Sects & Politics
A Personal Journey Through the Christian Right and Christian Nationalism
Following one Christian’s fifty-year journey through the changing world of American evangelicalism, the Christian Right, and Christian Nationalism.
Blending personal experience, history, and Scripture, the book invites readers to look beyond earthly causes, movements, and leaders and rediscover the hope found in God’s Kingdom.
Faith was never meant to be a weapon. The Kingdom was never meant to be of this world.
What happens when faith becomes entangled with political identity, tribal loyalty, and the pursuit of power?
For fifty years, Joel W. Townsend has lived inside the changing world of American evangelicalism—from the Jesus Movement of the 1970s and the rise of the Christian Right to the emergence of Christian Nationalism. He was not standing outside looking in. He was a worship leader, pastor, church planter, political enthusiast, and eventually a member and leader within a Christian personality cult.
Sects & Politics is his personal journey through that world and his attempt to understand how sincere faith can gradually become attached to causes, movements, political parties, nations, and charismatic leaders. Through personal stories, historical context, and biblical reflection, Townsend traces the subtle shifts that can transform devotion to Christ into devotion to a tribe or ideology.
Neither a political manifesto nor an attack on the church, this book is an invitation to step back, examine our deepest loyalties, and rediscover a Kingdom that transcends every nation, party, and earthly cause.