I have never met a book I didn’t like. Although, I suppose that’s not quite true; I’ve thoroughly disliked most self-help books I have ever encountered, and I think the entire body of Victorian fiction is criminally overrated. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that I have never encountered a book which didn’t impress me, which didn’t force me to think about the efforts involved in translating all of those thoughts into words, and putting all of those words onto the page. Even the worst novels – and I have read a few – leave me with the impression that the author has accomplished a Herculean task: externalizing what was once only internal.
If I’m so easily impressed as to be bowled-over by the accomplishment contained in even the shoddiest work of fiction, you can probably imagine how dumbstruck I find myself in the presence of truly great nonfiction – works which represent not only the efforts of turning thoughts into words and putting them onto the page, but the additional efforts of taking something difficult and complex and rendering it understandable to a lay audience.
I find many great escapes in fiction – temporarily trading the travails of the real world for the troubles of the prairie in Lonesome Dove or the river in Heart of Darkness, constrained forever to the page – but nonfiction is where I find comfort. It’s not always an easy comfort, admittedly, plunging into the unpleasantness of history or economy or ideology, but it is a true comfort. It is a comfort born not of escaping the world’s problems, but of attempting to understand them better, of getting a firmer grasp on them. And, in many ways, the comfort I derive from a masterful work of nonfiction is simply the comfort of knowing that someone else has given a particular problem an adequate amount of thought; that I am not alone in either my anxieties or my hopes.
In my quest to understand and communicate the threat that Christian nationalism poses to American democracy, I have found that kind of comfort in a great many books by a great many scholars, reporters, and activists: authors who did not minimize the problem, but contextualized it in ways I found helpful. With the second Trump administration looming only a month away, the threats of Project 2025 and a Christian nationalist remaking of America lurking in its shadow, those books feel more important than ever.
At the end of every year, I release a list of everything I read in the preceding 12 months. If you are interested in dozens of titles on the subject, my last few lists can be found at these links. Today, though, I want to recommend four specific books to you, in the hope that they might bring you some comfort, too – not by escaping the threat, but by understanding it.
Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States
By Dr. Samuel L. Perry and Dr. Andrew L. Whitehead
If I could only recommend one book about Christian nationalism in the United States, it would be this one, and I know many scholars of the movement who agree with me on that. Published in 2020, Taking America Back for God is the product of two of the finest minds in the field synthesizing their combined decades of research into one digestible tome. What begins as an attempt to understand the strength of evangelical support for Donald Trump winds up being one of the clearest and most concise descriptions of the Christian nationalist movement ever produced.
The brilliance in Taking America Back for God comes from its authors’ day jobs. Perry and Whitehead are not reporters or polemicists or activists, they are sociologists.
Their work is not based on vibes and assumptions, it is based on rigorous, detailed analysis of survey data. When Perry and Whitehead say “Christian nationalism,” they can tell you exactly what they mean, down to the specific beliefs, and what percentage of the population holds them. Though I’m doubtful that either of them would admit it, there is not much debate among those of us who follow Christian nationalism that Perry and Whitehead are the top scholars on the topic.
Though I have not had the fortune of meeting Dr. Whitehead, I can tell you from experience that, in addition to the brilliance on display in the book, Dr. Perry is the rarest kind of academic: a natural, charismatic communicator. I’m not sure I will ever recover from having to take the stage after him in Woodland Park earlier this year.
You can find Drs. Perry and Whitehead on social media as well.
Sam Perry: Twitter
Andrew Whitehead: Twitter | BlueSky
The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
By Katherine Stewart
A surreal thing happened to me this Monday morning, shortly after I had outlined the four books I was going to include in this piece: my phone rang, and it was Katherine Stewart on the other end. To make a longer story short, I’m planning to interview her next month about her forthcoming book, Money, Lies, and God, which will be released in February, and I can’t wait.
As I told Stewart on the phone on Monday, though – and as I’m sure I’ve gushed to her before – her previous book, The Power Worshippers, absolutely rocked me. Where Perry and Whitehead take a definitional look at the movement and its beliefs, Stewart delves into the operational side of the Christian nationalist movement: how it builds and deploys strength in its single-minded quest for temporal power.
Last year, Stewart’s work was invaluable to me as I pursued a greater understanding of the network of think tanks, family foundations, and other political organizations seeking to force the American Birthright curriculum into public schools in Woodland Park. Some of the same individuals and organizations behind the Birthright push are detailed in The Power Worshippers, as Stewart takes a comprehensive look not just at the movement’s operational practices, but at the vast flows of money keeping it afloat.
Katherine Stewart can be found on social media at:
The Violent Take it By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy
By Matthew D. Taylor, Ph.D.
While other books on this list have looked at the Christian nationalist movement more broadly, Matthew Taylor’s book – released earlier this year – is a much-needed dive into an underreported and over-important segment of that movement: the New Apostolic Reformation. Part history and part contemporary reporting, Taylor tracks this heavily politicized form of charismatic and pentecostal Christianity from its Southern California roots at Fuller Seminary to its role in the events of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Having been raised as a Calvinist, my childhood contained a great deal of Christian nationalism, but of a notably different flavor than the groups Taylor tracks in The Violent Take it By Force.
While we were khakis-wearing hymn-singers, they were tambourine-playing hippie types; the only thing we all agreed on was that the country should be conquered for Christianity. Now, as an adult tracking and contending with the movement in real life, gaining a better understanding of the other side of the movement has been vital.
Uncommon among many scholars, Taylor is also a remarkably shrewd political observer, and has masterfully synthesized both the political and religious aspects of the NAR in his book, which focuses on a number of Christian nationalist leaders who have risen to great prominence in Trumpworld, like Lance Wallnau and Paula White. When it comes to understanding exactly what kind of Christian leaders have the once and future president’s ear, you cannot do better than Taylor’s book.
Like the other authors on this list, Taylor can be found on social media, at:
The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
By Tim Alberta
Of the books on this list, none moved me as deeply as The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory by Politico’s Tim Alberta – largely because of how close to home it hit. Like me, Alberta was raised as the son of a Presbyterian pastor, and, like me, he came to despair about the hold Donald Trump had over evangelicals. Unlike me, though, Alberta has remained in the church, and is a better messenger because of it.
On one level, The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory is just a damn good book: a national political correspondent road-tripping to churches around the country to figure out what the hell happened to the people he grew up with. It’s propulsive, reminds me of early Chuck Klosterman.
On another level, it is an intimate glimpse into Alberta’s personal struggle to understand the forces weighing down the faith he still loves and practices. It is the story not just of what Trumpified Christianity has done to the nation, but of what it has done to the church.
Throughout the book, Alberta interviews pastors – some you have probably heard of, some you have not – and parishioners, and details a wide array of experiences at a diverse collection of churches and faith-based political events. It’s here that the book, and Alberta’s skill as a journalist, really shines: many of the most damning, clarifying lines in the book come not from Alberta, but straight from the mouths of his subjects. The result is a book which is troubling and illuminating, but also fair enough and good-hearted enough that I have recommended it to many evangelical friends. After all, Alberta is one of them – he’s just one of them who sees the problem so many of them have not seen yet.
Alberta, of course, can be found on social media, at:
Since the election, a lot of friends have asked me variations on the same question: what do we do now? And I have given them the same answer: for now – right now – the best thing we can do is rest, recuperate, and heal as necessary. Spend time with friends and family. Read a good book. What we do not need to be doing right now is running in circles, hanging on every cable news alert, and fraying our nerves before any meaningful action can be taken.
But if taking your hands off the wheel for a few weeks isn’t your style, if you need to keep part of your mind on the action to avoid going out of your mind, pick up one of these books. Learn more about what we are facing, and become better equipped to face it in the process. If comfort is available to you via the unconventional route of nonfiction, perhaps you will find some here.
