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

Chapter 1 introduces Chris Winans, the new senior pastor at Cornerstone. Winans was chosen by Pastor Alberta as “heir apparent” because of his insights on the Scriptures. He is humble and easy to speak to, lacking the “outsized ego” often found in preachers. However, Winans is not a Republican. Alberta’s father believed that Winans could overcome the conservative Republican community’s reservations about a liberal Christian through a “manifest love of Jesus” (18).

Despite this, people confronted Winans and complained about anything he said on politics. With Pastor Alberta behind him, Winans managed within the community. However, after Pastor Alberta died, COVID-19 swept through the nation. Winans, already suspect in the eyes of the community, earned condemnation from his decision to obey shutdown orders. His opponents united under a “prophetic certainty” propagated in the evangelical community for decades: that the godless leftists of America would one day launch an attack on Christianity. They believed that they were at war, and Winans, through his compliance, was surrendering.

Later, the Black Lives Matter movement and Trump’s reelection campaign furthered this divide. The movement involved civil unrest prompted by racial injustice, and this combined with Trump’s “dark rhetoric” prompted evangelicals to demand that their leaders start speaking out against COVID-19 measures, racial justice protests, and Biden. When Winan refused, people left. Later, the “crusade” to overturn the election results led to further extremism in the evangelical community. On January 6, rioters stormed the Capitol. Many were Christian, as they exhibited by praying, singing hymns, and wielding Bibles and crosses. According to Alberta, evangelism would “forever be associated with this tragedy” (21).

Alberta asks Winan what he thinks is wrong with American evangelicals. He responds that too many of them worship America. Many politicians selectively choose Bible verses to justify positions that do not necessarily align with overarching Christian values. For instance, many conservative politicians choose to quote from the Old Testament rather than from the New. According to Alberta, this is because the values of the New Testament, which come from descriptions of Jesus’s life, tend to contradict conservatives’ established positions.

These arguments based on incomplete or misused Biblical teachings were employed to justify evangelical endorsement of Trump in 2016. Evangelicals, in past years, were known to condemn politicians like Bill Clinton for their perceived lack of “godly character.” However, similar behavior on Trump’s part was often tolerated, if not outright celebrated: “Trump could be considered an imperfect instrument of God’s perfect design for America” (24). Even though Trump was not a paragon of Christian values, he could be God’s agent on earth, protecting the true believers from people worse than him. Trump catered to this belief by appointing pro-life judges, moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as a nod to Biblical prophecy, and crucially, picking Mike Pence as his running mate.

Pence, a “born-again evangelical,” softened Trump’s image. Pence especially unified evangelicals by exaggerating the threat they faced from Democrats. He appropriated out-of-context Biblical history to argue that God has a special relationship with the United States, much like God’s Biblical relationship with Israel.

Winans, though still challenged by the extremism in his congregation, decides to stay with Cornerstone. The membership is shrinking, however, and relocating to a revivalist church nearby that preaches a reactionary Christian nationalism. Winans states that while Christianity is supposed to challenge its adherents, many evangelicals no longer tolerate being challenged in any way.

Chapter 2 covers the history of the Christian megachurch Goodwill. Alberta met John Torres, the senior preacher. Through Torres, he learned more of the political divides plaguing Goodwill’s congregation.

The main conflict started in 2008 after Obama was elected. The Democrat president left many Goodwill members uneasy, even contemptuous of the new administration. After a letter by a Black pastor was published, detailing the profound healing experienced by Black people at the sight of a Black man at the head of the country, Torres read the letter aloud to his congregation. The backlash he experienced was “sudden and severe” (38). Several people left the church for good over the issue. After the backlash from the letter, Torres resolved to stay out of politics entirely and stick to scripture. When COVID-19 swept the nation, Torres decided to switch to Zoom meetings, livestreams, and even drive-through worship. His new need to be constantly online for his members alerted him to the “sheer derangement” of the conspiracy theories that many of them espoused.

When the Black Lives Matter movement started after the murder of George Floyd, Torres couldn’t help but vocally support the cause. His congregants reacted with outrage, some accusing him of being a “Marxist who was teaching Critical Race Theory” and demanding his removal (41). Torres was not fired by the elders of the church, but the antagonism reached a point that two members stood up during service and shouted for him to “repent,” accusing him of “sowing racial hatred in the Church” (42). In response, Torres later sent an email to one of the accusers, asking him to stay off the church’s property. The man sent back an edited image of the Goodwill church on fire. Torres was shaken by the extremism. It was only a small fraction of the members, but many of them were staff members and even close friends. In 2022, after the pandemic partially abated, Torres’s congregation dwindled to under 100.

Martin Sanders, a well-known evangelical who teaches theology around the world, adds his insights to the dilemma. He states that most of the churches in turmoil are old, white, and evangelical. After years “marinating in rhetoric of ‘Armageddon for the Church” (48), they believe that their foes are other Americans, creating a fear-based, dogmatic culture. Sanders believes that American evangelism is so “uniquely dysfunctional” because American culture revolves around being “number one.” Naturally, the Church also became about supremacy.

Torres, in response, points out that Jesus refused the traditional Jewish view of the Messiah as a warlike avenger, instead choosing to die a terrible death. “All the winning in the world doesn’t make a difference,” (51) states Torres, asserting his belief that a preoccupation with defeating perceived enemies won’t improve America.

This chapter covers the origins of Liberty University, an American evangelical institution. First known as Lynchburg Baptist College, it was renamed by Jerry Falwell Sr., one of the most prominent megachurch pastors in American history. In the 1970s, Falwell mobilized his huge following to regard Liberty as a central institution of evangelical culture.

Liberty University represented the culmination of Falwell’s shifting of evangelism towards cultural dogma. Falwell started his own Baptist church in 1956 and began to air a radio show. This was a new development for religious preachers, and his embrace of technology, later including television, led to his meteoric rise. Soon, his sermons reached “hundreds of thousands of viewers each Sunday” (55). In the beginning, he argued against Christian involvement in politics. He preached “separatism,” the belief that Christians are set apart from the rest of the world. In 1965, he condemned Martin Luther King Jr. for his protests for civil rights, stating that “politicians are not called to be preachers but soul winners” (56). However, despite his stance, he often waded into politics himself to sway his congregation towards his own cultural values.

Before its renaming, Liberty University struggled. Falwell’s strict Baptist beliefs alienated younger Christians by condemning movies, dancing, drinking, smoking, and dating. Sensing this divide, he changed tactics. He renamed Lynchburg to Liberty, changed the school’s colors to red, white, and blue, and added a new motto: “Training Champions for Christ” (58). This movement towards patriotism instead of separatism sent Liberty on a new trajectory.

To maintain influence, Falwell and other evangelical preachers started weighing in on politics regularly. They delivered “jeremiads of civilizational collapse” (60) from their pulpits. They capitalized on patriotism and fears of secularism to win people to their cause. Falwell’s most remarkable act of religious and political performance was his condemnation of the 39th US president Jimmy Carter. Carter was a Sunday school teacher and devout Baptist, but Falwell seized on a single interview Carter had given to Playboy magazine as proof that he lacked moral character.

Falwell’s main goal for Liberty was to make it “a cultural stronghold” (62) that operated parallel to the Church. Liberty University was also helpful in expanding evangelism’s alliances. Falwell resolved to partner with “co-belligerents,” or people with different beliefs but the same goals. This decision led to a loose association of different religious groups which Falwell named the “Moral Majority.” The Moral Majority focused specifically on cultural issues, combatting signs of “societal degeneration” like divorce rates, queerness, and above all, abortion.

Falwell also worked closely with Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, leading to a groundswell of support for Reagan from evangelicals. After Reagan’s landslide victory, the Republican party changed in a crucial way, and the Moral Majority “[took] over the Republican Party” (68).

Liberty University was suddenly on the national stage. The Reagan era introduced “politically crazed young conservatives” (69) to the college, changing the patriotic but religious atmosphere to a “fanatical” political theater. Though the Moral Majority seemed to be a positive movement at first, evangelicals more focused on spiritual matters watched it subsume all of Falwell’s rhetoric, and even the city of Lynchburg itself.

In 1989, Falwell disbanded the Moral Majority. However, new “Christian culture warriors” (72) quickly overshadowed him. They took control of the narrative, and Falwell did not take well to the lack of respect and attention. He became a “caricature” of extreme Republican views, propagating racist and anti-gay takes on pop culture. Liberty University, accordingly, also declined in fame and funds. Jerry Falwell Jr., Falwell’s son, stepped in to help. Jerry Jr. drastically cut back on spending, and Falwell credited him with saving the university. In 2007, Falwell died, leaving Jerry Jr. in charge, with Falwell’s adopted son Mark DeMoss in the second-highest position. DeMoss was uneasy about Jerry Jr.’s new responsibilities. Jerry Jr. had “never portrayed himself as a pious man” (74). He saw Liberty as a business more than a mission.

In 2012, Donald Trump first visited Liberty University. At that time, he was a divisive figure often espousing bombastic rhetoric. Trump, speaking to the 10,000 students gathered to hear him, decried the “weak leadership” of the Democratic White House and advised the young followers of Christ to “get even.” Jerry Jr. responded positively to Trump and quickly allied himself with him. When Jerry Jr. proudly endorsed Trump for the 2016 election, “the Liberty community was stunned” (77). DeMoss, unable to square his Christian beliefs with a Trump presidency, gave an interview to the Washington Post. He pointed out examples of Trump’s racism and criticized evangelicals who backed him. In return, Jerry Jr. started to privately campaign among the school’s trustees to get DeMoss fired. When the pressure became insurmountable, DeMoss resigned. This marked a turning point for Liberty: Jerry Jr. became unchallengeable. As an example of his hypocrisy, he posed for a picture while visiting Trump. In the background of the picture was a framed cover of Playboy, the magazine with which his father had condemned President Carter.

After Trump’s presidential victory, Jerry Jr. continued to gain notoriety. His misbehavior—including drinking, sexual harassment, and crude jokes—escalated throughout 2020, leading to him being put on leave. While on leave, the Washington Examiner published an investigation of Jerry Jr.’s wife Becki and her affair with a Miami pool boy, which was done with Jerry’s consent. Officials of Liberty University responded to the scrutiny by making Jerry Jr. a scapegoat for many of the school’s problems, but the scrutiny didn’t end. Among other scandals, 12 women came forward in 2021 claiming that the university discouraged them from reporting sexual assault. If this were true, it would violate federal guidelines and possibly lead to the school’s shutdown. As of 2023, Liberty University still exists, but concerns still exist within and outside of the school. The Falwells’ failure to remain consistent with core Christian ideals paralleled the moral decline within the evangelist movement overall.