Book Reviews: Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism

Jesus never asked his followers to agree on everything. But he did call his followers to obey a new command: to love others in the same way he has loved us. Instead of asserting our rights or fighting for power, we need to begin asking ourselves: what does love require of me?

“Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith” by Obery M. Hendricks

The words in Amazon’s description, including "galvanizing," "scathing," and "clarion call," are certainly on point. This will be a "love it or hate it" book, for sure. I’d love to sit down with Dr. Hendricks some time and interview him. I’m absolutely certain that I would learn an amazing amount from him in a short time.

This book was chock full of factual historical details about the formation of evangelical thinking, like a number of other books described on this page. He methodically addresses all the hot-button topics against which modern evangelical Christians are up in arms right now, including social justice, abortion, workers’ rights and big business, gun control, homophobia, and more. He tears gaping holes in the justification for the right-wing position for every single one of them.

I was already familiar with almost all the ideas which Dr. Hendricks addresses, and I had read several reviews by conservative evangelical Christians railing against this book being supposedly filled with heresy and left-wing socialistic views. However, he provides reasonable and rational and inspired answers against the multitudes of right-wing and evangelical claims. There are certainly some areas where I take issue with his assertions, for example just one or two instances where I think the Bible translation he used results in a particular spin that the original Greek or Hebrew might not support. But on the whole, I found very little in this book that did not have a strong factual basis and scriptural support.

I appreciated that he was careful to distinguish between "evangelical" and "right-wing evangelical," and to repeatedly emphasize that modern right-wing evangelicalism bears extremely little resemblance to its origins.

He was also scathing in his identification of the sudden downward spiral represented by the election of President Trump, and the evangelical church’s running after him as their darling, and I believe with good reason.

Perhaps the most shocking statement in the entire book was found halfway through the epilogue: "But their full possession by a spirit of antichrist can be considered to have occurred when their leaders made a devil’s bargain with Donald Trump to defend his avalanche of lies, hate mongering, blatant immoral indecency, and outright attacks on the democratic rule of law in return for his support of their agenda to dominate American society." Ouch. If he is correct, this would explain a lot. And with the perspective available to me from spending much of the last year separating myself from both evangelicalism and right-wing ideology, I can see the truth in this stunning indictment.
(Reviewed July 2022)

Amazon description: A timely and galvanizing work that examines how right-wing evangelical Christians have veered from an admirable faith to a pernicious, destructive ideology.

In the wake of the deadly insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol, Christians Against Christianity is a clarion call to stand up to the hypocrisy of the evangelical Right, as well as a guide for Christians to return their faith to the life-affirming message that Jesus brought and died for. What Hendricks offers is a provocative diagnosis, an urgent warning that right-wing evangelicals’ aspirations for Christian nationalist supremacy are a looming threat, not only to Christian decency but to democracy itself. What they offer to America is anything but good news.

“Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church” by Katelyn Beaty

This book left me shaking my head wondering why I’d never really thought through all the problems with celebrity Christianity, and more than that, how many ways we allow hero worship to creep into our faith practices. I’ve long been concerned about the BIG celebrities, especially after listening to "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" podcast, but even the small and local celebrities, can cause trouble in our doctrine.

It also ended on a great reminder that Jesus’ way of making disciples and influencing culture was always the non-obvious, humble, self-sacrificing way, and that should apply to our leaders too.
(Reviewed October 2022)

Amazon description: Many Christian leaders use their fame and influence to great effect. Whether that popularity resides at the local church level or represents national or international influence, many leaders have effectively said to their followers, "Follow me as I follow Christ." But fame that is cultivated for its own sake, without attendant spiritual maturity and accountability, has a shadow side that runs counter to the heart of the gospel. Celebrity–defined as social power without proximity–has led to abuses of power, the cultivation of persona, and a fixation on profits.

In light of the fall of famous Christian leaders in recent years, the time has come for the church to reexamine its relationship to celebrity. Award-winning journalist Katelyn Beaty explores the ways fame has reshaped the American church, explains how and why celebrity is woven into the fabric of the evangelical movement, and identifies many ways fame has gone awry in recent years. She shows us how evangelical culture is uniquely attracted to celebrity gurus over and against institutions, and she offers a renewed vision of ordinary faithfulness, helping us all keep fame in its proper place.

“Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?” by John Fea

I found this book to be a very helpful walk through early American history – both before and around the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, up through the Bill of Rights. It’s chock-full of well-sourced historical writings of the Founders themselves. Rather than starting from a "yes" or "no" answer, Fea addresses the question with equanimity and patience. The answer, to give a bit of a spoiler, is a resounding "maybe – it really depends on how you define ‘Christian’."
(Reviewed February 2022)

Amazon description: John Fea offers a thoroughly researched, evenhanded primer on whether America was founded to be a Christian nation, as many evangelicals assert, or a secular state, as others contend. He approaches the title’s question from a historical perspective, helping readers see past the emotional rhetoric of today to the recorded facts of our past. This updated edition reports on the many issues that have arisen in recent years concerning religion’s place in American society including the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, contraception and the Affordable Care Act, and state-level restrictions on abortion and demonstrates how they lead us to the question of whether the United States was or is a Christian nation. Fea relates the history of these and other developments, pointing to the underlying questions of national religious identity inherent in each. "We live in a sound-bite culture that makes it difficult to have any sustained dialogue on these historical issues," Fea writes in his preface. "It is easy for those who argue that America is a Christian nation (and those who do not) to appear on radio or television programs, quote from one of the founders or one of the nation’s founding documents, and sway people to their positions. These kinds of arguments, which can often be contentious, do nothing to help us unravel a very complicated historical puzzle about the relationship between Christianity and America’s founding."

“Immeasurable: Reflections on the Soul of Ministry in the Age of Church, Inc.” by Skye Jethani

This was a powerful book to me. It’s really written to pastors and church leaders, but I found it very useful to help me understand the Biblical role of pastors and churches, in contrast to what is visible today in the American evangelical church systems in which I was raised. In particular, it calls us to recognize when we’ve gotten a little too focused on metrics and numbers and the business of church, and not focused enough on the ministry and people within the organization.
(Reviewed April 2022)

Amazon description: “In my first seminary class, we were asked to introduce ourselves and say why we enrolled. I’ll never forget what one student said ‘My denomination wants me to have an M.Div., but once they see I can grow a big church, I don’t think they’ll make me finish the program.'” The priorities of this future pastor were startling, but he’s not alone in them.In the years since that class, author and minister Skye Jethani has seen more and more pastors swallowed by the celebrity syndrome. Not long ago, ministers were among the most trusted and admired people in our culture. But not anymore. A 2013 study from Gallop revealed that Americans’ admiration for clergy has reached an all-time low. That, taken with reduced trust of institutional religion overall, makes it easy to see why ministers feel insecure about their calling. In response to this trend, some pastors have looked to emulate those who are praised by the culture—business leaders, entertainers, and social activists. This has led to a new understanding of what a minister should be. We’ve turned away from viewing our pastors as shepherds, and now expect them to be celebrities. Immeasurable will help ministers recognize the cultural forces shaping their view of the calling, and then reimagine what faithful church leaders can look like in the twenty-first century. Through short essays and reflections on the pastor’s soul and skills, this book will help prospective pastors explore their calling to ministry, and it will help veteran pastors reframe their vision for the work. Drawing on cultural dynamics, personal stories, and his own experience working in a church and with church leaders, Skye Jethani will address matters like ambition, anger, community, consumerism, fame, health, justice, platform, preaching, rest,simplicity, success, vision, and more. There are endless resources to help pastors do the practical work of ministry, but there are far fewer that speak to the pastor’s soul and spirit. Immeasurable provides affirmation and encouragement for church leaders faithfully serving God. It commends the true work of ministry—shepherding, teaching, encouraging—while redefining what we mean by success in ministry. It’s a book church leaders can return to again and again for insight and inspiration.

“Inalienable: How Marginalized Kingdom Voices Can Help Save the American Church” by Eric Costanzo, Daniel Yang, and Matthew Soerens

This was a very impactful book to me. It’s written by three very different US-born white evangelical men – a pastor, a missiologist, and a parachurch ministry leader. Each brings their own unique perspective and experience to the book, yet it’s a very coherent work. Its basic thrust is carefully assessing the struggles facing the American church, particularly the evangelical wing of the church, and frankly and openly considering its blind spots, particularly in how it has marginalized other communities and other worldwide Christians, cutting itself off from the insights and blessings that those communities bring to Christianity. The four themes of the book include the kingdom of God, the image of God, the word of God, and the mission of God. The entire book is deeply insightful, and well worth your time.

Perhaps the most valuable thing about this book to me was how it opened my eyes to the contributions from Christians outside the United States. It challenged a lot of my assumptions about the primacy and superiority of the American church’s doctrine and spiritual wisdom. Reading this book has put a new desire in me to begin learning about how the church in other cultures and nations understands the Gospel and God Himself; I am convinced that such study will give me great insight into my own faith and a new rich ability to connect with God at a deeper level.
(Reviewed July 2022)

Amazon description: With our witness compromised, numbers down, and reputation sullied, the American church is at a critical crossroads. In order for the church to return to health, we must decenter ourselves from our American idols and be guided by global Christians and the poor, who offer hope from the margins, and the ancient church, refocusing on the kingdom, image, Word, and mission of God.

We’ve written this book because we believe American Christians are at a critical crossroad, and the very soul of the American church is at stake. Jesus Christ promised that his church will endure until he returns again (Mt 16:18). He did not make that promise to the American church, however. If we are to stem this tide of decline and decay, it will take all of us—and it will take humility to listen to voices of the church beyond the White American evangelical stream of the faith which has long assumed leadership.

“The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power” by D. L. Mayfield

Wow. I highly, highly recommend this book.

I’m really conflicted on how to write this review. It was a deeply, personally, painfully challenging book, on multiple levels. It directly poked at many things I grew up with in my life, and despite all the changes in my heart and actions in the last two years, it still found me jerking back as yet another nerve was touched, a fiery sting of recognition of my own shortcomings.

At the same time, it often felt like sitting in the therapist’s office as the author poured out her heart – her white, American, privileged, evangelical, self-sufficient, superior heart – over the injustices she became aware of, and became aware she was complicit in. There was constantly a tension between feeling my own discomfort and sometimes pain, and vicariously watching her intensely feel her own discomfort and sometimes pain.

And yet, despite this discomfort, I came away from each session feeling as if there was a deep hope and peace amidst the pain, a recognition of the amazing gift to which we Christians have ready access if we can just step back from our pursuit of affluence, of autonomy, of safety, and of power (her four major sections), and see the world – and "the least of these" among us – through God’s loving eyes.
(Reviewed August 2022)

Amazon description: Affluence, autonomy, safety, and power. These are the central values of the American dream. But are they compatible with Jesus’ command to love our neighbor as ourselves?

In essays grouped around these four values, D. L. Mayfield asks us to pay attention to the ways they shape our own choices, and the ways those choices affect our neighbors. Where did these values come from? How have they failed those on the edges of our society? And how can we disentangle ourselves from our culture’s headlong pursuit of these values and live faithful lives of service to God and our neighbors?

“The Other Evangelicals: A Story of Liberal, Black, Progressive, Feminist, and Gay Christians – and the Movement That Pushed Them Out” by Isaac B. Sharp and David P. Gushee

I loved this book. Over the last year, I’ve read probably two dozen books that detail some aspects of the history of evangelicalism, and this book basically wraps up all that history into one fairly dense and incredibly thorough summary.

The pure-as-the-wind-driven-snow concept I have long held about evangelicalism is, to put it very mildly, total whitewashing. Oh, and literally "white." The history of how we got to modern (even pre-Trump modern) evangelicalism is actually rather pocked with quite a bit of mess, a lot of it wrapped up in racist, segregationist, and outright pro-slavery theology. The ways that evangelical leaders have put fences around which people are allowed to claim the label "evangelical" have been outright harmful in many cases.

I understand that how we got to a given set of beliefs doesn’t necessarily define the rightness of those beliefs. But it should nonetheless inform our assumption about whether those beliefs are inherently trustworthy. When a system of thought has its origins in very ungodly actions and practices, it deserves extreme scrutiny.

In a nutshell, once my "evangelicalism is perfect" mental structure cracked, it fell apart fairly quickly as I encountered fact after fact after fact that eroded the previously-perfect foundations in my mind. And this book does a careful, thorough, and very readable job of packaging all of that history, topic-by-topic, into a single volume.
(Reviewed May 2023)

Amazon description: What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear "evangelical"?

Carefully researched and deftly written, The Other Evangelicals offers a breath of fresh air for scholars seeking a more inclusive history of religion in America.

“The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here” by Kaitlyn Schiess

Definitely recommended.

Schiess is a young author, and I detect this in some of her writing, but it’s a surprisingly solid book nonetheless.

I’ve read a lot of American political/sociological/religious history – mostly about our religious systems and how they developed and morphed over the last several hundred years – and this book did a good job of tying them together.

Schiess has a definite progressive tilt to her thinking, and since that agrees with my own approach, I didn’t mind it, but I can see how some readers would be frustrated by a few of her conclusions. But she makes extremely solid arguments for her conclusions, both logically and from Scripture, and shows how the current trend in politics and religion is fraught with danger that we really need to address as a society.
(Reviewed September 2023)

Amazon description: How do Bible passages written thousands of years ago apply to politics today? What can we learn from America’s history of using the Bible in politics? How can we converse with people whose views differ from our own?

Readers will be encouraged to pursue a biblical basis for their political engagement with compassion and confidence.

“Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth” by John R. Franke

Franke does a good job in this book of arguing against the very common "my way or the highway" approach to Christianity, where we are so focused on boundary creation and maintenance that we have a hard time even imagining how we could be "one" with other denominations even in our own nation, much less people of vastly different cultures. Yet, that was Jesus’ prayer in John 17: "Make them one, Father, even as you and I are one," more or less.

So if we can’t get past our own doctrinal walls with fellow Christians, how could we ever become one?

This fits neatly with something about which I’ve been passionate for some time: doctrinal humility – the idea that if there are many different approaches to worship and the Word in all the different denominations, and if very skilled and intelligent readers of the scriptures cannot agree on a single doctrine, it’s extremely likely that whatever I personally believe is actually very incomplete, and not only should I be humble about my beliefs, I actually should assume that I NEED others and their beliefs to become complete, to become "one" with not only them, but in such a way as to properly and fully represent the Father and Son to a watching world.

So Franke basically asserts that it’s impossible to represent all of God with any one limited doctrine, and that it’s a fallacy to assume that the RIGHT answer is ever going to be "they all need to become like me."

Doctrinal humility. It’s hard, but necessary and valuable.
(Reviewed May 2023)

Amazon description: If Christians are part of the one body of Christ, how do we account theologically for the multiple expressions of our common faith? If God is ultimate truth, why is it so difficult to agree on issues related to truth? Must we sacrifice a commitment to truth in favor of a pragmatic unity in the church? Or must we hold on to our perception of the truth at the expense of fracturing the church? For John Franke, truth versus unity is a false dichotomy. In this provocative yet thoughtful book, he argues that orthodox and biblical Christian faith is inherently pluralist, and that this diversity, far from being a problem that needs to be overcome, is in fact a blessing from God and part of the divine design and intention for the church. Suggesting that Christians should affirm the reality of ultimate truth, but cautioning humility regarding our grasp of it, Franke sets forth a relational theology in which the many expressions of revealed truth—Christ, the Holy Spirit, and Scripture, along with a diverse church—together witness to the expansiveness of the one God. "John Franke asserts the plurality of truth, not as a capitulation to non- or anti-Christian thought, but rather as an expression of profoundly Christian thought—and specifically, of emergent, missional, and Trinitarian Christian thought. In so doing, he gently implies that the dominant alternative view—that white, modernist, Western Christian scholars and institutions have a monopoly on truth—is actually a capitulation to modes of thought and power that have betrayed the life and gospel of Jesus Christ."

“Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America” by Russell Moore

I have mixed feelings about this book.

First, the good: It’s a powerful indictment of the evangelical church in America today, and Moore is unafraid to call out the church for what he sees. And I think he’s right about his analysis: the evangelical church has largely sold itself out, and only has itself to blame for its decline and all the ugliness of the last few years. A lot of what Moore says is absolutely true, and frankly, it’s damning.

But here’s what troubled me about the book: it’s disjointed. First, it only has five chapters for 266 pages, and there are really no subheadings. Each chapter therefore covers a TON of ground, taking maybe 45 minutes or so to read (and I’m a fast reader). To be quite honest, Moore rambles. In the acknowledgements after his conclusion, Moore notes that the book developed from his newsletter, and it shows: it really does read like a lot of individual vignettes kind of strung together, loosely grouped around topics. If he had a serious plan for each voluminous chapter, it certainly doesn’t show. In the end, I felt like I could have read the first five or ten pages of each chapter and gotten his point, and the rest was somewhat-related filler.

Also, and I admit this is particular to me, I’m not quite on Moore’s page about a number of more conservative viewpoints. He spent a lot of words (scattered through each chapter) calling people back to conservatism, and in so doing, he’s sure to lose some progressive leaders. Since I spent 45 years in that camp until very recently, I could handle it, but other long-time liberal or progressive Christians may have a hard time seeing his bigger points amid the conservative preaching. With that said, it’s who Moore is, and I was expecting no less from him. And honestly, it’s good to see a conservative calling out his fellow conservatives for their failures.

I’m glad I read the book; he makes some good points I hadn’t seen before, and he gives voice to a lot of my own concerns. I’m not sure it will be convincing to people thoroughly enmeshed in the issues he’s raising. But coming from someone with his long-time and well-respected evangelical credentials, perhaps it would be a good book to recommend for friends or relatives who got sucked into the Trump and MAGA vortex.
(Reviewed July 2023)

Amazon description: Former Southern Baptist pastor and Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore calls for repentance and renewal in American evangelicalism.

The altar call of the old evangelical revivals was both a call to repentance and the offer of a new start. In the same way, this book invites unmoored and discouraged Christians to step out into an uncertain future, first by letting go of the kind of cultural, politicized, status quo Christianity that led us to this moment of reckoning. Only when we see how lost we are, we can find our way again. Only when we bury what’s dead can we experience life again. Only when we lose our religion can we be amazed by grace again.

“The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church” by Sarah McCammon

This looked interesting enough that I pre-ordered it, and I wasn’t disappointed. It was compelling enough that I pretty much read straight through it in a couple sessions. Sarah’s story is very familiar to me: growing up in slightly-fundamentalist very-evangelical spaces, with all the James Dobson and Moral Majority and Reaganism influences. I wasn’t homeschooled, but the outcome wasn’t much different. The book interweaves personal stories of Sarah’s journey with analysis of the trends and events around evangelicalism, and I find that it does a good job of identifying a lot of the most difficult and painful aspects people face as they begin to discover that it wasn’t what they thought, and might require some repentance. This discussion is much larger than any one book can cover, and this book is certainly just a slice of it, but I think it handles it very well. It doesn’t try to provide any global answers – and that’s fine, because I don’t think there ARE any global answers. Rather, Sarah tells a story and shares her own experiences, and sometimes that’s enough for us to sit with, and learn from.
(Reviewed March 2024)

Amazon description: The first definitive book that names the growing social movement of people leaving the church: the exvangelicals.

Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.

“The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism” by Tim Alberta

Let’s be simple: this is a must-read book, in my opinion.

Tim Alberta tackles some of the most controversial problems facing evangelical American churches today, head-on, unflinchingly. Full of detailed accounts of his personal interactions with both problematic and hope-inducing thought leaders in today’s American evangelical scene, this book makes an incredibly strong case for the need for deep introspection and sorrowful repentance for its sins and failure to accurately represent Christ to the world.
(Reviewed March 2024)

Amazon description: Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing – and least understood – people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement. Through the eyes of televangelists and small-town preachers, celebrity revivalists and everyday churchgoers, Alberta tells the story of a faith cheapened by ephemeral fear, a promise corrupted by partisan subterfuge, and a reputation stained by perpetual scandal.

Sifting through the wreckage – pastors broken, congregations battered, believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political schemes – Alberta asks: If the American evangelical movement has ceased to glorify God, what is its purpose?

“Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile” by Brian Zahnd

I learned about Brian Zahnd from another book I read, and he sounded like the kind of author I needed to check out. I picked this book to introduce myself, and it was a decent read – not my favorite author, but definitely saying a lot of important things to the church. My only complaint, I suppose, was that the second half of the book felt more like an extended sermon than anything else – quite a few very focused critiques and calls for repentance. I don’t mind those calls – I fully endorse everything he is saying – but it’s just not my preferred style; I like a more tightly-focused historical and analytical approach. With all that said, I’d love to talk to him sometime, and hear what he thinks of the last four years since he wrote the book, and how it’s been recieved. Something tells me that he’ll be feeling exactly the same, if not more intent on the same message, because every trend he identifies has proven quite true.
(Reviewed April 2024)

Amazon description: The original gospel proclamation that the Lord of the nations was a crucified Galilean raised from the dead and that salvation was found in vowing allegiance to Jesus of Nazareth unleashed a shock wave that turned the Roman Empire upside down. Early Christianity was subversive and dangerous – dangerous for Christians and a threat to the keepers of the old order. Most of all Christianity was countercultural. But what about contemporary American Christianity? Is it the countercultural way of Jesus or merely a religious endorsement of Americanism? In his provocative book, Postcards From Babylon, Brian Zahnd challenges the reader to see and embrace a daring Jesus-centered Christianity that can again turn the world upside down.

“Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism” by Jason C. Bivins

I read the sample only of this book (about 80 pages out of 330). I would have liked to finish the book but the very high price ($45+ for Kindle alone) deterred me.

It’s a fairly scholarly-sounding book – a lot of professorial language – and is similarly very carefully written. The introduction and first two chapters were very informative and insightful about how the current fear-based religion that infests almost all of evangelicalism came about.

As a 2008 book, I’d be very interested to see what Bivens thinks about the last 16 years, which I believe have significantly ramped up the use of fear and “othering” that occurs in conservative evangelical circles.
(Reviewed October 2024)

Amazon description: Conservative evangelicalism has transformed American politics, disseminating a sometimes fearful message not just through conventional channels, but through subcultures and alternate modes of communication. Within this world is a “Religion of Fear,” a critical impulse that dramatizes cultural and political conflicts and issues in frightening ways that serve to contrast “orthodox” behaviors and beliefs with those linked to darkness, fear, and demonology. Jason Bivins offers close examinations of several popular evangelical cultural creations including the Left Behind novels, church-sponsored Halloween “Hell Houses,” sensational comic books, especially those disseminated by Jack Chick, and anti-rock and -rap rhetoric and censorship. Bivins depicts these fascinating and often troubling phenomena in vivid (sometimes lurid) detail and shows how they seek to shape evangelical cultural identity.

Religion of Fear is a significant contribution to our understanding of the new shapes of political religion in the United States, of American evangelicalism, of the relation of religion and the media, and the link between religious pop culture and politics.

“The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide” by Pamela Cooper-White

This was a quick and useful read. I was already well-acquainted with most of this material, but it was a solid summary in a compact book. It was a good overview of – as the title says – the psychology of Christian nationalism, that mental framework that underpins a particular way of looking at God’s relationship with America and the Christian duties and expectations that arise from that framework. It was a fairly quick read. I didn’t learn much new, but that’s probably only because I already have done a fair amount of reading on the topic, and this book did a good job of summarizing it in a digestible and approachable book. It would make a good resource if you’re new to the topic.

I particularly appreciated her detailed and well-thought-out advice in Chapter 3 for how to deal with people in our lives in different stages or at different levels of Christian nationalism thinking.

(Reviewed September 2024)

Amazon description: How do we overcome polarization in American society? How do we advocate for justice when one side won’t listen to the other and cycles of outrage escalate? These questions have been pressing for years, but the emergence of a vocal, virulent Christian nationalism have made it even more urgent that we find a way forward. In three brief, incisive chapters Pamela Cooper-White uncovers the troubling extent of Christian nationalism, explores its deep psychological roots, and discusses ways in which advocates for justice can safely and effectively attempt to talk across the deep divides in our society.

“Ministers of Propaganda: Truth, Power, and the Ideology of the Religious Right” by Scott M. Coley

I’ve been in this deconstruction/reconstruction space since about 2021, and by 2022 I was beginning to see through the propaganda, and recognize it as such. I quickly began to understand that “this is the way we’ve always thought” is an absolute lie – not just a misunderstanding, but an outright lie. It reveals a sharp and marked lack of awareness of history in some Christians, and a studied rejection of history in others. The result is deeply harmful, when we let others convince us that questioning dogma is sinful.

Since I’d already begun to “see the man behind the curtain,” and realize that an awful lot of string-pulling and lever-flipping was the norm as religious leaders try to keep people coralled in their tribal sheep pens, I saw this book title and was immediately intrigued. I wanted to see what I could learn from someone who studied the topic intently.

I wasn’t disappointed.
(Reviewed September 2024)

Amazon description: Scott Coley exposes the inner workings of the religious right’s propaganda – and how Christians can resist it.

Coley explains that we buy into propaganda because of motivated reasoning, and when we are motivated by perceived self-interest, the Christian message is easily corrupted. But if we recover Jesus’s commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves, right-wing propaganda will lose its power. Any reader troubled by American evangelicals’ embrace of racism, misogyny, and other unchristian views will find answers and hope in these pages.

“The Religion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith” by Michael O. Emerson and Glenn E. Bracey II

This felt like an incredibly important book. A few years ago, starting in 2020, I came into direct conflict at my former church because my heart was breaking for the racial inequities I began to see in our nation and then even within our local assembly. So I began to speak out – and found myself very abruptly and thoroughly silenced by the pastor and others who protested against my postings on my own private social media – despite saying exactly nothing within the church. I discovered I had stepped over an invisible line and was almost instantly shunned and unacceptable to the congregation. This book finally explains exactly what happened to me, and exactly why.

From my perspective two to three years after those events, and having thought and written and spoken extensively about these matters, I was nonetheless unable to identify the underlying flaws and issues that would lead otherwise apparently strong Christians to lash out so abruptly and harshly as to shun a brother in Christ with no possibility of reconciliation. It made no sense to me that these apparently good-hearted, loving, God-fearing people could harbor and even act upon such latent but toxic bitterness and racism, and yet deny it with absolute vehemence. Thanks to this book, I finally found an understanding that gave me a solid foundation for thinking about the problems and what I might actually do about them.

My initial conclusion, I am sorry to say, is that there is little I can do for those from my former church who worship at the altar of the Religion of Whiteness. God will have to confront them, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be a part of it. I lost my voice at that church through their weakness, not mine.

But it does give me hope in addressing the issue within “the remnant,” as this book names those who refuse to be ROW devotees. This is interesting to me, because I have been using terms like “exile” and “remnant” to describe myself for a while – one who exists outside the traditional church structure, living in a spiritual wilderness. And I’m in community with many others who are similar outcasts from that church, for the same reason, but we have not had language to understand this aspect of it. But now I see that many others even outside our former church live in the same wilderness, too, and might be reachable and willing to come together in meaningful ways.

(Reviewed October 2024)

Amazon description: Are most white American Christians actually committed to a Religion of Whiteness?

Using national survey data, in-depth interviews, and focus group results gathered over several years, Emerson and Bracey show how the Religion of Whiteness shapes the practice of Christianity for millions of Americans–and what can be done to confront it.

“Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel” by Kate Bowler

This was a good book to educate myself on some features of American evangelicalism that I grew up seeing as totally normal. I USED to think that my former church didn’t have much prosperity gospel in it, and I was pretty happy about that fact – since I already knew that it was a dangerous and unrighteous theology. But wow, after reading just the first chapter, I kept having these moments of “oooooh, that’s dangerous” followed immediately by “oooooh, but that was us.”

We might have avoided the worst excesses of modern prosperity gospel and “name it and claim it” but looking more closely with fresh insight I could see how so much of our theology was actually formed directly from, or at least closely tied, to prosperity gospel thinking that coalesce in the late 1800s and fully flowered in the 1900s. Pretty much everything about how our church handled healing ministry and prayers for the sick, for example, was straight out of the early roots of prosperity gospel.

And the soteriology also lined up perfectly with prosperity gospel soteriology: God did all this stuff for us, and we just have to fully believe it and speak the correct words to make it manifest in our lives.

I was even surprised to discover that thinking of ourselves primarily as spiritual beings merely clothed in a body of flesh is perfectly aligned with prosperity gospel thinking, giving rise to the idea of aligning our physical selves with the spiritual reality that is already in place for believers. Yes, this language comes from scripture, but the choice to focus on it so directly, to the exclusion of other viewpoints, was very strong in the prosperity gospel world, which let them claim that everything that was out of order in a believer’s life was the result of imperfect application of our theology.

So it was hard to tell whether the theology we held springs from prosperity gospel, or merely parallels it, but it really feels as if it was sourced there. In any case, reading about the prosperity gospel like this, especially after worshiping in a United Methodist church for about a year, with its extremely different focus, really made me feel a little bit icky about my spiritual upbringing.
(Reviewed October 2024)

Amazon description: How have millions of American Christians come to measure spiritual progress in terms of their financial status and physical well-being? How has the movement variously called Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, Name It and Claim It, or simply prosperity gospel come to dominate much of our contemporary religious landscape?

Kate Bowler’s Blessed is the first book to fully explore the origins, unifying themes, and major figures of a burgeoning movement that now claims millions of followers in America. Bowler traces the roots of the prosperity gospel: from the touring mesmerists, metaphysical sages, pentecostal healers, business oracles, and princely prophets of the early 20th century; through mid-century positive thinkers like Norman Vincent Peale and revivalists like Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin; to today’s hugely successful prosperity preachers. Bowler focuses on such contemporary figures as Creflo Dollar, pastor of Atlanta’s 30,000-member World Changers Church International; Joel Osteen, known as “the smiling preacher,” with a weekly audience of seven million; T. D. Jakes, named by Time magazine one of America’s most influential new religious leaders; Joyce Meyer, evangelist and women’s empowerment guru; and many others. At almost any moment, day or night, the American public can tune in to these preachers-on TV, radio, podcasts, and in their megachurches-to hear the message that God desires to bless them with wealth and health. Bowler offers an interpretive framework for scholars and general readers alike to understand the diverse expressions of Christian abundance as a cohesive movement bound by shared understandings and common goals.

I’ll update this list as my reading continues.

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