I have been reading Tim Alberta’s new book, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory (HarperCollins, 2023). The book analyzes the rise of Donald Trump
and MAGA Christianity within American evangelicalism.
How is it that Christian devotion to such a pagan politician has succeeded in splintering American evangelicalism?
I believe that Vincent Bacote, theology professor at Wheaton College, hits the nail on the head when he accuses American evangelical leaders of failing to disciple, to catechize, their people.
I couldn’t agree more.
For instance, the so-called “Great Commission” is not a command to evangelize unbelievers. It is a command to disciple, to teach and rigorously instruct believers into faithful Christian discipleship. Evangelism is crucial, but it is only the entry point for the radical demands of true Christianity.
Jesus commands his followers, “Go and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20).
A Christian disciple is someone who puts into practice all the upside-down, crazy, counter intuitive, radical lifestyle choices that Jesus taught his disciples, and us, to embrace. That requires a lifetime of sacrificial self-denial and devotion.
Along these lines, Alberta quotes Professor Bacote:
“Jesus loved them [the 12 disciples] but he did not infantilize them. Time and again, when His disciples got something wrong — or even when they simply showed human weakness — Jesus rebuked them. He chided them for being faithless. He censure them for the vanity and biotry and prejudice. He criticized them for not grasping His instruction.”
This is what discipling loopks like And this . . . is what’s absent inside much of the American evangelical Church.
“If you ask me what’s the biggest problem with evangelicalism, I’d say it’s a catechesis problem. It’s a formation problem, a discipleship problem. These are people who are supposed to have a knowedge of the Bible, but many of them don’t . . . A lot of these people are just not going deep enough.”
By remaining shallow in the scriptures, Bacote said, too many American Christians have avoided a necessary showdown between their own base cultural proclivities and God’s perfect standard. When Christians are discipled primarily by society, inevitably they look to scripture for affirmation of their habits and behaviors and political views. But if the Bible is the word of God, then God ought to be interrogating those things.
