{"id":359,"date":"2024-08-10T23:15:18","date_gmt":"2024-08-10T23:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/104.193.40.20\/greggfriend-wp\/?p=359"},"modified":"2026-02-08T23:15:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T23:15:40","slug":"idols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/?p=359","title":{"rendered":"Idols"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"350\" height=\"528\" src=\"http:\/\/104.193.40.20\/greggfriend-wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image-66.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image-66.png 350w, https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image-66-199x300.png 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I read Tim Alberta&#8217;s book, <em>The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism <\/em>using the Libby app from my public library. It is a depressing analysis of how idolatry infiltrated the American Evangelical church. Tim has researched and interviewed popular church leaders who have succumbed to the same power offered to Jesus in the wilderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are some quotes from the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>God has His own kingdom; no nation in this world can compare. God has His own power; no amount of political, cultural, or social influence can compare. God has His own glory; no exaltation of earthly beings can compare.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>We can serve and worship God or we can serve and worship the gods of this world. Too many American evangelicals have tried to do both. And the consequences for the Church have been devastating.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with American evangelicals?\u201d Winans thought a moment. \u201cAmerica,\u201d he replied. \u201cToo many of them worship America.\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Suffice it to say, the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount (\u201cBlessed are the meek\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Blessed are the merciful\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Blessed are the peacemakers\u201d) were never conducive to a stump speech.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The story of the Southern Baptist Convention, after all, was inseparable from America\u2019s original sin. Formed in 1845 by slave-owning whites who were alarmed at abolitionist efforts within the national Baptist Church, the SBC became an avatar of religious justification for the trafficking and ownership of human beings.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Falwell denounced the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954, saying \u201cthe devil himself\u201d was pushing integration and that \u201cthe true Negro\u201d did not want it. (\u201cWhat will integration of the races do to us?\u201d Falwell asked his all-white congregation. \u201cIt will destroy our race eventually.\u201d)<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Disparaging the weak leadership at the highest levels of American government\u2014and the soft, turn-the-other-cheek mentality that this particular audience was wont to possess\u2014Trump offered two words of advice to the ten thousand students inside the Liberty auditorium: \u201cGet even.\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>For his part, Falwell lauded Trump as \u201cone of the greatest visionaries of our time\u201d and \u201cone of the most influential political leaders in the United States.\u201d In front of his students, the university president saluted Trump for having \u201csingle-handedly forced President Obama to release his birth certificate,\u201d and then awarded him an honorary doctorate.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The NPR host asked Jeffress for his response. \u201cI don\u2019t want some meek and mild leader or somebody who\u2019s going to turn the other cheek,\u201d Jeffress told the host. \u201cI want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation.\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The corner of Jeffress\u2019s office was a shrine\u2014his secretary used that specific word to describe it\u2014to President Donald J. Trump.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>\u201cWho\u2019s preaching to them about idolatry? I mean, really, in evangelical churches, how many sermons are people hearing about idolatry of any kind, much less national idolatry?\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>When I pressed him on these beliefs\u2014offering evidence that Biden won legitimately, and probing for the source of his conviction\u2014Tony did not budge. He is as convinced that Trump won the 2020 election, he told me, as he is that Jesus rose from the dead two thousand years ago.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>By the end of Barton\u2019s presentation, there wasn\u2019t much ambiguity about what the white, conservative Christians in the audience needed to do to take America back\u2014or who they needed to take it back from.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>As recently as five or six years earlier, even as the evangelical-political brand was becoming more disputatious, it would have been scandalous to see such vile and violent symbolism at an event associated with Christianity. But Ralph Reed didn\u2019t really care. He was giving the people what they wanted. He was giving them Donald J. Trump.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The enemy was people who failed to appreciate how endangered their kingdom was, people who would let principles and laws obstruct their quest for power. The enemy was people like Mike Pence.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Maldonado said that Christians had a responsibility before God to expose voter fraud because \u201cJesus Himself was the first politician to walk the earth.\u201d I replied by mentioning how Jesus told Pontius Pilate, before His execution, that His kingdom was not of this world. \u201cNo. It is of this world,\u201d Maldonado told me. \u201cGod gave us this country. We are the keepers of this kingdom. And right now, we are allowing the enemy to take it from us.\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Winning campaigns had become more important than winning converts; scolding the culture had become more important than sanctifying the Church.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I read Tim Alberta&#8217;s book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism using the Libby app from my public library. It is a depressing analysis of how idolatry infiltrated the American Evangelical church. Tim has researched and interviewed popular church leaders who have succumbed to the same power [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":361,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}