Former President Donald Trump has empowered a fringe movement of Christian extremists known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), according to the Religion News Service.
This movement has previously been flagged by scholars as a serious new political force preparing to flex its muscles in the 2024 election.
"This NAR movement runs like a golden thread through recent flashpoints of evangelical Christian support for Donald Trump, Christian nationalism and Christian extremism," said the report. "NAR leaders were central to the mobilization of Christians for the Jan. 6 insurrection, and many apostles, prophets and NAR symbols were present around the U.S. Capitol that day. NAR ideas helped inspire the recent controversy surrounding the Alabama Supreme Court in vitro fertilization ruling. House Speaker Mike Johnson flies a flag outside his office that is closely associated with the NAR’s aggressive prophetic politics."
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At the core of the movement is the belief that God is currently choosing a new slate of apostles and prophets who are tasked with taking over the world in order to enforce Christian law.
"The New Apostolic Reformation refers to a set of charismatic leadership networks established in the late 1990s and early 2000s by a renegade evangelical seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner," noted the report. "Almost all of its leaders, including Wagner himself, believed themselves to be newly commissioned apostles and prophets, endowed with immense supernatural authority to revolutionize the church, to defeat Satan and his demons and build the kingdom of God on earth." The NAR also has a hand in the Seven Mountain Mandate, a prophecy that calls on believers to seize control of seven core aspects of society: religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment and commerce.
It is largely due to Trump that this movement has gone from a fringe ideology to something capable of shaping major political events in the United States, said the report: early in his 2016 campaign he connected with a key activist in the movement, televangelist Paula White-Cain, who persuaded large numbers of NAR leaders to meet with and endorse Trump, and later serve on his faith advisory boards.
"The combined force of Trump’s insurgent politics and the popularity of the Christian leaders surrounding him have together transfigured American evangelicalism," the report concluded. "The fringe has become the carpet, and ideas that emerged decades ago on the evangelical margins are today drawing more and more Christians into zealous Trump support."
