Organized Christianity is participating in its own dwindling as a cultural influence

 Tim Alberta's latest at The Atlantic is pretty damn disturbing.

The basic subject matter is not new with his piece. Many have been writing for some time now about the Trumpist infection of American evangelical Christianity. What Alberta brings to the table is a look at four churches - and four pastors - that have responded in particular ways to the juncture at which they found themselves when the Trump phenomenon appeared. 

Two of them, FloodGate Church in Brighton, Michigan, pastored by Bill Bolin, and Global Vision in Wilson County, Tennessee, pastored by Greg Locke, have gone full-tilt Trumpist: Sunday services in which anti-vaccine rants, MAGA hats and American flags outnumbering crosses are the most prominent features.

By contrast, Community Bible Church in Trenton, Michigan, where minister Ken Brown holds forth, sticks to scripture and sound doctrine. 

In researching his article, Alberta spent a great deal of time at all three churches, and with all three preachers. The insights he gained are profound:

Every time I heard Bolin preach, I could also hear Brown, the pastors’ voices dueling inside my brain. Brown is polished and buttoned-down; Bolin is ostentatious and loud. Brown pastors a traditional church where people wear sweaters and sing softly; Bolin leads a charismatic church where people dress for a barbecue and speak in tongues. Brown is a pastor’s kid and lifelong conservative who’s never had a sip of alcohol; Bolin is an erstwhile “radical liberal” who once got “so high on LSD” that he jumped onstage and grabbed a guitar at a Tom Petty concert.

But in leading their predominantly white, Republican congregations, Brown and Bolin have come to agree on one important thing: Both pastors believe there is a war for the soul of the American Church—and both have decided they cannot stand on the sidelines. They aren’t alone. To many evangelicals today, the enemy is no longer secular America, but their fellow Christians, people who hold the same faith but different beliefs.

Alberta traces the personal evolutions of the ministers. In Locke's case, it appears to be a case of finding a milieu in which he could become a star:

Not long ago, Locke was a small-time Tennessee preacher. Then, in 2016, he went viral with a selfie video, shot outside his local Target, skewering the company’s policies on bathrooms and gender identity. The video has collected 18 million views, and it launched Locke as a distinct evangelical brand. He cast himself on social media as a lone voice of courage within Christendom. He aligned himself with figures like Dinesh D’Souza and Charlie Kirk to gain clout as one of the Christian right’s staunchest Trump supporters. All the while, his congregation swelled—moving from their old church building, which seated 250, into a large outdoor tent, then into an even bigger tent, and eventually into the current colossus. The tent holds 3,000 people and would be the envy of Barnum & Bailey.

Which is fitting—because what’s happening at Global Vision can feel less like a revival than a circus.

One Sunday morning in November, Locke, prowling the stage in a bright-orange tie, asks how many people have traveled to his tent from outside Tennessee. Scores of people stand up. “And this is every weekend!” Locke cries in his hickory drawl. Eager to put on a show for the visitors, Locke announces that his special guest—he tries to book one every Sunday—is the actor John Schneider, who played Bo Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard. The crowd erupts and everyone hoists their phone in the air, heralding Schneider’s arrival like Catholics awaiting the pope.

Schneider has come to speak and sing. There’s such energy that even some very serious-looking men—dressed in paramilitary gear, firearms strapped to their sides—bounce on their toes and clap along. Between songs, Schneider offers a different catalog of greatest hits. He talks about the flu shot making someone sick. He decries the Christian elites who look down on people like him. He hints at a potential violent uprising.

“We are born for such a time as this. God is calling you to do something,” Schneider says. “We have a country to get back. And if that fails, we have a country—yes, I’ll say it—to take back.”

Locke’s sermon is about the Philistines of the Old Testament stealing the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites, because they sensed that the only way to defeat God’s chosen people was to separate them from God. The same thing is happening in America today, Locke warns. Liberals have devised a plot to separate Christians from God. And all too many Christians—under the guise of a “plandemic”—are allowing it to happen.

The article also discusses the United Methodist Church, which is on track to split in two over the issue of gay marriage. It looks in particular at how one UMC congregation is dealing with that:

“The second you get into any of the political stuff, you start losing focus,” Michael Bingham, the lead pastor at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, in Greenville, South Carolina, told me during a visit last fall. “Some people say, ‘Well, you have to preach on abortion.’ Okay. But then something else happens in the culture—and if you preached on abortion, well, you better preach on voting rights. Or gun rights. Or immigrants. I’ve just decided I’m not touching any of it.”

Bingham has been a pastor in the UMC for nearly 25 years. Over that time, he says, he’s watched as political disputes have traveled from the periphery of church life to the heart of it. Despite being personally conservative on most issues—and estimating that two-thirds of the church agrees with him—Bingham has maintained a posture of unflinching neutrality from the pulpit.

He has two reasons. First, Bingham simply does not believe that pastors should contaminate the Gospel with political talk. Second, and of more immediate relevance when we spoke, the United Methodist Church was finalizing plans for a denominational divorce over core social divisions, including whether to ordain gay ministers. Under the tentative plans, individual churches will vote on whether to break away and join the new conservative denomination or side with the liberals and remain under the existing UMC umbrella.

With rumors of this imminent split roiling Aldersgate, Bingham told me, the last thing he wanted was to exacerbate tensions within his church. Plenty of people there know that he’s a conservative. They also know that his deputy, Johannah Myers, is a committed progressive. But the pair were working diligently to keep any trace of those political disagreements out of church life. “We are doing everything we can to hold this place together,” Myers told me.

Membership at Aldersgate is dwindling, and it appears to be because people prefer churches where secular concerns are at the fore of the message:

But what is left to hold together? When I visited, the church—an elegant structure with room for 500 in the sanctuary—was hosting maybe 150 people total across two Sunday services. Bingham is proud to say that he hasn’t driven anyone away with his political views. Still, membership has been in decline for years, in part because so many Christians today gravitate toward the places that are outspokenly aligned with their extra-biblical beliefs.

As I say, this all disturbs the hell out of me. For two reasons.

One, with Christianity per se fading as a foundational influence on American culture, all this disarray and secular preoccupation is relegating the core message of the faith to the status of a voice drowned out by cacophony. A nation starved for Truth is less able than ever to access it.

Two, the mixing of truly concerning cultural developments - namely, the racialization and sexualization of everything - with bogus issues such as masks and vaccines (and stolen-election delusions) - makes legitimate expression of - and acting upon - concerns about the former a very daunting task.

I will here repeat something I say every once in a while. I keep hoping that one day the name of this blog can become obsolete, that a ray of light may burst forth and illuminate the landscape with real humanity and reason for hope. Alas, that day hasn't arrived so far. It is very, very late in the day.