In my last post, I wrote about my experiences visiting nine different evangelical churches (plus a Franklin Graham rally). I wanted to talk to people who attended those services to understand what drew them to the church and what kept them coming back. The paradox of megachurches is that it is their small groups that keep people engaged. Once you decide to become a member, you join a group of 10 or so people who meet weekly at someone’s house for dinner and Bible study. It is there that people find their deepest connections to the church, not through the large-scale, showy Sunday service, which is intended to attract the masses of “unchurched” people. It is difficult for adults to make friends, and smart church leaders know that people will not forge friendships if left to their own devices. Evangelical churches are intentionally designed to foster these relationships through their small groups, classes, and volunteer requirements.
A main reason why I wanted to write about evangelicals is that they are a deeply committed, cohesive group with an outsize influence in our country. White evangelicals are the most important (and reliable) voting bloc for the Republican Party. At the services I attended, I did not hear many overt political messages. Most pastors referenced Bible passages projected on large screens and offered practical guidance about being better Christians, parents, and spouses. But there was one service that left me quite shaken.
The service was attended by a few thousand people — the crowd was overwhelmingly white — and I got there early to find a good seat. I spoke with two friendly couples seated next to me who said they enjoyed the “Bible-based” aspect of the church in contrast to others. After a variety of high-energy songs, the longtime pastor stepped up to deliver his remarks, which startled me so much I recorded them on my phone. He mentioned that his wife had looked out at the vast crowd and said it made her “so angry that they’re trying to steal this from us.” The line received big applause.
Let’s pause here because the feeling of embattlement runs deep in evangelicalism. They have historically felt under siege from secular culture (and even from mainline Protestants, with some justification) and thus must fight to protect their freedoms. There always has to be an enemy, in this case, progressives who teach “critical race theory” in schools and want to “tear down our monuments,” in the words of the pastor. (I overheard a group of people complaining about “CRT” before the service. They had seen coverage about it on Fox News.) “They tell us not to teach American history any longer in school because if they wipe out all the good things about this nation, then they can supplant it with their evil,” he said.
Christian education, like his church’s school, was the last line of defense. This was another classic evangelical response to cultural change: create a closed system and characterize any criticism of it as an attack on religious freedom. Much like Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed did years earlier, the pastor told people to run for office — not just federal or state offices, but local school boards and city councils. “Your church is important in the fight against everything that’s coming at us from the evil side of the fence,” he concluded.
After the service, I turned to the people I had spoken to earlier and said I felt the pastor’s statements were inappropriate. Characterizing entire classes of people and their ideas as “evil” and insinuating that the people at the church were the true patriots were off-putting to me, I said. They responded that the pastor was right to say that their freedoms could be taken away, even though no one hindered us from coming there to worship at what seemed to be a thriving, prosperous church campus. I brought up the riot at the Capitol in which far-right groups tried to overturn an election, and the man sitting next to me equated it to the burning of cities in the summer of 2020 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. He also pointed out that Donald Trump asked people to protest peacefully at his “Stop the Steal” rally on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.
We parted with an “agree to disagree” amicability, and one man even asked for my phone number to invite me to join their small group session later in the week for “hamburgers and Bible study.” I was left with an unsettling feeling that these were everyday, nice folks who truly believe they are patriots defending America against perceived evils. The pastor who tapped into this idea declined my request for an interview, which is one of the reasons I’m not naming him or his church here. However, I did talk to other evangelical leaders who spoke frankly on the record about the commingling of religion and partisan politics. More on that next time.