Evangelicalism's Identity Crisis
It's time to say it: American Evangelicalism feels really sick right now.
Hey everyone. Next week the Jackal takes its annual break for Holy Week, and before doing that I wanted to jot something down that felt applicable. I have done this before, but over the past couple years - with so much legal stuff surrounding You Know Who™ - I stuck with what I could explain the clearest. This year, something else has been tugging at my heart strings.
I am trying to think of a book that has affected me the way Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, has over the past few months. All I can come up with is something like 1984, or the novelization of the Starship Troopers movie.1
This isn’t just because large parts of Tim’s book “take place” in Brighton, Michigan, where Elisabeth grew up. But in it he manages to gently touch various parts of Evangelicalism in America and reveal new things about each one that he gets his hands on. I started the chapter on Liberty University thinking that I should skip it, but it was rich with new information. I didn’t know, for instance, that Jerry Falwell actively spoke out against Brown v. Board of Education, the SCOTUS decision that integrated schools.
Full disclosure: I am not a fan of Jerry Falwell. I have even watched YouTube videos of Christopher Hitchens mocking him shortly after he was deceased (as with any Hitchens video, I winced as much as I laughed). I am more than familiar with Falwell and his actions but for whatever reason, I ignored that very obviously wrong part of his history, and I couldn’t even tell you why. It’s right on his Wikipedia page!
This is partly because I’ve always dismissed guys like Falwell (or Pat Robertson) as extremists who did not reflect my views as an Evangelical Christian. But as I read Tim’s book, I kept wondering if I had been too dismissive; these guys and I share a lot of cultural heritage. And I kept wondering if my dismissiveness (a trait I blame on me being a native New Yorker) was more about personal convenience than anything else.
These aren’t irrelevant concerns. Church attendance in the U.S. has plummeted, and non-Christian adults have more unfavorable views of Evangelicals than any other religious group (including atheists). These are things that (I assume) many Christians are casually ignorant about, but they do matter.
I have talked with a friend here in Denver about Tim’s book, because he’s interested in reading it. A thing he has said to me is that while it might be interesting, he is skeptical because it clearly doesn’t reflect “our community.” That is true! I love my church here, which does not do explicit politics from the pulpit (the polar opposite of what Tim describes in his book). And when they do, sometimes the pastors say things that sound left-wing, and sometimes they say things that sound right-wing, because the Bible be’s like that sometimes.
Most of the time, I don’t feel like an American Evangelical even though I am one. And I think that gives me spiritual or cultural blinders as to what else is going on within Christianity. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work; maybe I wouldn’t be aware of all this stuff without social media.
On the other hand, I am intimately familiar with the things Tim describes in his book. He has a chapter on Floodgate Church in Brighton, Michigan, that is as disturbing as it is enraging. Instead of opening with a greeting or just doing the standard announcements, the pastor reads conservative news snippets from the pulpit. In interviews, he defends his own spreading of misinformation by saying he does not “necessarily believe everything he [says] or [posts]” on social media.2 Impressive stuff from a pastor.
I am familiar with these things because I have family members that currently attend Floodgate. So, I am lying to myself if I say these things are not a part of or reflective of Evangelical Christianity. The reality is that it’s a big tent, and probably a lot bigger than I would like to admit.
My own church attendance since childhood feels like ordered chaos when you look at it. I started off at Nazarene and Pentecostal churches as a child, but then when I moved away from home for college, I started attending Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan, a.k.a., Tim Keller’s church. Pentecostals, Nazarenes, and Presbyterians are all pretty different, but they can all safely be called Evangelicals.3
I never reflected on my church attendance until Trump walked into politics in 2015, and then haphazardly stumbled right into Evangelical Christianity. I’ll give you an example to make it easier to understand: Before Trump “happened,” I was familiar with Kenneth Copeland. I knew he was a particularly wild Evangelical preacher, but I lumped him in with the other “Televangelists” that existed and didn’t need to pay attention to (Benny Hinn comes to mind).
You may know him from this clip:
Copeland is now the subject of Christian documentaries, in which he is called a false teacher and scam artist. Was this happening before and I missed it? Was Joel Osteen always considered a heretic, or was I just closed off towards criticism of him? I ask myself these questions as one of the church’s I grew up in regularly promotes Osteen and his teachings, which are the antithesis of the Gospel.
If you are a regular reader of the Jackal, you know that I have a deep cynicism within me. I sometimes take this cynicism and use it for analysis, but I’ll fully admit: I have applied it poorly to the things that matter to me the most.
That is mostly because it sucks the life out of you to think that way. It is emotionally exhausting to watch anyone engaging in self-promotion and think, “I wonder how low they’ll go for the money.” But Tim’s book has made me wonder about whether or not the core of Evangelical America is rotten with grift.
When you read his book, it’s easy to see it happening at FloodGate Church. Before COVID-19, FloodGate had an audience of roughly 100. Following the pandemic’s restrictions and surging Trumpism, FloodGate’s attendance has exploded and - in turn - so have their offerings. And it’s all tax free.
How much of Evangelicalism, as a whole, is a grift? I’ll never forget a conservation I had with a friend who is a pastor. I said Joel Osteen’s popularity puzzled me, because his philosophy is transparently false. Although it disturbed me, I ultimately said he would be exposed as a false teacher and people will turn away from him.
My buddy said to me clearly, “No he won’t. There is always an audience for that.” It was depressing, true, and biblically accurate:
It ultimately makes me wonder if the American church can ever effectively live out the Bible. America might just be too rich and too comfortable. After all, 1 Peter tells us that one of the tenants of being a Christian is that you will suffer and should rejoice in suffering:
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
I believe it can. I look to my own church, which simultaneously supports alternative pregnancy centers and Venezuelan migrants, and it gives me great hope. I have so many friends who attend similar churches. But, man, we just feel so much quieter than everyone else.
I do think Trump has been a clarifying moment for the church, and also the Republican Party (which is also having its own identity crisis). In the same way I am an Evangelical Christian, I adhere to a lot of core Republican principles. And, believe it or not, when I first started reading about politics in college, it was the Republicans who were pushing for more immigration. I did a college presentation arguing for an open immigration system, and all of my sources were right-wing. It’s beyond weird to think about now, until you realize I was in college two decades ago.
But underneath all of that there was something more insidious. I distinctly remember the first immigration bill put forth by the George W. Bush Administration. The bill ultimately failed because of conservative talk radio, which vehemently opposed it. Maybe it was the first indication that conservatism was slipping away from the Republican Party and into the hands of its (supposedly) aligned media.
Years later, I remember Marco Rubio going on Sean Hannity’s radio show and pleading with him to support the latest immigration bill. Hannity refused, and Rubio eventually ran away from his own bill after it failed. It was a high moment of humiliation for a guy who has had a number of them. Fast forward to today and Rubio is apparently on Trump’s short list for vice-presidents.4 It is a neat little microcosm of how Trump infected the GOP with his own brand of “conservatism.”
I think Trump is perfect for American christianity and conservatism because he is “Christianity” with zero christianity, and he is conservative without an ounce of conservatism. He ultimately exposes everyone - from Rubio to Copeland to Robert Jeffress - as a grifter. Because Trump is the perfect representation of the human heart’s id, he pulls that out of anything that gets close to him.
Maybe Evangelicalism is going through that right now. Maybe there are thousands of churches in this country that are more American than they are Christian. Even still, I know God is good.
I have been reading the book of James lately, and - like everything in the New Testament - is incredible on its own, but even more incredible when you consider the context it was written in. The church was persecuted, attacked, and targeted by the most powerful government on earth, and they were joyful. In addition, it is written by Jesus’s brother James, who was a late and reluctant convert to Christianity. He ends the third chapter with this:
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity. And the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
“Open to reason…,” “…full of mercy and good fruits…” Does this describe American Christianity right now? Did it ever? Will it ever? I can only pray for all these things.
Have a blessed Holy Week.
This doesn’t exist, because Starship Troopers was already a (bad) book beforehand.
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, page 155.
Presbyterians less so, but that probably only applies to the mainline Presbyterian churches.
Because of the rule that says the two people on the ticket can’t be from the same state, Rubio will have to resign if he wants to be vice-president. People are saying he won’t do that, but he just might!
I love this piece so much. It may be my favorite Jackal. And that’s saying something.