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| Source: Matthew D. Taylor, The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening our Democracy. |
[Lance] Wallnau dabbed frankincense oil onto foreheads, anointing voters into God’s army. Another speaker said that Kamala Harris would be a “devil in the White House.” Others cast Democrats as agents of Lucifer, and human history as a struggle between the godless forces of secular humanism and God’s will for humankind. [Johan's highlighter.]
—Stephanie McCrummen in The Atlantic, The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows: Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which seeks to destroy the secular state."
I've been following the mutually exploitive alliance between the segment of Christians sometimes labeled the "New Apostolic Reformation" and all three of Donald Trump's presidential campaigns. About a year ago, I linked to this article by Paul Rosenberg in Salon concerning this movement. The Salon article focused on a book by André Gagné and did a pretty good job in covering the origins and leadership of the NAR.
Then, last week, The Atlantic published Stephanie McCrummen's article on "The Army of God..." from which came my opening quotation. She provides some valuable updates to Rosenberg's Salon article. More importantly, she paints vivid pictures of what the movement looks like on the ground, among people who may not even know that they're part of an academically-labeled New Apostolic Reformation, but have absorbed the goals and culture and clichés of the movement.
Some of this same territory is covered by Keira Butler in the November-December Mother Jones. Her article's title is clearly designed to alarm (as was McCrummen's article!): "Christian Nationalists Dream of Taking Over America. This Movement Is Actually Doing It." Subtitle: "The New Apostolic Reformation is 'the greatest threat to US democracy you've never heard of.'"
Neither Butler nor McCrummen had the space to provide all the details and nuances I might have wanted to see in coverage of the New Apostolic Reformation, but they're among the best surveys I've seen in secular media.
I have a few reflections on all these efforts to wake us up to the dangers of this movement.
What do I mean by "movement"? I'm being purposefully vague. Matthew Taylor, on the Straight White American Jesus Podcast, says that "The New Apostolic Reformation is a network of networks." The diagram at the top of this post shows how he locates the movement within the map of U.S. Christians—nested within the "Apostolic and Prophetic movements," in turn nested within Independent (nondenominational) Charismatics, who are nested within Pentcostal-charismatic movements" (which themselves cross boundaries among Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox lines). To some extent the "networks" are among leaders, and many participants may not know exactly how their church or pastor links up with the larger movement.
How many people, and what proportion of U.S. Christendom, are we talking about? Matthew Taylor's diagram is not intended to be statistically proportional. Paul Djupe at Denison University has gathered some startling statistics, indicating that well over half of U.S. evangelical Christians, plus substantial numbers of non-evangelicals, agree with most of the main ideas held by people in the NAR. For example, the statement "There are demonic 'principalities' and 'powers' who control physical territory" finds agreement among 69% of surveyed evangelicals and 40% of non-evangelicals.
Are there any Quaker ties to this movement? I'm sure there are individuals who identify with it, but as far as I can tell, no yearly meeting or wider association does so. C. Peter Wagner, sometimes credit with giving the movement its name, has been influential among some Quakers in the USA. Our adult Sunday school class at First Friends, Richmond, Indiana, used his book, Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow, back in the early 1980's, and found it very helpful. It was originally published well before he became known for advocating the ideas behind the NAR.
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| Peter Wagner and John Wimber (montage, source.) |
You might wonder about John Wimber (former Friends pastor and co-founder of the Vineyard denomination) and NAR, given the close partnership between Peter Wagner and John Wimber, particularly at Fuller Seminary. Wimber's widow, Carol Wimber-Wong, put it in her own tart way: "John didn't believe any of that crap." In that interview, she went on to say, "And he loved Peter.... But they didn't agree on that one point. John couldn't find it in the Scriptures." This clip of a conversation (less than a minute long) is worth viewing. It might help to explain why I personally have never caught a whiff of NAR in the few Vineyard churches I've visited.
When Carol died, earlier this month, the church lost a woman of wit, grace, intelligence, and clarity. This tribute to her includes a video interview with her, in which, among other things, she talked about the Quaker context at the beginning of John Wimber's ministry.
Why have many people "never heard" of NAR? To risk a generalization, the loudest and most obnoxious Christian celebrities have done a lot to make our Christian "good news" seem more like "bad news." People may admire Jesus himself and acknowledge the quiet ministries of care and healing carried out over the world in his name, but the whole subculture of theatrics and condemnation described in McCrummen's and Butler's articles must strike many nonparticipants as grotesque or repulsive, if they notice it at all. Some of that inevitably colors their attitude to Christianity as a whole.
The supernatural claims connected with that subculture's Pentecostal/charismatic context are no doubt part of that perceived grotesqueness. That's a loss. Evil does exist; so do principalities and powers, and demonic strongholds where systemic social injustice has become embedded in very specific territories. I plead for the concepts of spiritual warfare and the "Lamb's War" even as I refuse to use these concepts and vocabulary to slander my political opponents. In the Lamb's War, we don't search for enemies, we search for prisoners—and do everything we can collectively to free them.
(Don't we?)
For the record, we Democrats are not agents of Lucifer. (That is, not by virtue of being Democrats!)
Related:
Wikipedia's interesting survey of the New Apostolic Reformation.
"I was a bit nervous about using the language of spiritual warfare in this post."
George Fox on overcoming corruption.
Ted Grimsrud: Reading the Bible in light of the Lamb's War.
After five years in Russia, graduation shorts.
On the death of our Friend Simon Lamb.
Sociologist Yevhen Holovakha on how Ukrainians' views of the war have been changing.
Benjamin Wittes and Holly Berkley Fletcher on the theology of the Pete Hegseth hearing: Where evangelical culture and porn culture meet; exaggerating credentials or anointing?; repetition of the phrase "warrior ethos."
Contrarian street evangelist: Trump is the antichrist.
Finally, here is a transcript of Joseph Biden's farewell address, including urgent warnings about oligarchy and the defense of democracy. Alternate link (in case it disappears from the White House Web site in a few days!).
McKinley James with one of my favorite Junior Wells songs:
