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(OPINION) Ah, yes, those omnipresent American evangelical Protestants.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the media can't avoid ‘em. And in case anyone doubts this media fascination, consider last Sunday's episode of NBC's influential, anachronistically named gabfest "Meet the Press."

In the midst of a hyperclogged October political agenda, the show devoted a major segment to what host Chuck Todd called "the debate among evangelicals about Donald Trump and whether he represents their values." This was excerpted from a 30-minute piece that's streaming on Peacock.

The segment led off with a visit to the nondenominational, independent Patriot Church outside Knoxville, where the Ken Peters averred, "I think President Trump is a miracle. I think God picked Donald Trump, an imperfect vessel, to be the champion of His people." This is a congregation that has inspired almost as many headlines as it has members.

Yes, Pew Research tells us Trump scored 84% with white evangelical voters in 2020. But politicized preacher Peters is hardly representative of the sprawling and diverse network of evangelical clergy, churches, denominations, campuses and agencies.

An older-style evangelical pastor, the Rev. Phil Nordstrom of Knoxville's Life Church, told NBC, "We're trying to not fight the culture wars from the pulpit." Todd then interviewed the Rev. Russell Moore — former Southern Baptist social-issues spokesman turned "public theologian" at Christianity Today magazine — who fretted over Trump-era politicization of the evangelical image.

A prior Guy Memo weighed the possibility that a newsworthy evangelical crack-up is upon us, while another memo focused on the related Donald Trump political angle. Now there are further developments.

In case journalists are gathering string for a broad state-of-the-evangelical-union article, The Guy looked for perspective in a real period piece from 1977, our Time magazine Christmas cover story, "That Old Time Religion: The Evangelical Empire."

Now this feature was written just before the advent of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, Ronald Reagan's presidency, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and presidential run, the rightward doctrinal lurch by the Southern Baptist Convention, the rise of anti-abortion militancy and all the rest that would gobble up headlines in succeeding decades.

Time said, "The movement is now richer and more powerful than it has been in half a century" and spelled out examples. As mainstream Protestants suffered torpor, it asked whether "the new Evangelicals" would "change the balance of power in U.S. Protestantism."

Guess what? They did.

Here's the thing. This article was all about evangelistic hustle and pastoral creativity, with barely a word on political ambitions. In fact, when evangelicals sounded off back then, they mostly chided liberal churches for involvement in partisan causes that diverted energy away from their spiritual mandate!

The two memos linked above explored evangelicalism's growing internal rancor and the breach between grassroots populists and the "elite" leadership's neutrality or hostility on the Trump phenomenon. This month, an odd new dispute has broken out in elite ranks that involves opinion pieces from two evangelical Trump critics, Mark Galli, former editor in chief of Christianity Today, and David French, long a trailblazing religious-liberty litigator who now writes for thedispatch.com and Time.

But first came a piece at The American Conservative from the younger and lesser-known Jackson Waters, a Union University senior, and writer Emma Posey, covering the same ground as those Guy Memos. They said that "over the last year, the division between evangelicals and their leadership has only grown, raising the question of who is driving the movement," resulting in an identity crisis. They accused the likes of French and Moore of "cultural accommodation dressed as convictional religion."

Then, surprisingly, Galli pretty much agreed. His insider account depicted the establishment magazine he led as all too anxious to win accolades from opinion-makers in a secularizing American culture who are anything but friendly toward conservative Christianity. Some say that tendency was exemplified by Galli's famous 2019 CT editorial urging Trump's removal from office.

In his response, French observed that as "right-wing and left-wing intolerance persists and metastasizes," the old "culture war" is being supplanted by the new confrontation against "illiberalism" that unites foes of both conservative and liberal versions of cancel culture. But French's central concern was "reactionary politics and intolerant anti-woke militancy." He concluded bluntly, "A godless and hateful movement is taking root in all too many pews, often (and perversely) spread in the name of Christ."

Also note this critique at First Things — “The Failure of Evangelical Elites” — from Carl Trueman, Grove City College religion professor.

These articles are well worth attention, but fellow journalists will ask whether this is merely an inside-the-Beltway (or inside-the-Bible-Beltway) chatter-fest among a handful of self-anointed Twitter leaders.

The Guy suggests that something far deeper is occurring in the Trump Era — which continues, to some degree — that has the potential to wound or reshape what has been the largest and most dynamic segment of American religion.

Disclosure: Ostling was the news editor of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today before covering the beat for TIME magazine and The Associated Press.

Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for the Associated Press and former correspondent for TIME Magazine. This piece first appeared at Get Religion.