Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America; An Evangelical's Lament

As a progressive Catholic and self-avowed liberal, I was prepared to dislike this book. I anticipated shallow proof-texting of the sort found in nearly all books written by evangelicals--just proof-texting in a different direction. Instead, I found calm, reasoned discourse that systematically dismantled the myth of the modern theocracy sought by so many Christian conservatives today. I share with another reviewer the suspicion that those who accuse Dr. Balmer of anger have not read his book. The text is anything but angry. It is, in fact, rather self-effacing. The author clearly sets out the limits of his own knowledge and does not claim for himself any particular "gifts of the Spirit" that sharpen his insights or validate his positions. He writes with gentleness and compassion about people who consistently behave dishonestly and who pervert the spiritual values to which they claim exclusive right yet one never senses that he is out to exact revenge on political or religious enemies. Though he deals with political issues from beginning to end, Dr. Balmer's book is more a cri de coeur than a polemic. Dr. Balmer invites people to think. Alas, several of the reviews on this site amply demonstrate that many will not.

If someone as understanding and gracious as Professor Randall Balmer, PhD had been my teacher when I was a student at Bob Jones University, I might still consider myself to be a Christian. Of course, if Professor Balmer had ever taught at BJU, he'd be escorted off the campus and banned forever midway through his first lecture. As it turns out, Dr. Balmer is a tenured Professor at Columbia University and has recently published a great work about the state of religion in America.. Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament is a refreshing breath of common sense from a devout, intelligent evangelical Christian who sincerely desires to see his fellow believers return to their rightful roots of Christ's teachings. Whatever happened to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless and caring for those who are ill? Professor Balmer properly sees an evangelical movement that has been hijacked by wealthy sinister conservatives who have no scruples about using Christ, the Bible or faith in general to line their pockets and reward their political allies. I knew I was in for a treat by the time I reached page ten. He writes, "Selective literalism continues to serve an important function for the Religious Right. It allows them to locate sin outside of the evangelical subculture (or so they think) by designating as especially egregious those dispositions and behaviors, homosexuality and abortion, that they believe characteristic of others, not themselves." Finally, academia (and thanks to this book, the American reading public) is realizing what many of us have known for over a decade. Lives are being destroyed in Christ's name, and Christ must be really pissed off because he didn't come to earth to destroy lives. Yet that's what His "followers" are doing. Professor Balmer's book provides a well-written (and surprisingly succinct, especially for an academician) history of why and how America's Religious Right has veered far from its rightful course since 1980. Over the last few years I've met many gay men and lesbians who've been driven out of their evangelical churches and homes and away from their supposedly Bible-believing families. Their stories are filled with pain and anguish as they struggled to resolve their inner turmoil only to have the people in their life turn against them in the name of God. Professor Balmer shines the light on the hypocrisy of the Religious Right's "ruse of literalism," i.e. why they take the Bible literally in some places but not in others? For example, why doesn't the RR condemn divorce, which the Bible condemns much more ferociously than either homosexuality or abortion? It's because too many evangelicals have been divorced themselves and the pastors know they'd lose their flocks if they preached against divorce. More than any scholarly book I've read recently, Professor Balmer draws easy-to-understand distinctions: Abortion should be looked at from two perspectives, legal and moral, an

First, I want to express a bit of frustration. I understand that many reviewers are not actually reviewing the books they rate. I understand that they haven't actually read the books, but are bashing what they imagine the book says instead of what it actually does. But why do those members of the Religious Right when reviewing a book critical of the Religious Right fall back on the tired, inaccurate, irrelevant statement that the author is "angry." The charge against those critical of the Right almost seems to be that it is all about the supposed anger, never about the host of substantive and serious charges they make. Charges of "anger" always try to relocate the debate away from some very questionable positions on the part of the Religious Right and onto some supposed emotional state of the writer. But the truth is, there is no anger in this book and anyone reading it would know that. If Randall Balmer is angry, I would challenge critics of the book to provide quotes that illustrate this. Please provide a page number. In fact, the tone of the book is more sadness and regret than anything else, sadness that so many evangelicals have abandoned so many of their historical positions and their outsider status (which allowed them to criticize the dominate culture) to become instead a culturally embedded and dependent civil religion. The other side of the coin is this: if anyone comes to this book hoping for an angry denunciation of evangelicals, one will go away disappointed. My background and experience is incredibly similar to Balmer's and I have experienced most of the same frustrations he has. I am a former Southern Baptist (I left for more a more mainstream Baptist denomination after the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a statement at their annual convention that wives should be subservient to their husbands). As a child nothing gave me more pride as a Baptist than the story of Roger Williams and the role Baptists played in making the disestablishment clause a part of the Constitution and a formative principle of American life. Balmer does a great job of getting at the pride many Baptist's felt by his discussion of First Baptist Church of Dallas minister George W. Truett's (W. A. Criswell's predecessor) passionate advocacy of the wall between church and state. I was also proud of the denominations strong embrace of the doctrine of the priesthood of the believers, which entailed that Baptists were not supportive of creeds and refused to hold church members to doctrinal statements. One's beliefs were instead a matter between the individual Christian and God as he or she read the Bible. Today, however, Southern Baptists are passionately trying to destroy the wall between Church and state and, although Balmer doesn't bring this up in his book, Baptist colleges and institutions are driving people out of various positions by forcing them to sign affirmations that they believe all the doctrines laid out in the Baptist Faith and Mes

Randall Balmer has given liberal evangelicals a gift. With equal parts angst, humor, logic and careful intellectual insight, he has revealed the true colors of the Religious Right. At the same time, he has jealously guarded his personal relationship with Jesus as something he cherishes, as well as the biblical understanding of Jesus as Someone who cherishes the poor and marginalized. This book gave me the historical background and intellectual background to articulate the sins of the Religious Right. More than that, it also gave me hope--hope that there is someone with the courage to stand up to the Wayward Church, just like one of the prophets, and say "let justice roll down like waters." I hope we liberal evangelical Christians can rise up with Randall Balmer and join him in a reawakening of compassion and social justice in the evangelical church.

Speaking as both an evangelical and a professor of American history, Randall Balmer offers an insightful and penetrating look at the underbelly of the Religious Right and how this group has become champions of their own socio-political agenda instead of messengers of the "Good News." Balmer provides an in depth and thoughtful historical analysis as to how the Religious Right came to dominate the evangelical wing of the Church. This committed Christian speaks with authority and conviction as one, who has traveled the country and witnessed firsthand the devastation this new group of evangelicals has wrought upon the faith.