“In fifteen years of political journalism, I had witnessed chicanery and skulduggery of every sort. Nothing could surprise me anymore; I was immune to outrage, bereft of the ability to recoil from iniquity. And then rediscovered the ReAwaken America Tour.”

hats off to Tim Alberta. Subject aside, this is an extraordinary, colossal, & highly assiduous illumination-cum-confrontation with the horror, farce & threat of modern American evangelicalism, & all the barely plausible, arch-antithetical knaves, bullshitters & reprobates that now misdirect so much of this subgroup.

It is incredibly well penned, & diligently toils & traverses through this appallingly misshapen, disgraced, desecrated & despoiled landscape by-way-of hundreds & hundreds of interviews & scores of patient & thorough research & analysis.

Having previously written a best seller in closely related swamp swill – American Carnage-on the front lines of the Republican civil war and the rise of president Trump – Tim follows the stench to one of the conterminous & enabling primary poisons, bringing all his expertise & adroit writing style to the crisis in question.

& there is more, Alberta is himself, a practising Christian, an evangelical even, & the son of a successful pastor.

“In search of answers, I would spend much of the next four years embedded inside the modern Evangelical movement. I toured half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room only auditoriums; I shadowed big-city televangelists and small-town preachers and every day congregants. I reported from inside hundreds of churches, Christian colleges, religious advocacy organisations, denominational nonprofits, and assorted independent ministries. Each of the experiences offered a unique insight into the deterioration of American Christianity.”

So skin-in-the-game & knowledge in the field.

If you think that means that Tim will “go easy” on the bilious, counterfeit diabolism spewing from the movement, you would be dead-wrong.

He “respectfully” lays waste to the grotesque hoaxer distortionists & their sacrilegious perversions of “the good book”. Much of the damage & disqualification however comes from the offenders own mouths, & the actions (a flurry of every crime, sin, contradiction & contortion you can think of) of those espousing it, an unimaginable rabble of filth, fraud & farce on a scale that troubles the brains capacity & the very foundations of fathoming.

“I think we need to be honest about the Falwells. Jerry Sr. was always a bit of a scoundrel. And Jerry Jr. perfected the art of using fear and hatred as a growth strategy. Christianity happens to be the thing they use to build a multibillion dollar institution. It could have been anything else; it could have been moonshine. But they chose Christianity. And it’s gained them a lot and a lot of money, the two things these people truly worship.”

That’s the Falwells, described here as a “mafia” by one contributor (many ex-Liberty University professionals are interviewed). & yes that’s Jerry “Jerk-off” Falwell Jr., aka “the Cuck in the Corner”, who’s onanistic & voyeuristic “pool boy” misadventures between his wife & young lover Giancarlo Granda became his “unzipping” as the drunk, lecherous, sexually inappropriate & power-mad-despot president of the controversial Liberty University (the largest Christian university in the world).

Jerry’s masturbatory mishaps in his own children’s bedrooms whilst the wife of his three kids is banged by a younger man under their intense manipulations is given a remarkably small arc in the book (Tim being just too nice & dignified to concentrate on such a weird & sordid phenomenon), but this is made up for by some withering coverage of the Fapwell fuck-ups & the rivers of collateral & poison that stretch out from Larceny Universities foul wake.

It is incredibly & irredeemably disturbing & despicable stuff, deeply wedded to the current MAGA, Christian nationalist faecal cult Frankenstein.

Just unbelievable.

Trump’s unprecedentedly corrupting & degenerating effect on, well, everything, is highlighted as a specific cancer on the church, bringing a rancour & rot, & an intense divisionist conflict & soiling for an already beleaguered institution & culture.

“political extremism infiltrating churches” & how pastors are burnt out, terrified & demoralised by the intense toxicity of Trump, & the wealth of decay & conflict that he has infected the church with arise again & again “I can’t even count how many conversations I’ve had with pastors who have said, ’I’m crushed. I’m broken. I don’t know what to do.”

central & leading this new wave of fast-paced decomposition is a goon squad of the most fucked up snake-oil-supremacist wastrels & weirdos that seem to have been scraped from some kind of dark-fantasy dirty dozen backwater hellhole. Apparently, these “shitfits” now find succour “leading” the church/evangelical subset? Being treated like “rock stars” & turning the platform & faith into a radicalisation program that seems to want to mock, insult & subvert every principle that the faith initially consecrated & aspires towards.

It’s not just Paula White-Cain, Michael Flynn or Roy Cohn’s rent boy – Roger “Devil’s Cave” Stone (can you actually fucking believe it?) – but a backwash of the most improbable, inadmissible ex-crack addicts, swamp scum uber-losels, with one-foot in the occult & another in the mental asylum.

Its just insane. Literally insane.

What they all share in, is the ruthless manipulation, exploitation, abuse & merciless profiteering from the desperate, moronic, idiotic, brain-scrubbed imbeciles they preside over.

It is just such an unbelievable mess.

“winning is a virtue” – “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles [Americans?]. I want control of the senate.” – Dana Loesch

“He’s not telling us the truth. But I think he’s done the right thing with God.” – Gina Phillips

That’s the freaks defending Republican evangelical candidate Herschel “paid abortion factory” Walker.

When Herschel lost his bid for office, his own estranged son – Christian – would post on Twitter regarding the swarming controversy & allegations against the besieged pro-Trump candidate:

“Don’t beat women, hold guns to peoples heads, fund abortions … leave your multiple children alone to chase more fame, lie, lie, lie, say stupid crap, and make a fool of your family.”

And then maybe you can win a senate seat”

“Roy Moore, the disgraced Trump endorsed candidate for Alabama exhibited even worse malpractice & suffered the same defeat –

“Ironically, pushing back required allying himself with secular forces. That meant becoming a regular on Fox News, the right wing panic factory. It meant trading his church pulpit for a campaign podium, sharing the stage with crooks and grifters who were selling lies for political profit. Most conspicuously, it meant endorsing, promoting, and protecting Trump.”

This book has been published by a division of HarperCollins.

So that’s Rupert Murdoch’s vehicle.

Actually, although Murdoch is never mentioned, this book is relentlessly critical of Fox News (& for good reason. They are central to all of this), who fester in tandem with this degenerative movement. Perhaps the agreement of publication was to never mention Murdoch by name.

“I don’t want some meek and mild leader or somebody who’s going to turn the other cheek. I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation.”

they also got the greediest, most unprincipled & indecent madman corruptocrat – who went on to sell-out, sell off, debase, ruin, weaken & infest the country with nefarious foreign detractors in one of the most deranged misjudgements of the century.

“The public hasn’t turned against Christians because they act better than the rest of the world she said. The public have turned against Christians because they act worse than the rest of the world.”

I find out reading in The Kingdom that “Satan” is described in one of the old books as – “the father of lies”.

Now ain’t that a bitch????

I have never, ever, ever, ever, anywhere, in any capacity seen a man that is so defined by lying & lies as Donald Trump. The man has no counterpart. He is the embodiment of lies & the lie & liying.

Scatological sycophants slither up to the temple of turd to dribble their contorted obscenities of support & advocacy for the Faecal Fuhrer.

“God will bless or curse this nation according to the course Christians take in politics.” 9pro Trump)

“The most moral president on record” – Charlie Kirk

a turbo-vulgarian ,illustrious rapist, serial sexual molester, adulterer, child sexual abuser, incestuous & proud, self avowed “grabber of pussies”, illicitly cramming “hush money” to porn stars as campaign expenses who were shagged whilst unconscious (check her account) & devoted, long standing associate & business partner to horrific (& now jailed) sexual predators, well-organised child traffickers – Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, John Casablancas & George Nader (to name a few) is “the most moral” on record???

“Unsavory alliances would need to be forged. Sordid tactics would need to be embraced. The first step toward preserving Christian values, it seemed, would be to do away with Christian values.”

“To understand White’s ascent to the pinnacle of evangelical influence is to study Trump’s own takeover of the Republican Party. Neither had completed any formal education – White in theology Trump in law or government – to justify their positions of authority. Both had several failed marriages behind them and were shadowed by whispers of infidelity. Both nearly saw their reputations irreparably marred by legal, ethical and financial improprieties, only to somehow emerge more respected on the other side. They were outlaw survivors, conscience-free swindlers who possessed bot the talent to detect what people wanted to hear and the shamelessness to say it to them.”

“The greatest danger to America is the destruction of our nation from the people within.” – Donald Trump

So Satan cries “devil worship”. The saboteur screams sabotage.

& the rot – so advanced & so highly concentrated after years of intensive cultivation by our good friend Rupert Murdoch & his death media, & the mind rapists at Liberty University – is “complete” enough to make people believe this mindless shit sham cognitive paralysis.

A toast to Roy Cohn.

“God was kicked out of the White House as soon as Trump left office”. When Trump left the White House, he took god with him.”

so Slump is bigger than god now? one of the most corrupt men of the entire last century (if not more), an incorrigible repeat rapist & incestuous sexual abuser & pervert & ultimate purveyor of the seven deadly sins on steroids, who lies like he breathes oxygen & violates all “godly” virtues is presented as some kind of messianic god conduit?

& Hitler was a pacifist … hey, the ultimate pacifist!

Orwell must be thrashing in his coffin.

Here is a video of an ardent Trump supporter (self professed “Trump cultist”) & homosexual neo-Nazi explaining why he is more heterosexual than practising heterosexuals by being homosexual … this is the “reality” of the people we are dealing with.

“This compartmentalization of standards is toxic to the credibility of the Christian witness. Because politics is about the ends, not the means. Since the ends are about power – the power to legislate, the power to investigate, the power to accumulate more power – the means are inherently defensible, even if they are, by any other measure, utterly indefensible.”

In the sweeping & roaming expanse of Tim’s research, he also explores the unsettling proliferations of Christian extremism, theological militarisation & religious fundamentalism.

This sobering research comes via his conversing with a French monk who spent over a decade posted out in Russia, & observed this mutation first-hand.

In the “sacred war” – this phenomenon -”the political theology of Putinism”

“When yo have a special mission from god, then you are not bound by moral norms.“

As one Russian military commander “assures” the troops destined for Ukraine’s pointless meat grinder –

“remember that if you lay down your life for your country, you will be with God”

“weaponizing religion” – “presaged some of histories greatest crimes”

“Political religion is [not optional]. That was exactly Hitlerism, Nazism, communism. They were political religions. They were much more violent, and that is exactly the transformation that happened to Putinism. It started as a civil religion with a set of rituals, quasi-religious rituals, ideas that were optional for the Russian people. Now its not optional anymore. It is a political religion with the power of imposition”

after finishing this book, I went straight into the book The Nazis and the Occult by Paul Roland.

During many pages of the book, I felt like I was still reading Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom.

Its there. And its that bad. Don’t underestimate it.

Liberty University & the Fapperwell’s also bare a heavy responsibility for this Frankenstein.

As one ex-employee explains:

“I would go to these fundraising meetings. They would start with prayer & end in manipulation.”

“Almost forty years later, Thomas still felt ashamed. This practice of preying on unwitting believers was central to the business model of the Moral Majority and its successor groups.”

“The money raised by dubious methods was evidence of God’s blessing on the project, thereby sanctioning ever-more-dubious methods to raise ever more money.”

“In the darkest chapters of Church history – the crusades and the inquisition, the slave trade and sexual abuse scandals – the common denominator has been a willingness on behalf of Christian authority figures to distort scripture for what they perceive to be some greater good.”

“the great fault of the evangelical movement today is that we’re disobedient to the commands of the one that we claim to follow.”

“147 of his Republican colleagues vote against certifying the results of elections – essentially bowing to the demands of the terrorists who’d stormed the cathedral of American democracy hours earlier.”

“The painful realisation they would reach wasn’t simply that Liberty was no better – no holier, no more Christlike – than what they encountered in secular spaces. It was that Liberty was worse than the secular world.”

“You guys are doing stuff that even the pagans don’t do!”

“At its root, we’re talking about idolatry. America has become an idol to some of these people.”

“They would use scripture to make the case for capitalism.”

an amazing, amazing feat of work by Tim Alberta.

Tim Alberta, 2023, Harper 1871/HarperCollins, 445 pages