Warning signs
On the fusion of right-wing extremism and Christianity, and the need for an organized defense of American pluralism.
“The first time I walked into the sanctuary at Floodgate, I didn’t see a cross. But I did see American flags – lots of them.” — Tim Alberta, author of a new book on American evangelicalism, reporting on a visit to Floodgate Church in Michigan.
“We need deliverance from this terrible, tyrannical regime that we’re living under right now.” — Charlie Kirk, speaking at Dream City Church in Phoenix, explaining why Exodus is his favorite book of the Bible.
Tim Alberta is a political reporter and an evangelical Christian. He is the son of a pastor.
His most recent book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the religious rhetoric that permeates right-wing politics in the year 2024.
Tim Alberta’s book is compelling because, as he reports on the growing fusion between right-wing extremism and Christianity, he also refutes the theological justifications for this fusion. His reporting is thorough and fact-based, but he is not an unbiased observer. Alberta thinks the fusion is bad for American politics and bad for American Christianity. He is rooting for level-headed voices to prevail in their efforts to stabilize our politics and our culture.
The religious right first flexed its political muscles with the Moral Majority, a powerful evangelical lobby that backed Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
In his book, Alberta uses the example of Liberty University under the leadership of Jerry Fallwell Jr. to depict how the moral calculations have changed in recent years. Once upon a time, the religious right was offended by the Bill Clinton presidency, arguing that personal character is essential for political leadership. They aren’t making that argument anymore.
The latest iterations of the evangelical lobby have rallied around Donald Trump. Just last week, the Faith & Freedom organization, headed by pastor Ralph Reed, announced a $62 million spending campaign to help elect Trump in 2024.
In 2016, Trump was seen as an imperfect vessel of God’s will. Someone whose abhorrent behavior needed to be tolerated to achieve political ends. For evangelicals, one of the most important political ends was for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
Over time, Trump’s persona started to become incorporated into the spiritual-political equation. Evangelicals had been mocked and disparaged by secular leftists for too long. Trump was a fighter who didn’t turn the other cheek. And it worked. He won the 2016 election. He delivered conservative judges who overturned Roe vs. Wade.
Now, Trump is a role model for the right-wing warrior. Nice guys finish last. The ends justify the means. Mike Pence was too weak to do what needed to be done on January 6th.
Tim Alberta writes about an army of spiritual opportunists preying on church congregations for purposes of profit and power.
According to militant figures on the religious right, Christianity is in a war for survival. Any pastor who avoids political topics is weak and cowardly. The United States is not a secular nation. The left wants to crush Christianity and usher in a Marxist dystopia. Christians are called to do political battle to save human civilization.
Covid-19 mandates played right into the apocalyptic ideas that were already swirling in the psyche of the religious right. Were pastors willing to honor God and keep their churches open? Or were they going to bow down to the government and close the doors?
If a pastor showed weakness (or neutrality) on the political-cultural wars, he might see his flock running away to find a new shepherd.
You might think that, since Trump was president at the time, he would get criticized for allowing Covid mandates. Trump didn’t fire Fauci. Trump turbocharged production of the Covid vaccine, which many right-wingers think was a corrupt plot concocted by evil globalists.
You might think that Florida governor Ron DeSantis — who kept his state open, attacked the left mercilessly, was genuinely pro-life, spoke the language of the religious right, and won re-election in 2022 — would get politically rewarded for his actions.
Maybe Republican voters would prefer a populist fighter who wasn’t also morally deranged?
DeSantis thought the same thing, but he was wrong. Republican voters — and evangelical voters — stayed loyal to Trump. In the Iowa caucuses, Trump dominated DeSantis in the state’s most religious regions.
As Tim Alberta reports, the political and cultural wars have caused a serious divide in the evangelical world. Most pastors want to stay true to Christian theology. Most Christians want to live good lives. But the extreme voices are loud, persistent, and hard to ignore.
Charlie Kirk is a political activist. His organization, Turning Point USA, is based in Phoenix.
Turning Point is a right-wing populist organization with many tentacles enveloping Republican politics. The latest project is TPUSA Faith, an effort to recruit pastors and churches into the political fray.
Every month at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Charlie Kirk hosts a forum called “Freedom Night in America,” where he invites a leader from the evangelical community to chat about God and politics.
As I was reading Alberta’s book (which includes a chapter from Phoenix), I took time to watch three of Kirk’s most recent Freedom Night forums, which are available on YouTube. If I hadn’t been reading the book, I think I would have been alarmed at the provocations. But after reading multiple chapters about militant preachers and crazed influencers, Kirk’s provocations seemed boring and predictable.
Charlie Kirk is not an idiot. Although he has no formal training in theology, he speaks convincingly, weaving biblical and historical factoids together in making his points.
His trick is that he dodges a central tenet of the Christian Gospels: the part where we’re supposed to love our enemies.
In all three of the forums I watched, Kirk rhetorically distanced himself from the “love” component of Jesus’s teachings. He presents a (non-biblical) continuum where “truth” is on one side and “love” is on the other. He says he is simply emphasizing the “truth” aspect of the continuum when he demonizes his enemies.
Maybe this is why Kirk decided to attack Martin Luther King Jr. earlier this year. In attacking King, Charlie Kirk said he was trying to debunk the “myth that has been created and grown totally out of control.”
The reality is that Martin Luther King Jr. applied the love ethic to his public advocacy for civil rights. King encouraged his followers to be loving and non-violent, no matter what they faced. Even when his own house was bombed by racists, King did not give up on the love ethic. His movement succeeded in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
King’s example is a historical and theological refutation of the “hate your enemies” impulse that is fueling Charlie Kirk’s brand of right-wing extremism.
The claim that you can’t “win” without spreading fear and hatred is simply a lie.
The final section of Alberta’s book includes a few optimistic chapters about sensible and temperate Christians who are working to improve their churches. I was thankful to read these final chapters of hope, because he paints a very bleak picture for most of the book.
Moderates are not activists by nature, but if any time calls for activism by sensible and temperate people, the time is now. This applies to both sides of the political spectrum.
Tim Alberta’s book is about right-wing extremism, but there are illiberal strains of left-wing extremism that are just as potent. The extremes fuel each other. I don’t think it’s a surprise that left-wing cultural power peaked during the Trump presidency. The leftward lurch has moved the Democratic Party away from the cultural center at the same time Trump populists are finalizing their takeover of the GOP.
I don’t really see how our politics can get better before it gets worse in the near future. But we’ve endured bad times before, and I do hope there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
A concluding note about the defining characteristics of the United States.
I disagree with Senator Josh Hawley when he argues in First Things magazine that America is necessarily a Chrisian nation. It’s telling that his high-minded article ends with a neat solution — that to return to our proper status as a good Christian nation, we need to enact Josh Hawley’s ideas about public policy.
My own views align more with writer Andrew Sullivan when he argued in a book called The Conservative Soul that our nation is built on Enlightenment rationality.
Of course, you can’t separate the history of Western civilization from Christianity — just like you can’t separate Christianity from its own historical-cultural context.
But we live in a country where different cultures can cooperate peacefully under the banner of political freedom. That’s the point.
Our liberal tradition is our heart and soul: belief in individual rights; belief in freedom of speech and freedom of religion; belief in due process and equality under the law.
You don’t have to be a Christian to understand and appreciate these American principles.
The Declaration of Independence was written by a deist. It makes an argument for why human beings have a right to self-rule. It lists evidence for how Britain was behaving in a tyrannical manner. It starts with a “self-evident” premise, and the conclusions for American independence follow logically from there.
The Constitution was written after an examination of world history, a close reading of political philosophy, and a contemplative pondering of human nature. Its design was the result of argument, debate, and compromise. It includes a mechanism for amendment.
Our government was designed to contain the dominance of any faction, religious or political. That’s for a good reason. Authoritarians are perfectly capable of weaponizing religion to gain and hold power.
Americans of goodwill need to win the argument for why liberal democracy is worth preserving for future generations — whether these future generations are mostly Christian or not.
Well said - thoughtful and, IMHO, representative of how many who consider themselves to be conservative actually feel (and, FWIW, think you went pretty light on TPA, which has wrecked the AZ GOP - hoping this election cycle finally causes a reckoning that restores some equilibrium to the GOP).
Thanks, Billy. Good stuff as always.