The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory

What happens when the Church confuses its mission with a quest for national dominance? In The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta explores how American evangelicalism, once defined by a transcendent faith, became entangled in politics, conspiracy, and power-seeking. Alberta writes as both insider and investigator: the son of a Michigan pastor who watched his own congregation fracture under political strain. His central claim is sharp—evangelicalism’s crisis is not primarily political but theological. Its members have traded allegiance to the heavenly kingdom for loyalty to an earthly one.

The two kingdoms in tension

For Alberta, the story begins with Jesus’ distinction: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Yet many believers have reversed that order, treating America as the promised land rather than their mission field. You see this shift embodied in local churches like Cornerstone, FloodGate, and Goodwill—places where patriotic displays and political rhetoric replaced Gospel teaching. Pastors who warned against nationalism, such as Chris Winans and John Torres, faced backlash or exile. Those who embraced politics as ministry, like Bill Bolin at FloodGate, drew huge crowds but blurred the line between pastor and campaigner. Alberta calls that reversal the defining theological error of modern evangelicalism.

From revival to political machine

Tracing the movement’s history, Alberta revisits Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Moral Majority and the creation of Liberty University. Falwell and his allies—Howard Phillips, Richard Viguerie, and Paul Weyrich—built an empire that merged religion with Republican strategy. Falwell’s “I Love America” concerts and Liberty’s patriotic branding normalized the fusion of faith and politics. What began as tactical resistance to social change became a full-fledged identity movement. By the 2010s, figures like Ralph Reed, Paula White, and Robert Jeffress turned political rallies into spiritual revivals where partisanship sounded like prayer.

Alberta captures the transactional evolution: the Moral Majority’s vote-for-judges logic gave way to tribal belonging. Many now treat political loyalty as proof of faith. The shift from theological to partisan identity, he argues, explains the anger, fear, and conspiratorial thinking now common in evangelical spaces.

Institutions and the market of fear

From the Falwells’ Liberty empire to Clay Clark’s ReAwaken America tour, Alberta shows how evangelical institutions became enterprises of influence. Liberty’s growth brought money and control but also scandals—sexual misconduct, self-dealing, and political cynicism under Jerry Falwell Jr. At the same time, a commercial economy emerged around fear. Charisma Media, WallBuilders, and ReAwaken America monetize anxiety through books, supplements, and “prophetic” conferences. Churches become distribution centers for grievance and certainty. Alberta calls it an “economy of outrage” that rewards certainty and punishes nuance.

(Parenthetical note: Alberta’s critique parallels C.S. Lewis’s warning about “the inner ring”—the desire for influence that corrodes virtue.)

Pastors under siege and the discipleship deficit

Pastors are both victims and participants in this story. Many entered ministry to cultivate spiritual depth but found themselves refereeing mask wars, racial disputes, and election denial. Thousands have burned out or resigned. Alberta calls this the “discipleship deficit”—a generation steeped in political media but shallow in Scripture. Theologians like Vincent Bacote, Ed Stetzer, and John Dickson underscore that evangelical breadth has come at the cost of formation; without catechesis, believers become easy prey for nationalism.

The backlash and the reformers

The book’s second half highlights resistance. Figures such as Russell Moore, Cal Thomas, and David French represent theological pushback—what Alberta calls “deconstructing political religion.” Their aim is not to destroy faith but to reclaim it from idolatry. Miroslav Volf and Cyril Hovorun connect America’s drift to international patterns—how religion sacralizes state power, as seen in Putin’s Russia. These thinkers urge a reordering: power must serve witness, not the reverse.

Journalists and survivors like Julie Roys and Rachael Denhollander embody this reform ethic from another angle: they demand accountability in institutions like the Southern Baptist Convention. Their investigations forced denominations to confront scandals of sexual abuse and cover-up—the moral collapse that accompanies unchecked authority. The Anaheim convention becomes Alberta’s symbol of hope: a moment when ordinary believers choose truth-telling over tribal defense.

Rebuilding what was lost

In closing chapters, Alberta profiles Russell Moore and Curtis Chang’s twin projects—the “air war” of coordination and the “ground war” of pastoral rehabilitation. Their initiative, The After Party, offers biblical study on how to engage politics and culture without losing civility or faith. Pastoral networks, small-group curricula, and lay empowerment become the counter-strategy to performative outrage. Alberta concludes with Pastor Chris Winans’s metaphor of the “infinite game”: the Church’s purpose is not victory but faithfulness. You win not by conquering rivals but by enduring in love and truth.

Guiding insight

Alberta’s book is both diagnosis and hope. It warns that allegiance misplaced in the nation destroys spiritual integrity, but it also reveals a path to renewal through humility, accountability, and re-centered discipleship.

Through pastors, theologians, and ordinary believers, Alberta shows that the crisis of American evangelicalism is self-inflicted—but repentance, reform, and reformation remain possible if believers have the courage to disentangle faith from fear and politics from the gospel.

Alberta traces how conservative evangelicalism’s political engagement evolved from pragmatic cooperation into an all-encompassing identity. In the 1970s, leaders like Jerry Falwell Sr. and Paul Weyrich built the Moral Majority to counter cultural liberalization. They treated civic activism as spiritual obligation. Reagan’s presidency confirmed the formula: mobilizing evangelicals meant winning elections. Over decades, that alliance turned transactional faith into a tribal badge—the Republican Party became its de facto denomination.

The Falwell dynasty and institutional drift

Liberty University personifies that drift. Jerry Falwell Sr.’s patriotic branding turned an obscure Bible college into a national symbol of Christian conservatism. His son Jerry Jr. inherited an empire, grew it with online programs, and wrapped it around partisan politics. Falwell Jr.’s scandals—moral, managerial, and financial—unmasked what happens when institutions prioritize influence over formation. Leadership became showmanship. Academic freedom shrank. Liberty’s Christian mission was absorbed into a family brand of power.

(Note: Falwell’s experiment mirrors what political theorists call “civil religion,” where national identity replaces theological conviction.)

The evangelical–GOP merger

By the Trump era, politics was no longer an arena of influence but a measure of belonging. Campaign rhetoric framed elections as spiritual war. Ralph Reed’s Road to Majority and Paula White’s prophecies at rallies fused worship and politics into revivalism. Leaders defended morally flawed candidates as “modern-day King Cyruses,” useful instruments of divine purpose. That logic—ends justify means—redefined sin and virtue around political loyalty. In places like Brighton, Michigan, congregants equated opposing Trump with betraying God, reducing faith to a demographic marker.

Consequences on the ground

When loyalty to party equals loyalty to God, truth becomes negotiable. Churches split over pandemic rules, sermons about race, and vaccine mandates. Pastors lost pulpits. Congregants turned services into rallies. Alberta recounts how churches like FloodGate and Goodwill became microcosms of America’s polarization. The gospel of reconciliation gave way to culture-war rhetoric. Pastoral calls for repentance were mistranslated as political betrayal.

Core idea

Politics redefined evangelical identity from belief-based to enemy-based. Alberta warns that once a religious label signifies tribe rather than truth, its moral spine collapses.

The lesson echoes through Alberta’s reporting: a movement that baptizes political might eventually finds its faith explained not by Scripture but by slogans. To recover, evangelicals must reestablish that God’s kingdom corrects earthly ones—not the other way around.

Alberta’s most vivid chapters ground the national crisis in congregational life. At churches like Cornerstone, Goodwill, and FloodGate, political division became spiritual warfare. The pandemic, George Floyd protests, and the 2020 election supplied flashpoints that exposed what theologians call a “dual allegiance crisis”—faith competing with ideology.

The COVID crucible

Masks and lockdowns divided flocks more deeply than theology ever had. Chris Winans complied with health mandates out of care; Bill Bolin defied them as acts of faith. Their contrasting choices produced migration—hundreds left Winans for Bolin, seeking a pastor who would fight government “tyranny.” Alberta shows how those decisions doubled as political litmus tests rather than pastoral judgments. Defiance drew donors; humility lost members.

Race, justice, and identity

The murder of George Floyd ignited another schism. When John Torres preached on biblical justice, factions accused him of Marxism and tried to depose him. The core issue wasn’t doctrine but discomfort: confronting racism felt like betraying patriotic self-image. Alberta calls these episodes “identity wars”—moments when civic myths outweigh scriptural callings. Many pastors chose silence to survive, trading prophetic responsibility for false peace.

Escalation and exhaustion

Alberta documents intimidation campaigns—recordings, letters, social-media crusades—against pastors who wouldn’t politicize sermons. Congregants behaved like political operatives, coordinating boycotts and forming “watch committees.” The psychological toll was devastating. Pastors confessed fear; congregants retreated into suspicion. Alberta’s reporting renders church conflict as a microcosm of America’s civic trench warfare, suggesting that peacemaking at the congregational level may be the only viable path toward national healing.

(Note: The pattern parallels Reinhold Niebuhr’s warning that the group ego magnifies individual sin.) Alabama’s lessons are clear: without re-discipled hearts, local churches will mirror partisan tribes rather than transform them.

Alberta explores how political religion matured into an industry. Figures like David Barton and Chad Connelly turned the rhetoric of “salt and light” into voter-mobilization campaigns. Their Faith Wins and WallBuilders platforms present America as divinely ordained, teach historical myths, and register voters in sanctuaries. This blend of zeal and commerce transforms churches into campaign infrastructure with sacred wrapping paper.

From ministry to marketing

At Barton’s events in Ohio or Connelly’s rallies in South Carolina, worship songs segue into civic instructions—scan the QR code, register now, defend God’s country. In lobbies, patriotic Bibles and merchandise await. Alberta calls this convergence “the marketplace of fear”: a self-reinforcing loop where anxiety generates sales, and sales fund more fear. Publishers like Charisma Media and entrepreneurs like Mike Lindell formalize that loop, offering believers consumable reassurance and identity.

Ralph Reed and the revival of power

At events like Road to Majority, Reed and Paula White turn politics into revival theater. Campaign slogans mingle with prayer lines. When prayer becomes a political tactic—“pray for a red wave”—faith narrows to electoral calculus. Even disagreement becomes heresy: Mike Pence’s refusal to overturn the election drew boos as betrayal of God’s will. Alberta’s insight is chilling—spiritual language weaponized for partisan ends.

The ethical warning runs beneath every page: church sanctuaries cannot serve both markets and altars. Once worship depends on campaign logic, discipleship collapses into merchandising.

In a movement obsessed with winning, Alberta asks what victory costs. His answer emerges from repeated transactions where believers justify moral inconsistency for political gain. Donald Trump’s partnership with evangelicals epitomizes this logic: deliver judges and policies in exchange for loyalty regardless of conduct. Over time, that calculation alters the moral DNA of entire communities.

The Herschel Walker test

Alberta details how leaders defended Walker despite credible scandals, invoking biblical heroes as excuses. Crowds called allegations demonic attacks. For outsiders, that defense confirmed hypocrisy; for believers inside, it modeled expedience. Alberta argues that cloak of righteousness around flawed candidates signals deeper collapse—virtue replaced by tribal scoring. When moral witness defers to pragmatic strategy, the Gospel’s power withers.

Policy victory vs. spiritual defeat

Even apparent wins like overturning Roe reveal hollow foundations. Evangelical activism achieved legal success but failed to cultivate compassion infrastructure—support for mothers, adoption reform, healthcare. Alberta concludes that without mercy alongside law, moral arguments crumble publicly. Political effectiveness without transformed hearts produces backlash and isolation, not revival.

Lesson

Political power used without moral coherence breeds cynicism. The Church’s credibility depends not on court victories but on consistent virtue.

In Alberta’s portrayal, the true cost of faith-based realpolitik is internal decay: the erosion of conscience disguised as strategic maturity. Recovery demands rediscovering principle over partisanship.

Where politics corrupted evangelical witness, accountability begins renewal. Alberta’s chapters on journalism and denominational reform illustrate moral courage in action. Reporters like Julie Roys and survivors like Rachael Denhollander forced transparency on institutions that prized reputation over righteousness. Their efforts reveal that repentance often begins with outside scrutiny when insiders stay silent.

Unearthing hidden sins

Roys’s investigative reporting exposed financial misconduct at Moody and Harvest Bible Chapel, proving that celebrity pastors often operated with impunity. Denhollander’s legal advocacy catalyzed the Southern Baptist Convention’s 2022 reckoning, culminating in the Anaheim vote for reforms. Their partnership of journalism and law transformed survivor testimony into institutional change—a rare, painful glimpse of systemic repentance.

Resistance and courage

Hard-right factions tried to reframe accountability as liberal infiltration, weaponizing distrust. Yet ordinary messengers sided with the wounded, voting for the Ministry Check database and new oversight. Alberta observes that reform advances not through grand strategies but stubborn moral fidelity from unexpected actors. Broadmoor Baptist in Mississippi models that faithfulness: hiring investigators, publishing truth, and experiencing renewal despite loss.

The structural antidote

True reform combines centralized mechanisms and local discipleship. Russell Moore’s networks and Curtis Chang’s After Party curriculum connect denominational air wars with pastoral ground wars, giving shape and sustainability to repentance. By equipping pastors and laity to engage culture ethically, they cultivate long-game resilience—what Pastor Winans calls playing the “infinite game.”

Essential takeaway

Renewal begins not with new slogans but with storytelling, confession, and structural transparency. Alberta’s closing hope is that the Church can still be salt—distinct, humble, and healing—if it learns to lose well.

This reconciliation of truth and grace completes Alberta’s vision: the Church’s survival depends on moral clarity stronger than its fear of decline, turning scandal into sanctification through the hard discipline of accountability.