Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 180:720 (Oct 2023)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Matthew S. DeMoss

BSac 180:720 (October-December 2023) p. 475

Book Reviews

By The Faculty and Staff of Dallas Theological Seminary

Matthew S. DeMoss

Editor

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. By Tim Alberta. New York: HarperCollins, 2023. 493 pp. $35.00.

Alberta is a practicing Christian, the son of an Evangelical Presbyterian pastor, and a staff writer for The Atlantic. He has written for dozens of other publications as well. He writes from within the tradition that raised, nurtured, and continues to disciple him. This is not the work of an exvangelical or one who has deconverted, but it is, Alberta writes, “a window into my faith tradition” (9). He continues, “It happens to be the tradition that is the most polarizing and the least understood; the tradition that is more politically relevant and domestically disruptive than all the others combined: evangelicalism” (9–10). Granted that this statement is a bit hyperbolic (most polarizing?), it is nonetheless the author’s perception of the state of American evangelicalism.

A challenge in any work assessing evangelicalism is the problem of definition. Alberta rightly observes that the English word is rooted in the “Greek euangelion, which means ‘good news’ or ‘gospel’ ” (10). Noting that many, including the National Association of Evangelicals, adopt the framework of the Bebbington quadrilateral (biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism), the author concludes: “Efforts to formulate a more effective definition have failed time and again. To the present day there remains no real consensus around what it means to be an ‘evangelical’ ” (11). Furthermore, he argues, “By the 1980s, with the rise of the Moral Majority, a religious marker was transforming into a partisan movement. ‘Evangelical’ soon became synonymous with ‘conservative Christian,’ and eventually with ‘white conservative Republican’ ” (11). Some readers might find this identification too limited and limiting, but surely there is a segment of those who identify as evangelical for whom this is true, and the perception is widely held outside the movement. Of course not every American evangelical is White and conservative, and there are non-evangelicals who are Republican, as there are Christians who are not evangelical yet hold a high view of Scripture, the gospel, and salvation by grace. Alberta is clear that his focus is on the tradition in which he was raised and in which he watched changes in its relationship to politics and culture in the 1980s and beyond.

Alberta’s thesis is implied in the title of the book, which he then explains in more detail: “God has His own kingdom; no ...