Judy: The supreme court's leaked
draft opinion to overturn roe V.
Wade has brought the
intersection of politics and
religion to the forefront.
The relationship between the two
has a long and complicated
history but one trend has stood
out.
The evangelical churches swing
the far right.
Reporter: A staff writer at the
atlantic whose most recent
article entitled how politics
poisoned the evangelical church
delves into this issue and he
joins me now.
Welcome back to the "Newshour."
This is a tradition that you are
familiar with personally.
You have grown up in the
evangelical church and around
evangelical churches and
professionally you have been
reporting in these communities
for years.
Big picture, why did you decide
to return to report on it with
this deep dive?
>> What is most striking to me
at this point is just what we
have seen as a confluence of
events and factors and
circumstances.
You have these massive cultural
divisions in the church over
everything from discussions of
human sexuality and abortion to
race relations to the me too
movement and sexual abuse.
All of this swirling creating a
perfect storm inside the church
where decades-old alignments,
theologically, politically and
culturally our fracturing in
real-time.
What you're seeing now is a
massive realignment in which a
lot of folks who have been
members of the same churches for
many years, who called a church
in their community home have
abruptly left and relocated
somewhere -- sometimes down the
road to another church or a new
church and those churches most
often are not only reflecting
their own partisan views more
accurately but those churches
tend to be substantially further
to the right and that really
represents a sea change the
evangelical movement.
Reporter: When we talk about
evangelicals, we are talking
about an overwhelmingly white
group.
People who self identify as
evangelical, 76% are white,
largely conservative.
You profile in great detail a
number of people in the
community and a number of
pastors that you meet with
including Ken brown and bell.
You said in leading their
predominately white
congregations, they have come to
agree on one important thing.
They both believe there is a war
for the soul of the American
church.
How does that show up in their
ministry?
>> It is fascinating.
Bill leads a church in my
hometown in Brighton, Michigan.
He became a celebrity overnight
in his community and the reason
his church grew is because he
refused to close down his church
and comply with government
regulations at the beginning of
the covid pandemic.
Before this was seen as an
explicitly partisan political
He and his church decided to
make it one and they have reaped
a whirlwind from it.
They saw their church grow from
about 100 people on any given
Sunday and of course, in another
suburb in Detroit is Ken brown's
church who has seen his own
congregation lurch to the right
in a dangerous appreciation for
conspiracy theorizing and far
right French politics.
Ken brown around the time the
other pastor was exploiting it
for the growth and gain of his
church, Ken brown decided to do
the opposite and he decided to
put his foot down and begin
challenging his own congregants
and make sure that his church
would not become radicalized in
the way that others were.
Reporter: When you talk to
people in the community that see
their participation in the
church as part of their battle
for the soul of the country,
what about abortion?
You are talking about a group
that has long been opposed to
abortion rights in the country.
What does this supreme court
leak mean for them moving
>> Many of those voters, if the
issue is the federal lies and
pushed back to the states, many
voters will now have to confront
an altogether different calculus
in November of an election year
in which it is not clear whether
or not abortion from the great
single issue driver that has
galvanized so many churches and
frankly, which has invited so
much of this partisan political
activity from churches in recent
decades, whether that will now
be decentralized and whether you
will see more activity on the
ground at the local and state
level with much more church
involvement in those races
rather than at the top of the
ticket.
That is something a lot of
churches are working through and
we will see how it plays out.
Reporter: When you look back,
there has always been an
intersection of politics and
faith among evangelicals.
You think to the 1980's and the
moral majority.
You write about the evolution
and how it is causing fractures.
How do you think this political
influence will be?
>> What sets this moment apart a
bit is the fact that for moral
majority in its heyday, there
was a real belief that they were
saving America from itself.
That there was great momentum on
their side in this fight as they
saw it to restore the Christian
character of this nation.
I think what is different now is
that as I write the piece, there
is a certain fatalism that has
set into the evangelical
movement.
The white evangelical church
today is in a real way defined
by a belief that America's best
days are behind it that America
is in big -- inexorable decline
and rather than fighting to save
America as it were or this
idealized version of America,
the battle now is to sort of
carve out their own space and to
prevent the secularization of
all of America and to keep the
wolves at bay.
There is now a sense in which
many white evangelical
Christians are sort of letting
go of the church and clinging
closer to America rather than
the other way around.
Reporter: That is Tim Alberta
from the atlantic and his latest
piece -- how politics poisoned
the evangelical church.
Thank you for your time.