Falsely Alarmed

Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical’s Lament: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America
by Randall Balmer
Basic Books, 2006
(242 pages, $24.95, hardcover)

reviewed by Ralph Mackenzie

One of Randall Balmer’s earliest memories is of “sitting in the kitchen of a rural parsonage in southern Minnesota and asking Jesus into my heart.” Many years later, the still born-again Evangelical—“I’ll put up my credentials as an evangelical against anyone’s!” he asserts—writes in this book-length lament: “The evangelical faith that nurtured me as a child and sustains me as an adult has been hijacked by right-wing zealots who distorted the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

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