![]() skip past newsletter promotionĪlberta also captures Trump’s true feelings for the evangelical community, or at least those who sided with Ted Cruz in the 2016 primary. White evangelicals made up 28%.Īlberta also delivers a deep dive into events at Liberty University, the Virginia machine built by Jerry Falwell Sr and Jr. In 2020, more than one in five voters identified that way. “Religious nones” grow stronger at the polls. Scandal, and the embrace of conservatism and Trump, has extracted a heavy price. ![]() He is mindful of religion’s lack of purchase among younger Americans. She is profoundly unsuitable for power.Īlberta grapples with the decline in evangelical affiliation and the growth of evangelical unpopularity. Her recent behaviour at a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver – singing, dancing, vaping, groping – simply confirmed what everyone had thought since she arrived on the national scene. Months later, Boebert won re-election in a squeaker. “Boebert wasn’t bothered by this pastor praying for Jesus’s blood – His precious, sacrificial blood, shed for the salvation of sinners – to win an election, because, well, she wasn’t bothered by much after all.” “Lauren Boebert looked right at home,” Alberta recalls, of the far-right controversialist and congresswoman from the same great state. “May this state be turned red with the blood of Jesus, and politically,” Steve Holt prayed, at a revival in spring last year. Resentment and grievance supplanted the message of scripture and “What would Jesus do?”Īlberta remembers a preacher in Colorado who conflated a Republican midterms victory with the triumph of Christ. Instead, he tweeted, “the US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government”. “The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment,” he said, on Facebook.Īnother famous scion, the now disgraced Jerry Falwell Jr, admonished his flock to stop electing “nice guys”. American evangelism had evolved into caffeinated American nationalism, white identity close to the surface.įranklin Graham, the late Billy Graham’s son, threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they had the temerity to criticize Trump. Then again, he was Black and liberal and his personal beliefs could be discounted. Or Caesar.įunny how Obama never held such a place of honor. The spirit of Protestant dissent, which once fueled rebellion against the crown, had given way to declaring Trump a divine emissary, a modern-day Cyrus. Barack Obama had occupied the White House. The letter embodied a shift that was decades in the making. The unidentified elder simply repeated sentiments that had taken root in evangelical America since Trump’s election in 2016. “What the hell is wrong with these people?” she cried.Īs many congregants would see it, probably nothing. My criticisms of President Trump were tantamount to treason – against both God and country – and I should be ashamed of myself.” “I was part of an evil plot, the man wrote, to undermine God’s ordained leader of the United States. Yes, the same guy who made “ Two Corinthians” a punchline. Regardless, a church elder delivered to Alberta a one-page screed expressing his disapproval of the author for not embracing Donald Trump as God’s anointed. ![]() The Rev Richard Alberta died suddenly, of a heart attack. In his prologue, Alberta takes us back to summer 2019, and his father’s funeral. “All nations before him are as nothing and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.” Isaiah’s teaching stands nearly forgotten. The son of an evangelical Presbyterian minister who came to religion from finance, Alberta lays bare his hurt over how the cross has grown ever more synonymous with those who most fervently wave the Stars and Stripes, on the right of the political spectrum. “I have endeavored to honor God with this book,” he writes.
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