As with Trump’s rise in 2015-16, evangelical elites and their aspirants—a group Stephen Wolfe has aptly called the “evangelical arm of the ruling class”—have evidently still learned nothing. And this year will be no different. Evangelicals will vote in overwhelming numbers for Trump in the general election after his inevitable victory in the Republican primaries. And evangelical elites will continue to reserve their harshest judgment for their own tribe, a relationship that looks more and more tenuous by the day.

Don’t make Donald Trump your idol.” “It’s not about Left vs. Right but about the Messiah who already came.” “Saving souls is more important than saving your country.” “Jesus isn’t running in 2024.”
Ever since the former president soundly defeated his opponents in the Iowa caucus last week (as polls had been predicting for quite some time, to the consternation of the political class), and then immediately repeating the victory in New Hampshire, the crush of evangelical elite rhetoric targeting Trump’s evangelical voters has been deafening.
Passive aggressive tweets from pastors and online theologians and op-eds from individuals in the midst of some form of deconstruction have flooded the zone. Accusations abound, and sweeping, ideological generalizations are rampant. Even the very salvation of Christian Trump supporters has been called into question yet again.
Ben Ziesloft has pointed out that the veritable cottage industry of anti-Trump books written by the self-proclaimed guardians of “our democracy” is only equaled by the pile penned by evangelical thought leaders who castigate the evangelical hoi polloi who don red MAGA hats. (Whether or not the term “evangelical” is simply a sociological label or captures orthodox, low-church Protestants who attend church weekly is a different question entirely.) As Miles Smith has trenchantly observed on X, “Is their [sic] any more boring type of self-loathing American than an ‘Evangelical intellectual’ who is still writing about Trump?”
Aaron Renn has already begun reviewing one of the latest entries in this genre, Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Among other things, Alberta profiles the “well-organized, well-funded” network called “The After Party” that anti-Trump evangelicals Russell Moore, David French, and Curtis Chang, a liberal Silicon Valley consultant, created in the wake of the 2016 election. This group has been working hard ever since “to reduce Republican voting by evangelicals by providing doing so with a theological rationale.” Unsurprisingly, in original reporting at First Things, Megan Basham has shown that they’re bankrolled by a number of left-wing foundations.
In other words, Moore and French are doing the very same thing that Vote Common Good, a progressive Christian nonprofit, is doing: making sure that a Democrat stays in the White House for the foreseeable future. As Vote Common Good’s website notes, they too are looking to persuade “an additional 5-10% [of evangelicals] who are looking for an ‘exit ramp’ from supporting the Republicans who sacrifice the common good.”
In an election year, the spigot will undoubtedly be opened even more. Scott M. Coley’s forthcoming Ministers of Propaganda: Truth, Power, Ideology and the Religious Right (published by the increasingly heterodox Eerdmans Publishing Company in June), is a prime example. A talk he gave in August 2022, where he described the “ideology of the religious right” as including “creation science, illegitimate appeals to biblical authority or sufficiency, [and] Christian colorblindness,” is likely a preview of some of the arguments Coley will draw on in Ministers of Propaganda. Upholding orthodoxy, it seems, is not part of his project.
Books like Alberta’s and Coley’s, however, aren’t meant to be read. Rather, they are for signaling one’s own inclusivity, rejection of power, and care for the migrant—all elements that are consistent with regime-approved morality.
As with Trump’s rise in 2015-16, evangelical elites and their aspirants—a group Stephen Wolfe has aptly called the “evangelical arm of the ruling class”—have evidently still learned nothing. And this year will be no different. Evangelicals will vote in overwhelming numbers for Trump in the general election after his inevitable victory in the Republican primaries. And evangelical elites will continue to reserve their harshest judgment for their own tribe, a relationship that looks more and more tenuous by the day.
On the surface, this is akin to political consultants who consistently run losing campaigns featuring outdated and ineffective messaging but nevertheless remain extremely confident that next time, Americans will finally pick someone who can defeat the Soviets and balance the budget. But if it didn’t work last time, why would deploying the same strategies work this time? Instead, why not reach out to dissident figures on the Right? Or men who lift weights or work with their hands for a living?
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Spencer’s book is based on deep historical insight and research, it is written with elegance and energy, and it achieves the rare feat of being scholarly and serious as well as accessible and engaging. It will be an important resource for anyone who wishes to understand the scientific and religious entanglements that have shaped, and continue to frame, our views of God, humanity, and the cosmos.

Reading Nicholas Spencer’s Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion, I was reminded of T. S. Eliot’s words: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” For all the intense debates about how best to navigate the territories of science and religion, this is a journey that points back to its origin: the human person. As Spencer convincingly demonstrates, what we think about science and religion often says more about us—our views on what it means to be human and who gets to decide—than it does about science and religion.
The book’s title refers to the biologist Stephen Jay Gould’s model of science and religion as “non-overlapping magisteria,” or two distinct activities that need not interact. Others have variously defined the relationship in terms of conflict, dialogue, or collaboration. Spencer rejects such approaches as too simplistic. In line with the emerging scholarly consensus that there isn’t a single narrative for the history of science and religion, he offers alternative histories. After all, the two enterprises turn out to be “indistinct, sprawling, untidy, and endlessly and fascinatingly entangled.”
But Spencer’s goal isn’t just to emphasize complexity. In his telling, the histories of science and religion tend to converge on two issues: human nature (our origins, purpose, and uniqueness) and authority (who has the right to adjudicate these questions?). Perhaps this is why the topic of science and religion can be so polarizing: if Spencer is correct, we’re dealing not with sterile abstractions about “conflict” or “harmony,” but with profoundly human concerns about who we are, how we relate to each other, and what we might be.
While the story of science and religion is not so easy to track, Spencer’s own career trajectory has been heading toward an ambitious study of the subject for some time. As a senior fellow of the Christian think-tank Theos, he has already written a book about Charles Darwin’s religious beliefs, another on The Evolution of the West, and presented a BBC radio series on the relationship between science and religion. With Magisteria, he has now produced one of the most comprehensive and compelling popular accounts of the entanglements between these contested human activities.
Histories
The book’s historical scope is vast, with the first section alone tracing 1,600 years of (general) cooperation and (occasional) combat between science and religion. Spencer shows that, to a considerable degree, ancient and medieval religious believers supported, legitimized, and helped advance scientific inquiry. Augustine warned that it is “disgraceful and dangerous” for Christians to ignore facts about the physical world. Islamic scholars made original contributions to astronomy, chemistry, and medicine. Christian ideas about the order and rationality of the natural world informed the assumptions that continue to underpin science today. Medieval universities functioned primarily as scientific institutions.
Of course, the terms “science” and “religion” (as well as “science and religion”) are modern inventions, and Spencer acknowledges the risk of anachronism when using them in relation to the ancient and medieval worlds. His point is that, for large parts of human history, what we would now compartmentalize as scientific and religious outlooks were fully integrated in the lives of important figures. The twelfth-century scholastic philosopher Robert Grosseteste combined scientific work with an ecclesiastical career. The fifteenth-century philosopher Nicholas of Cusa was a Catholic cardinal as well as a mathematician and astronomer. Both men believed that God’s creation was subject to quantification and experimentation, and both engaged with ideas (such as the concept of infinity) that would sit easily with developments in twenty-first-century physics.
The book’s other three sections are framed by three major incidents in the history of science and religion, which Spencer sees as central to sustaining the popular myth of endless conflict: the Galileo affair, which seemed to pit Copernicus’s heliocentrism against the Catholic Church; the Huxley–Wilberforce debate, which seemed to pit Darwin’s new theory of evolution against Christian belief in Victorian England; and the Scopes Monkey trial, which seemed to perform a similar role in Tennessee sixty-five years later.
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Sauls’ standing as a pastor will also be reviewed at an upcoming meeting of the Nashville Presbytery. According to the denomination’s rules, he is considered a “teaching elder” whose status as a minister is overseen by that local presbytery. That presbytery will have the final say over the length and conditions of Sauls’ leave. 

(RNS) — The Rev. Scott Sauls, an influential evangelical Christian pastor and author, has been placed on an indefinite leave of absence from the Nashville church he has pastored since 2012.
His leave was announced Sunday (May 7) during a member meeting at Christ Presbyterian, a prominent Presbyterian Church in America congregation.
In a video message to the congregation, Sauls apologized for an unhealthy leadership style that harmed the people who worked for him and the church.
“I verbalized insensitive and verbal criticism of others’ work,” he said, according to a recording of the meeting shared with Religion News Service. “I’ve used social media and the pulpit to quiet dissenting viewpoints. I’ve manipulated facts to support paths that I desire.”
Sauls made clear he had not been involved in any sexual sin or substance abuse. He said that he would seek counseling and repentance during his leave and that he hoped to someday reconcile with the people he had harmed.
“I am grieved to say that I have hurt people,” he said. “I want to say to all of you that I am sorry.”
The leave comes after an investigation by Christ Presbyterian itself and by the Nashville Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America.  That investigation was prompted by a letter sent from a number of former Christ Presbyterian staffers who raised concerns about Sauls’ conduct as a leader.
During Sunday’s Christ Presbyterian meeting, members also heard from the church’s elders, who said they hoped the leave would to healing and reconciliation.  The elders also admitted their own shortcomings in allowing an unhealthy culture on the church’s staff.
Sauls’ standing as a pastor will also be reviewed at an upcoming meeting of the Nashville Presbytery. According to the denomination’s rules, he is considered a “teaching elder” whose status as a minister is overseen by that local presbytery. That presbytery will have the final say over the length and conditions of Sauls’ leave.
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