Is the pendulum beginning to swing back? I posted these words back in January of 2013...."The Billy Graham evangelical became the Ralph Reed evangelical which became the Karl Rove evangelical." In 2017 I added...."which became the Donald Trump evangelical."
Barnes & Noble....this being Tuesday....will probably have copies on the shelf of Tim Alberta's new book....The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory.....American Evangelicals In An Age Of Extremism." I just finished it an hour ago....and highly recommend that you drop everything and go out an purchase a copy. You might ask....'why not just order it on Amazon....I'll have it in less than a week'....well let me try putting it this way....we are in a war....spiritual not political....and there are casualties on all sides....we don't have the luxury of waiting for this or for that help to come.
How did Neil Diamond put it in his Sweet Caroline...."Where it began, I can't begin to knowing." Well I remember....it was 1988 and I was at $100 a plate dinner for presidential candidate Pat Robertson. The same year I was in a march with thousands of other Christians protesting the blasphemous new movie that was out....The Last Temptation Of Christ. We in America were on the back end of a revival which had begun in the late 60s. It was a heady time....and we were going to win America back for God....the problem was that we were beginning to slip away ourselves. Rush was more important to us than Billy Graham. By the end.....Rush was nothing but a shell of what he once was as it pertained to wisdom....blathering over Donald Trump. Ted Cruz had lost respectability....Franklin Graham was following in his father' footsteps....the problem being that his father made major mistakes in politics in the beginning....and even John MacArthur was lured onto the path of politics.
So in the post below....From Whence Come Wars And Fighting....I described how I was determined to get this new book....and to see if the author gets it right.....because we desperately need to see where we had gone off the straight path. Alberta got it right!
The author traveled the country for a couple of years....to this church or to that religious hotspot....observing for himself what was going on in this MAGA movement....to find out what had turned evangelicals away from the gospel to politics....and what had taken away our compassion?
I knew for some time that we had a big problem....and I've been posting on it....and warning about it....but even I was shocked at the extent of the pressures and the threats and the heavy-handed punishments meted out to those who had the audacity to question or challenge the MAGA movement!
Back to my original question...."Is the pendulum beginning to swing back?" Are evangelicals beginning to awaken to the mistakes we have made in turning to politics to save us....not to mention turning to a Donald Trump? Well let's see how this book does? It will do well amongst secular readers.....lured by the subtitle....American Evangelicals In An Age Of Extremism....but will it be bought and read by evangelicals? Four years ago we wouldn't touch it.
There are many examples that I could give of Tim Alberta's experiences....examples that would get your attention to the problem.....but I'll just give one....from page 405....forty pages from the end....on a virtual convocation in October of 2020....at Liberty University....just prior to the presidential election. On this MAGA campus....John Piper...."said he'd be voting third-party in the upcoming election." The interim president of the university...."ordered that the video be scrubbed from the school's website."
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