As a rule, your GetReligionistas strive to avoid writing about analysis features that are published in magazines such as The Atlantic.

However, when I keep hearing people asking questions about one of these “think pieces,” it’s hard not to want to add a comment or two to the discussion.

So first, let’s start with something that GetReligion team members have been saying for nearly two decades, as a reminder to readers who have never worked in mainstream newsrooms: Reporters/writers rarely write the headlines that dominate the layouts at the top of their pieces.

Case in point: The double-decker headline on that buzz-worthy Peter Wehner commentary piece at The Atlantic:

The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart

Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church.

Yes, I know. There is no such thing as “the evangelical church.”

Do basic facts matter? There are, of course, denominations that are predominantly evangelical. Some of them disagree on all kinds of things — such as baptism or the ordination of women. There are Pentecostal denominations that share many, but not all, doctrines with flocks that are connected with the evangelical movement. There are lots of evangelicals who still sit — though many are quite unhappy — in liberal Protestant pews.

We won’t even talk about that second line: “Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church.”

You can get to the heart of this confusion by — if you are reading the Wehner piece online — glancing at the tagline that appears in the subject line in your computer browser. That semi-headline reads: “Trump is Tearing Apart the Evangelical Church.”

Ah, that’s the heart of this matter.

Once readers get past the inaccurate and shallow headlines, they hit very familiar territory in which politics is the only reality, especially when dealing with the imperfect choices that millions of Americans make in our nation’s two-party political system. I would also note that Wehner uses much more accurate and appropriate language when describing evangelicals as part of a moment — as opposed to being in the same “church.”

But here is the key: It appears that the vast majority of big-media journalists are in total agreement with Donald Trump and leaders on the political far right on one crucial belief. They are convinced that, to be a real evangelical, an American had to vote for Trump.

That’s it. That’s their working definition of “evangelical.” Oh, and true evangelicals are also racists, but that goes along with the Trump vote.

The painful fault lines between Trump voters and reluctant Trump voters, as seen in 2016 primaries and in some polls, are irrelevant. Lost somewhere in the discussion is this image: An evangelical is standing in a voting booth in 2016 with these options — Trump, Hillary Clinton or a collection of third-party options (or not voting). I’m not an evangelical and I voted third party. But millions of people decided that Trump was the only realistic option.

Are there divisions in the evangelical movement over the choices linked to that decision? Of course there are. Oh, and is there an evangelical left? Of course there is. But the divisions here are way, way more complex than issues of politics, alone.

Let’s note a few key passages in the Wehner piece:

Influential figures such as the theologian Russell Moore and the Bible teacher Beth Moore felt compelled to leave the Southern Baptist Convention; both were targeted by right-wing elements within the SBC. The Christian Post, an online evangelical newspaper, published an op-ed by one of its contributors criticizing religious conservatives like Platt, Russell Moore, Beth Moore, and Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, as “progressive Christian figures” who “commonly champion leftist ideology.” In a matter of months, four pastors resigned from Bethlehem Baptist Church, a flagship church in Minneapolis. One of those pastors, Bryan Pickering, cited mistreatment by elders, domineering leadership, bullying, and “spiritual abuse and a toxic culture.” Political conflicts are hardly the whole reason for the turmoil, but according to news accounts, they played a significant role, particularly on matters having to do with race.

“Nearly everyone tells me there is at the very least a small group in nearly every evangelical church complaining and agitating against teaching or policies that aren’t sufficiently conservative or anti-woke,” a pastor and prominent figure within the evangelical world told me. (Like others with whom I spoke about this topic, he requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.) “It’s everywhere.”

Here’s another crucial block of these material, quoting historian George Marsden, that returns readers to the familiar territory mapped in the early 1990s in sociologist James Davison Hunter’s book “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America.”

The first step [toward current divisions] was the cultivation of the idea within the religious right that certain political positions were deeply Christian, according to Marsden. Still, such claims were not at all unprecedented in American history. Through the 2000s, even though the religious right drew its energy from the culture wars—as it had for decades — it abided by some civil restraints. Then came Donald Trump.

The problem, of course, is that there are political issues that have direct links to centuries of Christian doctrine — especially those linked to marriage, family, gender and sexual morality.

Journalists willing to do a bit of homework can spot consensus on these issues in decades of statements from Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, major evangelical denominations (Black and White), major Pentecostal denominations (Black and White) and other groups — think the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod — that are harder to label. It also helps to study the fault lines among, to spot an obvious example, United Methodists.

There is also quite a bit of unity in those groups when it comes to rising concerns about political and legal threats to First Amendment rights of free speech, freedom of association and freedom of religious belief and practice.

But did many of the people in these groups — united in the belief that some political issues are linked to transcendent, eternal truths — agree with each other on how to handle Trump? And, yes, have they always agreed on economic issues? No. Have they agreed on how to handle COVID-19 protocols? No. In my own experience, I have seen lots of disagreements among Trump voters on issues linked to COVID.

Meanwhile let’s state another obvious point: Have these Christian conservatives — including Black, White and Latino evangelicals — always agreed on how to handle issues of race and, let’s say, immigration?

Come to think of it, do Black church leaders — evangelical, Pentecostal and mainline — agree with one another on which parts of the secular system known as Critical Race Theory are theologically acceptable and which parts cross the line into a denial of biblical teachings on sin and racism? The answer is “no.”

Do Latino church leaders — evangelical, Pentecostal and mainline — agree with one another on matters of immigration and border policies? The answer is “no.”

One more question of that kind: Did all Black, White and Latino leaders in evangelical, Pentecostal and mainline churches agree on how to handle the Trump revolution? The answer again is “no,” although the arguments in these flocks were more one-sided.

Let me stress that there are parts of the Wehner article that are interesting and quite informative. But it is, in my opinion, ultimately doomed by a familiar problem. While the politics of race play a prominent role in the piece, there is no attempt to engage the voices of Black evangelicals and Pentecostals and ditto for the growing world of Latinos in those evangelical and Pentecostal flocks.

Everything comes down to White evangelicals and Donald Trump.

That would make Trump very happy, of course. It’s clear that he would agree with Wehner on that.

FIRST IMAGE: Illustration posted with a Public Reading Rooms feature on Donald Trump and religion.