How Trump Is Dividing The Evangelical Church

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🗓️ 29 November 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

Journalist Tim Alberta grew up in a conservative, republican, evangelical church, where his father was the pastor. He wanted to know why so many evangelical Christians had become extremists, and ardent supporters of Trump. Over the past 4 years, he traveled to churches around the country, reporting on pastors and congregants who backed Trump, and those who felt forced out of their church because they couldn't support him. His new book is The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory.

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0:00.0	Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation,
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0:17.2	This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. How did Evangelicals become
0:21.3	Donald Trump's most unflinching advocates?
0:24.8	That question plagued Tim Alberta as a journalist
0:28.4	and as a self-described son of a white conservative
0:31.5	Republican pastor in a white conservative Republican pastor in a white conservative Republican
0:34.9	church in a white conservative Republican town. Alberta describes
0:39.7	evangelicalism as the most polarizing and the least understood tradition that is also more
0:46.1	politically relevant and domestically disruptive than all the others combined.
0:51.8	To answer his own question about why many
0:53.8	Evangelicals support Trump, Alberta reported from
0:57.1	evangelical churches around the country, ranging from
1:00.4	mega churches to half-filled small churches and the church he grew up in in a suburb of
1:05.9	Detroit. He also reported from Christian colleges and religious advocacy organizations.
1:12.4	He writes about how Trump has polarized the church in his
1:15.6	new book The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an age of
1:21.1	extremism. Alberta is a staff writer for the Atlantic and former chief political
1:26.3	correspondent for Politico.
1:28.0	His previous book is the bestseller American Carnage on the front lines of the Republican Civil War and the rise of
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