Among the most ardent Christian nationalists today is a subgroup most Americans are not aware of but that is having an outsized influence on conservative politics and culture.
That group, the New Apostolic Reformation, is a focus of research done by Matthew Taylor, senior scholar and Protestant scholar at the Institute of Islamic, Christian, Jewish Studies, where he specializes in Muslim-Christian dialogue, evangelical and Pentecostal movements, religious politics in the U.S. His new book, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy, will be published Oct. 1.
Matthew Taylor
Taylor was among a host of speakers at a Sept. 10 symposium on Christian nationalism and democracy sponsored by Religion News Service as part of its own 90th anniversary celebration. The symposium was held at Fordham University in New York City.
This subset of a subset of conservative evangelicalism accounts for about 4% of Americans, he explained. It is sometimes described as “charismatic,” but that is true only to the extent that leaders in the movement emphasize spiritual warfare and demons and angels in the same way as “charismatic” preachers associated with Pentecostalism.
“We’re talking about a particular form of Christian spirituality that is interested in recapturing the supernatural dimensions of early Christianity,” Taylor said. “And we’re particularly talking here about what we as scholars call the independent charismatic sector. So this is the nondenominational part of the Pentecostal charismatic world, and within that world, which is its own kind of subculture with evangelicalism, the New Apostolic Reformation are a set of thought leaders. They’re a network of celebrities.”
He showed a slide with an array of these celebrity preachers and evangelists and the lines of connection they share. This movement gained formal status in the 1990s with the work of C. Peter Wagner at Fuller Theological Seminary.
“Wagner, who was an expert in church growth, became obsessed with this independent charismatic world and with some of the leaders who were there and with this idea that had been percolating in that world for quite a while of the renewed leadership roles of apostles and prophets,” he explained.
A loose network
Taylor named several of the subgroups within this universe of what he called “unconventional networks.”
“They become in some ways sort of spiritual oligarchs who work in tandem.”
“Part of the challenge with talking about groups like this is they don’t look and don’t function institutionally the way we tend to think about Christianity functioning,” he said. “And so there’s not a hierarchy, there’s not a statement of faith, there’s not a database that you can point to and say, ‘Oh, this person is NAR or this person’s not.’ So in this NAR conception, apostles primarily govern the church. They become in some ways sort of spiritual oligarchs who work in tandem, and then the prophets kind of advise, and they truly believe these people are prophets.”
These prophets claim to hear directly from God and to “speak the words of God into the community and help guide the apostles,” he continued.
Some of these apostolic and prophetic movements “rival the size of denominations, but you’ve never heard of them because they fly under the radar,” he explained. “They’re subterranean often and within this world, there’s a very strong emphasis on what is called spiritual warfare, a very aggressive vision of spiritual warfare that gets mapped onto societies and onto politics.
“And so in their world, the apostles and prophets are generals of spiritual warfare who have authority to cast out high-level demons, but who also are empowered to mobilize mass campaigns of spiritual warfare to get hundreds of thousands or millions of Christians praying and concentrating on the same cause. And part of what I’m arguing in my book is that one of the major factors that fed into January 6 was a mass spiritual warfare campaign organized by the New Apostolic Reformation.”
Connection to January 6
The association is so clear, he said, that “many of the members of Peter Wagner’s mentoring circles, those closest disciples, show up on January 6, and also were essential to mobilizing Christians for that day.”
“The apostles and prophets are generals of spiritual warfare who have authority to cast out high-level demons.”
Amid the backstory of January 6 is that a host of these prophets said in 2016 Trump would be elected president when that seemed improbable. They prophesized that he was “God’s anointed candidate,” Taylor said. “And when he did win, defying all of our expectations, those prophets looked pretty snazzy in their community.
“And so by the time of the 2020 election cycle, you had hundreds of charismatic prophets all prophesying in unison, in harmony, saying each of us received revelations from God that God intends for Donald Trump to have a second term. When Trump refused to concede the election, almost all of those prophets said, ‘We aren’t recanting our prophecies. God is going to have to intervene supernaturally to put Donald Trump back in office.’ And they begin mobilizing a mass spiritual warfare campaign that culminates on January 6, and a number of these leaders from Wagner’s inner circle with the president there, especially Lance Wallnau, who has been making more national news more recently because of his efforts in this election.”
Understanding the NAR will make clearer what’s going on with the Appeal to Heaven flag that has been a focus of contention since Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had one flying at his summer home and that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson flies outside his Capitol office. The flag shows a green pine tree on a white background.
Although the flag has historical significance as a revolutionary symbol, it now “has been appropriated by the NAR as a symbol of spiritual warfare, a spiritual revolution to overturn the culture of the United States and make the United States into a Christian nation,” Taylor said.
Today, the NAR is focused on returning Trump to office, believing this has been God’s will all along. And in that, there is a pattern, Taylor said. “If you think about what happened in 2020 what you had was this nebulous mass of prophecies about Donald Trump that were kind of brewing over the course of the 2020 election. You also had all these other factors that are getting introduced into that mix: COVID and COVID denialism, which was very strong in these NAR circles, and a fixation on the Supreme Court.”
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, “one of the major NAR apostles claimed it was partly his prayers that helped end her life because she was blocking changing abortion,” the scholar reported.
Also in 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement took off after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and there were protests and counterprotests. “Many of the NAR leaders also got involved in those protests,” he noted.
“And then there’s a primary fixation for the NAR on abortion. So all this stuff is circling in 2020 and then the NAR helps to gather two major events on the National Mall in the lead-up to the 2020 election as part of their spiritual warfare campaign to see Donald Trump elected.”
Those events were called “The Return” in September 2020, and then singer and political activist Sean Feucht brought his “Let Us Worship” tour to the National Mall in October 2020.
“That was the pre-election campaign,” Taylor said. “Then you have the election when Donald Trump denies the election, and that pre-election warfare campaign pivots over to become the machinery of organizing for the post-election spiritual warfare campaign to overturn the election. And this is where you see these Jericho Marches begin to emerge in the swing state capitals, often led by NAR leaders using NAR spiritual warfare theology, and that culminates on Dec. 12, 2020, on the National Mall with this mass Jericho March. The night of the mass Jericho March, the Proud Boys riot in the streets of Washington, D.C., and set fire to a Black Lives Matter banner at a Black church.
“So what we had were these tremors on the Richter scale both before and after the election, and in retrospect, we can see that all of those events were pointing toward and then culminated in the big earthquake of January 6.”
Still prophesying
And the beat goes on, Taylor continued.
“Many of the prophets have said, ‘Well, I was told two terms. I didn’t say two consecutive terms.’”
“Once again, all these prophecies are there around Donald Trump. Those prophecies have not gone away. In fact, many of the prophets have said, ‘Well, I was told two terms. I didn’t say two consecutive terms.’ So those prophecies are still there. In fact, the assassination attempt on Trump has thrown all those prophecies into overdrive because many of the prophets are saying, ‘See, this is a sign that God’s hand and anointing is on Donald Trump.’”
Add to the mix abortion and Israel and Gaza and sexuality, he said. “These folks are extremely pro-Israel and Christian Zionist. And then they are now fixated on what they’re calling threats to children, education changing curricula, LGBTQ and trans rights.”
There are two major events planned for the National Mall before the election, he reported.
“There’s what’s called the Million Women March, also called Don’t Mess with Our Kids, which is they’re hoping to get a million women, they call them Esthers on the National Mall on October 12 on Yom Kippur to have a day of fasting and repentance.”
And Sean Feucht is back with a new event called Kingdom to the Capitol.
“He’s taken that tour to every one of the 50 state capitols,” Taylor said. “It will culminate on October 26 on the National Mall. So in the same way that we pay attention to events like the Unite the Right Rally that happened in Charleston in 2017, we need to be paying attention to what is going on in these events. These will be places where the far right will be gathering on the National Mall, and I worry that if the election goes in different directions, these folks will be very ready to pivot over again, and we need to learn the lesson of recent history.”
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