At his father’s 2019 funeral, Tim Alberta found some attendees more concerned with speaking to him about politics than consoling him over his loss.

The journalist had just released his book, “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump,” and some in the church he had grown up in worried that Alberta had lost his faith.

One source of their worry was Rush Limbaugh, who had recently spoken against Alberta on his radio show. 

Confrontations over his work included derisive questions in the receiving line and a strongly worded letter that Alberta initially believed to be a consolation note. These incidents set him on a path that took him back to his home state of Michigan and eventually to writing “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,” which was released in 2023.

Alberta shared some of the book’s themes with audiences at Baylor University on Wednesday. He also spoke about issues surrounding the state of the 2024 Presidential election. The J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor presented the events with support from Baylor’s Department of Religion, Interdisciplinary Core, and School of Social Work.

In his afternoon lecture, “The Crisis of American Christianity,” Alberta drew inspiration from Jesus’ ministry, the life of Peter and the early Church.

He narrated how Jesus shunned earthly power, including his rebuke of Peter for refusing to embrace the sacrificial nature of Jesus’ work. He spoke about the early martyrs and believers who embraced Jesus’ message and lived as people on the margins, unconcerned with power.

“These were people,” Alberta said, who had “long ago given up on any idea of attaining earthly power. They were people who actively rejected earthly power. They held fast to Jesus, to their citizenship in a kingdom not of this world, in the face of real threats.”

He added that this resulted in the growth of Christianity, with the faith moving from the margins of society to its center.

Then, according to Alberta, “The same government that persecuted Christianity began to enforce Christianity. And wouldn’t you know it? Before long, the Church was organized around preserving the very thing it once renounced.”

To the point of the teaching that Christians should reject earthly power, one audience member asked Alberta about Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas and an ardent Donald Trump supporter. Alberta had interviewed Jeffress for his latest book, indicating that the pastor had shown some regret for his previous political activities.

He has since returned to his vocal support for Trump, and the audience member asked Alberta if this surprised him.

Alberta said it didn’t.

He noted, “I think part of the reason we are warned, time and again, about the idolatry of nation and power is because those things are seductive. Once you have had a taste of them, you want more.”

Alberta shared some of his thoughts on the 2024 Presidential election at a lunch earlier in the day, which was attended by Baylor faculty and administration. Dr. Greg Garrett, The Carole Ann McDaniel Hanks Chair of Literature & Culture, facilitated the lunch conversation.

As a well-sourced journalist, Alberta has spent a lot of time studying Trump’s three presidential campaigns. This one was shaping up to be different from the other two in that it was well-funded and had intelligent, capable people at the helm.

But President Biden pulling out of the race and endorsing Vice President Harris changed everything.

“The long and short of it,” according to Alberta, “is that what they [the Trump campaign] had built in the spring heading into the summer was, effectively, a Death Star, but a Death Star capable of blowing up just one planet. And that was Planet Biden.”

At both the lunch and afternoon sessions, Alberta was asked about the current state of evangelicalism as it relates to the election and abortion.

To the lunch group, he said that he is currently in the middle of reporting on the subject.

He spoke about the razor-thin margins of Trump’s victory in 2016: “There’s no question that it was single-issue, pro-life voters who held their nose and voted for him [and secured his win.] In part, it was because Pence was on the ticket, in part, because there was a Supreme Court seat hanging in the balance, with a promise of two to three more to come…Those votes really mattered.”

Alberta has close relationships with many of these voters. “The only reason they are inclined to vote at all,” he said, “is because all they have been told for 50 years is that they aren’t just voting for the President, they are voting for the Supreme Court appointees. Therefore, you are voting for abortion policy.”

However, in a post-Roe world, according to Alberta, Donald Trump and JD Vance are now courting suburban women voters by openly antagonizing the pro-life movement.

Alberta sees many figureheads in that movement “contorting themselves into pretzels” and trying to justify a vote for Trump in 2024. But the big question, he believes, is what is happening on the ground with those voters who give their lives to the anti-abortion cause.

“From what I’ve seen on the ground,” he says, “I think there are serious red flags for the Trump folks.” Because of the thin margins in a handful of states that now determine elections, “if just 1% of those [pro-life] voters stay home in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin stay home, then he can’t win.”

In addition to his two books, Tim Alberta is a staff member at the Atlantic. He and his family currently live in southwest Michigan.