2022.05.10 政治如何毒害了福音派教会

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IDEAS
HOW POLITICS POISONED THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH
The movement spent 40 years at war with secular America. Now it’s at war with itself.

By Tim Alberta
Photographs by Jonno Rattman
MAY 10, 2022, 6 AM ET
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“Before i turn to the Word,” the preacher announces, “I’m gonna do another diatribe.”

“Go on!” one man yells. “Amen!” shouts a woman several pews in front of me.

Between 40 minutes of praise music and 40 minutes of preaching is the strangest ritual I’ve ever witnessed inside a house of worship. Pastor Bill Bolin calls it his “diatribe.” The congregants at FloodGate Church, in Brighton, Michigan, call it something else: “Headline News.”

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Bolin, in his mid-60s, is a gregarious man with thick jowls and a thinning wave of dyed hair. His floral shirt is untucked over dark-blue jeans. “On the vaccines …” he begins.

For the next 15 minutes, Bolin does not mention the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, or the life everlasting. Instead, he spouts misinformation and conspiratorial nonsense, much of it related to the “radically dangerous” COVID-19 vaccines. “A local nurse who attends FloodGate, who is anonymous at this time—she reported to my wife the other day that at her hospital, they have two COVID patients that are hospitalized. Two.” Bolin pauses dramatically. “They have 103 vaccine-complication patients.” The crowd gasps.

“How about this one?” Bolin says. He tells of a doctor who claims to know that “between 100 and 200 United States Congress members, plus many of their staffers and family members with COVID, were treated by a colleague of his over the past 15 months … with …” Bolin stops and puts a hand to his ear. A chorus of people responds: “Ivermectin.” Bolin pretends not to hear. “What was that?” he says, leaning over the lectern. This time, they shout: “Ivermectin!” Bolin nods.

This isn’t my first time at FloodGate, so none of what Bolin says shocks me. Yet I’m still struggling to make sense of the place.

photo of man with eyes closed, shouting, with arms spread wide
Bolin in February. After he held indoor Easter services at FloodGate in 2020, in defiance of Michigan’s emergency shutdown orders, attendance at his church soared. (Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic)
Having grown up just down the road, the son of the senior pastor at another church in town, I’ve spent my life watching evangelicalism morph from a spiritual disposition into a political identity. It’s heartbreaking. So many people who love the Lord, who give their time and money to the poor and the mourning and the persecuted, have been reduced to a caricature. But I understand why. Evangelicals—including my own father—became compulsively political, allowing specific ethical arguments to snowball into full-blown partisan advocacy, often in ways that distracted from their mission of evangelizing for Christ. To his credit, even when my dad would lean hard into a political debate, he was careful to remind his church of the appropriate Christian perspective. “God doesn’t bite his fingernails over any of this,” he would say around election time. “Neither should you.”

Brighton is a small town, and I knew the local evangelical scene like it was a second reporting beat. I knew which pastors were feuding; whose congregations were mired in scandal; which church softball teams had a deacon playing shortstop, and which ones stacked their lineups with non-tithing ringers. But FloodGate? I had never heard of FloodGate. And neither had most of the people sitting around me, until recently.

For a decade, Bolin preached to a crowd of about 100 on a typical Sunday. Then came Easter 2020, when Bolin announced that he would hold indoor worship services in defiance of Michigan’s emergency shutdown orders. As word got around the conservative suburbs of Detroit, Bolin became a minor celebrity. Local politicians and activists borrowed his pulpit to promote right-wing interests. FloodGate’s attendance soared as members of other congregations defected to the small roadside church. By Easter 2021, FloodGate was hosting 1,500 people every weekend.

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On this particular fall Sunday, Bolin riffs on everything from California forcing vaccines on schoolchildren to the IRS proposing more oversight of personal banking accounts. He promotes a new book that tells of “how the left has done a power grab to systematically dismantle religion and banish God from the lips, minds, and hearts of believers,” prompting the couple in front of me to make a one-click Amazon purchase. He suggests there is mounting evidence of a stolen election, concluding, “With the information that’s coming out in Arizona and Georgia and other places, I think it’s time for there to be a full audit of all 50 states to find out the level of cheating and the level of manipulation that actually took place.” The people around me cheer.

At one point, Bolin looks up from his notes.

“We had a visitor this morning who said, ‘You know, it’s really refreshing to hear a pastor talk about issues like this.’ ” Basking in the ovation he’s just invited, Bolin adds: “I’m okay talking about these things.”

He asks if he can keep going. The crowd answers with more applause.

Listening to bolin that morning, I kept thinking about another pastor nearby, one who approached his job very differently: Ken Brown.

Brown leads his own ministry, Community Bible Church, in the Detroit suburb of Trenton. I got to know him during the 2020 presidential campaign, when I was writing dispatches from around the country and asking readers about the stories and trends they thought weren’t receiving enough attention. Brown wrote to me explaining the combustible dynamics within the evangelical Church and describing his own efforts—as the conservative pastor of a conservative congregation—to keep his members from being radicalized by the lies of right-wing politicians and media figures.

From the April 2018 issue: Michael Gerson’s cover story on Trump and the evangelical temptation

When we finally met, in the spring of 2021, Brown told me his alarm had only grown. “The crisis for the Church is a crisis of discernment,” he said over lunch. “Discernment”—one’s basic ability to separate truth from untruth—“is a core biblical discipline. And many Christians are not practicing it.” A stocky man with steely blue eyes and a subdued, matter-of-fact tone, Brown struck me as thoroughly disheartened. The pastor said his concern was not simply for his congregation of 300, but for the millions of American evangelicals who had come to value power over integrity, the ephemeral over the eternal, moral relativism over bright lines of right and wrong.

He made a compelling case. So I began checking out his sermons, podcasts, and blog posts.

photo of podcast studio with two men sitting at table with mics and video equipment
Brown (right) in February. When COVID arrived, he launched a podcast to combat misinformation among his congregants. (Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic)
Every time I heard Bolin preach, I could also hear Brown, the pastors’ voices dueling inside my brain. Brown is polished and buttoned-down; Bolin is ostentatious and loud. Brown pastors a traditional church where people wear sweaters and sing softly; Bolin leads a charismatic church where people dress for a barbecue and speak in tongues. Brown is a pastor’s kid and lifelong conservative who’s never had a sip of alcohol; Bolin is an erstwhile “radical liberal” who once got “so high on LSD” that he jumped onstage and grabbed a guitar at a Tom Petty concert.

But in leading their predominantly white, Republican congregations, Brown and Bolin have come to agree on one important thing: Both pastors believe there is a war for the soul of the American Church—and both have decided they cannot stand on the sidelines. They aren’t alone. To many evangelicals today, the enemy is no longer secular America, but their fellow Christians, people who hold the same faith but different beliefs.

How did this happen? For generations, white evangelicals have cultivated a narrative pitting courageous, God-fearing Christians against a wicked society that wants to expunge the Almighty from public life. Having convinced so many evangelicals that the next election could trigger the nation’s demise, Christian leaders effectively turned thousands of churches into unwitting cells in a loosely organized, hazily defined, existentially urgent movement—the types of places where paranoia and falsehoods flourish and people turn on one another.

“Hands down, the biggest challenge facing the Church right now is the misinformation and disinformation coming in from the outside,” Brown said.

Because of this, the pastor told me, he can no longer justify a passive approach from the pulpit. The Church is becoming radicalized—and pastors who don’t address this fact head-on are only contributing to the problem. He understands their reluctance. They would rather keep the peace than risk alienating anyone. The irony, Brown said, is that by pretending that a clash of Christian worldviews isn’t happening, these pastors risk losing credibility with members who can see it unfolding inside their own church.

There is one person Pastor Brown doesn’t have to convince of this: Pastor Bolin.

“The battle lines have been drawn,” Bolin told me, sitting in the back of his darkened sanctuary. “If you’re not taking a side, you’re on the wrong side.”

If this is a tale of two churches, it is also the tale of churches everywhere. It’s the story of millions of American Christians who, after a lifetime spent considering their political affiliations in the context of their faith, are now considering their faith affiliations in the context of their politics.

The first piece of scripture I memorized as a child—the verse that continues to guide my own imperfect walk—is from Paul’s second letter to the early Church in Corinth, Greece. As with most of his letters, the apostle was addressing dysfunction and breakage in the community of believers. “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen,” Paul wrote. “Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Paul’s admonishment of the early Church contains no real ambiguity. Followers of Jesus are to orient themselves toward his enduring promise of salvation, and away from the fleeting troubles of humanity.

Substantial numbers of evangelicals are fleeing their churches, and most of them are moving to ones further to the right.
For much of my lifetime, however, American Christians have done the opposite. Beginning in the 1980s, white evangelicals imposed themselves to an unprecedented degree on the government and the country’s core institutions. Once left to cry jeremiads about civilizational decline—having lost fights over sex and sexuality, drugs, abortion, pornography, standards in media and education, prayer in public schools—conservative Christians organized their churches, marshaled their resources, and leveraged their numbers, regaining the high ground, for a time, in some of these culture wars.

Short-lived victories, however, came at a long-term cost. Evangelical leaders set something in motion decades ago that pastors today can no longer control. Not only were Christians conditioned to understand their struggle as one against flesh and blood, fixated on earthly concerns, a fight for a kingdom of this world—all of which runs directly counter to the commands of scripture—they were indoctrinated with a belief that because the stakes were getting so high, any means was justified.

Which brings us to Donald Trump.

When Trump was elected thanks to a historic showing among white evangelicals—81 percent voted for him over Hillary Clinton—the victory was rightly viewed as the apex of the movement’s power. But this was, in many ways, also the beginning of its unraveling. The “battle lines” Bolin described as having emerged over the past five years—cultural reckonings over racism and sexual misconduct; a lethal pandemic and fierce disputes over vaccines and government mandates; allegations of election theft that led to a siege of the U.S. Capitol; and, underlying all of this, the presidency, prosecution, and martyring of Trump himself—have carved up every institution of American society. The evangelical Church is no exception.

Peter Wehner: Evangelicals made a bad bargain with Trump

The nation’s largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is bleeding members because of ferocious infighting over race relations, women serving in leadership, accountability for sexual misconduct, and other issues. The United Methodist Church, America’s second-largest denomination, is headed toward imminent divorce over irreconcilable social and ideological divisions. Smaller denominations are losing affiliate churches as pastors and congregations break from their leadership over many of the same cultural flash points, choosing independence over associating with those who do not hold their views.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Christians, like Americans from every walk of life, are self-selecting into cliques of shared habits and thinking. But what’s notable about the realignment inside the white evangelical Church is its asymmetry. Pastors report losing an occasional liberal member because of their refusal to speak on Sunday mornings about bigotry or poverty or social injustice. But these same pastors report having lost—in the past few years alone—a significant portion of their congregation because of complaints that they and their staff did not advance right-wing political doctrines. Hard data are difficult to come by; churches are not required to disclose attendance figures. But a year’s worth of conversations with pastors, denominational leaders, evangelical scholars, and everyday Christians tells a clear story: Substantial numbers of evangelicals are fleeing their churches, and most of them are moving to ones further to the right.

Christianity has traditionally been seen as a stabilizing, even moderating, influence on American life. In 1975, more than two-thirds of Americans expressed “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church,” according to Gallup, and as of 1985, “organized religion was the most revered institution” in American life. Today, Gallup reports, just 37 percent of Americans have confidence in the Church. This downward spiral owes principally to two phenomena: the constant stench of scandal, with megachurches and prominent leaders imploding on what seems like a weekly basis; and the growing perception that Christians are embracing extremist views. One rarely needs to read to the bottom of a poll to learn that the religious group most opposed to vaccines, most convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, most inclined to subscribe to QAnon conspiracy theories is white evangelicals.

From the June 2020 issue: Adrienne LaFrance on how QAnon is more important than you think

Many right-wing pastors have formed alliances—with campaign consultants, education activists, grassroots groups, even MAGA-in-miniature road shows promoting claims of an assault on American sovereignty—that bring a steady flow of fresh faces into their buildings. From there, the fusion of new Republican orthodoxy with old conservative theology is seamless. This explains why, even during a period of slumping church attendance, the number of white evangelicals has grown: The Pew Research Center reports that more and more white Trump supporters began self-identifying as evangelicals during his presidency, whether or not they attended church.

Meanwhile, other pastors feel trapped. One stray remark could split their congregation, or even cost them their job. Yet a strictly apolitical approach can be counterproductive; their unwillingness to engage only invites more scrutiny. The whisper campaigns brand conservative pastors as moderate, and moderate pastors as Marxists. In this environment, a church leader’s stance on biblical inerrancy is less important than whether he is considered “woke.” His command of scripture is less relevant than suspicions about how he voted in the last election.

“A pastor asked me the other day, ‘What percentage of churches would you say are grappling with these issues?’ And I said, ‘One hundred percent. All of them,’ ” Russell Moore, the public theologian at Christianity Today, told me. “I don’t know of a single church that’s not affected by this.”

More than a few times, I’ve heard casual talk of civil war inside places that purport to worship the Prince of Peace.
Once the president of the Southern Baptist policy arm, Moore quit the denomination in 2021 after enduring years of “psychological warfare” for his opposition to Trumpism and advocacy for racial reconciliation. In the time since, as he’s traveled the country and counseled pastors on the intensifying divisions within their congregations, Moore has become convinced that the problem of political fanaticism inside the Church poses real threats outside it.

Peter Wehner: The scandal rocking the evangelical world

“Honestly, I’m more concerned than I was a year ago—and that’s saying something,” Moore said. “It may sound like Chicken Little. But I’m telling you, there is a serious effort to turn this ‘two countries’ talk into something real. There are Christians taking all the populist passions and adding a transcendent authority to it.”

Moore is not exaggerating. More than a few times, I’ve heard casual talk of civil war inside places that purport to worship the Prince of Peace. And, far from feeling misplaced, these conversations draw legitimacy from a sense of divine justice.

The Church is not a victim of America’s civic strife. Instead, it is one of the principal catalysts.

“Iwas a card-carrying member—literally, a card-carrying member—of the Moral Majority,” Brown told me.

It was 1981. Brown was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and for the first time, the Christian kid who’d graduated from a Christian high school was outside his bubble. He felt threatened by what he saw all around him: moral relativism, shameless sexuality, far-left professors who openly disparaged his faith. Brown found an identity in the nascent evangelical movement that aimed to restore the religious values of America’s founding. He read the books, watched the videos, listened to the radio programs. Brown committed himself not just to the dogma of the religious right, but to the precepts of political conservatism. For many years—while getting married, starting a career in technology, having children—he remained rooted in both.

When Brown felt called to join the clergy, he enrolled at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. It was there that he began to question the union of his politics and his faith. The more he studied scripture, the less confident he felt in the people he’d listened to for so long. Some of the Christian right’s leading voices—people like Paul Weyrich, of the Heritage Foundation, and James Dobson, of Focus on the Family—promoted visions of “postmillennialism,” a controversial interpretation of scripture that encourages amassing political power as a means of building a kingdom in this life parallel to that in heaven.

“I started to realize that a lot of these religious-right guys weren’t actually trained theologians. A lot of them didn’t know what they were talking about, biblically,” Brown said. “I worried that could come back to haunt us.”

Alan Jacobs: The word evangelical has lost its meaning

Just when Brown’s passion for politics was beginning to abate, Bill Clinton was elected president. “The apocalypse,” Brown recalled, laughing. Like so many evangelicals, the pastor viewed Clinton as the manifestation of America’s moral decline. He obsessed over the president’s every scandal and deception.

But Brown was growing equally disillusioned with Christian conservatives and their tactics. Some of the same people who tormented Clinton and lectured on morality were just as ethically compromised as he was—but because they played for what was ostensibly God’s chosen political team, they faced little scrutiny. “Back when I believed there was an honorable alliance between Republicans and evangelicals, it was because I believed that our values would ultimately prevail, come what may on this Earth, whether we win or lose some election,” Brown said. “But over time, there was a shift. Losing was no longer an option. It became all about winning.”

Late in Clinton’s tenure, Brown, who was serving as an associate pastor in Flat Rock, Michigan, was commissioned to plant a new church down the road in Trenton. He would have his own flock to look after. He didn’t have time to worry about politics. Aside from preaching against abortion—an issue Brown sees as inherently biblical—he kept politics out of his sermons. George W. Bush, whom evangelicals claimed as one of their own, was popular with Brown’s congregants. It was a period of harmony inside the church.

“And then,” Brown said, “came Barack Obama.”

It felt silly at first—jokes about Obama’s birth certificate, comments about his faith. But over time, the discourse inside the church became more worrisome. One day, a longtime member told Brown something that at the time sounded shocking: The president wore a secret Islamic ring. Brown demanded to know the woman’s source. “And she sent me this fake, Photoshopped thing. It didn’t take long to debunk,” Brown told me. “So I wrote her back and said, ‘Hey, here’s the deal: If you have forwarded this to anyone, you have an obligation to go back to them and correct it. Because Christians cannot foment falsehood. We are people of truth.’ ”

Adam Serwer: Birtherism of a nation

The woman never replied. She still attends Community Bible; the two have not spoken about the incident since. But it was a watershed moment for Brown. “That was the beginning of a new ministry for me,” he said.

Brown wasn’t faced with just Obama-centric conspiracy theories. People were beginning to confront him with questions and concerns he couldn’t comprehend. Once, when he visited Washington, D.C., for a pastors’ conference, he returned home to learn that people in the church had been entertaining a rumor started by one of its members. Having read blog posts about a FEMA program that recruited clergy to help calm communities after natural disasters, this man believed that Brown had gone to D.C. for covert training—and that he and other pastors were preparing to help the government enforce martial law.

“Good people were taken in by this stuff,” Brown said. “They really wondered whether I was a part of this secret government plot.”

Even as Brown became more vocal, he knew he was being drowned out. Fear, the pastor says, was taking root inside Community Bible. Some of it was explainable: The cultural climate was getting chilly for evangelicals; the Great Recession was squeezing his blue-collar congregation. But much of the anxiety felt amorphous, cryptic—and manufactured. However effective Brown might be at soothing his congregants for 45 minutes on a Sunday morning, “Rush [Limbaugh] had them for three hours a day, five days a week, and Fox News had them every single night.” Brown kept reminding his people that scripture’s most cited command is “Fear not.” But he couldn’t break through. Looking back, he understands why.

“Biblically, fear is primarily reverence and awe. We revere God; we hold him in awe,” Brown told me. “You can also have reverence and awe for other things—really, anything you put great value on. I think, in conservative-Christian circles, we place a lot of value on the life we’ve known. The earthly life we have known. The American life we’ve known … If we see threats to something we value, we fear—that is, we revere, we hold in inappropriate awe—those who can take it away. That’s Barack Obama. That’s the left.”

An urgency—bordering on panic—could be felt inside the Church. For white evangelicals, the only thing more galvanizing than perceptions of their idealized nation slipping away was the conviction that their favored political party was unwilling to fight for the country’s survival.

“There was this sense that America is under siege, that the barbarians were at the gates,” Brown said. “Then along comes Donald Trump, who says he can make America great again. And for evangelicals, it was time to play for keeps.”

When i first walked into the sanctuary at FloodGate, I didn’t see a cross. But I did see American flags—lots of them. There were flags on the screens behind the stage, flags on the literature being handed out. There was even a flag on the face mask of the single person I spotted wearing one. It was May 2021, and the church was hosting an event for Stand Up Michigan, a group that had formed to protest pandemic shutdowns, masking, and, most recently, vaccine mandates. This was the launch of the group’s Livingston County chapter.

While covering presidential campaigns, I had attended political rallies at churches across Iowa, South Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere. But I’d never seen anything quite like this. The parking lot swarmed with vehicles covered in partisan slogans. The narthex was jammed with people scribbling on clipboards. (I thought they were doing preemptive COVID contact tracing; they were actually enlisting volunteers for political activities.) Inside the sanctuary, attendees wore MAGA caps and Second Amendment–related shirts. I didn’t see a single person carrying a Bible.

For the next three hours, the church became a coliseum. The executive director of Stand Up Michigan decried the “evil” Democrats in charge of the state; said there was “probably some truth” to QAnon, which holds that satanic liberal elites are cannibalizing children for sustenance; and warned that Christians are too “nice.” The chair of the county board of commissioners railed against diversity training and critical race theory. A state senator tried to play to the base—joking that she’d asked God why he’d allowed Gretchen Whitmer to become governor—but then cowered when the base turned on her, with people standing to demand that she answer the question of whether Trump had won Michigan in 2020. Visibly shaken, she refused to answer.

The table had been set by Bill Bolin himself. Introduced at the beginning of the program as the “rock star” who disobeyed the government, Bolin took the stage and wasted no time before showing his visitors just how uncouth one could be in the pulpit. He began by suggesting that COVID-19 was “possibly being manipulated with the funding and blessing of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the man who put us in masks.” When he heard scattered boos, Bolin said: “That’s right, go ahead!” The sanctuary filled with jeers. A minute later, the pastor was boasting about how far he’d taken his insults of Whitmer. “Probably the most egregious thing I ever did,” Bolin said, chuckling, “was I did do a Nazi salute and called her ‘Whitler.’ ”

Photo of man with eyes closed and head down, with a number of other people placing hands on his body and praying
Bolin praying with FloodGate congregants in February. The pastor initially opposed Donald Trump’s candidacy, but he says he came to “love” the former president. (Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic)
In my ensuing visits to FloodGate, and in long conversations with Bolin, it became clear that this type of extreme political expression is central to his church’s identity, and to his own.

Bolin told me that after a troubled childhood in Southern California—he said he began drinking and doing drugs at age 9—he discovered an interest in political activism. He became infatuated with Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., committing himself to the art of protesting: marches, sit-ins, hunger strikes. He was a “proud hippie” more interested in the occult than in any organized religion.

Then, when he was 20 years old, he was packing for a cross-country hitchhiking trip and discovered a Bible that had been given to him years earlier. “I lifted it up—and remember, I’m a supernaturalist—and felt like my arm was on fire,” Bolin told me. “And I heard a voice: ‘Return to me, or you will die.’ ”

Bolin got a ride to Reno, Nevada, where he had a Christian cousin. They went to church together. “There was an altar call, and I went down and got baptized that same afternoon,” Bolin said. “I’ve never been the same. It changed who I am.”

That change included his politics. Setting out on his Christian journey—working as a substance-abuse counselor, attending Bible college, pastoring in churches from California to Pennsylvania—Bolin found that many of his old stances were incompatible with his new faith. In particular, his views of abortion and religious freedom were turned upside down. One thing didn’t change. “I have always been prone to protesting,” Bolin told me. “Then and now.”

Much like Pastor Brown, Bolin married conservative theology to conservative ideology. But whereas Brown became disillusioned by the religious right’s hypocrisy and political ruthlessness, Bolin believes that evangelicals didn’t go far enough. “Christians have languished with their participation in politics,” he said, “which is one of the reasons we’re in this dire position as a nation.”

When Bolin arrived at FloodGate in 2010, the church—founded in 1972 and formerly called the Father’s House—was mostly apolitical. Bolin changed that. “Pastors used to be the primary influencers in their communities in determining who we elected,” Bolin said. He aimed to restore that tradition in his own ministry.

Some people left the church; others joined. All the while, his congregation hovered right around 100 people. He leaned into plenty of political controversies—including Trump’s candidacy—but his membership stayed flat. Looking back, it’s fair to wonder whether that’s because he was on the wrong side of that particular issue. “Donald Trump was the last person I wanted elected president,” Bolin said, letting go of a belly laugh. He thought Trump was a charlatan, a lifelong Democrat who was defrauding conservative voters.

“He proved me wrong,” Bolin said. “He turned out to be the most pro-life president we’ve ever had. His influence on the courts will change the country for the next 50 years.” Bolin sounded ashamed of having ever doubted Trump. He rattled off the former president’s accomplishments. He rolled his eyes at the “condescending” Christians who criticized Trump’s ethics. He defended the January 6 insurrection, which “was not a big deal.” In fact, Bolin himself nearly traveled to Washington that day “because a lot of people from our church were going, and because I love Donald Trump.”

The Trump conversion experience—having once been certain of his darkness, suddenly awakening to see his light—is not to be underestimated, especially when it touches people whose lives revolve around notions of transformation. And yet, it reflects a phenomenon greater than Trump himself. Modern evangelicalism is defined by a certain fatalism about the nation’s character. The result is not merely a willingness to act with desperation and embrace what is wrong; it can be a belief, bordering on a certainty, that what is wrong is actually right.

In the fall of 2016, Ken Brown informed his congregants that he planned to vote for Trump. His choice came down to abortion, he explained, and the Supreme Court appointments in the balance. Still, the pastor emphasized Trump’s personal failings and warned against political idolatry. He reminded his people that Christians aspire to a higher standard than “the lesser of two evils.” Brown felt confident they understood him.

His confidence was misplaced. Over the next four years, the pastor watched as many of his people became MAGA disciples. They were glued to Fox News. Some posted ugly, combative messages on social media. A few were devotees of Alex Jones, the internet-radio host famous for his hateful conspiracy theories.

When COVID arrived—bringing with it “a new flood of misinformation”—Brown and his leadership team wrote a letter to the congregation laying out their reasons for closing the church and specifying the sources they were relying on. Brown also launched a blog and a podcast, vying for his members’ attention at a moment when so many were suddenly stuck at home and swimming in hearsay and innuendo.

From the October 2018 issue; The tiny blond bible teacher taking on the evangelical political machine

Jen Furkas, who began attending Community Bible in 2003, wondered if Brown’s efforts were coming too late.

“There are people at the church, people who I’d consider friends, who would have said very hurtful, very unbiblical things,” Furkas, the assistant principal of a local public school, told me. “And it didn’t just start during COVID.”

Furkas describes herself as a moderate Democrat—which, she joked, “makes me the most liberal person at our church.” When Trump became the Republican nominee and Pastor Brown shared his intention to vote for him, Furkas was so disappointed that she left the church.

She spent a year shopping around. But none of the other congregations felt right. One Sunday, Furkas came back to Community Bible and noticed something different about the place. “It was Ken,” she said. “He had changed. This wasn’t the same guy who was sold out to this mindset of Well, it all comes back to abortion and the courts. It was clear that he’d seen how this fanaticism had infected the church.”

Furkas recalled how, a few years ago, Brown delivered a sermon reminding everyone whom Jesus had come to save. Clicking through a PowerPoint on the sanctuary’s projector screens, Brown showed pictures of well-known faces. It was good for some laughs and lighthearted commentary. Then he put up a photograph of Ilhan Omar, the Democratic representative from Minnesota and a Muslim, wearing her hijab. “What about her?” Brown asked. “Did Jesus come for her?” The room was silent.

“I love the evolution from Ken,” Furkas said. “But I know it’s come at a cost.”

Every person I spoke with from Community Bible brought up the fact that some longtime members had quit the church. Brown acknowledged that his tactics had pushed some people away, but he shrugged off the number, saying “four or five families” and “a few individuals” had left. “Sometimes, when someone leaves,” he said, “that means you’ve been successful in protecting the rest of your flock.”

But not everyone who’s dissatisfied with a church leaves—at least, not right away. At a place like Community Bible, with a core of members who have been together for years, the concern isn’t necessarily a mass exodus. It’s a mass estrangement, in which people stop listening to the pastor or stop trusting one another—or both—and the church slowly loses its cohesiveness.

“What I worry about is people tuning Ken out—people who don’t like his politics, and because of that, they stop letting him be their pastor,” Bob Fite, a high-school history teacher who has attended Community Bible for more than a decade, told me. “And honestly, he’s making me nervous. I have tried to tell him, ‘Stay in your lane.’ ”

Fite said that Brown is “losing people” with his political agenda. One of those people is B.J. Fite—Bob’s son. B.J. was raised evangelical, graduated from Bob Jones University, and believes it’s his responsibility to be active in the Church. He’s just not sure anymore that Community Bible is a good fit for someone like him—deeply conservative, a Trump voter, a consumer of right-wing media.

When I met B.J. it was apparent that he was wrestling with whether to leave Community Bible. In fact, he said he’d been engaged in a weeks-long text exchange with Pastor Brown. B.J. was upset that Brown had released multiple podcast episodes vilifying the people responsible for the January 6 insurrection. He also resented the fact that Brown had written blog posts endorsing COVID vaccines and, B.J. felt, had minimized the concerns of people—like himself—who worried they would lose their jobs for refusing the shot.

From the January/February 2022 issue: Tim Alberta on Peter Meijer and what the GOP does to its own dissenters

“There are different truths in politics—Trump’s truth, Biden’s truth, whatever,” B.J. told me. “But in church, there’s supposed to be one truth. Why aren’t we just sticking to that truth?”

Bob Fite said he addressed these concerns in a letter to Pastor Brown and the leadership team. But nothing changed. Bob can’t imagine leaving the place he loves, the place where he and his wife, Valerie, teach Sunday school. But he also can’t imagine standing by while Brown pushes B.J. out the door.

“I’ve been going to church with a lot of apprehension,” Bob said. “I told Valerie, ‘One day, if Ken says the wrong thing, I might have to stand up and leave.’ ”

Bill bolin knows something about people leaving. About 90 percent of his Sunday crowd at FloodGate has migrated from other congregations over the past two years. Almost all of them, he says, came bearing grievances against their former pastors. Yet most had never considered looking elsewhere. It took a pandemic, and the temporary closing of their churches, for them to sever ties.

As of the spring of 2020, Jeff and Deidre Myers belonged to Oak Pointe Milford, a suburban-Detroit church. Though they were frustrated that the preaching wasn’t more overtly political, they were highly engaged: leading a marriage ministry, active with other homeschoolers. They were even friends with the pastor, Paul Jenkinson, and his wife.

And then COVID hit. When the church closed, rumors flew about the board of elders holding contentious late-night meetings to debate pandemic protocols. The longer the church remained locked, the more people speculated on who was casting the deciding votes. Around that time, George Floyd was murdered. Oak Pointe Novi, the parent church, introduced a video series called “Conversations,” which featured interviews with Black pastors and social-justice activists.

“I thought I was going to vomit,” Deidre told me, recalling her reaction to one episode. Jeff added: “It was the pastor’s son”—who, he claimed, is said to be a member of antifa in Canada—“lecturing on white privilege and critical race theory.” (I could not confirm that the pastor’s son is, in fact, a member of antifa in Canada; several people who know the family laughed when I asked the question.)

After an outcry, the pastor apologized for “the ruptures that have occurred,” while the elders issued a separate statement denouncing critical race theory. According to Jeff and Deidre, they were just two members in a stampede out of Oak Pointe.

Deidre saw friends from other congregations, also displaced by shutdowns, posting on Facebook about FloodGate. The first service she attended—in which Pastor Bolin unapologetically advocated for people, like Jeff and Deidre, who felt cheated by their old churches—brought her to tears. Jeff was equally moved. They had found a new home.

Brown hears the grousing that his political commentary takes the focus off Jesus. But his entire rationale rests on the belief that Jesus long ago became a secondary focus for some in the church.
When Jeff and Deidre met with Jenkinson to inform him that they were leaving the Milford church, tensions ran high. Their worst fears had already been confirmed: A friend on the elder board had told them that Jenkinson—their pastor, their friend—had argued to keep the church closed. Jeff and Deidre pressed Jenkinson on the church’s refusal to engage with politics. When they asked the pastor why, despite being personally pro-life, he had never preached on abortion, they got the response they’d dreaded. “He said, ‘I’d lose half my congregation,’ ” Jeff recalled.

Jenkinson remembers the conversation somewhat differently. Jeff and Deidre, he tells me, weren’t just pushing him on abortion; they were challenging the pastor’s policy of political neutrality from the pulpit, and accusing him of taking the easy way out of the debates fracturing his church.

“And I remember telling them, ‘The harder thing to do is what I’m doing,’ ” the pastor says. “This is how you lose people. How you gain people is, you pick a tribe, raise the flag, and be really loud about it. That’s how you gain a bunch of numbers. That is so easy to do. And it cheapens the Gospel.”

Whatever the specifics of their exchange, to Jeff and Deidre, Jenkinson’s stance amounted to cowardice. “I realize these are hard conversations, but the reason we left Milford is they were never willing to have the conversation,” Jeff said. “They were just trying to keep everybody happy. Paul is a conservative, but his conservatism has no teeth.”

Tony DeFelice is another new arrival at FloodGate—and another Christian who got tired of his pastor lacking teeth. At his previous church, in the Democratic-leaning Detroit suburb of Plymouth, “they did not speak a single word about politics. Not on a single issue,” he told me. “When we got to FloodGate, it confirmed for us what we’d been missing.”

DeFelice, a building inspector, had been attending the Plymouth church for 14 years when the pandemic began. He and his wife, Linda, had friends and family there; one of their daughters still works on the church staff. Tony and Linda had their share of complaints—the church was too moderate and “too seeker-friendly,” catering more to newcomers than longtime Christians—but they had no plans to leave.

And then, in March 2020, everything fell apart.

“We didn’t leave the church. The church left us,” Tony told me. “COVID, the whole thing, is the biggest lie perpetrated on humanity that we’re ever going to see in our lifetime. And they fell for it.”

Tony and Linda say FloodGate’s style—and Bolin’s fiery messages on topics like vaccines and voter fraud—has changed the way they view their responsibilities as Christians. “This is about good against evil. That’s the world we live in. It’s a spiritual battle, and we are right at the precipice of it,” Tony said.

With the country on the brink of defeat at the hands of secularists and liberals, Tony no longer distinguishes between the political and the spiritual. An attack on Donald Trump is an attack on Christians. He believes the 2020 election was stolen as part of a “demonic” plot against Christian America. And he’s confident that righteousness will prevail: States are going to begin decertifying the results of the last election, he says, and Trump will be returned to office.

“The truth is coming out,” Tony told me.

When I pressed him on these beliefs—offering evidence that Joe Biden won legitimately, and probing for the source of his conviction—Tony did not budge. He is just as convinced that Trump won the 2020 election, he said, as he is that Jesus rose from the dead 2,000 years ago.

Nestled in a wooded stretch of exurban Wilson County, Tennessee, the campus of Greg Locke’s Global Vision Bible Church feels more like a compound. Heaps of felled oak trees border the property, evidence of hurried expansion. A rutted gravel parking lot climbs high away from the main road. At the summit stands an enormous white tent. A sign reads this is a mask free church campus.

A photograph of the old Global Vision building and the inside of the new tent.
The old Global Vision building (right) held about 250 people. Now the congregation gathers in a tent that fits 3,000 (left). (Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic)
Inside, men wearing earpieces and camouflage pants guard the entrance. Behind them, many hundreds of people jump up and down on a floor of cedar chips. Locke salutes them as “soldiers rising up in God’s army.” Some hear this more literally than others: I spot a few folks carrying guns.

Most evangelicals don’t think of themselves as Locke’s target demographic. The pastor has suggested that autistic children are oppressed by demons. He organized a book-burning event to destroy occult-promoting Harry Potter novels and other books and games. He has called President Biden a “sex-trafficking, demon-possessed mongrel.”

If this all sounds a bit strange—ominous, or even “dangerous,” as one local pastor warned me the night before I visited—well, sure. But strange compared to what? Having spent my entire life in and around the evangelical Church, I had in recent years become desensitized to all the rhetoric of militarism and imminent Armageddon. The churches that host election-fraud profiteers and weeknight speakers denouncing the pseudo-satanic agenda of Black Lives Matter—churches that consider themselves mainstream—were starting to feel like old hat. It was time to visit the furthest fringes. It was time to go see Greg Locke.

Not long ago, Locke was a small-time Tennessee preacher. Then, in 2016, he went viral with a selfie video, shot outside his local Target, skewering the company’s policies on bathrooms and gender identity. The video has collected 18 million views, and it launched Locke as a distinct evangelical brand. He cast himself on social media as a lone voice of courage within Christendom. He aligned himself with figures like Dinesh D’Souza and Charlie Kirk to gain clout as one of the Christian right’s staunchest Trump supporters. All the while, his congregation swelled—moving from their old church building, which seated 250, into a large outdoor tent, then into an even bigger tent, and eventually into the current colossus. The tent holds 3,000 people and would be the envy of Barnum & Bailey.

Which is fitting—because what’s happening at Global Vision can feel less like a revival than a circus.

One Sunday morning in November, Locke, prowling the stage in a bright-orange tie, asks how many people have traveled to his tent from outside Tennessee. Scores of people stand up. “And this is every weekend!” Locke cries in his hickory drawl. Eager to put on a show for the visitors, Locke announces that his special guest—he tries to book one every Sunday—is the actor John Schneider, who played Bo Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard. The crowd erupts and everyone hoists their phone in the air, heralding Schneider’s arrival like Catholics awaiting the pope.

Schneider has come to speak and sing. There’s such energy that even some very serious-looking men—dressed in paramilitary gear, firearms strapped to their sides—bounce on their toes and clap along. Between songs, Schneider offers a different catalog of greatest hits. He talks about the flu shot making someone sick. He decries the Christian elites who look down on people like him. He hints at a potential violent uprising.

“We are born for such a time as this. God is calling you to do something,” Schneider says. “We have a country to get back. And if that fails, we have a country—yes, I’ll say it—to take back.”

Locke’s sermon is about the Philistines of the Old Testament stealing the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites, because they sensed that the only way to defeat God’s chosen people was to separate them from God. The same thing is happening in America today, Locke warns. Liberals have devised a plot to separate Christians from God. And all too many Christians—under the guise of a “plandemic”—are allowing it to happen.

Photo of a crowd of people with eyes closed and hands and arms raised inside an enormous tent with stage lights
Worshippers at Global Vision Bible Church, in Tennessee, in April (Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic)
“Let me tell you something,” Locke says, his voice rising. “I ain’t never had a prostitute mad at me for keeping this church open! I ain’t never had a wino or a drunkard [come] in here and say, ‘I can’t believe you!’ I ain’t never had a crackhead mad for keeping this church open! But I get letters from preachers all the time: ‘Oh, Brother Locke, you just need to take a chill pill. We feel like you’ve shamed us.’ ”

Locke starts nodding. “I have! Every last one of them cowards, I’ve shamed all of them!” The audience leaps to its feet again. “Shame, shame, shame!” he shouts, wagging a finger.

Listening to Locke that morning, I felt a peculiar sort of disappointment. There was nothing sui generis about the man or this Sunday service. Locke said nothing I hadn’t heard from other pastors. Atmospherics aside—it’s not every day you worship inside a tent next to an armed man wearing an Alex Jones shirt—the substance was familiar and predictable to the point of tedium.

Let’s be clear: Locke belongs to a category of his own. He recently accused multiple women at his church of being witches (his source: a demon he encountered during an exorcism). That makes it easy for evangelicals to dismiss Global Vision as an outlier, the same way they did Westboro Baptist. It’s much harder to scrutinize the extremism that has infiltrated their own church and ponder its logical end point. Ten years ago, Global Vision would have been dismissed as a blip on Christianity’s radar. These days, Locke preaches to 2.2 million Facebook followers and has posed for photos with Franklin Graham at the White House.

Walking out of Global Vision, I asked myself: How many pastors at smaller right-wing churches—pastors like Bolin—would have felt uneasy sitting inside this tent? The answer, I suspect, is very few. Global Vision and FloodGate may be different in degree, but they are not different in kind.

This mission creep inside evangelicalism is why some churches have taken an absolutist approach: no preaching on elections, no sermons about current events.

“The second you get into any of the political stuff, you start losing focus,” Michael Bingham, the lead pastor at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, in Greenville, South Carolina, told me during a visit last fall. “Some people say, ‘Well, you have to preach on abortion.’ Okay. But then something else happens in the culture—and if you preached on abortion, well, you better preach on voting rights. Or gun rights. Or immigrants. I’ve just decided I’m not touching any of it.”

Bingham has been a pastor in the UMC for nearly 25 years. Over that time, he says, he’s watched as political disputes have traveled from the periphery of church life to the heart of it. Despite being personally conservative on most issues—and estimating that two-thirds of the church agrees with him—Bingham has maintained a posture of unflinching neutrality from the pulpit.

He has two reasons. First, Bingham simply does not believe that pastors should contaminate the Gospel with political talk. Second, and of more immediate relevance when we spoke, the United Methodist Church was finalizing plans for a denominational divorce over core social divisions, including whether to ordain gay ministers. Under the tentative plans, individual churches will vote on whether to break away and join the new conservative denomination or side with the liberals and remain under the existing UMC umbrella.

With rumors of this imminent split roiling Aldersgate, Bingham told me, the last thing he wanted was to exacerbate tensions within his church. Plenty of people there know that he’s a conservative. They also know that his deputy, Johannah Myers, is a committed progressive. But the pair were working diligently to keep any trace of those political disagreements out of church life. “We are doing everything we can to hold this place together,” Myers told me.

In a sense, Christians have always lived a different epistemological existence than nonbelievers. But this is something new.
But what is left to hold together? When I visited, the church—an elegant structure with room for 500 in the sanctuary—was hosting maybe 150 people total across two Sunday services. Bingham is proud to say that he hasn’t driven anyone away with his political views. Still, membership has been in decline for years, in part because so many Christians today gravitate toward the places that are outspokenly aligned with their extra-biblical beliefs.

For all their talk of keeping Aldersgate unified, Bingham and Myers acknowledged that in a few years’ time, they would belong to different churches. The same went for their members. When I met with some of the longest-tenured laypeople of the church, almost everyone indicated that when the UMC divorce was finalized, they would follow the church that reflected their political views. It didn’t matter that doing so meant, in some cases, walking away from the church they’d attended for decades.

“What’s coming is going to be brutal. There’s no way around that,” Bingham told me. “Churches are breaking apart everywhere. My only hope is that, when the time comes, our people can separate without shattering.”

Ken brown knows plenty of pastors like Bingham, who refuse to talk about the very things tearing their churches apart. He knows they have their reasons. Some don’t know what to say. Others fear that speaking up would only make matters worse. Almost everyone is concerned about job security. Pastors are not immune from anxiety over their mortgage or kids’ college tuitions; many younger clergy members, in particular, worry that they haven’t amassed enough goodwill to get argumentative with their congregation.

Brown is grateful that, after 20 years leading Community Bible, he gets lots of latitude from his congregation. He hears the grousing that his political commentary takes the focus off Jesus, but his entire rationale rests on the belief that Jesus long ago became a secondary focus for some in the church. “I need to do better explaining why I’m dropping these comments in such a volatile cultural environment. Some people feel like I’m just dropping random anti-Trump bombs,” Brown said. “But if I didn’t see Trump—and Trumpism—as a danger to our mission, they would never hear me say anything about Trump.”

Brown has informed the church that he’s headed toward retirement. He’s searching for a successor and hopes in a few years to transition into a support role. He says the new lead pastor doesn’t necessarily need to share his approach to the crises of discernment and disinformation. But this only adds to the urgency of fortifying Community Bible.

The pastor is pushing harder than ever, and he feels, for the first time, that momentum is on his side. Many of his members, Brown said, have told him over the past year that they swore off cable news or deleted their social-media accounts; not coincidentally, some of them seem more engaged with scripture than ever before. There are still holdouts, Brown said, people who’d prefer the church to go in another direction. But that only validates his approach: Without this intervention, how much worse off might Community Bible be? “I can’t prove what would have happened,” Brown said, “but my guess is that our church would have descended into the sort of war zone that other churches have become.”

There are days when Brown envies his colleagues from other churches who haven’t waded into this fight. It would be simpler to spend his final years as a lead pastor sticking to scripture. But whenever he considers that temptation, Brown says he is reminded of a favorite passage. In the Book of John, Chapter 10, Jesus warns of the “hired hand” who puts his own safety ahead of the flock’s: “So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.”

Brown believes he’s been called to be a shepherd. The hired hand, he says, is no better than the wolf.

Sitting inside a cramped office at the back of FloodGate, Bill Bolin is second-guessing himself.

We’ve talked at length about extremism in his church—the people who were certain that Trump would never leave office, the people who swear by QAnon—and Bolin seems, at some level, to genuinely be reckoning with his role in it. He says he’s worried about Christians getting their priorities mixed up. He tells me he doesn’t want his rants about Biden or the 2020 election—which are “nonessentials”—to be taken with the seriousness of his statements about Jesus, which are the “essentials” people should come to church for.

“I do make a separation between our religious perspective and our political perspective,” Bolin tells me. “I don’t view political statements as being infallible.”

That’s putting it generously. In the time I spent listening to Bolin preach, sitting with him for interviews, and following his Facebook page, I recorded dozens of political statements that were either recklessly misleading or flat-out wrong. When I would challenge him, asking for a source, Bolin would either cite “multiple articles” he had read or send me a link to a website like Headline USA or Conservative Fighters. Then he would concede that the claims were in dispute, and insist that he didn’t necessarily believe everything he said or posted.

It seemed a dangerous practice for anyone, let alone someone trusted as a teacher of truth. Many of the backwater websites and podcasts Bolin relies on for political information were the same ones cited to me by people from his church. In a sense, Christians have always lived a different epistemological existence than nonbelievers. But this is something new—and something decidedly nonessential.

At one point, I show Bolin a Facebook post he wrote months earlier: “I’m still wondering how 154,000,000 votes were counted in a country where there are only 133,000,000 registered voters.” This was written, I tell him, well after the Census Bureau had published data showing that more than 168 million Americans were registered to vote in 2020. A quick Google search would have given Bolin the accurate numbers.

The Atlantic Interview: Why this evangelical got fired for promoting vaccines

“Yeah, that’s one I regret,” he tells me, explaining that he subsequently learned that the numbers he’d posted were incorrect. (The post was still active. Bolin texted me the following day saying he’d deleted it.)

Doesn’t he worry that if people see him getting the easy things wrong, they might suspect he’s also getting the hard things wrong? Things like sanctity and salvation?

“I really don’t. No. Not too much. I don’t,” Bolin says, shaking his head. “Firebrand statements have been part of the pulpit, and part of politics, for as long as we’ve been a nation. And there is a long history of both sides exaggerating—like in a post like that.”

Still, Bolin seems rattled. He begins telling me about a couple of Democrats who attend FloodGate and have rebuked him for his political rhetoric—but who reassure him, Bolin says, “When it comes to the Word, you’re rock-solid.” Then he tells me something surprising: He’s thinking of scaling back “Headline News” on Sunday mornings. Maybe he’ll just read news clips verbatim, he says, without adding commentary. Or maybe he’ll cut the political headlines in half, adding some “feel good” news to balance the mood. The more he thinks about it, Bolin says, he might just cut the segment altogether, posting those political musings on Facebook but keeping them out of worship.

“We’re now going from pandemic to endemic. Our culture will change. There will no longer be this massive division over COVID,” Bolin says. “The fervency is going to die down.”

Except there will always be something new. Literally moments before he talked about the fervency dying down, Bolin previewed a shtick he was going to deliver on Sunday morning about Apple adding a “pregnant-man emoji” to the iPhone.

Bolin had diagnosed in some detail “the sorting” within evangelicalism—the scramble of Christians switching congregations, churches rising and falling, pastors adapting or heading for the exits. It occurs to me, while he discusses these potential changes, that no church is guaranteed anything. The moment Bolin stops lighting fires from the pulpit at FloodGate, how many of its members—who are now accustomed to that sort of inferno, who came to FloodGate precisely because they wanted the heat—will go looking for them elsewhere?

That’s not a risk he seems willing to take. Bolin tells me the church has sold the building we’re sitting in—where the congregation has met since the 1970s—and purchased a sprawling complex down the road. The pastor says FloodGate’s revenue has multiplied sixfold since 2020. It is charging ahead into an era of expansion, with ambitions of becoming southeast Michigan’s next megachurch.

Bolin says FloodGate and churches like it have grown in direct proportion to how many Christians “felt betrayed by their pastors.” That trend looks to be holding steady. More people will leave churches that refuse to identify with a tribe and will find pastors who confirm their own partisan views. The erosion of confidence in the institution of American Christianity will accelerate. The caricature of evangelicals will get uglier. And the actual work of evangelizing will get much, much harder.

God isn’t biting his fingernails. But I sure am.

This article appears in the June 2022 print edition with the headline “How Politics Poisoned the Church.”






理念
政治如何毒害了福音派教会
该运动花了40年时间与世俗的美国交战。现在，它正与自己开战。

作者：蒂姆-阿尔伯塔
摄影：Jonno Rattman
2022年5月10日，美国东部时间上午6点
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"在我讲道之前，"传教士宣布，"我要再做一次自述。"

"继续！"一个男人喊道。"阿门！"在我前面几个座位上的一个女人喊道。

在40分钟的赞美音乐和40分钟的讲道之间，是我在礼拜堂里看到过的最奇怪的仪式。比尔-博林牧师称这是他的 "自言自语"。位于密歇根州布莱顿的洪门教会的信徒们则称它为另一种东西："头条新闻"。

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博林，60多岁，是一个热情洋溢的人，有着厚厚的下巴和一波稀疏的染发。他的花衬衫在深蓝色的牛仔裤上没有扎紧。"关于疫苗...... "他开始说。

在接下来的15分钟里，博林没有提到罪的赦免、身体的复活或永恒的生命。相反，他大谈错误信息和阴谋论的废话，其中大部分与 "极端危险的 "COVID-19疫苗有关。"一位参加洪水门的当地护士，现在是匿名的，她前几天向我妻子报告说，在她的医院，有两个COVID病人在住院。两个。" 博林戏剧性地停顿了一下。"他们有103名疫苗并发症患者。" 众人惊呼。

"那这个呢？" 博林说。他讲述了一位医生，他声称知道 "在过去的15个月里，有100到200名美国国会议员，加上他们的许多工作人员和家庭成员患有COVID，由他的一位同事治疗......用......" 博林停下脚步，把手放在耳朵上。一个合唱团的人回应道。"伊维菌素"。博林假装没有听到。"那是什么？"他说，俯身在讲台上。这一次，他们喊道。"伊维菌素！" 博林点点头。

这不是我第一次来 "洪水门"，所以博林所说的一切都没有让我震惊。然而，我仍然在努力理解这个地方。

男子闭着眼睛，大喊大叫，双臂张开的照片
博林在二月。2020年，他无视密歇根州的紧急关闭令，在 "洪水门 "举行了室内复活节仪式后，他的教堂的出席率猛增。(Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic)
我就在这条路上长大，是镇上另一个教会的高级牧师的儿子，我一生都在看着福音派从一种精神倾向蜕变为一种政治身份。这是令人心碎的。这么多爱主的人，为穷人、哀伤的人和受迫害的人付出时间和金钱，却沦为一个漫画。但我明白为什么。福音派教徒--包括我自己的父亲--成了强迫性的政治人物，让具体的道德争论像滚雪球一样演变成全面的党派主张，往往分散了他们为基督传福音的使命。值得称道的是，即使我父亲在政治辩论中表现得很强硬，他也会小心翼翼地提醒他的教会注意适当的基督教观点。他在选举期间说："上帝不会为这些事情咬指甲"。"你们也不应该这样。"

布莱顿是一个小城镇，我对当地的福音派场景了如指掌，就像第二个报道版面一样。我知道哪些牧师在争吵；哪些教会陷入了丑闻；哪些教会的垒球队有一个执事在打游击，哪些教会的阵容中堆满了不交钱的人。但是 "洪水门"？我从未听说过 "洪水门"。直到最近，坐在我周围的大多数人也没有听说过。

十年来，博林在一个典型的周日向大约100人讲道。后来到了2020年复活节，博林宣布他将无视密歇根州的紧急关闭令，举行室内礼拜。当消息传到底特律保守的郊区时，博林成了一个小名人。当地的政治家和活动家借用他的讲坛来促进右翼利益。随着其他教会的成员投奔到这个路边小教堂，"洪水门 "的上座率飙升。到2021年复活节，洪水门每个周末都会接待1500人。

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在这个特殊的秋季周日，博林对从加州强迫学童接种疫苗到国税局提议对个人银行账户进行更多监督的所有事情进行了抨击。他宣传一本新书，讲述了 "左派是如何抢夺权力，系统地瓦解宗教，将上帝从信徒的口中、脑中和心中驱逐出去的"，促使我前面的那对夫妇在亚马逊上一键购买。他表示，有越来越多的证据表明选举被盗，并总结说："随着亚利桑那州和乔治亚州以及其他地方的信息曝光，我认为现在是对所有50个州进行全面审计的时候了，以找出实际发生的作弊和操纵程度。" 我周围的人欢呼起来。

有一次，博林从他的笔记中抬起头来。

"今天早上有一位访客说，'你知道，听到一位牧师谈论这样的问题真的很新鲜。 " 博林沉浸在他刚刚邀请的欢呼声中，补充道。"我谈论这些事情是可以的。"

他问自己是否可以继续下去。观众用更多的掌声回答。

那天早上听了博林的话，我一直在想附近的另一位牧师，他对待工作的方式非常不同。肯-布朗。

布朗在底特律郊区的特伦顿领导他自己的事工--社区圣经教会。我是在2020年总统竞选期间认识他的，当时我正在写来自全国各地的新闻报道，并询问读者他们认为没有得到足够关注的故事和趋势。布朗写信给我，解释了福音派教会内部的可燃动力，并描述了他自己的努力--作为一个保守派教会的保守牧师，使他的成员不被右翼政治家和媒体人物的谎言所激化。

来自2018年4月号。迈克尔-格森关于特朗普和福音派诱惑的封面故事

当我们终于在2021年春天见面时，布朗告诉我他的警觉性只增不减。"教会的危机是一场鉴别力的危机，"他在午餐时说。"鉴别力"--一个人区分真理和非真理的基本能力--"是圣经的一项核心纪律。而许多基督徒并没有实践它。" 布朗是个身材高大的人，有一双坚毅的蓝眼睛，语气平和，不苟言笑，让我感到非常沮丧。这位牧师说，他所关心的不仅仅是他的300名会众，而是数以百万计的美国福音派教徒，他们重视权力而不是诚信，重视短暂而不是永恒，重视道德相对主义而不是明确的是非界限。

他提出了一个令人信服的理由。于是我开始查看他的布道、播客和博客文章。

播客工作室的照片，两个人坐在桌子旁，拿着麦克风和视频设备。
布朗（右）在二月。当COVID到来时，他推出了一个播客，以打击他的教徒中的错误信息。(Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic)
每次我听到博林讲道时，我也能听到布朗的声音，两位牧师的声音在我的大脑中对决。布朗是彬彬有礼的，扣子扣得很紧；博林是浮夸的，声音很大。布朗是一个传统教会的牧师，人们穿着毛衣，轻声歌唱；博林领导的是一个有魅力的教会，人们穿着烤肉，用方言说话。布朗是一个牧师的孩子和终身的保守派，他从来没有喝过一口酒；博林是一个曾经的 "激进自由主义者"，他曾经 "对迷幻药如此兴奋"，在汤姆-佩蒂的音乐会上跳上舞台并抓住一把吉他。

但在领导他们以白人为主的共和党会众时，布朗和博林在一件重要的事情上达成了共识：两位牧师都认为存在一场争夺美国教会灵魂的战争--他们都决定不能站在一边。他们并不孤单。对今天的许多福音派教徒来说，敌人不再是世俗的美国，而是他们的基督徒同胞，那些拥有相同信仰但不同信仰的人。

这种情况是如何发生的？几代人以来，白人福音派培养了一种叙事方式，让勇敢的、敬畏上帝的基督徒对抗一个邪恶的社会，这个社会想把全能者从公共生活中驱逐出去。在使许多福音派信徒相信下一次选举可能会引发国家的灭亡之后，基督教领袖们有效地将成千上万的教会变成了一个组织松散、定义模糊、存在紧迫的运动中不知情的细胞--这些地方是偏执狂和假话泛滥、人们互相攻击的地方。

"布朗说："毫无疑问，教会现在面临的最大挑战是来自外部的错误信息和虚假信息。

正因为如此，这位牧师告诉我，他不能再为在讲台上采取消极的做法辩护。教会正在变得激进--不正视这一事实的牧师只会助长这一问题。他理解他们的不情愿。他们宁愿保持和平，也不愿冒着疏远任何人的风险。布朗说，具有讽刺意味的是，如果假装基督教世界观的冲突没有发生，这些牧师就有可能在能够看到这种冲突在他们自己的教会中展开的成员中失去信誉。

有一个人，布朗牧师不需要说服他。博林牧师。

"战线已经划定，"博林告诉我，坐在他黑暗的圣殿后面。"如果你不站在哪一边，你就站错边了。"

如果这是两个教会的故事，它也是各地教会的故事。这是数百万美国基督徒的故事，他们在一生中都在考虑他们的信仰背景下的政治归属，现在正在考虑他们的政治背景下的信仰归属。

我小时候背诵的第一段经文--继续指导我自己不完美的行走的经文--来自保罗写给希腊科林斯早期教会的第二封信。如同他的大多数信件一样，使徒正在解决信徒群体中的功能障碍和破裂问题。"我们不看眼前的，只看眼前的"，保罗写道。"因为看见的是暂时的，看不见的是永远的"。

保罗对早期教会的告诫并没有真正的含糊之处。耶稣的追随者要把自己定位在他持久的救赎承诺上，而远离人类短暂的麻烦。

大量的福音派教徒正在逃离他们的教会，其中大多数人正在转向更右的教会。
然而，在我有生之年的大部分时间里，美国基督徒的做法恰恰相反。从20世纪80年代开始，白人福音派以前所未有的程度将自己强加于政府和国家的核心机构。在性和性行为、毒品、堕胎、色情制品、媒体和教育标准、公立学校的祈祷等问题上，保守派基督徒一度只能喊出文明衰落的悲鸣--他们在这些文化战争中一度重新获得了高地。

然而，短暂的胜利是以长期的代价换来的。福音派领导人在几十年前就设定了一些今天的牧师们无法控制的事情。基督徒不仅被调教成将他们的斗争理解为与血肉之躯的斗争，执着于世俗的关注，为这个世界的国度而战--所有这些都直接违背了圣经的命令--他们被灌输了一种信念，即由于风险变得如此之高，任何手段都是合理的。

这让我们看到了唐纳德-特朗普。

当特朗普由于在白人福音派中的历史性表现而当选时--81%的人投票给他，而不是希拉里-克林顿，这一胜利被正确地视为运动力量的顶点。但在许多方面，这也是其解体的开始。博林描述的过去五年出现的 "战线"--对种族主义和性行为不端的文化反思；致命的大流行病以及对疫苗和政府授权的激烈争论；导致围攻美国国会大厦的选举盗窃指控；以及所有这些的背后，特朗普本人的总统职位、起诉和殉教--已经分割了美国社会的每个机构。福音派教会也不例外。

彼得-韦纳（Peter Wehner）。福音派与特朗普做了一场糟糕的交易

由于在种族关系、妇女担任领导职务、性行为不端的责任以及其他问题上的激烈内斗，美国最大的教派--南方浸信会的成员正在流失。美国第二大教派联合卫理公会因不可调和的社会和意识形态分歧，正朝着即将离婚的方向发展。较小的教派正在失去附属教会，因为牧师和会众在许多相同的文化热点问题上与他们的领导层决裂，选择独立而不是与那些不持有他们观点的人交往。

也许基督徒和各行各业的美国人一样，正在自我选择共同习惯和思维的小团体，这并不令人惊讶。但白人福音派教会内部的调整值得注意的是其不对称性。牧师们报告说，由于他们拒绝在周日上午谈论偏执、贫穷或社会不公，偶尔会失去一些自由派成员。但同样的牧师报告说，仅在过去几年里，他们就失去了相当一部分会众，因为他们抱怨自己和他们的工作人员没有推进右翼政治教义。硬数据很难得到；教会不需要披露出席人数。但是，通过一年来与牧师、教派领袖、福音派学者和普通基督徒的交谈，可以看出一个清晰的事实。大量的福音派教徒正在逃离他们的教会，而且他们中的大多数人正在转向更偏右的教会。

基督教历来被视为对美国生活的一种稳定、甚至温和的影响。根据盖洛普报告，1975年，超过三分之二的美国人表示 "对教会有很大或相当大的信心"，截至1985年，"有组织的宗教是美国生活中最令人尊敬的机构"。今天，盖洛普报告说，只有37%的美国人对教会有信心。这种螺旋式下降主要归因于两个现象：丑闻不断，大型教会和知名领导人似乎每周都会内讧；以及越来越多的人认为基督徒正在接受极端主义观点。人们很少需要读到民意调查的底部，就能了解到最反对疫苗、最相信2020年总统选举被盗、最倾向于认同QAnon阴谋论的宗教团体是白人福音派。

来自2020年6月的期刊。阿德里安娜-拉芳斯谈QAnon如何比你想象的更重要

许多右翼牧师已经形成了联盟--与竞选顾问、教育活动家、草根团体，甚至MAGA-in-miniature路演，宣传对美国主权的攻击的说法--为他们的建筑带来了稳定的新鲜面孔。从那里，新的共和党正统观念与旧的保守神学的融合是无缝的。这就解释了为什么即使在教会人数下滑的时期，白人福音派的人数也在增长。皮尤研究中心报告说，越来越多的特朗普白人支持者在他担任总统期间开始自我认同为福音派，无论他们是否参加了教会。

与此同时，其他牧师感到被困住了。一句话就可能使他们的会众分裂，甚至使他们失去工作。然而，严格意义上的非政治性做法可能会适得其反；他们不愿意参与只会招致更多的审查。窃窃私语运动把保守的牧师打成温和派，把温和派的牧师打成马克思主义者。在这种环境下，教会领袖对圣经无误的立场不如他是否被认为是 "清醒的 "重要。他对圣经的掌握不如对他在上次选举中如何投票的怀疑来得重要。

"有一天，一位牧师问我，'你说有多大比例的教会正在努力解决这些问题？我说，'百分之百。所有的教会。"《今日基督教》的公共神学家拉塞尔-摩尔告诉我。"我不知道有哪个教会不受此影响。"

我不止一次听到在那些声称崇拜和平之君的地方随意谈论内战。
摩尔曾经是南方浸信会政策部门的主席，在因反对特朗普主义和倡导种族和解而忍受了多年的 "心理战 "之后，于2021年退出该教派。在此后的时间里，随着他走遍全国，就会众内部不断加剧的分歧向牧师们提供咨询，摩尔确信，教会内部的政治狂热问题对教会外部构成了真正的威胁。

彼得-韦纳（Peter Wehner）。震撼福音派世界的丑闻

"摩尔说："老实说，我比一年前更担心，这说明了一些问题。"这可能听起来像小鸡仔。但我要告诉你，有一种严肃的努力要把这种'两个国家'的谈话变成真实的东西。有基督徒把所有的民粹主义激情，加上一种超然的权威。"

摩尔并没有夸大其词。我不止一次听到在那些自称崇拜和平之君的地方随意谈论内战。而且，这些谈话远没有感到错位，而是从一种神圣的正义感中获得了合法性。

教会并不是美国社会纷争的受害者。相反，它是主要的催化剂之一。

"布朗告诉我："我是道德多数派的持卡成员--从字面上讲，是持卡成员。

那是1981年。布朗是密歇根大学的本科生，这个从基督教高中毕业的基督徒孩子第一次走出了自己的圈子。他对周围的一切感到威胁：道德相对主义、无耻的性行为、公开贬低他的信仰的极左派教授。布朗在新生的福音派运动中找到了自己的身份，该运动旨在恢复美国建国时的宗教价值观。他读了这些书，看了这些录像，听了这些广播节目。布朗不仅致力于宗教右派的教条，还致力于政治保守主义的戒律。多年来，在结婚、开始从事技术工作、生儿育女时，他仍然扎根于这两方面。

当布朗感到被召唤加入神职人员行列时，他进入了底特律浸信会神学院。正是在那里，他开始质疑他的政治和信仰的结合。他对经文研究得越多，就越觉得对他长期以来听从的人没有信心。一些基督教右派的主要声音--像传统基金会的保罗-韦里奇和 "关注家庭 "的詹姆斯-多布森--宣传 "后千年主义 "的愿景，这是一种有争议的对圣经的解释，鼓励将积累政治权力作为在今生建立一个与天堂平行的国度的手段。

"我开始意识到，这些宗教右派的很多人实际上并不是受过训练的神学家。布朗说："他们中的很多人不知道他们在谈论什么，在圣经上。"我担心这可能会回来困扰我们。"

艾伦-雅各布斯：福音派这个词已经失去了它的意义

正当布朗对政治的热情开始减退时，比尔-克林顿当选为总统。"天启"，布朗笑着回忆说。像许多福音派教徒一样，这位牧师将克林顿视为美国道德衰退的表现。他痴迷于总统的每一个丑闻和欺骗行为。

但布朗对基督教保守派和他们的策略同样感到失望。一些折磨克林顿并在道德上说教的人和他一样道德败坏--但由于他们为表面上是上帝选定的政治团队效力，他们很少受到审查。"布朗说："当我相信共和党人和福音派之间有一个光荣的联盟时，那是因为我相信我们的价值观最终会占上风，无论在这个地球上发生什么事，无论我们是赢还是输。"但随着时间的推移，出现了一个转变。失败不再是一种选择。它变成了关于胜利的一切。"

在克林顿任期的后期，在密歇根州弗拉特罗克担任副牧师的布朗被委托在特伦顿的路上建立一个新的教会。他将有自己的羊群需要照看。他没有时间去担心政治问题。除了反对堕胎的布道--布朗认为这个问题本质上是符合圣经的--他的布道中不涉及政治。福音派人士认为乔治-W-布什是他们的一员，他在布朗的教徒中很受欢迎。那是一个教会内部和谐的时期。

"然后，"布朗说，"巴拉克-奥巴马来了。"

一开始感觉很傻--关于奥巴马出生证明的笑话，关于他信仰的评论。但随着时间的推移，教会内部的言论变得更加令人担忧。有一天，一个长期的成员告诉布朗一些在当时听起来很震惊的事情。总统戴着一个秘密的伊斯兰戒指。布朗要求知道这个女人的来源。"她给我发了这个假的、经过Photoshop处理的东西。布朗告诉我说："没过多久就被拆穿了。"所以我给她回信说，'嘿，这样吧：如果你把这个东西转发给任何人，你有义务回去纠正它。因为基督徒不能煽动假话。我们是追求真理的人'。 "

亚当-塞尔维。一个国家的鸟类主义

那位女士从未回复。她仍然参加了社区圣经；此后两人没有再谈及这一事件。但这对布朗来说是一个分水岭。"他说："对我来说，那是一个新事工的开始。

布朗面对的不仅仅是以奥巴马为中心的阴谋论。人们开始用他无法理解的问题和担忧来面对他。有一次，当他到华盛顿特区参加一个牧师会议时，他回到家得知，教会里的人一直在接受一个由其成员发起的谣言。这个人读了关于联邦紧急事务管理局招募神职人员在自然灾害后帮助安抚社区的博客文章后，认为布朗去了华盛顿特区接受秘密培训--他和其他牧师正准备帮助政府实施戒严令。

"布朗说："善良的人们被这些东西所迷惑。"他们真的想知道我是否是这个政府秘密阴谋的一部分。"

即使布朗变得更有发言权，他也知道他被淹没了。牧师说，恐惧正在社区圣经中生根。其中一些是可以解释的。对福音派来说，文化氛围越来越冷；经济大衰退正在挤压他的蓝领会众。但很多焦虑感觉是无定形的、隐秘的，而且是制造出来的。无论布朗在周日早上的45分钟内如何有效地安抚他的教徒，"拉什[林博]每周五天，每天都有三个小时，福克斯新闻每天晚上都有他们。布朗不断提醒他的人，经文中引用最多的命令是 "不要惧怕"。但他没能突破。回想起来，他明白了原因。

"从《圣经》来看，恐惧主要是指崇敬和敬畏。布朗告诉我，"我们崇敬上帝；我们对他充满敬畏。"你也可以对其他事物--真的，任何你很看重的东西--产生崇敬和敬畏。我认为，在保守的基督教圈子里，我们对我们所知道的生活有很大的价值。我们所知道的尘世生活。我们所知道的美国生活......如果我们看到我们所珍视的东西受到威胁，我们就会害怕--也就是说，我们崇敬，我们对那些能够夺走它的人抱有不适当的敬畏。这就是巴拉克-奥巴马。这就是左派。"

教会内部可以感受到一种近乎恐慌的紧迫感。对于白人福音派教徒来说，唯一比对他们理想化的国家正在消失的看法更令人振奋的是，他们喜欢的政党不愿意为国家的生存而奋斗。

"有这样一种感觉，美国被围困了，野蛮人在门口，"布朗说。"然后唐纳德-特朗普出现了，他说他能让美国再次伟大。对福音派来说，现在是玩命的时候了。"

当我第一次走进洪水门的避难所时，我没有看到一个十字架。但我确实看到了美国国旗--很多。舞台后面的屏幕上有旗帜，分发的资料上有旗帜。我看到的那个戴着面具的人的脸上甚至有一面国旗。那是2021年5月，教堂正在为 "站起来 "密歇根州举办活动，该组织成立的目的是抗议大流行病的关闭、遮蔽，以及最近的疫苗强制接种。这是该组织的利文斯顿县分会的启动仪式。

在报道总统竞选活动时，我曾在爱荷华州、南卡罗来纳州、德克萨斯州和其他地方的教堂参加政治集会。但我从未见过这样的情况。停车场里挤满了贴着党派标语的车辆。中厅里挤满了在剪贴板上涂鸦的人。(我以为他们是在进行预防性的COVID联系追踪；实际上他们是在为政治活动征集志愿者）。在避难所内，与会者戴着MAGA帽子，穿着与第二修正案有关的衬衫。我没有看到一个人携带圣经。

在接下来的三个小时里，教堂成了一个竞技场。密歇根州站起来组织的执行主任谴责掌管该州的 "邪恶 "的民主党人；说QAnon "可能有些道理"，该组织认为撒旦式的自由主义精英正在吞食儿童以维持生计；并警告说基督徒太 "好 "了。县委员会主席抨击了多元化培训和批判性种族理论。一位州参议员试图迎合群众，开玩笑说她问上帝为什么允许格雷琴-惠特莫成为州长，但当群众向她发难时又畏缩了，人们站起来要求她回答特朗普是否在2020年赢得密歇根州的问题。她明显受到震动，拒绝回答。

桌子是由比尔-博林自己设置的。节目一开始就被介绍为不服从政府的 "摇滚明星"，博林上台后，不紧不慢地向他的来访者展示了一个人在讲坛上可以有多么粗鲁的行为。他首先暗示COVID-19 "可能是在安东尼-福奇博士的资助和祝福下被操纵的，他是给我们戴面具的人"。当他听到零星的嘘声时，博林说。"这就对了，说吧！" 教堂里充满了嘲笑声。一分钟后，这位牧师开始吹嘘他对惠特曼的侮辱达到了什么程度。"可能是我做过的最恶劣的事情，"博林笑着说，"我确实行了一个纳粹礼，并叫她'惠特勒'。 "

男子闭目低头的照片，其他一些人将手放在他的身上并进行祈祷
博林在2月份与洪水门的教徒一起祈祷。这位牧师最初反对唐纳德-特朗普的候选资格，但他说他开始 "爱 "这位前总统。(Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic)
在我随后对 "洪水门 "的访问中，以及在与博林的长时间交谈中，我清楚地看到，这种类型的极端政治表达是他的教会身份的核心，也是他自己的核心。

博林告诉我，在南加州经历了一个麻烦的童年后，他说他9岁就开始喝酒和吸毒，他发现自己对政治活动有兴趣。他迷恋上了罗伯特-肯尼迪和马丁-路德-金，投身于抗议的艺术：游行、静坐、绝食。他是一个 "骄傲的嬉皮士"，对神秘学的兴趣超过了对任何有组织的宗教的兴趣。

然后，在他20岁的时候，他为一次跨国搭车旅行收拾行李，发现了一本多年前送给他的圣经。"我把它举起来--记住，我是个超自然主义者--感觉我的手臂像着火了一样，"博林告诉我。"我听到一个声音：'回到我身边，否则你会死。 "

博林搭车去了内华达州的里诺，在那里他有一个基督徒表弟。他们一起去了教堂。"博林说："当时有一个唤坛，我就去了，并在当天下午接受了洗礼。"我从来没有变过。它改变了我是谁。"

这种改变包括他的政治。博林开始了他的基督教之旅--作为药物滥用顾问工作，上圣经学院，在从加利福尼亚到宾夕法尼亚州的教会中担任牧师--博林发现，他以前的许多立场与他的新信仰不相容。特别是，他对堕胎和宗教自由的看法被颠覆了。有一件事没有改变。"我一直都很容易抗议，"博林告诉我。"当时和现在。"

与布朗牧师一样，博林将保守的神学与保守的意识形态结合起来。但是，布朗对宗教右派的虚伪和政治上的无情感到失望，而博林则认为，福音派没有走得足够远。他说："基督徒在政治上的参与已经萎靡不振，""这是我们国家处于这种严峻境地的原因之一。"

当博林于2010年来到洪水门时，这个成立于1972年、以前被称为 "父亲之家 "的教会大多是不参与政治的。博林改变了这一点。"博林说："牧师曾经是他们社区中决定我们选举谁的主要影响者。他的目标是在自己的事工中恢复这一传统。

一些人离开了教会；另一些人加入了教会。在这期间，他的会众一直徘徊在100人左右。他参与了很多政治争议--包括特朗普的竞选--但他的会员人数保持不变。回顾过去，我们有理由怀疑这是否是因为他在那个特定问题上站错了队。"唐纳德-特朗普是我最不希望当选总统的人，"博林说，放声大笑。他认为特朗普是一个骗子，一个欺骗保守派选民的终身民主党人。

"他证明我错了，"博林说。"他原来是我们有史以来最支持生命的总统。他对法院的影响将在未来50年内改变这个国家。" 博林听起来为曾经怀疑过特朗普而感到羞愧。他列举了这位前总统的成就。他对那些批评特朗普道德的 "居高临下 "的基督徒翻白眼。他为1月6日的叛乱辩护，这 "不是什么大事"。事实上，博林本人那天差点就去了华盛顿，"因为我们教会的很多人要去，而且我喜欢唐纳德-特朗普"。

特朗普的皈依经历--曾经确定自己的黑暗，突然醒悟看到自己的光明--是不可低估的，尤其是当它触动了那些生活围绕转型概念的人。然而，它反映了一个比特朗普本人更伟大的现象。现代福音派的定义是对国家性质的某种宿命论。其结果不仅仅是愿意不顾一切地采取行动，拥抱错误的东西；它可能是一种信念，接近于一种确定性，即错误的东西实际上是正确的。

2016年秋天，肯-布朗告诉他的教友，他计划投票给特朗普。他解释说，他的选择归结于堕胎，以及最高法院的任命。不过，这位牧师还是强调了特朗普的个人缺陷，并警告说不要崇拜政治偶像。他提醒他的子民，基督徒追求的是比 "两害相权取其轻 "更高的标准。布朗觉得他们有信心理解他。

他的自信是错误的。在接下来的四年里，这位牧师看着他的许多人成为MAGA的信徒。他们紧盯着福克斯新闻。一些人在社交媒体上发布丑陋、好斗的信息。一些人是亚历克斯-琼斯（Alex Jones）的信徒，这个网络电台主持人因其仇恨的阴谋论而闻名。

当COVID到来时--带来了 "新的错误信息洪流"--布朗和他的领导团队给会众写了一封信，阐述了他们关闭教会的原因，并说明了他们所依赖的来源。布朗还推出了一个博客和一个播客，在许多人突然被困在家里，在道听途说和含沙射影中游泳的时刻，争夺他的成员的注意力。

摘自2018年10月号；金发碧眼的圣经老师对抗福音派政治机器

2003年开始参加社区圣经的詹-弗卡斯想知道布朗的努力是否来得太晚。

"教会里有一些人，那些我认为是朋友的人，他们会说非常伤人、非常不符合圣经的事情，"当地一所公立学校的校长助理弗卡斯告诉我。"而且这不仅仅是在COVID期间开始的。"

Furkas称自己是一个温和的民主党人--她开玩笑说，"这使我成为我们教会中最自由的人。" 当特朗普成为共和党提名人，而布朗牧师也表示打算投票给他时，弗卡斯感到非常失望，她离开了教会。

她花了一年时间四处寻找。但其他教会都感觉不对。一个星期天，弗卡斯回到了社区圣经，并注意到这个地方有些不同。"是肯，"她说。"他变了。他不再是那个被这种心态出卖的人了，这一切都回到了堕胎和法庭上。很明显，他看到了这种狂热是如何感染教会的。"

弗卡斯回忆说，几年前，布朗做了一次布道，提醒大家耶稣是来拯救谁的。布朗在圣堂的投影仪屏幕上点击了一个PowerPoint，展示了一些知名人士的照片。这很容易引起一些笑声和轻松的评论。然后他放了一张来自明尼苏达州的民主党代表、穆斯林伊尔汗-奥马尔（Ilhan Omar）的照片，她戴着头巾。"她怎么了？" 布朗问道。"耶稣为她而来吗？" 房间里一片寂静。

"我喜欢从肯的演变，"弗卡斯说。"但我知道这是有代价的。"

与我交谈的每一位来自社区圣经的人都提到了这样一个事实：一些长期成员已经退出了教会。布朗承认他的策略把一些人赶走了，但他对这个数字避而不谈，说 "四五个家庭 "和 "几个人 "已经离开了。"有时，当有人离开时，"他说，"这意味着你已经成功地保护了你的其他羊群。"

但并不是每个对教会不满意的人都会离开--至少不是马上就离开。在社区圣经这样的地方，核心成员已经在一起多年，人们担心的不一定是大规模的出走。它是一种大规模的疏远，在这种情况下，人们不再听从牧师的意见，或者不再相互信任，或者两者兼而有之，教会慢慢失去了凝聚力。

"我担心的是人们把肯调走--那些不喜欢他的政治的人，因为这个原因，他们不再让他成为他们的牧师，"鲍勃-菲特，一位参加社区圣经十多年的高中历史教师，告诉我。"说实话，他让我很紧张。我曾试图告诉他，'留在你的车道上'。 "

菲特说，布朗的政治议程正在 "失去人们"。这些人中的一个是B.J.菲特-鲍勃的儿子。B.J.从小接受福音教育，毕业于鲍勃-琼斯大学，并认为积极参加教会活动是他的责任。他只是不确定社区圣经是否适合像他这样的人--极度保守，特朗普的选民，右翼媒体的消费者。

当我见到B.J.时，很明显，他正在纠结是否要离开社区圣经。事实上，他说他已经和布朗牧师进行了长达数周的文字交流。B.J.对布朗发布多期播客节目诋毁1月6日叛乱事件的责任人感到不满。他还对布朗写博客文章支持COVID疫苗的事实感到不满，B.J.认为，他把人们的担忧降到了最低，比如他自己，他们担心自己会因为拒绝注射而失去工作。

来自2022年1月/2月号。蒂姆-阿尔伯塔谈彼得-梅耶尔和美国共和党对自己的异议者的做法

"政治上有不同的真理--特朗普的真理，拜登的真理，等等，"B.J.告诉我。"但在教堂里，应该有一个真理。我们为什么不坚持这个真理呢？"

鲍勃-菲特说，他在给布朗牧师和领导团队的信中提到了这些担忧。但没有任何改变。鲍勃无法想象离开这个他热爱的地方，这个他和他的妻子瓦莱丽教主日学的地方。但他也无法想象当布朗把B.J.推出门外时，他却袖手旁观。

"我一直怀着忐忑不安的心情去教堂，"鲍勃说。"我告诉瓦莱丽，'有一天，如果肯说错了话，我可能不得不站起来离开。 "

比尔-博林对人们的离开有所了解。在过去的两年里，他在洪水门的周日人群中约有90%是从其他教会迁移过来的。他说，几乎所有的人都是带着对前牧师的不满来的。然而，大多数人从未考虑过要去其他地方。一场大流行，以及他们的教堂暂时关闭，才让他们断绝关系。

截至2020年春天，杰夫和迪德丽-迈尔斯属于底特律郊区的橡树园米尔福德教会。虽然他们对讲道没有更明显的政治性感到沮丧，但他们高度参与：领导一个婚姻事工，积极与其他家庭教育者合作。他们甚至与牧师保罗-詹金森和他的妻子是朋友。

然后，COVID来了。当教会关闭时，关于长老会在深夜举行有争议的会议以辩论大流行病协议的传言不胫而走。教堂被锁得越久，人们就越是猜测谁在投决定性的一票。大约在那个时候，乔治-弗洛伊德被谋杀了。母会Oak Pointe Novi推出了一个名为 "对话 "的视频系列，其中包括对黑人牧师和社会正义活动家的采访。

"我想我要吐了，"迪德丽告诉我，回忆起她对一集的反应。杰夫补充说："那是牧师的儿子"--他声称，据说他是加拿大反法西斯组织的成员--"在讲授白人特权和批判性种族理论"。(我无法证实该牧师的儿子实际上是加拿大反法组织的成员；当我问及这个问题时，几个认识该家庭的人都笑了。）

在一片哗然之后，该牧师为 "已经发生的破裂 "道歉，而长老们则发表了一份谴责批判性种族理论的单独声明。据杰夫和迪德丽说，在离开橡树园的踩踏事件中，他们只是两个成员。

迪德丽看到其他教会的朋友，也因为关闭而流离失所，在Facebook上发布了关于洪水门的信息。她参加的第一次礼拜--博林牧师毫不掩饰地为像杰夫和迪德丽这样感到被旧教会欺骗的人辩护--让她流下了眼泪。杰夫也同样感动。他们已经找到了一个新的家。

布朗听到有人抱怨说他的政治评论把焦点从耶稣身上移开。但他的全部理由都建立在这样一个信念上：对教会中的一些人来说，耶稣早已成为次要焦点。
当杰夫和迪德丽与詹金森见面，告知他他们要离开米尔福德教会时，气氛非常紧张。他们最担心的事情已经得到了证实。长老会的一位朋友告诉他们，詹金森--他们的牧师、他们的朋友--主张继续关闭教会。杰夫和迪德丽就教会拒绝参与政治的问题向詹金森施压。当他们问牧师，为什么尽管他个人支持生命，但他从来没有讲过堕胎问题，他们得到了他们害怕的回答。"他说，'我将失去一半的会众'，"杰夫回忆说。

詹金森对这次谈话的记忆有些不同。他告诉我，杰夫和迪德丽不只是在堕胎问题上逼迫他；他们是在挑战这位牧师在讲台上的政治中立政策，并指责他在分裂教会的辩论中采取了简单的方法。

"我记得我告诉他们，'更难做的事情就是我正在做的事情'，"这位牧师说。"这就是你失去人的方式。你如何获得人们是，你选择一个部落，举起旗帜，并且非常大声地宣传它。这就是你获得一堆数字的方式。这是很容易做到的。而且它降低了福音的价值"。

无论他们交流的具体内容是什么，对杰夫和迪德丽来说，詹金森的立场等同于懦弱。"我意识到这些是艰难的对话，但我们离开米尔福德的原因是他们从来不愿意进行对话，"杰夫说。"他们只是想让大家都高兴。保罗是一个保守派，但他的保守主义没有牙齿。"

托尼-德菲利斯是另一位新到洪门的人，也是另一位厌倦了他的牧师没有牙齿的基督徒。在他以前位于底特律郊区普利茅斯的民主党教会，"他们对政治问题只字不提。他告诉我，"他们对政治只字不提，不谈任何问题。"当我们到了洪水门，它证实了我们一直缺少的东西。"

DeFelice是一名建筑检查员，当大流行开始时，他已经在普利茅斯教会工作了14年。他和他的妻子琳达在那里有朋友和家人；他们的一个女儿仍然在教会工作人员中工作。托尼和琳达有他们的抱怨--教会太温和，"太适合寻求者"，更多地迎合新来者而不是长期的基督徒，但他们没有计划离开。

然后，在2020年3月，一切都崩溃了。

"我们没有离开教会。教会离开了我们，"托尼告诉我。"COVID，整个事情，是我们有生之年将看到的对人类犯下的最大谎言。而他们上当了。"

托尼和琳达说，"洪水门 "的风格以及博林在疫苗和选民欺诈等话题上的火热信息，改变了他们对自己作为基督徒的责任的看法。"这是关于正义与邪恶的斗争。这就是我们所处的世界。这是一场属灵的战斗，而我们正处于这场战斗的悬崖边上。"托尼说。

随着国家在世俗主义者和自由主义者手中处于失败的边缘，托尼不再区分政治和精神。对唐纳德-特朗普的攻击就是对基督徒的攻击。他认为2020年的选举是作为针对美国基督徒的 "恶魔 "阴谋的一部分而被盗。而且他相信，正义将获得胜利。他说，各州将开始取消对上次选举结果的认证，特朗普将重新上任。

"真相正在浮出水面，"托尼告诉我。

当我就这些信念向他施压时--提供乔-拜登合法获胜的证据，并探询他的信念来源--托尼没有动摇。他说，他相信特朗普赢得了2020年的选举，就像他相信两千年前耶稣从死里复活一样。

依偎在田纳西州威尔逊县郊区的一片树林中，格雷格-洛克的全球视野圣经教会的校园感觉更像是一个大院。成堆的被砍伐的橡树环绕着校园，是匆忙扩张的证据。一个布满车辙的碎石停车场远离主干道向高处爬去。在山顶上矗立着一个巨大的白色帐篷。一块牌子上写着这是一个没有面具的教会园区。

全球视野的旧建筑和新帐篷内部的照片。
旧的全球视野建筑（右）可容纳约250人。现在，教徒们聚集在一个可以容纳3000人的帐篷里（左）。(Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic)
在里面，戴着耳机、穿着迷彩裤的人守在门口。在他们身后，成百上千的人在杉木片的地板上跳上跳下。洛克向他们致敬，称他们是 "在上帝的军队中崛起的士兵"。有些人听到这句话的时候，比其他人听得更真切。我发现有几个人拿着枪。

大多数福音派教徒都不认为自己是洛克的目标人群。这位牧师曾建议自闭症儿童受到魔鬼的压迫。他组织了一次烧书活动，以销毁宣扬神秘主义的哈利波特小说和其他书籍及游戏。他曾称拜登总统是 "性交易、被魔鬼附身的杂种"。

如果这一切听起来有点奇怪--可怕，甚至是 "危险"，正如一位当地牧师在我访问的前一天晚上警告我的那样--那么，当然。但是，与什么相比奇怪呢？我一生都在福音派教会中度过，近年来，我对所有关于军国主义和即将到来的世界末日的言论已经麻木了。那些接待选举欺诈暴发户的教会和平日里谴责 "黑人生活事件 "的伪撒旦议程的演讲者--那些自认为是主流的教会--已经开始觉得是老生常谈了。是时候访问最偏远的边缘地区了。是时候去见格雷格-洛克了。

不久前，洛克还是田纳西州一个小有名气的传教士。然后，在2016年，他在当地的塔吉特超市外拍摄了一段自拍视频，讽刺该公司在浴室和性别认同方面的政策，从而走红。这段视频收集了1800万次观看，它使洛克成为一个独特的福音派品牌。他在社交媒体上把自己塑造成基督宗教中一个孤独的勇气之声。他与迪尼斯-德索萨(Dinesh D'Souza)和查理-柯克(Charlie Kirk)等人结盟，作为基督教右派最坚定的特朗普支持者之一获得影响力。与此同时，他的会众也在不断扩大--从能容纳250人的旧教堂建筑搬到了一个大型户外帐篷，然后又搬到了一个更大的帐篷，最终搬到了现在这个巨大的帐篷。这个帐篷可以容纳3000人，会让巴纳姆和贝利羡慕不已。

这很合适--因为在全球视野发生的事情可能感觉不像是复兴，而是马戏团。

11月的一个周日上午，洛克穿着一条鲜艳的橙色领带在舞台上徘徊，问有多少人从田纳西州以外来到他的帐篷。几十个人站了起来。"而这是每个周末！" 洛克用他的山核桃木口音喊道。渴望为游客表演节目的洛克宣布，他的特别嘉宾是演员约翰-施奈德（John Schneider），他在《哈扎德公爵》（The Dukes of Hazzard）中扮演波-杜克（Bo Duke），他试图每个星期天都预订一个。人群爆发了，每个人都把他们的手机举到空中，像天主教徒等待教皇一样预示着施奈德的到来。

施耐德是来演讲和唱歌的。现场气氛热烈，甚至一些看起来很严肃的人--穿着准军事装备，枪支绑在身旁--也蹦着脚尖跟着拍手。在歌曲之间，施耐德提供了不同的最受欢迎的歌曲目录。他谈到了流感疫苗使人生病。他谴责那些看不起像他这样的人的基督教精英们。他暗示了潜在的暴力起义。

"我们是为这样的时代而生的。上帝在召唤你做一些事情。"施耐德说。"我们有一个国家要夺回。如果失败了，我们有一个国家--是的，我要说的是要夺回来。"

洛克的布道是关于旧约中的非利士人从以色列人手中偷走了约柜，因为他们感觉到打败上帝的选民的唯一方法是使他们与上帝分离。洛克警告说，同样的事情正在今天的美国发生。自由主义者设计了一个阴谋，将基督徒与上帝分开。而所有太多的基督徒--在 "瘟疫 "的幌子下--正允许它发生。

在一个有舞台灯光的巨大帐篷内，一群人闭着眼睛，举起手和胳膊的照片
4月，田纳西州全球视野圣经教会的崇拜者（Jonno Rattman for The Atlantic）。
"让我告诉你一件事，"洛克说，他的声音提高了。"我从来没有因为保持这个教堂的开放而让一个妓女对我生气！我从来没有因为这个教堂的开放而让一个妓女对我生气。从来没有一个酒鬼或醉汉[来]在这里说，'我不能相信你！' 从来没有一个瘾君子因为我维持这个教堂的开放而发火！但是我收到了牧师的来信。但我经常收到传教士的来信：'哦，洛克弟兄，你只需要吃点冷静的药。我们觉得你让我们感到羞愧。 "

洛克开始点头。"我有! 他们中的每一个懦夫，我都让他们感到羞耻！" 观众们再次跃跃欲试。"羞耻，羞耻，羞耻！"他喊道，挥舞着手指。

那天早上听了洛克的话，我感到一种特殊的失望。这个人和这个主日礼拜没有什么特殊之处。骆家辉没有说任何我从其他牧师那里没有听到过的东西。撇开气氛不谈--你不是每天都在一个帐篷里做礼拜，旁边是一个穿着亚历克斯-琼斯衬衫的武装人员--实质内容是熟悉的，可预测的，甚至是乏味的。

我们要清楚：骆家辉属于他自己的一类人。他最近指控他的教会中的多名妇女是女巫（他的来源：他在驱魔时遇到的恶魔）。这使得福音派人士很容易将全球视野视为一个异类，就像他们对韦斯特伯勒浸信会一样。但要仔细研究渗透到他们自己教会的极端主义，并思考其合理的终点，就难得多了。十年前，全球视野会被视为基督教雷达上的一个闪光点而被驳回。如今，骆家辉向220万Facebook粉丝传教，并在白宫与富兰克林-格雷厄姆合影。

走出全球视野，我问自己。有多少小型右翼教会的牧师--像博林这样的牧师--坐在这个帐篷里会感到不安？我猜想，答案是非常少。全球视野 "和 "洪水门 "在程度上可能不同，但在种类上没有区别。

福音派内部的这种使命感爬升，是一些教会采取绝对主义做法的原因：不讲授选举，不讲授时事。

去年秋天，南卡罗来纳州格林维尔的阿尔德斯盖特联合卫理公会的首席牧师迈克尔-宾厄姆在访问中告诉我："一旦你涉及到任何政治问题，你就会开始失去焦点"。"有些人说，'好吧，你必须就堕胎问题讲道。好吧，但后来文化中又发生了别的事情--如果你就堕胎问题进行布道，那么你最好就投票权进行布道。或者枪支权利。或者移民。我只是决定我不碰任何东西。"

宾汉姆在联合基督教会担任牧师已近25年。他说，在这段时间里，他目睹了政治争端从教会生活的边缘走向教会生活的中心。尽管他个人在大多数问题上持保守态度，而且估计三分之二的教会同意他的观点，但宾汉姆在讲台上一直保持着坚定不移的中立姿态。

他有两个原因。首先，宾汉姆根本不相信牧师应该用政治谈话来污染福音。第二，在我们谈话时，更直接的关系是，联合卫理公会正在敲定关于核心社会分歧的教派离婚计划，包括是否按立同性恋牧师。根据暂定计划，各个教会将投票决定是脱离并加入新的保守派教派，还是站在自由派一边，继续留在现有的联合卫理公会旗下。

宾汉姆告诉我，由于有关这一即将发生的分裂的传言在奥尔德斯盖特激荡，他最不希望的就是加剧教会内部的紧张关系。那里有很多人知道他是个保守派。他们也知道他的副手约翰娜-迈尔斯是一位坚定的进步人士。但这对夫妇正在努力工作，以使这些政治分歧的任何痕迹不出现在教会生活中。"我们正在尽一切努力来维持这个地方的团结，"迈尔斯告诉我。

从某种意义上说，基督徒一直生活在一个与非信徒不同的认识论的存在。但这是新的东西。
但还有什么可以支撑呢？当我访问的时候，这个教堂--一个优雅的结构，在圣殿里可以容纳500人--在两个周日的礼拜中，总共接待了大约150人。宾汉姆自豪地说，他并没有因为自己的政治观点而赶走任何人。然而，多年来会员人数一直在下降，部分原因是今天许多基督徒倾向于那些直言不讳地与他们的圣经外信仰保持一致的地方。

尽管他们说要保持奥尔德斯盖特的统一，但宾汉姆和迈尔斯承认，几年后，他们将属于不同的教会。他们的成员也是如此。当我与教会中一些任期最长的平信徒会面时，几乎每个人都表示，当UMC的离婚案最终确定后，他们将跟随反映他们政治观点的教会。在某些情况下，这样做意味着离开他们参加了几十年的教会，这并不重要。

"即将到来的事情将是残酷的。这是没办法的事。"宾汉姆告诉我。"教会正在四处瓦解。我唯一的希望是，当时间到来时，我们的人能够在不破碎的情况下分离。"

肯-布朗认识很多像宾汉姆这样的牧师，他们拒绝谈论使他们的教会分裂的事情。他知道他们有自己的理由。有些人不知道该说什么。其他人担心说出来只会让事情变得更糟。几乎每个人都在担心工作的安全性。牧师们也不能免于对他们的抵押贷款或孩子的大学学费的焦虑；特别是许多年轻的神职人员，担心他们还没有积累足够的善意来与他们的会众争论。

布朗很感激，在领导社区圣经20年后，他从会众那里得到了很多宽容。他听到有人抱怨说他的政治评论把焦点从耶稣身上移开，但他的全部理由是相信耶稣早已成为教会中某些人的次要焦点。"我需要更好地解释为什么我在这样一个动荡的文化环境中发表这些评论。布朗说："有些人觉得我只是在随意投掷反特朗普的炸弹。"但如果我不认为特朗普和特朗普主义是对我们使命的威胁，他们就不会听到我说任何关于特朗普的事情。"

布朗已经通知教会，他正在走向退休。他正在寻找继任者，并希望在几年内过渡到一个支持性角色。他说，新的主任牧师不一定需要分享他对鉴别和虚假信息的危机的方法。但这只会增加加固社区圣经的紧迫性。

牧师比以往任何时候都更努力，他第一次感觉到，势头是站在他这边的。布朗说，在过去的一年里，他的许多成员告诉他，他们发誓不再看有线电视新闻，或者删除了他们的社交媒体账户；并非巧合的是，他们中的一些人似乎比以前更喜欢读经了。布朗说，仍然有一些持反对意见的人，他们希望教会朝另一个方向发展。但这只验证了他的方法。如果没有这种干预，社区圣经可能会有多大的变化？"我无法证明会发生什么，"布朗说，"但我的猜测是，我们的教会会沦为其他教会的那种战区。"

有那么几天，布朗羡慕他的其他教会的同事，他们没有涉足这场斗争。如果他能在最后几年作为首席牧师坚持遵守经文，那就更简单了。但每当他考虑这种诱惑时，布朗说他就会想起一段最喜欢的经文。在《约翰福音》第10章中，耶稣警告那些把自己的安全放在羊群前面的 "雇工"："所以他看见狼来了，就丢下羊跑了。"

布朗认为他被召唤成为一个牧羊人。他说，雇工并不比狼好。

坐在洪水门后面一间狭窄的办公室内，比尔-博林正在猜测自己。

我们已经详细讨论了他的教会中的极端主义--那些确信特朗普永远不会下台的人，那些对QAnon发誓的人，在某种程度上，博林似乎真的在反思自己在其中的角色。他说，他担心基督徒把他们的优先事项搞混了。他告诉我，他不希望他对拜登或2020年选举的咆哮--这些都是 "非必要的"--与他关于耶稣的声明的严肃性相提并论，这些才是人们应该来教会的 "必要的"。

"我确实把我们的宗教观点和我们的政治观点分开了，"博林告诉我。"我不认为政治声明是无懈可击的。"

这句话说得很慷慨。在我听博林讲道、与他坐在一起接受采访以及关注他的Facebook页面的时间里，我记录了几十条政治声明，这些声明要么是鲁莽的误导，要么是完全错误的。当我向他提出质疑，要求提供消息来源时，博林要么引用他读过的 "多篇文章"，要么给我发一个网站链接，如美国头条新闻或保守派斗士。然后他就会承认这些说法有争议，并坚持说他不一定相信他所说的或所发布的一切。

对任何人来说，这似乎都是一种危险的做法，更何况是一个被信任为真理导师的人。博林赖以获取政治信息的许多落后网站和播客，也是他教会的人向我引用的那些。从某种意义上说，基督徒一直过着与非信徒不同的认识论存在。但这是新的东西--而且是明显的非必要的东西。

有一次，我给博林看了他几个月前在Facebook上写的一个帖子。"我仍然想知道，在一个只有133,000,000名登记选民的国家，154,000,000张选票是如何被计算出来的。" 我告诉他，这是在人口普查局公布数据显示2020年有超过1.68亿美国人登记投票后写的。在谷歌上快速搜索一下就能得到博林的准确数字。

大西洋报》采访。这位福音派人士为何因宣传疫苗而被解雇

他告诉我："是的，这是我感到遗憾的一件事，"他解释说，他后来得知他发布的数字是不正确的。(该帖子仍然有效。博林第二天给我发短信说他已经删除了）。

他难道不担心，如果人们看到他把简单的事情弄错了，他们可能会怀疑他把困难的事情也弄错了？像圣洁和救赎这样的事情？

"我真的不担心。不，不是太多。我不知道。"博林说，摇了摇头。"自从我们成为一个国家以来，火爆的言论一直是讲坛的一部分，也是政治的一部分。双方都有夸大其词的悠久历史，就像在这样的帖子中一样。"

不过，博林似乎还是被激怒了。他开始告诉我，有几个参加 "洪水门 "活动的民主党人曾斥责他的政治言论，但他们向他保证，博林说："当涉及到道时，你是坚如磐石的。" 然后他告诉我一些令人惊讶的事情。他正在考虑缩减周日上午的 "头条新闻"。他说，也许他将只是逐字逐句地阅读新闻片段，而不加评论。或者，他将把政治头条新闻减半，加入一些 "感觉良好 "的新闻来平衡气氛。博林说，他想得越多，他可能就会把这部分内容完全删掉，把那些政治感想发布在Facebook上，但不把它们放在崇拜中。

"我们现在正从流行病变成地方病。我们的文化将会改变。在COVID上将不再有这种大规模的分裂，"博林说。"狂热将消退。"

除了总是会有新的东西。就在他谈到热潮消退的前一刻，博林预告了他将在周日早上发表的关于苹果在iPhone上添加 "怀孕男人表情符号 "的戏码。

博林对福音派内部的 "分类 "做了一些详细的诊断--基督徒转换会众的争夺，教会的兴衰，牧师的调整或退出。在他讨论这些潜在的变化时，我突然想到，没有一个教会能保证什么。当博林停止在 "洪水门 "讲坛上点火的那一刻，有多少成员--他们现在已经习惯了这种地狱，他们来到 "洪水门 "正是因为他们想要这种热量--会去其他地方寻找它们？

他似乎不愿意冒这个险。博林告诉我，教会已经卖掉了我们所在的建筑--自20世纪70年代以来，教会一直在这里聚会，并在路边购买了一个庞大的建筑群。牧师说，自2020年以来，FloodGate的收入已经翻了六倍。它正在冲向一个扩张的时代，雄心勃勃地要成为密歇根州东南部的下一个大型教会。

博林说，"洪水门 "和像它这样的教会的发展与许多基督徒 "感到被他们的牧师背叛 "的程度成正比。这一趋势看起来正在保持稳定。更多的人将离开拒绝认同某个部落的教会，并找到确认他们自己党派观点的牧师。对美国基督教机构信心的侵蚀将加速。福音派的漫画将变得更加丑陋。而实际的传教工作将变得更加困难。

上帝并没有咬他的指甲。但我肯定会的。

本文出现在2022年6月的印刷版上，标题为 "政治如何毒害教会"。