Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over Ameria

The Christian far right is eviscerating children’s welfare in order to raise up an army of “soldiers... instructed in a totalistic environment,” according to this eye-opening account. Journalist Lavin (Culture Warlords) begins by recapping the past several decades of the Christian nationalist movement in America in an attempt to explain mainline Christianity’s embrace of Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. She finds that the inflection point is QAnon, which, by “mixing the language of Old Testament mysticism with contemporary right-wing conspiracy theories,” has caused anti-democratic ideas long-inculcated by the far right to blend seamlessly with popular religious narratives. While well-told, this history isn’t particularly innovative; far more revealing is the book’s second half, which draws on hundreds of interviews with adults who suffered corporal punishment as children in evangelical households. Pairing their stories with an examination of the Christian right’s promotion of “parental rights,” Lavin convincingly positions child abuse as a central tenet of the Christian far right’s extremist politics (“Their objective... is to exact complete obedience”). Though Lavin’s account is limited by her focus on ex-evangelicals, whose ’90s-era recollections give the narrative a throwback sheen, and her understanding of Evangelicism at times feels sensationalized, her reporting on child abuse is important and shocking. It’s an infuriating glimpse into a cloistered world where abuse is encouraged. (Oct.)