Christian Extremism: The Heresy and Its Consequences
January 5–26, February 9, 2025, 11:00 am
Jim Aageson
Fellowship Hall
How do we untie the Gordian knot regarding the relationship between extremist religion and national politics? We might state the problem this way: religion and politics should remain separate because they have the potential to corrupt each other; religion and politics cannot remain separate because people’s fundamental values will and ought to inform the social and political order. But what happens when extremist religion (right-wing Christianity in this case) and extremist politics (Extremist right-wing American politics in this case) join hands? This is the world that Tim Alberta leads us into in his recent book: The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicalism in an Age of Extremism. Using a discussion format, we will follow Alberta into this world to examine this contemporary Christian heresy and its many consequences.
Sessions:
Week One:
Week Two:
Week Three:
Week Four:
Week Five:
Tim Alberta, his Father, and the Warping of Christianity and Contemporary American Politics
Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, the Cult of Personality, and the “Fall”
Greg Locke and the Global Vision Bible Church: The Kingdom Builders
The Orthodox Monk Cyril Hovorun, Civil Religion, and Political Religion: The Point and
Counter Point of American Extremist Religion and Russian Religion in the Time of Putin
Seeing the Light: The Reconversion of Brian Zhand and the Courage to Push Back