THE KINGDOM, the POWER, and THE GLORY: AMERICAN EVANGELICALS in an AGE of EXTREMISM (audiobook) by Tim Alberta

Published by HarperAudio in December of 2023.
Read by the author, Tim Alberta.
Duration: 18 hours, 16 minutes.
Unabridged.

Tim Alberta is a writer for The Atlantic and also an Evangelical. He grew up in the faith, but is very troubled by the tendency towards Christian Nationalism. He was inspired to write this book after an incident at his father's funeral at the church he grew up in. 

Alberta embarked on a cross-country exploration of the intersection of Evangelicals and politics at Christian Nationalism - and how this combination is changing Evangelicals and they way they are perceived.

Alberta does not come at this as an outsider. As I already noted, he grew up in the church - and still belongs to a church. To me, this is important. I read another book with a similar theme (The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism) that just didn't hit the right tone and answer the right questions because the author was coming from the outside. She didn't know the ins and outs and didn't truly understand the people she was writing about.

Russell Moore recently wrote a book (Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America) that addresses problems among American Evangelicals from the inside, but it's not really a book about politics. The closest book to Alberta's is the excellent Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. The two books don't really cover the same territory, but they certainly run in parallel lines and they do not present a pretty picture of contemporary Christianity.

The author, Tim Alberta

Alberta looks at the struggles of his home church, Liberty University and its rise to prominence by promoting politics instead of Christianity, Brian Zahnd's church's struggle when he went out of his way to reject Christian Nationalism, the Southern Baptist Convention's struggles with sexual abuse charges and, of course, the ever-present influence of Trump and Trumpism.

I found this book to be a fascinating look into this dangerous mix of Christianity and politics. I blasted through this 18 hour audiobook in just a few days and I wish it was twice as long.

I highly recommend this book.

5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE KINGDOM, the POWER, and THE GLORY: AMERICAN EVANGELICALS in an AGE of EXTREMISM by Tim Alberta.