In the three and a half years since Donald Trump incited the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Americans have learned how much Christian nationalism played a role in the riot. What’s less well-known, however, is how the fringe Christian movement New Apostolic Reformation came to dominate and shape the effort to overturn the 2020 election. The group, once considered extreme even by most white evangelicals, played a key role in organizing and inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol that day.
In his book “The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy,” religious scholar Dr. Matthew Taylor explores how this group of self-proclaimed “prophets” and “apostles” became central to the MAGA movement and ultimately an attempted coup. He spoke with Salon about this poorly understood fringe religious group and why they’re so important to Trump.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
At the end of the book, you emphasize the importance of Christians speaking out against the far-right Christian nationalism that fueled the January 6 uprising. Why do you think liberal Christians need to speak out more?
To be clear, I also call on conservative Christians to be in this mix. I grew up as a conservative Christian. Many members of my family and many of my friends growing up are still conservative Christians. They are shocked and dismayed by much of this as well. There is a principled form of conservative Christianity in the United States that is not in bed with Christian nationalism. Those people need to speak out as well. It is important for atheists and non-Christians to speak out because their rights are going to be violated more by Christian supremacists. But it is a duty of Christians to confront when our fellow Christians are going off the rails and becoming harmful.
A lot of the dialogue that needs to happen is a theological conversation. Part of the challenge here is that it’s not just politics or power that’s driving this dynamic. Theology is also very much in the mix. And Christians are the ones who can talk about Christian theology. We desperately need intra-Christian dialogue and even intra-Christian debate, which can sometimes be quite heated. I think that’s fine, because the consequences are so serious. There’s a real danger that some of our fellow Christians pose to our democracy and we need to challenge them.
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As someone outside of the Christian world, I learned a lot from your book about the complexity of it. I had heard of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), but had no idea what it was and how central it was to the January 6th insurrection. Can you briefly explain what it is and why it was so important to the Capitol riots?
The New Apostolic Reformation is a series of leadership networks created by a seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner. He was a professor at my alma mater, Fuller Theological Seminary, though we never overlapped. He became fixated on the sector of Christianity that emerged from a cross between nondenominational governmentality and charismatic spirituality, which focused on the more supernatural dimensions of Christianity. Wagner became convinced that this was the key to a global revival that he helped spark.
One of the things that is characteristic of the independent charismatic sector of Christianity is that people believe in modern-day apostles and prophets. This is not something that the mainstream denominations recognize. Wagner became convinced that he was an apostle. He surrounded himself with these modern-day prophets. When he spoke about the New Apostolic Reformation, he saw a change like the Protestant Reformation that would have a lasting impact and become a new branch of Christianity. In the early 21st century, that group of leaders became increasingly radicalized around American politics, increasingly fixated on visions of taking over society. They embraced a prophecy called the Seven Mountain Mandate. Sarah Palin was mentored by one of these prophets in Wagner’s networks. They really believe that they are this vanguard that God has put on earth to bring about the kingdom of God. They want to have a global revival and take over entire societies and turn them into Christian nations.
The NAR leaders had a theology that was prepared for a figure like Trump. They were among the first Christian leaders to embrace and support him. They created the theologies and propaganda that made Trump palatable to the broader American evangelical church. They became some of his closest advisors and helped shape many of the policies of the Trump era. They truly believed that God wanted Trump to win the 2020 election. They had hundreds of prophecies about that idea. When Trump refused to concede, all of these prophets and apostles decided that their prophecies were not wrong, but that God would miraculously intervene to restore Donald Trump. They began a massive spiritual warfare campaign, mobilizing charismatic Christians to pray against the demons that they believed were stealing the election. That spiritual warfare campaign was a major factor in the Christians who showed up on January 6th.
You fill in the story of the Appeal to Heaven flag, which only came onto people’s radar after Sam Alito — who is Catholic — flew it outside his house. It’s an old revolutionary flag that had no real meaning until NAR embraced it as a symbol.
The Appeal to Heaven flag was adopted in 1775 to fly over the Massachusetts Navy. It was one of many flags used by American troops during the Revolutionary War. It was an obscure piece of Americana. In 2013, a NAR prophet named Dutch Sheets came across the flag. He believed he had received a prophecy that the flag was a sign of a new spiritual revolution. It was a low point for Christian supremacist groups. They felt they were fighting a demonic Obama administration. The Appeal to Heaven flag was embraced as a sign of a Christian revolution that would transform America into a nation centered on Christianity and built around conservative Christian morality. Sheets left his job to promote the flag’s symbol. He wrote a book about it that was published in 2015. NAR networks with hundreds of leaders urged their followers to fly the flag. The flag serves as a visual prayer.
By 2020, the flag had become intertwined with the cause of Donald Trump. It also symbolized anti-abortion activism, anti-LGBTQ activism. It was a coded symbol in these Christian nationalist circles. It’s a double entendre. It signals support for spiritual revolution, but when challenged, they can say they just love American history. It has a secret handshake quality. About two weeks before the 2020 election, Donald Trump was campaigning in Nevada, and an NAR pastor presented Trump with an Appeal to Heaven flag. He said it was a symbol of Trump’s victory. A photo of Trump with the flag went viral on charismatic social media. Dutch Sheets was one of the most influential, most bombastic, most hyperbolic leaders urging Christians to support Trump. He supported the lies about the 2020 election and encouraged Christians to take to the streets to fight back against the legitimacy of the election.
That’s why on January 6th, you see dozens of these Appeal to Heaven flags flying in the crowd. It’s one of the most ubiquitous symbols of the Capitol riots. It’s this Appeal to Heaven flag, and reporters interviewed people who flew these flags on January 6th. The symbolism was pretty clear, but a lot of people didn’t pay much attention to these flags or just wrote them off as another generic right-wing extremist symbol. But now, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is flying an Appeal to Heaven flag. We saw Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito and his wife flying an Appeal to Heaven flag. Republican leaders have embraced this symbol. It’s a sign of the extent to which these Christian supremacist networks reach and the traction that these ideas have gained in the Republican Party under Donald Trump.
Most white evangelicals voted for Trump, but you claim that even in that world the New Apostolic Reformation is a fringe Christian movement. Why?
The most important thing would be their theology. They embrace Christian supremacy, the idea that Christians are supposed to be in charge of society and are mandated by God to take over societies and transform them into conservative Christian utopias. We could use the term theocracy, although it’s a little more complicated than that. But they want Christians at the top of every part of society. They want to create a new vanguard of Christian leadership that will take over every nation in the world. And they have their eyes on the United States in particular right now.
This is not entirely unprecedented historically. In the past, we have seen the Crusades and pogroms and imperialism and colonialism and racism in Christian history. But in the modern world, NAR theology is a real departure from mainstream, even mainstream evangelical theology. It is disturbing to see a movement that would have been considered quite extreme 10 to 15 years ago now moving into the mainstream of Republican politics. It is also moving into the center of American evangelicalism and the supposed leadership of the religious right in America.
One reason this has happened is that these NAR leaders have aligned themselves with Donald Trump, giving them power and influence beyond their numbers or representation in the larger evangelical world. How have they done this?
Part of it was a historical accident. Since 2002, Trump has been close to this Florida megachurch pastor named Paula White Kane. When Trump entered the presidential race in the summer of 2015, he asked Paul White Kane to be his liaison to evangelicals. The problem is that Paula White Kane herself is not a conventional evangelical. She’s a female preacher. She’s charismatic. She’s a prosperity gospel preacher. She’s a televangelist and doesn’t know a lot of the mainstream evangelical leaders. So she starts reaching out to the people she does know. Some of them are NAR leaders.
It parallels the way Trump revolutionized the Republican Party. Trump came as an outsider and brought with him a whole wave of fringe figures. People like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone: people who were very much on the fringes of the Republican Party. And Trump brought those people into the center of Republican politics. Traditional Republicans are despised and despised by the vast majority of self-identified Republicans. A similar revolution has taken place within American evangelicalism. Figures who were willing to embrace Trump — were willing to support him and promote him — he elevated them and their ideas and brought them into the center of the conversation in American evangelicalism.
It is one of the most rapid shifts in evangelical thinking in American history. Ideas that would have been ridiculed in mainstream Republican circles 15 years ago now have approval ratings of over 50 percent among American evangelicals. We are living in a tectonic shift in both culture and theology. It is reflected in the extremism we see every day in evangelical and Republican politics.
