The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annually gathers pastors together from throughout the community. Many of these pastors, after the frightening conflict and exodus of the extremists in their congregations, actually found their smaller communities to be resilient and healthy. Pastors could “finally breathe again” (353), able to ignore the news cycle. They had learned the drawbacks of engaging with any political discourse.

Alberta writes that the SBC gives credentials to many reporters that the far-right media had attempted to discredit. Daniel Darling, a speaker at the recent SBC convention, argues that “a public shaming” from the media was long overdue. The issues they had to cover were real and enduring, including the sexism that kept women out of ministry and sexual abuse and its concealment by church elders.

Charlie Cutler, who works in insurance for churches, Christian schools, and religious organizations, used to cover things like fire or floods. He now focuses on insuring churches’ reputations by helping Christians “deal harshly with unwelcome species” (355) like abusers, predators, and pedophiles. Cutler points out that to a pedophile, a church is an inviting hunting ground, as its culture is built on trust. Cutler’s mission is to create transparency and accountability in an institution that tends to resist it.

The SBC convention is full of people like Cutler. Unlike the many fraudulent speakers of ReAwaken, people solicit donations to support prison ministries, underground Christian movements in hostile countries, and alleviating childhood poverty. Many of them run support groups for single mothers, offering food, clothing, and diapers. They accept that women will abort unless parenthood becomes a viable, sustainable option. They also support and facilitate adoption within the SBC.

In 2021, the first SBC probe into sexual assault allegations was put in motion using an independent firm called GuidePost Solutions. At the time of writing in 2022, a “bombshell” report is released just weeks before the convention. In response to highly negative findings, the SBC proposes a new entity called the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force to handle all ongoing matters. They also propose an independently run database called Ministry Check which would allow churches to share properly vetted information about pastors accused of abuse. The first measure passed without argument, but the second met with resistance from “archconservatives.” They complained that they couldn’t trust GuidePost because the organization had recently sent out a tweet celebrating Pride Month. Their complaints were met with impatience by the chairman of the original task force, showing a change in rhetorical power. No longer could extreme conservatives derail the debate with culture war grievances. The new measures passed with 80% of the vote. These modest changes were greeted with “hugging and weeping and praying” (360) as survivors of abuse saw hope for justice for the first time.

The new president of the SBC, Bart Barber, vowed to relentlessly root out sexual predators in the churches. “The tables have turned,” he said to reporters. “The hunter is now the hunted” (367).

Jules Woodson and Tiffany Thigpen, two survivors of sexual assault in SBC churches, had braved “years of mockery and malice” (367) to force the institution to reckon with its sins, and make itself safe for women and children. Though both expressed hope in the historic vote that day, they made clear that they had left the Church and were never coming back. Thigpen stated that GuidePost had shown her more of God than she ever got from the Church. Woodson, in agreement, mentions the parable of the Good Samaritan, where a friendly outsider shows compassion while high-ranking religious officials do not. They both point out the necessity of secular help in unknotting the wrongdoings of the SBC and holding evangelicals accountable.

Rachael Denhollander, a lawyer and well-known survivor of abuse in the Church, had been abused not only by a predator in her childhood church, but also by Larry Nassar, the pedophile physical therapist who abused a staggering number of young gymnasts. Denhollander’s decision to go public with her accusation against Nassar inspired hundreds of other girls and women to do the same. Her victim statement, which condemned Nassar’s performative Christianity, went viral. It was picked up by Christian outlets, who lauded Denhollander as a paragon of evangelical womanhood. “I was the evangelical darling” (375), states Denhollander. The movement expected a more stereotypical standard of traditional femininity, but when Denhollander used her legal skills to unearth scandals and coverups in American Christianity, evangelical opinion of Denhollander quickly plummeted. Unbothered, Denhollander tried to develop strategies to reform the Church for good.

Meanwhile, Julie Roys, an investigative journalist and talk show host for Moody Radio, an offshoot of Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute, was growing suspicious of her management. Happy to point her investigative skills in the direction of their perceived enemies, they shut her down whenever she proposed a story that critiqued any part of the Church. When she asked to investigate James McDonald, the pastor of the megachurch Harvest Bible Chapel, she was told he was “off-limits” (377). McDonald, known for an abusive leadership style, also frequented casinos to play poker. When Moody Bible Institute tried to revise their official moral standards and guidelines to no longer condemn gambling, Roys realized that they were “running a protection racket” (377). At this time, Trump was also degrading the entire evangelical community, and Roys decided to instigate a “housecleaning.”

When Roys finally published her extensive investigation into the wrongdoing at Moody on her blog, she received significant backlash. She was fired immediately and cast as a villain who had betrayed Christianity itself. However, she also started receiving a flood of tips from other religious institutions. She decided to continue her investigation of McDonald. Over the next year, she researched and released incriminating stories about McDonald’s abuse of his staff and theft of church funds. After this, Roys continued to receive a tips from other churches.

Denhollander, meanwhile, faced a new problem. Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a staunch ally of hers, reached out for her help. A professor at his college had confessed to sexual contact with a student. The professor, David Sills, claimed the relationship was consensual. The victim, Jennifer Lyell, and Denhollander had met by coincidence at the 2019 SBC meeting. A successful Christian publisher and marketer, Lyell confessed to Denhollander that Sills had violently sexually abused her. She planned to keep it private, since Sills had already been kicked out of Southern, but she heard that he had returned to ministry in a different denomination. The church officials who knew Lyell’s story pressured her to speak out, promising to protect her from backlash. She agreed and wrote a statement that she submitted to Baptist Press, the SBC’s news agency. Contradicting her story, they released a report that implied that the relationship was consensual and said that Lyell had confessed to an immoral relationship with Sills. Baptist Press, run by the SBC Executive Committee, painted Lyell as an adulteress and downplayed the violence against her.

Denhollander encouraged Lyell to go public to the secular world. Lyell refused, still trying to protect the SBC from the consequences of its own acts against her. After the damage to her professional reputation and her mental health, though, she finally gave Denhollander permission to share her story. At a keynote conversation between herself and Russell Moore about abuse dynamics in the Church, Denhollander revealed the truth. To her surprise, Moore listened intently and asked probing questions about the complicity of SBC executives.

Denhollander represented Lyell in a suit filed against the SBC Executive Committee in 2019. They denied access to records and refused to cover medical expenses for Lyell’s subsequent PTSD diagnosis. In negotiations with Denhollander, they claimed that her own infamous abuse experience precluded her from objectivity. Nevertheless, the historic vote at the 2022 SBC supporting survivors represented her ultimate victory over them.

However, when Saddleback Church ordained three women as pastors in 2022, the uproar from members of the SBC led to Saddleback being abruptly disfellowshipped from the SBC. The hardline conservatives still had enough power to kick out a church unceremoniously; therefore, they had enough power to sabotage Denhollander’s reforms. She was acutely aware of their vulnerability to the power of the Executive Committee.

Meanwhile, Roys had to face her own complicity when allegations about the evangelical “superstar” Ravi Zacharias came out. A widely beloved figure who was mourned around the globe when he died in 2020, he was the subject in 2021 of accusations of sexual abuse. Zacharias “methodically” groomed young women by conditioning them to depend on him emotionally and financially, then exploited them for sex. Roys was distressed by the exposure of this “prolific sexual predator” (388), feeling that the adoration he received despite his crimes indicated worrying corruption in the Church at large.

It appeared that “Christianity has become institutionally desensitized to [the abuse]” (390). Roys experienced this firsthand when she released a story about John MacArthur, a pastor and moderate conservative who would combat extremists to protect Christian culture. He had “fostered a culture of abuse” (390) in his church, reliably siding with abusers over victims and excommunicating a woman for refusing to take back her child abuser husband. “There are too many people making money off of John MacArthur,” (391) said Roys as explanation for MacArthur’s evangelical support, which protected him and condemned her. The financial hit the evangelical community would take for his downfall was too grievous for many to consider. Roys’s refusal to keep evangelical problems inside “the family” was unforgivable for many of her fellow Christians. Roys has often received more negative scrutiny for her investigation than the abusive leaders she writes about, yet she continues her work.

Denhollander continues to work with churches to investigate abuse and discourage it in the future. She predicts, however, that the new standards of reporting and investigating abuse in the SBC will inevitably cause a huge schism. Nonetheless, Denhollander believes her work is vital to create a better Christian society for women and warns that it is necessary to “define your identity” independently of the Church.

The final chapter returns to Liberty University. The same problems explored in other religious institutions in this book are deeply present in Liberty as well. “Indoctrination […] was incentivized” since the school’s inception (399). The spiritual front-facing image of a school that hid a “family business” that continually sought to maintain power. Nick Olson, a former student and current professor at Liberty whose father is an alumnus, became aware of these “manifest flaws” before he started to teach. He hoped that by accepting the position he could effect change, but instead he was harshly warned in his orientation that he should align with their values or quit. Centralized curricula, one-year teaching contracts, and the constant use of coercive nondisclosure agreements for teachers who strayed all combined to create a threatening “authoritarian” atmosphere.

Jerry Jr. faced severe criticism from the press that irreparably damaged his reputation soon after Olson started. However, the problems at Liberty continued after his departure. Liberty had been instituted as a power-dealing, moneymaking venture by Falwell Sr. Most teachers expressed sincere regard for a Christian education, but they found themselves continuously silenced by Liberty administration in the Falwells’ absence.

The students at Liberty, in contrast, Alberta perceived as notably kind, helpful, and sincere. However, they seemed oblivious to the institutional corruption. Slowly, after Trump and COVID-19, the ignorance diminished. The current student body president, Daniel Hostetter, recounts his disillusionment and subsequent run for leadership to address sexual abuse, getting Charlie Kirk banned from campus, and protesting the extremism displayed by the older “entrenched” faculty.

The firing of Dr. Aaron Werner, a beloved professor, acted as the final offense. Werner suspected that his firing was due to the devotional he had been asked to lead, in which he “probed the ties between nationalism and American Christianity” (411). This made him popular with students, but not with the administration. In January 2023, he was abruptly fired and escorted from campus by security.

The students started an “overwhelming” protest. They demanded to speak to the provost. Covert recordings made during the conversation revealed the provost essentially telling them that, as Christians, they had to defer to higher administration without question. Werner learned that Liberty wasn’t better than other communities—in fact, “Liberty was worse than the secular world” (413). Werner and his wife both agreed that Liberty needed “purifying.” Werner held up another Falwell as the potential instrument of that purification: Falwell Sr.’s other son, Jonathan.

Jonathan, a lesser-known figure, runs Thomas Road Baptist Church as its pastor. His sermons thoughtfully identified genuine threats to Christianity—extremism, hypocrisy, and political toxicity—while holding Christianity accountable for them as opposed to blaming outsiders. Soon after Werner’s dismissal, Jonathan became chancellor of Liberty and approved retired Air Force general Dondi Costin as the new president. Costin was as much of an outsider to the university as was possible to hire, and everyone was enthusiastic about him. Jerry Jr., however, expressed doubt from the sidelines. He accused Jonathan of choosing “piety over competence” (418). Jerry Jr. was not doing well in 2023. Banned from campus, in a vengeful legal dispute with Liberty for withheld retirement payments, and abandoned by his former friend Trump, he found himself cut off from many longtime allies who could no longer condone his allegiance. Jerry Jr. said he was itching to fight against what he perceived as a perversion of his father’s vision.

Olson expresses doubt about the ability of Liberty to change. The “institutional tragedy” could be related to American evangelicals as a whole. Instead of investing in “defense mechanisms,” argues Olson, they need to surrender power and status and become “vulnerable” enough to implement real change.

Alberta returns to Cornerstone four years after his father’s funeral in 2019. He sees a “very different” Chris Winans at the pulpit. Winans is now “seasoned, assertive, intellectually imposing” (431) and confident in his demeanor. Cornerstone had regained its lost numbers and more. Winans asks in his sermon what defines the purpose of the Church.

Alberta muses on the many different “purposes” he has encountered. The purpose of the culture war of Ralph Reed and Charlie Kirk served to make Christians instinctively recoil from any hint of progressivism. They tried to instigate Christian nationalism, using political violence to make Christianity—and therefore right-wing conservatism—mandatory for all Americans.

Whether or not Trump wins in 2024, his legacy in “western Christendom” is already indelible. Belief in God in general has dropped from 89% in 2016 to 81% in 2022, an all-time low since the Gallup survey began in 1944. Alberta reflects that the identity of “evangelical” has impeded to the work of “evangelizing.” The reaction of the secular world to scandals and hypocritical behavior within the Church prevents them from empathizing with its supposed spiritual goals.

Winan speaks on James Carse, a mathematician who studied game theory. He proposed that all games can be divided into “finite games” and “infinite games.” Finite games have known players, fixed rules, and an objective to win conclusively. Infinite games have known and unknown players, flexible rules, and the objective to constantly improve with no set end point. Winans defines the Church as an infinite game that some try to make finite. Winans argues that the infinite game of Christianity is to faithfully express Christ’s love to broader society, stating, “We don’t win at holiness” (443). The finite game would be to win the “culture wars.”

Alberta makes clear that this type of sermon would have been impossible to give to Cornerstone just three years ago. It would never have been given by Pastor Alberta. He reflects further that, though his father was flawed, he did know that the game of the Church was infinite. That was why he had appointed Winans, hoping to evolve the Church’s rhetoric in ways he might have failed to.