The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory

Tim Alberta is a journalist, a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor. In this work of narrative reporting he examines American evangelicalism, a movement he calls polarizing and poorly understood, from the inside.

He draws on televangelists, small-town preachers, celebrity revivalists and ordinary churchgoers. Many conservative Christians regard America as a land set apart and blessed by God. Alberta argues that this devotion has hardened into right-wing nationalism that diminishes the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

He treats fear, partisan scheming and repeated scandal as the forces that have damaged the faith's standing. The book traces the modern evangelical movement and sets its political and cultural turning points beside church teaching and tradition. Alberta contends that Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic sped up trends that were already running toward trouble.

His reporting takes him from half-empty sanctuaries to packed convention halls, and he gains access to the highest levels of the movement. He looks at how believers have sought and used power, and at a culture in which loving enemies gets called woke.

Alongside the national picture sit accounts of individual pastors and their congregations as they cope with lost status in an increasingly secular country. Some pastors are broken, some churches battered, and some believers leave over sex scandals and political maneuvering. The tone is serious and critical, and the book closes on a single point: if the movement no longer glorifies God, its purpose is left in doubt.