Alberta finishes an interview promoting his first book and checks his phone to learn his father has died of a heart attack.

Mourners at Pastor Alberta's wake confront Tim Alberta with Rush Limbaugh's criticism of his book rather than offering condolences.

Alberta delivers his father's eulogy at Cornerstone, then publicly confronts the congregation for their hostile behavior at the wake the day before.

A familiar church elder leaves Alberta an envelope containing a screed accusing him of being part of a deep state plot.

Jerry Falwell Sr. launches a Baptist church and a radio show, rapidly building a massive evangelical following through new media technology.

Falwell seizes on a single Playboy magazine interview to publicly attack the moral character of sitting President Jimmy Carter.

Falwell unites different religious groups around shared cultural goals, forming a political voting bloc he names the Moral Majority.

Falwell's collaboration with Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign delivers a groundswell of evangelical support and leads to a landslide victory.

Jerry Falwell Sr. dies, leaving his son Jerry Falwell Jr. in charge of Liberty University.

Jerry Falwell Jr. publicly endorses Donald Trump for president, stunning the Liberty University community.

Mark DeMoss publicly criticizes evangelical Trump endorsers in the Washington Post, and Jerry Jr. campaigns among trustees to have DeMoss removed.

The Washington Examiner publishes an investigation into Jerry Falwell Jr.'s wife's affair, and a shaken Jerry Jr. is placed on leave.

Twelve women come forward claiming that Liberty University actively discouraged them from reporting sexual assault, threatening the school's federal standing.

The Southern Baptist Convention votes to establish a new abuse oversight task force and an independently run database for tracking accused pastors.

Alberta returns to Cornerstone to find a transformed Winans confidently preaching that the Church is an infinite game, not a finite culture war.

Tim Alberta's investigation begins with the death of his father and the shocking hostility he encounters from his father's evangelical congregation, planting the seeds of his three-year inquiry. The book then traces the rise of Jerry Falwell Sr., who transformed American evangelism from a separatist faith into a powerful political machine through media savvy, culture war rhetoric, and the formation of the Moral Majority. Falwell's alliance with Ronald Reagan cemented evangelical Christianity as the backbone of conservative Republican politics for decades. After Falwell Sr.'s death, his son Jerry Jr. accelerated a moral decline by endorsing Trump and presiding over Liberty University's descent into personal and institutional scandal. The Falwell dynasty's hypocrisy — marked by private misconduct and institutional cover-ups — mirrored the broader corruption Alberta documents across the evangelical movement. The book closes with Alberta returning to his father's church to find a resilient pastor preaching that faithful Christianity is not a culture war to be won but an infinite game of love.

The rise and fall of evangelical political power, from Alberta's personal loss to Liberty University's moral collapse.

Chris Winans, chosen by the late Pastor Alberta as his successor, faces congregation-wide condemnation for complying with COVID-19 shutdown orders.

Pastor John Torres reads a Black pastor's letter praising Obama's historic election aloud at Goodwill Church, triggering sudden and severe backlash.

After Torres publicly supports the Black Lives Matter movement, outraged congregants accuse him of being a Marxist teaching Critical Race Theory.

Two Goodwill Church members stand up during a service and shout at Torres to repent for sowing racial hatred in the Church.

Robert Jeffress attacks Mitt Romney's Mormon faith during Romney's presidential campaign, becoming one of the most prominent evangelical voices in America.

After the Access Hollywood tape surfaces, Jeffress publicly defends Trump, saying he wants a strongman rather than a meek and mild leader.

Bill Bolin at FloodGate Church refuses to comply with Michigan's lockdown orders, causing a flood of new members to join his congregation.

Vern and Nancy Hoffner leave Cornerstone Church for FloodGate, describing Winans's COVID closure as their personal point of no return.

Ralph Reed partners with televangelist Pat Robertson to launch the Christian Coalition as a more powerful successor to the waning Moral Majority.

Trump speaks at Reed's Road to Majority conference and publicly denounces former vice president Mike Pence for lacking the courage to act.

Doug Mastriano uses campaign funds to rent buses carrying his supporters to the January 6 Capitol riot.

Herschel Walker, exposed for absentee fatherhood, coerced abortions, and domestic abuse, continues his Senate campaign with strong evangelical backing.

Herschel Walker loses his Georgia Senate race to Raphael Warnock, and Doug Mastriano loses his Pennsylvania gubernatorial race in the same midterms.

Curtis Chang and David French launch the Good Faith podcast, which quickly rises to global popularity as a moderate evangelical voice.

Tucker Carlson is fired from Fox News after leaked texts and emails reveal his privately held contempt for the views he promoted on air.

This pool follows the individual stories of pastors and leaders who found themselves on the front lines of evangelical polarization, facing congregational revolt for making measured decisions. Figures like Chris Winans and John Torres suffered for complying with health orders or acknowledging racial injustice, while firebrands like Bill Bolin and Robert Jeffress built followings by amplifying their congregants' worst fears. The contrast reveals a church in civil war, where the loudest and most extreme voices consistently won new members while moderate leaders bled theirs. The political machinery behind this radicalization — from Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition to Trump's Road to Majority rallies — demonstrates how evangelical fear was deliberately manufactured and exploited for electoral gain. Candidates like Herschel Walker illustrated how far evangelicals would compromise their stated values to achieve political ends, only to lose anyway. Even amid the dysfunction, small signs of hope emerged through efforts like the Good Faith podcast and the exposure of figures like Tucker Carlson.

The pastors and political operators caught in the crossfire of evangelical radicalization.

Alberta's wife reads the screed left by a church elder and asks 'What the hell is wrong with these people?' — sparking Alberta's investigation.

Jerry Falwell Jr. is photographed with Trump in front of a framed Playboy cover — the same magazine his father once used to condemn President Carter.

The Southern Baptist Convention officially aligns itself with Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, making partisan political affiliation a pillar of Baptist identity.

Russell Moore publicly criticizes Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Trump endorsement in a Tweet, making Moore a marked man within the Southern Baptist Convention.

Moore exposes the SBC's history of racism and uncovers sexual abuse cover-ups, leading the CBN to publicly denounce him as divisive and un-Christlike.

Moore's family begins receiving death threats from white nationalists, and Moore resigns from the Southern Baptist Convention he has spent his career serving.

Congressman Adam Kinzinger joins the January 6 investigation committee and, after receiving death threats, announces he will never run as a Republican again.

Alberta attends the ReAwaken America Tour and finds Michael Flynn and Clay Clark running what he describes as a scam artist's Super Bowl.

Brian Zahnd studies ancient Christian doctrine and dismantles Christian justification of American empire from his pulpit, losing over 1,500 congregants as a result.

After publicly opposing Trump, David French receives death threats including a photoshopped image of his adopted Black daughter in a gas chamber.

GuidePost Solutions releases a bombshell report on the SBC's systematic concealment of sexual abuse in the weeks before the annual SBC convention.

Julie Roys publishes a sweeping investigation into pastor James McDonald and Moody Bible Institute and is immediately fired and cast as a villain.

Baptist Press misrepresents Jennifer Lyell's account of sexual abuse by professor David Sills, publishing a report that implies the relationship was consensual.

Rachael Denhollander publicly reveals Jennifer Lyell's true story of abuse at a keynote conversation with Russell Moore, who responds with probing questions.

Dr. Aaron Werner is abruptly fired from Liberty University and escorted off campus by security after leading a devotional probing ties between nationalism and Christianity.

This pool traces the moments when the evangelical movement's contradictions were exposed most sharply, beginning with Alberta's wife's simple but damning question at his father's funeral and ending with the firing of a Liberty University professor for simply questioning nationalism. The early chapters show how the SBC's formal alliance with partisan politics created the conditions that silenced reform voices like Russell Moore, who was ultimately driven out of the denomination he had served for decades. Later chapters reveal how that same culture of institutional protection enabled predators, illustrated by Baptist Press's distortion of Jennifer Lyell's abuse account and the bombshell GuidePost report that finally forced a public reckoning. Journalists like Julie Roys and advocates like Rachael Denhollander paid steep personal costs to force accountability that the institution refused to initiate itself. Meanwhile, turning points like Adam Kinzinger's death threats and Brian Zahnd's mass congregation exodus showed the human toll of the movement's radicalization. Together, these revelations chart the painful and widening distance between evangelical Christianity's stated values and its actual institutional behavior.

The decisive revelations and moral reckoning that exposed the evangelical movement's deepest contradictions.