Quick Take
- Narration: Tim Alberta narrating his own work is essential to the book’s credibility; his voice carries the weight of someone who spent years inside these communities.
- Themes: Evangelical Christianity and political power, faith corrupted by partisanship, the cost of institutional loyalty
- Mood: Urgent, deeply reported, and at times genuinely grieving
- Verdict: One of the most important works of religious journalism published in recent years, and a book that requires an author-narrator to carry its full moral weight.
I started The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory on a long train journey, which gave me the uninterrupted time the book genuinely requires. Tim Alberta has written something that is both a work of journalism and a personal reckoning, and at eighteen hours and sixteen minutes, it earns every hour. I finished the last section somewhere between cities, sitting very still, thinking about institutional loyalty and what it costs.
Alberta is the son of an evangelical pastor and a practicing Christian himself. That positioning is central to what the book accomplishes. A secular journalist writing the same story would produce something that could be dismissed by its subjects as an outside attack. Alberta is writing from within the tradition, and the grief and anger that animates the book is the grief and anger of someone who has watched his own community make choices he finds indefensible. That is a different kind of book, and a harder one to write off.
Our Take on The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
The book’s thesis is not subtle: the American evangelical movement has, in significant portions, ceased to glorify God and has instead become a vehicle for earthly political power. Alberta documents this through reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls, through conversations with televangelists and small-town preachers, celebrity revivalists and ordinary churchgoers. The scope of the reporting is one of the book’s most impressive qualities. Alberta is not cherry-picking extremes. He is drawing a pattern from a vast, heterogeneous movement, and the care with which he does so is what distinguishes this from simpler critiques.
The central paradox the book keeps returning to is how a movement built on the teachings of the New Testament ended up fighting mightily against flesh and blood, to borrow its own language. How loving your enemies became a synonym for weakness. How owning the libs became, as Alberta puts it, the answer to WWJD. The reporting does not mock this development. It mourns it, which is precisely the right register for someone writing about the corruption of something they genuinely believe in.
Why Listen to The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
Alberta narrating his own book is not a vanity choice; it is the correct one. The dialogues he quotes, the conversations with pastors and congregants, carry the authority of a reporter who was genuinely present for them. His voice is steady throughout even when the material is not, and the moments of personal emotion that surface are calibrated rather than performed. One reviewer described the book as rare and valuable precisely because of the insider perspective, and the narration reinforces that quality on every page.
The Washington Post called Alberta not just a thorough and responsible reporter but a vibrant writer capable of rendering a farcical scene in vivid hues. That last capacity matters more than it might seem in a book of this subject matter. Alberta can make a charismatic revival meeting vivid and specific without reducing it to caricature, which requires both reporting skill and genuine literary awareness.
What to Watch For in The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
One reviewer described the book as a bit of a slog in places, and at eighteen hours the length is a real consideration. The book does not maintain an even pace throughout; some sections, particularly the more intimate congregational portraits, move more slowly than the chapters dealing with national figures and political inflection points. Listeners who find themselves flagging in the middle sections should push through; the accumulated weight of the portraits is part of the argument. This is not a book that works as efficiently sampled as it does heard whole.
Who Should Listen to The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
This audiobook is for listeners who want a serious, reported, emotionally grounded account of how American evangelical Christianity has navigated its relationship to political power. It is useful for both Christians who want to understand what has happened to their own movement and for secular listeners trying to understand the political landscape of contemporary America. Skip it if you are looking for a polemic or a simple explanation of evangelical voting behavior; this is a much more complicated book than that framing suggests.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory hostile to evangelical Christianity, or does it engage fairly with the tradition?
Alberta is himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor. The book’s critique is made from inside the tradition and is animated by genuine grief rather than contempt. Reviewers from within evangelical communities have found it painful but fair.
At eighteen hours, how does the book sustain its momentum across such a long runtime?
It varies. The chapters built around individual pastors and congregations are slower and more intimate; the sections dealing with national figures and political events move faster. The accumulated weight of the portraits is part of the book’s argument, so the slower pace is functional even when it is demanding.
Does Tim Alberta’s self-narration affect the book’s credibility as journalism?
Positively. His presence in the reporting is explicit throughout, and his voice carries the authority of someone who was physically present for the conversations he describes. A hired narrator would create a distance that does not serve the material.
Is this book useful for non-Christian readers trying to understand American evangelical politics?
Yes. Several reviewers identify themselves as non-Christian and describe the book as illuminating for understanding the political dynamics they observe from outside. Alberta builds enough context that insider knowledge of evangelical theology is not required.
