Intelligencer - America Has a White Evangelical Problem

When the journalist Tim Alberta’s father unexpectedly died, another ordeal awaited Tim. His father had pastored the Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyterian church in Michigan, where the Alberta family now gathered to honor his life alongside the congregation the father had nurtured. “None of us had slept much that week,” Alberta writes in his second book, The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. “So the first time someone made a glancing reference to Rush Limbaugh, it did not compute.” But the references kept coming. Soon, Alberta realized they were talking about him. He was promoting his first book, American Carnage, on the ascension of Donald Trump, and Limbaugh was displeased about what Alberta calls “unflattering revelations” about the former president. Now, members of his father’s congregation wanted to know if Alberta remained a Christian, whether he was “still” on “the right side.”

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