Tim Alberta's "Sermon"
Plus: Belated reactions to the VP Debate
I drove to Colorado Springs on Wednesday to attend the opening event of the Center for the Study of Evangelicals at the University of Colorado — Colorado Springs. Spearheaded by my friend Jeff Scholes (religious studies/philosophy), Paul Miller (history) and George Bayuga (anthropology), the CSE is committed to exploring the nature of evangelicalism in the heart of what was one called “Evangelical Mecca”, Colorado Springs. Launched with a grant from the Henry Luce foundation, it will be a resource for scholars, religious leaders, and community members. They are looking to raise $10,000 toward a matching gift that will provide the CSE with ongoing funding, so feel free to send them a few dollars (I did).
The inaugural speaker was Tim Alberta: staff writer for the Atlantic, Michigan Native, and author of The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism which came out late last year. I enjoyed the book a lot and wrote about it here. It also was a useful resource for my own book1.
I expected Tim to tell stories from his book and maybe give updates on what’s happened since it went to press (maybe including what’s been going on with the pentecostal prophetic movement2). But that’s not what he did.
After paying homage to his late father, an evangelical pastor in Brighton Michigan3, he explained the origins of the word evangelical (Good News). Then he launched into a talk that bordered on a sermon. It even had three points that alliterated.
His three points were Temptation, Threat, and Test. In the first point, he highlighted the temptation of Christ in the desert and how he was offered power in exchange for faithfulness. He spoke of Peter and the ways in which he kept trying to pursue power and strength in place of the ideals of the Kingdom. His second point, Threat, explored the massive social changes that have confronted evangelicals in the last couple of decades. His third point, Test, explored how the Apostle Peter’s epistle tells us taht we shouldn’t be expecting to be in a position of dominance.4
There were a lot of church people in attendance. So his choice of topic was better suited to the crowd than the journalistic/academic talk I was looking for. I think the big takeaway was “it doesn’t have to be like this”.
In my post about the book (and Tim Egan’s), I had written this:
This is a crisis of faith. Why does God need voters to protect him? Don’t they believe that God is sovereign? Doesn’t scripture warn against putting your trust in chariots and armies?
We have a spiritual formation crisis in too many churches. That crisis will leave rank and file evangelicals at the mercy of whatever political leader preys on their fears, whether that’s in 1921 or 2024.
It was a great evening and I’m looking forward to more such events in the future. It’s well worth the drive.
Political junkie that I am, of course I watched the VP Debate on Tuesday night. I meant to write about it Wednesday morning before I was affected by everyone else’s takes but it didn’t happen. I’m prepping for another accreditation visit in a couple of weeks, so it got pushed aside. Then I was tainted by the podcasts I listened to on my way to Colorado Springs.
Tim Walz had foregrounded the debate by making clear he wasn’t a good debater while J.D. Vance had been to Yale Law (and lived online). It wasn’t a surprise that the critics of Walz’s performance highlighted his “Midwest nice” style, looking for the best in his opponent. There were a lot of “I’m sure the Senator would agree…” comments.
Vance tried his best to be engaging (which he apparently cannot do when ordering doughnuts). If you just listened to his tone, it sounded reasonable. Where Trump wouldn’t look at Harris in their debate, it seemed like Vance wouldn’t stop looking at Walz, giving a side-eye to the camera.
Vance seemed to argue that everything wrong with America is because of immigration, repeating his claims about Springfield. It’s curious to me that he’s clear that increased migrant populations put stresses on social services in the community. But as Walz observed, Trump killed the border bill and Vance wouldn’t support it. I really wanted someone to ask Vance why the go-to solution isn’t to provide resources to prop of those social services rather than deport the Haitians.
Vance’s main argument was that all of the proposals that the Harris campaign has made are things that she should have done during her time as VP. I wrote on X in the middle of the debate that if J.D. ever became VP, he’d be stunned at how little autonomy vice presidents have and why they don’t unilaterally pass policy. If I can borrow from Walz, it was just a weird argument. The Walz critics said that he missed too many opportunities to directly attack Vance’s positions.
The big takeaway from the night, according to all the pundits, was Walz’s response to Vance avoiding the 2020 election question. It was, as Walz labelled it, “a damnable non-answer”.
The snap polls after the debate called it a tie and unlikely to shift anyone’s position on the election. I did notice that Walz did better on survey question that asked about issues rather than who won.
As I reflected on the debate, I found myself returning to when I used to teach social psychology. In the section of persuasion, we would talk about the difference between source effects and message effects. Obviously, the best combination is to have a credible source who presents a well articulated message. Having strong source characteristics but a mediocre message is better than having a strong message with weaker source effects.
At least in the short term. Over the long term, the source characteristics get decoupled from the message effects. In the long run, it won’t matter that Vance was a more polished debater than Walz.
What will remain are Vance’s weird attacks on Harris’s supposed power as VP, his doubling down on attacking migrants, his claim to have never favored an abortion ban (just “national standards”) and his damnable non-answer. He should be asked about all of those positions.
Walz may not have been as combative as the press and pundits wanted, but he may appear more trustworthy as time passes.
Matthew Taylor’s new book should be on your reading list.
I told Tim that we used to live on Brighton Road
I didn’t take notes, so these are my takeaways three days later.