The Kingdom, the Power, The Glory—book review
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Tim Alberta
Harper, 2023
Tim Alberta is a native son of Michigan and adept observer of the Evangelical and post-Evangelical world as the son of a born again pastor who built up a successful church down the road from me in Brighton. We’re all floundering right now in a netherland between polarities, in a nation more divided than ever.
Some assert on the verge of a civil war,
Into this dire fractured battlefield stepped Tim Alberta. After his father died, the author decided to assess the health of Evangelical Christianity from a number of perspectives, knowing that not everyone would agree on even what it means to be an Evangelical Christian. What he found was that the Church was in trouble,
I began reading this book in the aftermath of a decision by Chicago’s City Zoning Committee to deny CCO (Cornerstone Community Outreach, the homeless shelter I used to work at) a Special Use Permit to extend a men’s residential program and lease a building down the street from the current shelter. The most disappointing aspect of this news was that the loudest voice in opposition to the men’s program was a church that only recently leased space in the alley shared with CCO. The pastor came out against the proposed men’s program, which, by the way, had the backing of the ward alderperson and Department of Human Services. He led a protest to stop the program and testified at the hearing to deny the permit. Wow, I thought, this is so messed up. The pastor was intimately aware of CCO and had even in the past, when his church was situated elsewhere, supported the shelter by asking congregants to buy backpacks for homeless students Back to School initiative. This time it was a NOT IN MY BACKYARD campaign—even though he knew the shelter and his church plant shared the same alley, He chose to move the church there! It made no sense to me. His opposition lacked scriptural integrity to treat the least of these as you would Jesus. His actions from my perspective came from an animus of spite.
Where is the Church today when it comes to defending the defenseless, helping the widow and orphan? The refugee?
Alberta’s book is written in three acts, focusing on the Kingdom, the sad state of affairs facing many pastors today, the Power—the bulldozing effect of Republican pugilistic stances against, you name it . . . Alberta found that many Evangelical white churches feel like victims of Big Government, pushed to the margins and are fighting back against culture. A lot of words that have a multitude of meanings and can be interpreted by various groups in various ways. There is no one culture or no one America. Yet many churches today identify with America and have institutionalized Christian Nationalism as a religion. This is scary stuff. One review cannot delve deep enough into the twisted thinking behind all this. From my point of view it doesn’t come from rational thinking or from a spirit of love. In fact, the words of Christ to love thy neighbor as thyself has sort of gotten lost in the mess.
The last act: the Glory, sounds a hopeful note—but just. We see the commercialism of Christianity, the gimmickry, the charlatans trying to sell books and fear to congregants. The super PACs let into churches to preach separatist hate and politics—instead of, as Alberta writes so eloquently, the Gospel. Where is Jesus in all this?
When I found my way into Christianity it was during the Jesus Movement, a ground swell among young people (mostly) to change their life for something more authentic, not their parent’s mainstream mainline religion where it was church on Sunday and every other day of the week faith didn’t matter. Just think of the Coke song, it’s THE REAL THING. There was something that generation was after that didn’t seem to exist. Not that the Jesus Movement invented revival, but was part of a continuum where God intersects with man to bring about a resurgence. This cannot be manufactured.
Cut to today: that same group of believers is leading the charge into conspiracies and rallying around the American flag.
Most of us know by now that fear sells. There’s nothing that
motivates folks more than the thought that they are under siege, in danger,
about to lose something. It’s what kept the Neanderthals moving, the guiding
principle of the human race, all that adrenaline that helped us defeat wooly
mammoths, run from or into war, survival of the fittest. You get it. Our
instinct is to protect. This election year will be rough. There’s going to be
misinformation, tons of ads feeding into our brains, perhaps even foreign
interference. We’re going to be afraid. Tim Alberta’s book ends under no
illusions, but asks us to look ahead:
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is
unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” He
calls us to remember who we are and where are allegiance lie.
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