'A war for the essence and character of American Christianity' described in new book

American Christianity is at an inflection point.

There is “a war for the essence and character of American Christianity,” writes Tim Alberta, a national political reporter for the Atlantic.

The son of an evangelical pastor in Michigan, Alberta challenges conservative Christian culture from an insider’s perspective in his new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

Feeling ownership of the country, and that it’s slipping away

“What’s clear to me is that inside the American evangelical movement, far too many believers have begun to view their faith through the prism of their national identity rather than viewing their national identity through the lens of their faith,” Alberta told Yahoo News.

Alberta says that for decades, American evangelicals have been taught that the United States is rightfully theirs and is being taken away from them. Figures such as Liberty University founder Jerry Falwell Sr., Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and David Barton of WallBuilders and, more recently, others such as Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, Jerry Falwell Jr. and evangelical talk radio host Eric Metaxas have spread this message.

“There is a certainty among a lot of evangelical Christians that the government is coming for them, that the secular culture is sort of plotting to take them down,” Alberta told Yahoo News. “And that is infectious, that fear and that persecution complex.”

Growing extremism

Alberta visited churches across the country and concluded that many evangelical Christians have descended further into conspiracy theories and talk of violence in the nearly three years since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol on behalf of then-President Donald Trump. Evangelical leaders were among the fiercest supporters of Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and many of the rioters that day used religious symbols and rhetoric to justify their actions.

“Something was happening on the religious right, something more menacing and extreme than anything that preceded it,” Alberta writes. “This was no longer about winning elections and preserving the culture. This was about destroying enemies and dominating the country by any means necessary.”

Alberta documents example after example of evangelicals, after Jan. 6, becoming more politically radicalized.

“The next January 6 should be open carry,” said John Zmirak, a right-wing writer who is popular among evangelicals, at an appearance inside an evangelical church in Washington state earlier this year. Zmirak, sitting alongside Metaxas, also “repeatedly offered casual calls to violence, at one point citing the Islamic fundamentalist takeovers of Middle Eastern societies as a model for how Christians ‘can take this one back,’” Alberta writes.

Alberta’s book tracks the history and evolution of Liberty University, the college started by Falwell Sr. in 1971. Falwell and his son Falwell Jr. have married Republican politics to conservative evangelical beliefs.

“Jerry Jr. perfected the art of using fear and hatred as a growth strategy” for the university, a former Liberty professor told Alberta. Falwell Jr. resigned as Liberty president in 2020 after a series of scandals.

Internal struggles

Some evangelicals have opposed Trumpism. But Alberta writes that it has often been “an unfair fight for the soul of American Christianity” between “decorated veterans of the culture wars, archconservative Christians who live for conflict” such as the Falwells, and “more ‘moderate’ counterparts” who are “inherently reluctant to enter the fray.”

The relational networks of activists, donors and celebrities on the hard right have built over decades, while the attempts to reform evangelicalism are still in their infancy.

But Alberta reports that efforts to arrest the decline of evangelicalism have grown more organized and have had some early success. Leading figures in this effort include Christianity Today editor in chief Russell Moore, New York Times columnist David French and attorney and abuse victims advocate Rachael Denhollander.

“Children of the Moral Majority ... inherited something that does not make sense to us,” Alberta told Yahoo News. “And what’s really been interesting to me is in all of my travels and all of my reporting, whenever I’ve been in spaces with younger Christians, younger evangelicals ... they have an altogether different framework for thinking about all of this.

“And it seems like there’s a generational change in these churches,” he said. “I have got to think that there’s a real reckoning at hand here.”