The innate yearning to control government and society has propelled charismatic Christianity to prominence in a Trump presidency determined to impose authoritarian rule in the U.S., political science and religion scholars said during a recent webinar.
“Charismatic Christians in this contemporary moment are enjoying a particular access to power that maybe they haven’t seen before, and they share that with this current administration,” said Dara Delgado, assistant professor of religion at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania and an expert on American Christianity and Pentecostalism.
Dara Delgado
“There’s this access of power, there’s this way in which they are able to nuzzle up very closely to the systems that are moving the needle in this country,” she said.
Delgado was part of a panel of scholars assembled by Public Religion Research Institute to discuss charismatic influences on American political power and authority. The Aug. 5 discussion examined how the concept of spiritual warfare and other charismatic tenets are shaping the rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration.
The group defined charismatic Christianity as a nondenominational movement characterized by ecstatic worship and belief in a Holy Spirit active through spiritual gifts such as prophecy and speaking in tongues.
PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman opened with an overview of a 2024 survey documenting charismatic attitudes and practices among all church-going Americans.
Just over 45% of Americans agreed that “God reveals his plans for the future to humans as a prophecy,” according to the study, which also found 21% witnessed someone speaking in tongues during a church service in the previous year, and half reported receiving an answer to specific prayer in that period.
Nearly 40% of churchgoing Americans said the Holy Spirit inspired them or someone they know to carry out a specific action, 30% reported receiving a direct revelation from God and 29% said they witnessed the divine healing of an injury or illness.
Republicans were more likely than independents or Democrats to report receiving definitive answers to prayers and being empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry out specific tasks, PRRI found.
Melissa Deckman
“By contrast, Democrats (26%) are more likely than Republicans (19%) to have witnessed people speaking in tongues. Both Republicans (30%) and Democrats (28%) are more likely than independents (22%) to say they witnessed divine healing of an injury or illness.”
But the survey also found Republican Christian nationalists much more likely to report witnessing three charismatic events in the preceding 12 months: “Republicans who hold a favorable view of Trump score higher on our scale that measures prophetic and prophecy beliefs than Republicans who hold unfavorable views of Trump.”
Panelists noted the similarities between the rhetoric of charismatic and MAGA ideologies.
The charismatic emphasis on spiritual warfare as a battle between divine and demonic powers in human affairs is reflected in Trump’s depictions of political opponents, immigrants and certain journalists, lawyers and judges as “evil.”
The president’s February executive order “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” perpetuated the notion of sinister forces unfairly targeting conservative Christians for discrimination and persecution. The motif continued in Trump’s selection of charismatic leader Paula White to lead the White House Faith Office.
Paul Djupe
The movement largely discredited by the televangelist scandals of the 1980s and ’90s clearly has made a comeback, said Paul Djupe, a political science professor at Denison University in Ohio. “They have come full circle especially because of the platforming Donald Trump provided to charismatic faith leaders.”
And in the process, evangelicalism is “being captured by charismatic ideas,” Djupe added. “These days, to understand conservative Christian conservatives is to wrestle with what it means to be a charismatic and what the worldview of a charismatic looks like.”
It also requires a look at influential movements within charismatic Christianity such as the New Apostolic Reformation, he said.
NAR is not an organization or denomination but a network of charismatic influencers driven by dominionist beliefs such as the Seven Mountain Mandate, a doctrine requiring Christians to assume control of all aspects of the arts, business, education, entertainment, family, government and media.
“The NAR has been at the forefront because they really have these strong dominion goals, because they are incredibly motivated to get involved with politics and because they have been platformed by Donald Trump,” Djupe said.
The NAR also can be seen as a charismatic version of the Moral Majority, the conservative Christian movement that supported Republican candidates during the 1980s, said Leah Payne, professor of American religious history at George Fox University’s Portland Seminary. “It’s more diverse than previous forms of right-wing Christianity in the United States because the charismatic movement is more diverse overall than other forms of conservative Protestantism.”
NAR and other politically savvy charismatics are intimately familiar with social media and know how to use it for political ends, Payne added. “We need to be paying attention to them because they are the form of right-wing activism that has the most energy and the most proximity to the president.”
Related articles:
NAR prophets still declaring Trump is God’s man, scholar warns
The New Apostolic Reformation drove the January 6 riots, so why was it overlooked by the House Select Committee? | Analysis by Rick Pidcock