1. I found the book to be deeply emotional, in a good way. It connected with my own care and concern for the Church in America on a gut level, I could sense the authenticity of Tim's faith and his heartbreak at what has become of the Evangelical world he grew up in. The personal sections where Tim wrote about his dad's death were at hard to read as expected, but that same heart-on-his-sleave aspect carries throughout the book.
2. Alberta interviewed, and got honest self-aware responses, from the heaviest hitters in the world of political evangelicalism. This isn't a hatchet job from an outsiders, instead it is a look behind the curtain.
3. Although I knew about most of the episodes that he builds his narrative around (Jerry Falwell Jr.'s fall from leading Liberty University, for example, or Rachel Denhollander's crusade to help the SBC reckon with the sexual abuse in their midst), there were still gut wrenching new details and head shaking low points that were new to me.
4. While a cry for help, the book is not without hope. In the midst of the most Christ-dishonoring actions of individuals who claim to be doing God's work are sprinkled the stories of other men and women, mostly less well known, who were/are willing to strive to be like Jesus and to do so with honor and decency.
5. "Christian" Nationalism as a threat to the Church in America isn't going away anytime soon. It took us generations to reach this point, a point where politics trump theology and ethics, where winning at all cost is met with thunderous cheers instead of the horror that it deserves, and so the path back to a more Christ-like attitude will be a long and difficult one.
Overall, this is an excellent book, sobering in its unflinching diagnosis of what ails the Church in America, Evangelicalism in particular, but also ones written from a man who firmly believes that God is in control and that his Church will triumph.
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