Entering, Leaving the Kingdom

WE LIVE in an age of right wing political extremism. Today's left wing political leaders are domonstrably more moderate than their forebearers of the early and middle twentieth century; our conservative political leaders, by contrast, are far more extremist than their predicessors. A cursory glance, for instance, at the 1956 Republican party platform, which on the surface resembles the agenda of Bernie Sanders, attests to this. Among the drivers of the new wave of far right political extremism is the evangelical community, which married itself to the far right during the Reagan era. In a recently released new monograph, journalist Tim Alberta, who writes for "The Atlantic", examines the role currently being played by American evangelical Christianity in "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism". More than eighty percent of evangelical Christians supported Donald Trump in 2016, supported him again in twenty tweny,and, despite the former president's obvious lack of traditional Christian virtues and values, still support him. It is the evangelical community which openly advocates installing the Christian religion officially into the American government, advocates "Christian nationalism". according to which America becomes a shining beacon of religious faith, and, more extreme still, "Christian dominionism", according to which the Christian faith would be injected into every institution, government and non government,in American society and culture. Evangelicals in general eschew the concept of separation of church and state, seemingly unaware, or unwilling to be or to become aware, that America's founders nearly unamimously embraced it, as both Jefferson and Madison put it, an "impregnable wall" between church and state. They go much further in their revisionist rewriting of history, prefering to believe that the nation was founded on Christian principles rather than secular enlightenment principles, preferring to believe that their God given mission on Earth is the restoration of America to a pure, Christian nation, an America which never existed, and, most likely, never will. Even the revolution against British rule they ascribe to freedom loving preachers who supposedly preached the message of a new nation, dedicated to the ministry of Christ, their ministerial political and religious exhortations, so they believe, having laid the foundation for the new nation. In point of fact, a single man, Thomas Paine, by publishing his pamphlet "Common Sense" in 1776, did more to inspire the revolt than all the ministers and all the pulpits in colonial America. Paine, of course, was an atheist, whose other seminal pamphlet, "The Age of Reason" was an attack on religion in general and the Christian religion in particular. But all is not well in the kingdom of the Lord. Not only is protestant Christianity declining in North America, support among fervantly religious people for Donald Trump is waning, as Trump's personal debauchery and political authoritarian populism begins to wear thin among both moderate and independant voters. Politically, the evangelical movement is beoming increasingly divided. Progressive Christianity, ostensibly much more deeply rooted in Christian teachings, is a growing movement, and more and more often ultra conservative political ministries are preaching to empty pews. They seem destined to become even emptier, a reflection of their misguided politics.