Aaron Renn reviews Tim Alberta’s book:
His portrayal of the anti-Trumpers is almost a photographic negative of the pro-Trumpers he decries. Pro-Trumpers believe they are fighting a culture war to save America from those who want to destroy it. But Alberta’s anti-Trumpers are likewise fighting a culture war, only theirs is internal to the church, waged against more conservative evangelicals. They too seem to believe they are engaged in a Manichean struggle between good and evil. And they, too, sometimes worship America, as shown in David French’s table-pounding over the First Amendment, a quintessentially American principle.
In fact, in his own apocalyptic style and over-the-top denunciations of pro-Trump evangelicals in his book and articles, Alberta resembles the very people he castigates. He too believes America is facing a mortal threat. For example, on Christmas Day 2023 he warned in an Atlantic column of the danger Christian nationalism poses to the future of America. He uses disease metaphors to describe pro-Trump evangelicals—terms like “contagion” and “depollute” that echo how his targets might describe the Left. He writes in the book, “many [pro-Trump] American evangelicals cannot let go.” Neither can he.
…Alberta’s book is ultimately yet another piece of evangelical writing that ardently criticizes conservative evangelicals, in a liberal secular forum, using arguments aligned with liberal secular elite values.
