The "Christian" Right's Unholy Campaign

For centuries religion has fueled hate and division and all too frequently the murder of those of other faiths and those deemed "sinners."  Indeed, the European wars of religion were much on the minds of the Founding Fathers who wanted the new nation to be free from any established church and that freedom of religion was not reserved to one sect or dogma.  Despite this reality, many within the wrongly named "Christian Right" continue to falsely claim America was founded as a "Christian nation" and to strive to inflict their beliefs on all citizens.  What is frightening is the manner in which the Republican Party has been captured to a large degree by Christian extremists and evangelicals who want to impose a theocracy on the nation and eliminate those who oppose their agenda.   To these extremists, their dominion over all is the main goal and increasingly they are only too happy to egage in violence as demonstrated by the large presence among these supposed Christians among those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  A piece in Salon looks at the ongoing efforts among this faction to undermine democracy and religious freedom.  These are not nice and decent people and they have a mindset akin to the Spanish Inquisition of old. Here are article highlights:

"You've got a friend in Pennsylvania!" was the theme of the state's  ad campaign to promote tourism in the 1980s. That was a veiled historical reference to the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, the liberal Christian sect to which William Penn, for whom Pennsylvania is named, belonged. But since the early 2000s there has been a quiet campaign in the Keystone State and beyond to unfriend anyone outside certain precincts of Christianity — and most Quakers would almost certainly be among the outcasts.

That campaign got a lot less quiet this April, as many leaders of the neo-charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, who have been hiding in plain sight for a generation, began ramping up a contest for theocratic power in the nation and the world. Their first target is Pennsylvania.

On April 30, Sean Feucht, a musician and evangelist for conservative Christian dominion, spoke at Life Center Ministries, the Harrisburg megachurch of Apostle Charles Stock. . . . Sometimes Feucht's tour has ventured into darker terrain. He told an audience in Austin, Texas, that "no one has hope for" their city: Why are we going to all these 50 capitals — because they're amazing cities? … they're actually not. They're the most horrible cities in America.

Indeed. Feucht and his movement consider the 50 state capitals to be demon-infested bastions of ungodly government. His tour has openly become a campaign to "unfriend" the nation. He wrote in an "Open Letter to Church Leaders" on April 23: Unfriend? That seems a little harsh for some. Yet [New Testament author] James didn't seem to think so — "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

Feucht's effort to connect young people with what his movement considers William Penn's ancient vision for Pennsylvania is part of the wider, epochal campaign of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement at the cutting edge of Pentecostal and Charismatic evangelicalism, which is now the second largest Christian faction in the world after the Roman Catholic Church and the largest growth sector in American and global Christianity.

This is a central story of our time, and one that has scarcely penetrated our national consciousness. . . . Books have been written on the NAR and there has been prominent reporting in the Washington Post, the New Republic, the New Yorker, Religion Dispatches and Salon. But little of this seems to get absorbed into a shared common understanding about the Christian right. 

Although many NAR leaders have been closely aligned with Donald Trump, they insist that they aim for a utopian biblical kingdom where only God's laws are enforced. Most therefore hold to a vision of Christian dominion over what they call the "seven mountains": religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment and business. (This is what is meant by Dominionism.) 

[T]he NAR's notion of what God requires is a matter of interpretation, and in this case God's intentions are said to be revealed through modern-day, mutually recognized apostles and prophets, some of whom lead vast networks of believers, whom they often call "prayer warriors." These dynamic networks seek to dissolve traditional Christian denominations and institutions, peeling away members and sometimes whole congregations.

The NAR's long-term plan is to transform all of institutional Christianity to their vision of how the church was organized in the first century A.D. In their view, the only legitimate church offices, as described in the Book of Ephesians, are apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors (but no popes, bishops or presidents). This is called the "fivefold ministry."

NAR leaders understand perfectly well that their views are revolutionary. In addition to wanting to take over government at all levels, they are engaged in a long-term erosion of institutional Christianity, including the destruction of doctrines and denominations that they see as obstacles to advancing the Kingdom of God. They call such errors the "sin of religion."

Some apostles are patient revolutionaries. Others are accelerationists. Some participated in planning meetings at the White House before the Jan. 6 insurrection and played visible roles in the days leading up to the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Dr. Anthea Butler, a historian of African-American and American religion at the University of Pennsylvania, offered a blunt assessment of the situation to an audience at Harvard last year, saying that evangelical Christianity has been "captured by Pentecostals and Charismatics." "I worry about our democracy," she said. "Democracy is belittled" in the "theocratic way in which all of these people are positioning themselves." 

[A]udio recordings and transcripts of these calls reveal a religious movement that sees itself at war with demonic forces, and believes that God may enter the fray soon and carry his believers to ultimate victory. . . . A number of elected officials and political figures — nearly all of them Republicans — also participated. These recordings provide an intimate look at the relationship between the Republican Party and this burgeoning theocratic movement. The presence of prominent Republicans on these calls — and sometimes their remarks — reveal the depth and breadth of the movement's role in state-level GOP politics. 

"In [William] Penn's day, and for many generations afterward, his writings stood as a vigorous, clear, anti-theocratic religious witness" Fager writes. But Penn's notion of religious liberty, he says, "has been revised into the 'religious liberty' of the Dobbs decision, the 'Don't say gay' bills, the guns-everywhere laws, anti-vaxxerism and targeting trans folk and same-sex marriage."

Since the 2022 elections, there has been a noticeable uptick in the threatening rhetoric of NAR leaders and the political figures associated with them, both on the prayer calls and in public. Their politics appear to be animated less by "conservative" political philosophy or even strong religious values than by a vengeful vision of purging those who refuse to be converted and are deemed to be demonically possessed enemies. 

The struggle between what actually happens and conspiracy theories about what doesn't happen will almost certainly continue. There will always be someone to blame — Freemasons, Communists, witches, antifa, Black Lives Matter or someone else from the long menu of potential scapegoats. The responses will not necessarily be peaceful.