Local author makes New York Time bestseller list with book on extremism, Bill Bolin is a main CHARACTER

New York TImes bestseller ‘The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism’ by Tim Alberta discusses Bill Bolin in part 1 of Chapter 7.

“The story of Floodgate is personal for Alberta, who grew up in the area and whose father was pastor of a nearby evangelical church called Cornerstone. Alberta grieves the fact that many of the believers who once belonged to his father’s church have since embraced Floodgate and Bolin’s “tawdry translation of the message of Jesus Christ.”

“Bolin was less a pastor than he was a performer,” Alberta wrote. “He had traded his pulpit for a soapbox” and “openly preyed on the political and cultural insecurities of his congregants. And it worked.

“The hardest part of witnessing all this was to see people I knew — people I respected and cared about from around the community — falling for this spiritual farce. Rather than being challenged and transformed by the gospel, they were now coming to church to have their worst impulses confirmed.”

Speaking from a stage festooned with flags but lacking any crosses, Bolin routinely dispensed utter falsehoods from the pulpit, including the claim that a local hospital was treating two patients with COVID and 103 patients suffering from the effects of “radically dangerous” COVID vaccines.

During one sermon, Bolin referred to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as “Whitler,” using a Nazi hand gesture to salute her. Floodgate congregants jeered Whitmer at the mention of her name.

For Alberta, Bolin was the epitome of the Christian leader who has been “seduced by earthly idols of nation and influence and exaltation,” traded biblical principles for “blood-and-soil nationalism,” and turned churches into circuses of partisan politicking, MAGA symbolism and chants against Anthony Fauci.

Bolin’s tenure on the library board isn’t his first political foray. As Floodgate grew, it attracted a growing number of GOP activists and politicians. And in 2021, Bolin was appointed to a Metropolitan Authority Board. His term expires in 2027.” Source

The QR code connected to this entry is a gift link to the 2022 Tim Alberta article in The Atlantic about Floodgate titled “How Politics Poisoned the Evangelical Church.”