think that we have created an American Kingdom I think that
We have lusted after a power to protect that American Kingdom and I think in the process we have self- glorified in ways that steal the glory from our God and diminished him in the eyes of a world that sees what we are doing and has made
Up their mind that they want nothing to do with Christianity even though they so desperately need Christ yeah so as a journalist and as I mean there there’s a good deal of memoir in this for you as well that is personal I wonder if we might just wrap on bit of that personal
Note that it was in the wake of your father’s sudden passing that you kind of as you say it ushered you into an age of gnawing unknowns and that I think is going to resonate with a lot of people that I mean it just so happened for you that
Summer of 19 and you point this out like toward the end of the book how would your father have responded here right to this age of gnawing unknowns and I think that’s expressive of a lot of where we started with disillusionment these gnawing unknowns the gnawing disillusionment that feels
Almost always there almost always present so long as Christianity remains a culturally dominant Force as it I think still does that has a kind of Haunting and gnawing unknown sort of sensation I wonder if you’d sort of comment about what it was like for you
To cope and to grieve in that moment at a personal level and trying to draw these various things together into a kind of now also a journalistic comment where you’re trying to understand the State of Affairs before us the hardest part about Reckoning with your parents
Legacy is to recognize I think that one day your children are going to do the same so I felt at times particularly in the early stages of conceiving and Reporting this book out I felt like I was sort of wrestling with the ghost of my father because he was on the one hand
My best friend my roal model my hero Someone who lived his life with such integrity and such virtue that it set an example I won’t be able to live up to and I just and I know that and he was and his walk with the Lord his relationship with Jesus was so intimate
That I’ve always been in awe of him and yet he was a sinner he was was as depraved as the next guy he was flesh and blood and he didn’t get everything right and to Grapple with that to understand okay here is an Exemplar in
So many ways of of what it means to be a good father and a good husband and a good neighbor and a good follower of Jesus but he also strayed from the path and but he got certain things wrong that’s a hard thing for a son to do I
Think especially a son who’s still mourning yeah I I think where I took a great deal of encouragement was in hearing my dad say to me my whole life that the model here is Jesus right the model isn’t me the model isn’t Billy Graham the model isn’t
James Dobson or whoever any of the sort of cultural Evangelical figures that of my youth or whatever no no it’s it’s keep your eyes fixed on Jesus as it says in Hebrews right right and so it was a journey for me to try and get enough emotional distance to soberly and
Critically assess my childhood my church my faith tradition and my own family in ways that could be intellectually honest and I think ultimately useful to others who are walking a similar Road and trying to piece some things together and get a better understanding of what’s happened institutionally to the church in this
Country and maybe as a result what’s happened to their own faith I think it’s tragic when I come across people who have walked away from Jesus because they’ve walked away from the church or or because the underbelly of Christianity has scared them away from Christ right and what I hope if nothing
Else what I’m trying to do here by sharing my story and by Reckoning with some of the hard conversations with my dad when he was alive and then some of the hard conversations after he’s gone is trying to understand what has gone wrong but also what continues to be
Right and how we can reconcile the two and how we can uh how we can play a part in trying to write what has gone wrong also I think this is the most important thing Evan in the process you know I have young kids I know you do as well
Yeah trying to set forth for them a blueprint for continuing to do this work themselves I think that in many ways we are planting seeds that will not be reaped for many many many years maybe it’s our grandkids or our great grandkids I think that we are part of a
Long-term project here and you know my dad used to say that we are in sales not in management which I’ve always kind of liked so God’s in charge of this thing I think we can play a small part here in trying to sell Jesus and reintroduce
Jesus to a market that has kind of turned away from him at at this time and let the management kind of take care of itself over a much longer trajectory I like that a lot and it’s that kind of continual understanding that I think really lands for me that
That understanding things constantly and continually and admitting that there’s there’s only a piece of it and that like that kind of coming at this from such a journalistic perspective where there is a personal investment in it and a desire to understand a desire to like remain curious about just what brings about the
Kinds of events and the kinds of forces that we observe in our world it’s that sort of search for continual understanding that I’m that I’m really appreciating about what you’re bringing in this book and um looking forward to more of that sort of continuing to try to come to some sort of understanding
Reckoning with things so Tim thanks for joining me on the show well we all have our part to play and I’m honored to have this conversation with you Evan thank you very much for having me yeah Tim thank you so Much [Applause] for the life of the world is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and culture at Yale Divinity School this episode featured journalist Tim Alberta production assistants by Macy Bridge Alexa Rollo and Tim Bergland I’m Evan Rosa and I edit and produce the show for more information visit us online at
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1 Comment
They are fake that's the problem, they can care less as long as they can have power.