HowStuffWorks via myPod

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If you’ve been following this space, you certainly already know that Indiana Republican delegates selected Noblesville pastor and avowed Christian nationalist Micah Beckwith as their nominee for lieutenant governor at their convention in mid-June. With that as a jumping off point, we spoke with IU-Indianapolis sociology professor Dr. Andrew Whitehead back in Episode 41. He gave us a great 101-level introduction to Christian Nationalism, and I highly recommend listening to that conversation before diving into this episode, though it isn’t absolutely necessary.

Again, using Beckwith as an entry point, we’ll be looking at a particularly virulent strain of Christian nationalism - the New Apostolic Reformation, described by the man who named and built the movement as “the most radical change in how churches operate since the Protestant Reformation.”

https://scottaaronrogers.substack.com/subscribe

https://icjs.org/people/matthew-d-taylor/

https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2024/06/15/hoosier-gop-insiders-spurn-party-establishment-nominate-beckwith-for-lg/

https://scottaaronrogers.substack.com/p/episode-41-handling-snakes-christian

https://icjs.org/charismatic-revival-fury/

https://www.freedomoverfascism.us

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-violent-take-it-by-force-the-christian-movement-that-is-threatening-our-democracy-matthew-d-taylor/21000760

https://www.salon.com/2024/01/02/meet-the-new-apostolic-reformation-cutting-edge-of-the-christian-right/

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/pentecostal-theology/

https://survivingchurch.org/2016/10/25/c-peter-wagner-1930-2016-rip/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Jacobs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/new-apostolic-reformation-mtg-mastriano-dutch-sheets-1234584952/

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG6pb2Dh8yfgHsWKghqKO-rcnqm6-XN-Z

https://lancewallnau.com/category/7-mountains/

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/seven-mountain-mandate/

https://religionnews.com/2024/05/06/how-trumpism-has-pushed-a-fringe-charismatic-theology-into-the-mainstream/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/she-led-trump-to-christ-the-rise-of-the-televangelist-who-advises-the-white-house/2017/11/13/1dc3a830-bb1a-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/27/paula-white-donald-trump-pastor-evangelicals

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/donald-trump-2016-norman-vincent-peale-213220/

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-12-16/ty-article/trumps-compared-to-persian-king-cyrus-will-he-build-the-third-temple/0000017f-f882-d887-a7ff-f8e67abc0000

https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1770873525835829639

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/mike-johnson-christian-nationalist-appeal-to-heaven-flag-1234873851/

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2024/05/23/hancock/hancock-culture/mdi-maine-leonard-leo-appeal-to-heaven-flag-same-justice-alito/

https://www.janetdouglasministries.com/city-gate-indiana.html

https://computer.howstuffworks.com/augmented-reality.htm

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Duration:: 1h 15m
Broadcast on:: 03 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[music] Welcome to the Who's Left podcast to show about Indiana politics, history, and culture from the unapologetic perspective of the Who's Left. My name is Scott Aaron Rodgers, and I'm recording from Bloomington. If you've been following this space, you certainly already know that Indiana Republican delegates selected at Noblesville Pastor and a biode Christian nationalist, Mike Abecwith, as their nominee for Lieutenant Governor at their convention in mid-juke. With that, as a jumping-off point, we spoke with IU Indianapolis Sociology professor Dr. Andrew Whitehead back in Episode 41. He gave us a great one-on-one-level introduction to Christian nationalism, and I highly recommend listening to that conversation before diving into this episode, though it is an absolutely necessary. Again, using back with as an entry point, we'll be looking at a particularly virulent strain of Christian nationalism, the new apostolic Reformation. Described by the man who named and built the movement as "the most radical change in how churches operate since the Protestant Reformation." With a big shout-out to Stephanie Wilson over at the Freedom Over Fascism Podcast who connected us, I reached out to Dr. Matthew Taylor from the Institute for Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies, ICJS, to tell us about this dangerous network of religious extremists who play a "major role" in very nearly ending American democracy. His official biography. Matthew D. Taylor PhD is a senior scholar and the Protestant scholar at ICJS where he specializes in Muslim Christian dialogue, evangelical and Pentecostal movements, religious politics in the U.S., and American Islam. Prior to coming to ICJS, Matt served on the faculty of Georgetown University and the George Washington University. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies. Matt holds a PhD in religious studies and Muslim Christian relations from Georgetown University and an MA in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. His book, Scripture People, Salafi Muslims in Evangelical Christians America, from Cambridge University Press, offers an introduction to the oft misunderstood Salafi movement in the U.S., by way of comparison with American evangelicalism. He is also the creator of the acclaimed audio documentary series Charismatic Revival Fury, the New Apostolic Reformation, which details how networks of extremist Christian leaders helped instigate the January 6th insurrection. His next book, The Violent Take It By Force, the Christian movement that is threatening our democracy from broadleaf books will be published in fall 2024. End quote. I'll have links for all that, including a link to pre-order the new book which drops October 1st in the show notes. In this interview, Dr. Taylor will tell us all about the new Apostolic Reformation, their central concepts and key personalities in the movement. He'll talk about their belief in modern-day apostles and prophets, their roadmap for dominion over all spheres of society and what it means when they talk about spiritual warfare. Before we turn to that conversation, please consider supporting who's left financially. I currently work as an independent craftsman during the day and work on this project whenever I can. There are so many more things I want to do here at who's left. More campaign finance research, maybe live hangouts if that's something you're interested in. A daily episode if we can get there, but I need your help. So if you can, visit scottairandrogers.substack.com and subscribe at the paid level. For $5 a month or $50 a year, you can help me push our state in a better direction. And maybe if we reach critical mass, I can put down my tool belt and devote my full time to you, to this project, and to Indiana's future. So if you have the means, pause right now, go to scottairandrogers.substack.com and subscribe at the paid level. And while the best way to help this project is a financial contribution, if you can't afford it at this time, you can still help. Subscribe at the free level over on Substack. Set your favorite podcast player to auto download new episodes of the show. Rate and review the show on whatever platform you use. This trains the algorithm to help new people find us. Follow me on social media at facebook.com/whoseleft, that's H-O-O-S left. I'm also one blue sky at the same handle. On Instagram, threads and Twitter, I'm @scottrogers78, that is S-C-O-T-T-R-O-G-7-8, and on Mastodon @scottrogers78@hoozer.social. Full video episodes of the pod are available on YouTube with clips on TikTok. The handle on both of those is also @whoseleft. Please subscribe on whichever platforms you use, and send me a DM to discuss ideas for the project. But most importantly, share our message. Forward the articles to friends, family, and colleagues, don't just like but share wildly and widely on social media. Invite others to this community of Indiana leftists. I might be the guy with the microphone, but I try to take this thing where your input leads me. So be generous with feedback, good, bad, or indifferent. I value it all. To those who have joined this community already, especially those paid subscribers, thank you so much. I am honored to have your support. And to everybody, thank you for listening. Now here is my interview with Dr. Matthew Taylor. Appreciate you joining the "Whose Left Podcast." Welcome. Thank you for having me, Scott. So before we jump in here, tell the listeners a little bit about yourself. So I grew up in the evangelical world in Southern California. I was in Christian ministry for a while and went to seminary and discovered in the process of going to seminary that I didn't really resonate as much with evangelicalism after about 30 years. And I realized I was fascinated with Islam. And so I went and did a PhD in Muslim Christian relations and religious studies at Georgetown University. And that's what I work in now is I work in the field of inter-religious dialogue at the Institute for Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. But in the midst of researching and working on different movements within Islam and within Christianity, I started digging into January 6 and stumbled across these vast networks of leaders that I didn't know about prior to January 6 that we're actually at the heart of organizing for January 6 and that has led me to create a podcast series called Charismatic Revival Fury and then also my forthcoming book, which is called "The Violent Take It By Force." I've spent the last three years immersed in January 6 for my sins. Very good. So I've listened to your audio documentary, Charismatic Revival Fury. And I didn't know about all these networks of people, but now knowing about that, especially knowing about the language these folks and that network use, I hear things like that around here. Our recently announced Republican Lieutenant Governor candidate, Michael Beckwith, is a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and he uses a lot of terminology that it sounds like this is one of these new apostolic reformation adjacent people, at least he talks like it. So can you tell people what the new apostolic reformation is? Sure, yeah, the new apostolic reformation, people often call it the NAR. Some people even pronounce the acronym as the NAR. So the new apostolic reformation is, it's a set of leadership networks that were created in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At the heart of them was a seminary professor. He's actually a seminary professor from the same seminary that I graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary, we didn't overlap at all, he was there. He left in 1999 and I started in I think 2004, but some of his influence was still lingering while I was there and his name was C. Peter Wagner, Charles Peter Wagner, he was an expert in a field that was called church growth that was very popular in the 1970s and 1980s. And the idea was that you could study which movements in church history, which are contemporary movements in the church grow, why they grow. You could attach kind of sociological data to theological principles and then you could produce growth, that you can create kind of formulas and engineer growth within churches and communities. A real factor in the rise of the megachurch movement, Rick Warren, who's one of the most famous Southern Baptist pastors in the country, actually did his doctoral dissertation under Peter Wagner and became in some ways the foundation for his books, The Purpose Driven Life and The Purpose Driven Church, which became these kind of best sellers and was a major force in the rise of these megachurch movements and megachurch organizations. But then in the 1980s, Peter Wagner became kind of fixated on this one particular sector of global Christianity, what we scholars would call the independent charismatic sector of Christianity. And what we mean by that is just so independent is a synonym for non-denominational. These are non-denominational churches that are not attached to the structures of denominations. So it's very amorphous world where there aren't a lot of kind of clear boundaries. There aren't a lot of clear orchestrating structures in there. And then when you don't have a boss who has a boss, right? Yeah. The denominations are kind of functionally sort of democratic and bureaucratic governance structures that have evolved as particularly within American Protestantism. But really, I mean, you can find denominations around the world and it's sort of a way of holding together networks and trans local groupings of churches, denominations, train clergy, denominations provide statements of faith. They provide financial backing. They help plant new churches, right? They're kind of the layer of organization that's above the level of congregation. And when we're talking about non-denominational, we're talking about much more kind of loosey goosey. Things are much more free-flowing. And then when we talk about charismatic, charismatic refers to a form of spirituality within modern Christianity. It's been around roughly 120, 130 years. It really starts with the rise of Pentecostalism in the early 20th century. And there, of course, if anyone's encountered Pentecostalism, there's a strong emphasis on speaking in tongues, this kind of ecstatic speech that Christians will sometimes participate in. It's not unique to Christianity. There are other religious traditions that will have this kind of trance-like utterances. The technical term is glossolalia because you're speaking a language, but it's not a recognizable kind of language. But then other things that charismatic focus on are miracles, healings. If you've ever seen the phenomenon of faith healings, if you've ever kind of been flipping through the channels and come across a televangelist healing people, I'm Benny Hidd, and that's what I imagined, and he pushes and the whole congregation. Yeah. Benny Hidd is a major figure in the independent charismatic world. He's kind of one of the leading lights of the independent charismatic world. And so Wagner starts focusing on this because he thinks that this A, this sector of Christianity is growing very rapidly. And just to give you a sense of numbers, scholars estimate that in the year 1970, there are about 44 million independent charismatic in the world. By 2020, the estimate was up to 312 million, right? So you're talking about a movement or a sector of Christianity that is doubly in size basically every 20 years, consistently, right? And so very rapid growth, one of the fastest growing religious movements in world history. And so Wagner recognized that, and he believed that this was the future of the church, that if you could really kind of capture the energy of these independent charismatic, that would lead to this global revival that would sweep the globe with a wave of Christianity. And one of the things that is very important in that world is a belief in prophecy and not just biblical prophecy, that there are just the Bible that speak about future events, but that there are modern day prophets who are present in the world today, whom God speaks to and through whom God speaks to the church. And Wagner in the year 1999 met one of these prophets, her name was Cindy Jacobs. And she really introduced him to a whole bunch of new ideas. They also believe in the rebirth of the office of the apostles, if you know anything about church history, right? The apostles were the ones who founded the church. They were the original disciples of Jesus, but most forms of Christianity don't recognize apostles today. That was seen as a form of leadership that was kind of special that died out in the era of the early church. But what Wagner is doing, and this is why he's using this term, "new apostolic reformation," he believes that we're entering into a new era, and he said that a new era in the church began in the year 2001, that we had entered the second apostolic age of the church, right? The first apostolic age is the early church. And now these offices, these apostles and prophets, these roles that had died out are coming back and that there's a kind of new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And now we have apostles and prophets again. And so what the new apostolic reformation was, it was a set of networks that Wagner built. He retired from Fuller in 1999 and started building networks, kind of peer-to-peer networks of these apostles and prophets who, or at least want to be, apostles and prophets. People who wanted to kind of step into these new roles. And they believed that they were going to revolutionize the church, that they were going to transform the face of global Christianity. And Wagner would often compare this to the Protestant Reformation and say that what is happening through the new apostolic reformation is the most sweeping change in the face of global Christianity since the Protestant Reformation. So let me, let me, that's a lot, let me clarify here, kind of figure this out. So charisma, first of all, like charismatic. That's not just like, you know, being an outgoing personality, it's the, the kids call it riz now apparently. It's not the same. Well, no, I mean, the term, the term actually, it's a charisma, the word that we have in our vocabulary today comes from the Greek. In fact, it, it, it, it, it descends from the New Testament usage of that word in the Bible. And the, the, but the term charisma, um, the Greek can be translated as the gift, a gift or a grace. The plural is charismatic. So you can kind of see the roots there of how we get to, to charismatic. But the, the, the word is we use it in, in kind of common parlance or in typical vocabulary. It kind of means you have a magnetic personality, right? Um, you, you, you have a watchable quality, right? You've got the gift of gap. Sure. Yeah. Um, but when we use it in this kind of technical Christian sense, it, it includes that sense of your, your, your compelling, your, your magnetic, but it also has more of a sense of, you have been given a special gift from God for, for a particular purpose. Um, and, and that, then that purpose is supposed to serve the church in Christian theology. So most, most Christians believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, right? Then the, the, the, the Holy Spirit gives to Christians different gifts. And those can be, um, some, some, some, um, very impressive things like, oh, you have the gift of, of teaching, right? Oh, interesting. Right. Or sometimes either. So that in the language of the Testament, it also talks about the people having the gift of administration, right? Like you've been gifted to work at the DMV, right? That, that is the, the gift from the Holy Spirit to you. Right. But some people, I wish I had the gift of administration and I'm a mess over here. It's, it's, it's a way, um, in the New Testament of kind of rationalizing, right? Different people bring different things into the life of the church. And so the, the, the language of the New Testament talks about these as different gifts. And some of those actually do have this kind of more supernatural dimension, like healing or prophecy. Um, and so that when we talk about charismatic today, these are Christians who emphasize those supernatural dimensions of early Christian or near trying to recapture or recover that, that, that early energy that they see in the New Testament, they, they want to experience the things that they read about in the New Testament. So you know, if you think of the, the Trinity and the father and the son and the Holy Ghost, it sounds like they're really heavy on the Holy Ghost. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, that is what Charismax and Pentecostals really emphasize is that, that kind of third person of the Trinity, the, the Holy Spirit as, uh, I mean, obviously they, they care about Jesus. They care about God, the father, but, but really this is, this is a marker of the charismatic movements is that they have, um, that they've really reactivated, um, this focus on the Holy Spirit and said, we need, we need to lean into and think more about this area of the Christian tradition about the Holy Spirit that they, they think was not, was not accessed enough in earlier eras. You know, so the, yeah, there were these one time roles of the apostles and the prophets, right? And they're spoken of in the Bible, right? And then once the Bible was codified, said in stone, as it were, it's like those, those jobs, traditional Christians, most Christians would say, do not exist anymore. Right. Like that was establishing the early church. That was what they were for. And then, uh, no longer, they don't, they don't exist. Yeah, but most Christians, there's, there's actually kind of a divide in the Christian tradition. There's kind of two major views of what happens with the apostles. Um, so the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox Anglican churches, um, would, would say that the, the, the authority of the apostles gets passed on to the bishops, that the, the bishops are, um, the, the governors of the church who inherit their authority from the apostles. So, right. If you talk about the pope, the pope is the bishop of Rome who inherits his authority. You can trace the lineage back to the apostle Peter. And so you'll have, uh, right to become a bishop in most traditions that have bishops. You have to be able to, to point back through a chain of transmission, how you got your authority. Well, you got your authority from so and so who ordained you and you trace it all the way back to one of the apostles. And so there's this theory of begots, basic, uh, a continuing tradition of authority that the church controls, right? Now when you have the Protestant Reformation, right, the Protestants are, are, are very frustrated with the Catholic hierarchy are very frustrated with the way that the Catholic church has used some, some of these ideas and, and, and claims the authority of the apostles. And so in the Protestant Reformation, they say, well, the authority of the apostles is the foundation of the church, but that authority is encoded in the writings of the apostles, i.e. the New Testament. And so what they're saying is that, that, that apostolic authority is contained within the text. And so when Protestants talk about sola scriptura, we interpret scripture as having authority alone, apart from tradition, they're saying the authority of the apostles remains in the text and it's accessible to all Christians. And so the church bears witness to the authority of the Bible, but it is that it doesn't control the Bible. It doesn't control the interpretation of the Bible. So you still have bishops in some Protestant traditions, but it's, it, there's more of an emphasis on the teaching of the apostles. What Wagner and the New Apostolic Reformation is saying is, no, the authority of the apostles never died out. We just stopped recognizing them. And we need to start recognizing again that God is, is creating apostles today. God is, is, is endowing apostles with this gift to apostleship and authority. And those should be the people we look to, to lead the church. Yes. So, you know, the apostles, yeah, yeah, this office really never went out of it. It came back and, oh, it's us running. We happen to be the people who are receiving messages from God. It sounds like an end around, like, to, to, to claim authority for yourself outside of the tradition of any geted organized church body. Well, and this is, this is what's possible in this non-denominational space, right? Most denominations would, would, would bulk at this idea of modern day apostles. In fact, most denominations do bulk at this idea of modern day apostles, because it seems like that we, we, we, we've got long history of Christianity to, to, to, and long traditions to reckon with these ideas. Where are you pulling this from? But in the non-denominational, charismatic space, people can say, well, it's, it, I heard it from God. I heard it direct from God. In fact, part of how Peter Wagner came to believe that he was an apostle was that Sidney Jacobs, this young prophet that he's mentoring, comes to him and she says, I have a prophecy for you. And God has anointed you as an apostle of prayer. And you have the anointing of Abraham on your life, right? And so, so he's, he, he believes these prophecies about himself, but all of this is again not, it's not, it's not like he's, he's simply reading the Bible and coming to these ideas. It's coming through this belief in kind of charismatic revelation, that there, there's ongoing revelation through the prophets. And then that, though, that revelation is, is unveiling these new movements of God. And so with these revelations and these prophetic gifts from God, you can kind of say, you heard whatever you want. And anything goes, yeah, you know, you could, you could, so the Bible doesn't stop where it's codified now. You can see while we're receiving new revelations, this, this thing that I am receiving now, this is also God's truth. Yeah, they would say that they are still holding their own prophecies up to the Bible, that prophecy should never contradict the Bible, that it is not, that prophecy does not have the same authority as the Bible, they're still Protestant in that sense. But they are putting a very high premium on these revelations. And I would say in many ways, prophecy shapes the theology. It doesn't replace the Bible for them, but it shapes how they interpret the Bible, how they approach the Bible, how they think about the Bible and how they access the Bible, right? And so, for instance, you might read a passage in the Bible and say, oh, well, this means X because this is the clear meaning of the text, but they might come in and say, actually, I have a prophecy that reinterprets that text to mean this, right, and come to a very different conclusion, right? So it's a different hermeneutic of Scripture, we could say in kind of technical terms, right? They're bringing other sources in to help interpret the text, but they're still paying homage to the text and saying, well, the text has this authority. It's just our prophecies kind of control the interpretation of the text. And some of these prophecies can become so central to these leaders and these movements that they function as doctrine, they function as something that you have to believe, something that they believe is direct from God. One of, this makes me think of one of the terms you talk about, and one of the terms that our friend Michael Beckwith used in one of his Facebook posts about Christian nationalism and it was echlesia, and this is one of those things that sounds like they're making their own interpretation of what that means to fit their own narrative. Yeah, like in this term, the word echlesia, e-k-k-l-e-s-i-a is another Greek word, and it occurs in several places in the New Testament. The word, I mean, if you were directly translating just what's the most common sense translation of the word echlesia, it would just be assembly, right? It's an assembled group of people, right? Now, in most places where you find the term echlesia in the New Testament, it's either translated as assembly or just translated as church, because this is one of the words that the early church uses to refer to itself. So right, early Christianity is emerging from Judaism, and by the time that Christianity is coming around, most Jews are speaking Greek, and they've adopted a Greek term to describe their communities that exist outside of the boundaries of Israel, and they call those synagogues, synagogue, right, which is another word for assembly, right? This is the gathering place. This is the community gathering place, and so when Christianity is emerging in this largely Jewish milieu, the Christians kind of find a synonym for synagogue, and they call themselves an echlesia, right? It's another word, other gathering, right? But the word echlesia does have other meanings in Greek, and if you go back to say the Athenian period, several hundred years before the time of Jesus, in the same way that we would talk about a state legislature as an as in the state assembly, sometimes in some states they'll use that terminology, well that word was also used for kind of legislative bodies in the era of the Greek and Roman republics, right? When you had a gathering of citizens, they would talk about that as an assembly. Now, by the time of Jesus, that terminology, the term didn't really mean that anymore, right? Because you're living under the Roman Empire, right? It's not a republic anymore, but again, how these folks, how the NAR reads the scripture, one of the prophets, a guy named Dutch Sheets, claims that he receives a new revelation about this word, a new, a reinterpretation of the word echlesia, and there's a very important passage in the book of Matthew in Matthew chapter 16, where Jesus is speaking to the apostle Peter, and he says, you are a rock, he's actually, it's actually a play on words with Peter's name, Peter, Petra means rock, he's like, you are a rock, and on this rock, I will build my echlesia, right? I will build my church, I'll build the community on this rock of Peter, and this is where Roman Catholics will point to and say, we'll see, like that's why the pope is the Bishop of Roman is the head of the church, because the rock of Peter is the source, and now we are the Bishop of Roman, the succession of Peter. Well, Dutch Sheets comes along and he says, no, no, no, that word echlesia, we need to retranslate that as legislative assembly, that on the rock of Peter, on the rock of the apostles, Jesus will build his legislative assembly, and then you can play it with all kinds of things from that, right? Well, and Dutch Sheets would say, well, the church is the real legislative authority on the earth, that the church is the body, the assembly on the earth, endowed with Jesus' authority, and he may sense it further than that, and he says, well, Jesus was looking around at the Roman Empire, and he was saying, this is the model for my kingdom, is the Roman Empire, and in the same way that the Romans will colonize a place and build a assembly of Roman citizens to bring their culture, well, the church is a colonizing force from heaven, sent to bring the culture of heaven to earth. Now, I just have to say, and pause here as somebody who's trained in Christian theology, this is a wild interpretation, right? Jesus is a colonized peasant in the Roman Empire, who is executed by the Roman Empire, and Jesus goes around also saying things like, my kingdom is not of this world, and that they don't look to the lords of the Gentiles, don't look to the Romans and they're model of doing things, that is not my model, and yet Dutch Sheets is saying, well, no, this is what the word has to mean, even though like no other Christian interpreter in history, as far as I have found prior to Dutch Sheets, has ever read that word this way, has ever understood that passage this way, but if it's coming through revelation, well, then the sky's the limit on where you can take this passage, what you can do with it, and what they've done is they've turned this into an entire program, where they say the apostles and prophets get to legislate on the earth, and that they have the authority of heaven to legislate on the earth, and if you go and look at what happens on January 6, Dutch Sheets was very heavily involved in organizing for January 6, in fact, I would argue that he did more than any other Christian leader to mobilize Christians to be there on January 6, and when you find people talking about around the capital right, they're saying, we are the ecclesia, and we are legislating, we are decreeing and declaring from heaven, and we are going to change the selection. From the authority of heaven that we have, we're going to change this election, right? That is where this theology can take you again, because they believe that God has given them this legislative authority, and that they don't need to simply look to human institutions. They think that they are the real governance in the world. So, yeah, their job is to build the kingdom of God on earth, right? I see, back with LinkedIn biography, first thing it says is kingdom focused. That's what he's talking about. Yeah, they're saying, I mean, they would say, we aren't focused on the church, we're focused on the kingdom, and they would interpret the kingdom as it, including all of society, right? So, they're reinterpreting the mission of the church. Another passage they sometimes play with, also from the gospel of Matthew, a very famous passage to the end of the gospel of Matthew, usually called the Great Commission Matthew chapter 28, where Jesus is kind of saying goodbye to his disciples to the apostles, and he says to them, don't worry, I'm going away, but the Holy Spirit will be with you, and he says, go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe everything that I've commanded you, right? So, this is the mandate, this is the mission of the churches that we're supposed to go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations. Almost all Christian interpreters throughout history have understood that as you are sent to the various peoples of the world, the ethnos, and the nations of the world. And so, we're supposed to go and spread the message that Jesus taught to the people of the world, the people of the nations. The NAR folks come along and they say, no, no, no, no, what Jesus is saying is, you need to disciple nations, that nations are the object of the Christian mission, and that apostles and prophets have the authority to go and disciple whole nations, to make nations Christian, to train nations in how to be Christian, to speak to world leaders, to speak to whole societies, and to transform those societies into Christian nations, right? That's a very, very different interpretation. But that's what they're saying when they're talking about, we move from a church mentality to a kingdom mentality, right? We're building the kingdom of God on earth, which from my perspective as a Christian theologian is an incredibly hubristic claim that we build the kingdom of God on earth as though we have the power to do that. But that is their theology, that they have the capacity and the authority to do this again, because they're reinterpreting along these passages. And so as they disciple the nations of earth, one of the ways they talk about doing this is conquering the seven mountains. Talk about the seven mountains. So the same mountains is another prophecy. One of the early leaders in the NAR is a guy named Lance Wallenau, and he believes that he receives a revelation. It's actually somebody else's near death experience that he hears about, and he kind of bundles it together with some other prophecies that he's heard in a great story. But that's kind of how things work in this world. It's all free-wheeling. But the idea is that there are seven arenas of influence in every society. Religion, education, government, arts and entertainment, media, science, business and commerce. And that in every one of those arenas, they imagine it as a mountain. Every one of those parts of society is a mountain. And the top of that mountain, the position of control in that arena is either controlled by Satan and the demons, or by God and the Christians. And so they believe that in every society on the earth, that there's a battle going on for control between Satan and Satan's minions, and God and the Christians, and that Christians need to conquer all of these seven mountains. The Christians need to purposefully target positions of influence in each of these areas of society, try to either themselves attain the highest level they can, or push others who they think are Christians, or kind of Christians who are aligned with their interests, to those highest levels of society, and so that then Christian influence can flow down into society. Now, this is a very, very different model of cultural change than what, say, the religious right was doing in the 1980s and 1990s, right? And I grew up as a conservative Christian and evangelical in the 1980s, 1990s. I was steeped in what we today would call Christian nationalism. Well, you're then calling more their religious right. And the idea then was we're the moral majority, right? We're the Christian coalition. If we can just mobilize Christian voters from the grassroots and get Christians active in politics, then we can change society. But they're channeling the energy of Christian nationalism of the religious right into democratic processes, right? Or we need to be more active in society. That's a grassroots model of societal transformation, right? And it's fairly democratic, actually. Yeah, mountains is a vanguard model of societal transformation. It's a revolutionary model. You conquer the positions of power, you take over the highest positions, and then let your influence flow down and change society. That is actually defeat the demon, huh? Yes. And it's anti democratic in that they're saying we need to take over and then rule, right? Not that we need to earn the democratic processes, the right to rule, we need to take over positions of power and then rule. So it's a much more authoritarian model for how to change a society. The top down model instead of a bottom model. But this is an idea that has been percolating in these NAR networks since at least the year 2000, 2001. And this was one of the major rationales for why Christians supported Donald Trump. They said, well, he's not a good Christian, but he can conquer the government for us. You find this language still in a lot of these, especially charismatic circles, but the seven mountain stuff that is leaked out of these charismatic circles. A colleague of mine and I, his name is Paul Jup, he's a political scientist at Denison University. We ran a survey a few months ago in January of 2024 of American Christians just to just see how far some of these ideas are spread. Because again, these were marginal ideas when I was growing up. I grew up evangelical. I grew up fairly charismatic evangelical. I never heard about apostles and prophets. I never heard about the seven mountain mandate. This was just not in the, in the ether when I was growing up. What we found this year right now, we, we isolated seven of these statements of kind of theology that comes out of these NAR circles on six out of the seven of these statements. More than 50% of evangelicals said they agree or strongly agree with those statements. The only one that didn't get more than 50% was the Dutch sheets, Ecclesia idea. It got 43%. These ideas have become basically mainstream with an American evangelicalism in a very, very short window of time. I mean, say 15 years ago, you would not have found those survey results. I'm confident about it. But these are the ideas that have traveled with Trump. They're the ideas that have been used to popularize Trump. These are the leaders who have been the frontline Christian propagandists for Trump. And so their ideas have become incredibly popular along with them and spread far beyond the, the, the kind of independent charismatic sector where they tend to operate. Yeah, right. So like the, the, the, these independent charismatics, they're like one flavor of Christian nationalism. And they invented this thing and it's leaking out into other Christian nationalist congregations. Yeah. That's a great way of putting it. Yeah. They're, they're, they're kind of one style of Christian nationalism. But this independent charismatic style of Christian nationalism, the NAR helped to create has been, it's the ascendant style. It's, it's the one that is really driving the action in the Christian nationalist world right now, both at the popular level. These are the populist Christian nationalists and also at the leadership level, right? These are the leaders who have become integral at the local and the national level in a way that they never were in the past. There's really been a shift that occurred in, in the Trump era to, that has brought these previously marginal and fringe figures into the center of leagues. I mean, you think about it's parallel in many ways to what Trump has done in the political realm, right? You can go figure like Dean Bannon or Stephen Miller or Roger Stump, right? You were pretty out there in the Republican politics, pretty fringe. Now that they're at the heart of the action, right? Because they've traveled by Trump on Trump's coattails. The NAR has also traveled on Trump's coattails and has written them to great popular. He had one of these so-called profits in the White House? I mean, he has a number of them, actually. Yeah, well, one of them had an office in the White House, right? Was that what's her name? So, Donald Trump's personal pastor is a woman named Paula White Kane and she is an independent charismatic televangelist and mega church pastor. She met Trump in 2001. He saw her preaching on television and called her out of the blue and told her, "You have the it factor," and her half-joking response was, "Sir, we call that the anointing." They've been friends. Ever since she bought a condo in Trump Tower, she has been kind of a counselor to Trump for more than 20 years now. And she was the person that Trump asked in the 2016 campaign to be sort of his liaison evangelicals, to be the bridge builder between him and the evangelicals. By 2019, she actually did have an office in the White House, herself, a White House employee, even as she's also organizing prayer movements and doing things that I think are quite in violation of the separation of church and state. She was coordinating those things out of the White House. Lance Walnava, you mentioned earlier, was one of the early evangelicals to endorse Trump and was he the one that came up with the Cyrus thing? Whether he came up with it or not is a little bit in dispute. Part of what happens is when Trump enters the presidential race in the summer of 2015, almost from the start, the evangelicals, especially these charismatic evangelicals, were very attracted to Trump. He has a sort of televangelist delivery. He's got the weird hair, that defies gravity. He's got the constant on-message positivity. He's always trying to sell you something. He's got the style of a televangelist. A lot of these folks were already drawn to him. And when he empowers Paula White and says, "I want to speak to the evangelical leaders," well, she doesn't know the mainstream evangelical leaders. She exists in the independent charismatic world. And so she starts bringing in the people that she knows, and she starts sitting up a series of meetings with Trump at Trump Tower in the fall of 2015. Lance Walnava is one of the NAR leaders who's in these meetings. He's, again, the Seven Mountains guy. And he claims in these meetings that he receives a prophecy about Trump while he's meeting Trump, that God, it tells Lance that Donald Trump is an Isaiah 45 Cyrus. And if you missed that day in Sunday school, Cyrus is the emperor of the Persian Empire. He was a heathen emperor. But he was the one who sent the Jewish people who were in exile in Babylon back to rebuild Jerusalem in the 6th century. So in Isaiah 45, God speaks about Cyrus as Mayan noington. And when we talk about anointed in the Hebrew Bible, that is where we get the term Messiah, the anointed one. And so in some ways, Cyrus is cast in the Hebrew Bible as a sort of a secular Messiah, a secular Savior, somebody who, even though he's not a person of God, God uses him to save the people of Israel and return them to their land. And so what Walnava is saying in this prophecy is that Donald Trump can be that. He can be a sort of secular Messiah for Christians in America who feel in battle and who feel like they're in cultural exile, and the Trump can bring them back from cultural exile. Along with the seven-ounce idea, this becomes one of the central rationalizations for why Christians support Donald Trump. This image of Cyrus, it just travels everywhere. It becomes one of the ubiquitous memes supporting Donald Trump and saying, well, he might not be a good Christian. He might not even be a Christian, but God has anointed him for a purpose. He's an instrument in the hands of God, and he's a Cyrus. Wow. And while now Paul of White Kane, you know, close to Trump, and then you said this Dutch Sheets guy was very instrumental in putting together January 6th. Part of what you have to understand about the NAR. I mean, I try to keep it very simple in thinking about the NAR. Because once you dig into it, it's quite a wild movement with a lot of eccentric people, a lot of eccentric concepts. But there are three really central concepts for the NAR. What is, I mean, we've covered two of them already. One is this idea of apostles and prophets should be the primary governance of the church. And the second one is the Seven Mountains mandate, which kind of functions as their political theology, right? That Christians are basically supposed to take over the world, right? Conquer all the Seven Mountains in every society, build the kingdom of God on earth. The third one is this idea of strategic spiritual warfare. And when we talk about spiritual warfare, I mean, many Christians believe in spiritual warfare. The idea is, right, there's this invisible battle going on all around us between angels and demons. And that we experience that battle in our own selves and in the bad fortune we may have, like, oh, the demons are after me, or in depression, in addiction. And that we can participate in that battle. This is the idea of spiritual warfare through prayer or through equity, or through singing worship songs, right? That through spiritual practices, Christians can affect this invisible battle going on. This comes out of imagery in the New Testament. It's been a part of the Christian tradition for a very long time. But when Wagner and Cindy Jacobs and Dutch sheets and these folks get ahold of this idea of spiritual warfare, they take it and they put it on steroids. And they say that the opposition, right? Again, the demons in Satan, Wagner believes in what he called territorial spirits. High-ranking demons that are kind of commonly underlevel demons control literal physical territory and literal human institutions. And so there's not there's not this divide between, oh, there's a spiritual realm and a physical realm. No, in the physical realm, there are demons that control that control a literal territory. Here in Bloomington, the Kinsey Institute, I am told, is literally guard invited. That's not where it's all aligned with the IR worldview. I mean, they've obsessed about the Freemasons and believe that the Freemasons practice in doing different occult practices and empowering territorial spirits. They're obsessed with abortion. They believe that abortion is a form of child sacrifice that empowers these territorial spirits. And again, when you get to the January 6, part of what all these eccentric Christian practices that are going on around the Capitol, people blowing so far as these Rams horns, why are people singing songs, singing worship songs outside of an ongoing riot? Well, they're doing spiritual warfare. They believe that demons have con have taken over the Capitol, or demons are stealing the election from Donald Trump, and that through their spiritual warfare practices, they can push back those demons. And they believe that apostles and prophets have a special authority in spiritual warfare. Again, they're the ecclesia, they're the apostles, right? They are generals of spiritual warfare. Sydney Jacobs leads an organization called Generals of Intercession, right? That we are generals and we can orchestrate these campaigns of spiritual warfare. And this is the backstory of a lot of what happens on January 6, that January 6 was the culmination of a massive spiritual warfare organizing campaign led by people like Dutch Sheets and Lance Wallenow and Sydney Jacobs to try to swing the election back to Trump. And this is why so many Christians show up that day is that they believe they are there to do spiritual battle against these demonic forces that they think have conquered the US Capitol and have taken over parts of the US government, and that they through their presence and their spiritual practices can push back those territorial spirits and swing the election to Trump. So their political opponents are not just people with whom they have stark disagreement. We are literal demons, or possessed by demons, or... They would say that so in Russian tradition, you're always supposed to love people in the Christian tradition, right? You're always supposed to love your enemies, love everyone, but in love the sinner, yeah. But so the version in the NAR is love the sinner hate the demon, love the demon possessed, but hate the demon, right? And so they would say is, oh, I love you. I just hate the demons that have filled you with all the bad ideas that you have. And I'm out to liberate you, to free you from your demons, and then you'll agree with them. So it's dehumanizing in a very profound way because it's saying, I don't have to treat you as a human being with integrity, with values, with principles, with a worldview that happens to be different than my own. I could just say, well, anything that I don't like about you is coming from the demons. In fact, Lance Wall now, who's very, very involved in the 2024 campaign right now is running maybe the most coordinated Christian nationalist voter mobilization campaign I've ever seen. And it's hand in glove with the Trump campaign. A few months ago, he said on his show, it's more coming to the point in this election, where you can't even hear people on the left speaking, because it's just the demons speaking through them, right? When you introduce this kind of spiritual warfare, cosmic battle, conceptions into democratic politics, a it's extremely polarizing, right? Because why would you ever compromise with demons? If the other side, if the other side of the abortion debate, it's not if it's not a debate about the rights of the fetus versus the rights of the mother, if it's if it's about empowering demons and child sacrifice, why would you ever compromise on these things? And if you imagine that your political opponents in a democracy are inspired by demons and are filled with demons, well, why would you ever have any compromise with them? Why would you ever try to find middle ground? Because what middle ground is there between the kingdom of God and demons, right? And so this is, I think, one of the major forces that is driving this asymmetric polarization, we see the radicalization of people on the right in our politics who are saying, not that there aren't radical people on the left, of course there are, but that what we're seeing is a broad-scale radicalization of people on the right who believe that they have truth with a capital T and that anyone who disagrees with them is participating in lies and falsehood and there should be no compromise, right? And when you align prophecies around someone like Donald Trump, which they have done with great vigor, hundreds of prophecies around Donald Trump saying he's an anointed one, God has chosen him, God has given him this power, then it becomes in many ways a sort of quasi-messianic movement built around Trump, built around these prophecies, built around spiritual warfare that is not participating in democracy anymore. They might use the language of democracy, but spiritual warfare is what they're doing in American politics. And that's the framework through which they approach American politics. And at that point, it's not even a conversation about policy. It's a conversation about control and authority. Real quick, I want to go back to our friend Dutch Sheets, who I assume has nothing to do with some fine, high-threaded count linens from the Netherlands. Not that I know of. He may order His Sheets from the Netherlands. I'm not certain of that. So he's the guy that came up with this whole appeal to heaven flag meme. And this thing was in the news recently with the Justice Samuel Alito flying this thing at his summer home, apparently. What's that all about? So in in 2013, Dutch Sheets was at a graduation ceremony for a little Bible college in Dallas called Christ from the Nations Institute. He was actually an alumni there and the executive director at the time. And in one of his disciples, one of Dutch's disciples gets up on stage. He's the speaker at this event. And he presents Dutch with this flag. It's a revolutionary war flag. It's a white flag with a green pine tree at the center in the phrase an appeal to heaven across the top. This flag was actually commissioned by George Washington to fly over the Massachusetts Navy. It wasn't much of a Navy. It was like five cruisers. But to fly over this fledgling kind of navy for the Massachusetts colony in 1775. And this guy who's presenting it to Dutch says that in a little bit of an exaggerated way, says this is the flag under which America was born. Because it's a flag that predates the Betsy Ross flag because it's in 1775. And Dutch is very taken with us. Now, there were dozens of revolutionary war flags. Yeah, a lot of flags flying in 1775. But he believes that there's a prophecy that he receives about this flag that this is a sign of a new spiritual revolution, a spiritual warfare revolution that we need to enter into a new revolutionary war in the spirit realm to redeem America to re-Christianize America. And he actually leaves his job at Christ from the nations Institute and says, I need to start focusing on the 2016 election and rolling out this appeal to heaven flag and getting more and more people mobilized. And the appeal to heaven flag itself is it's a spiritual warfare campaign that she says, I'm the general and I'm leaving the spiritual warfare campaign. He writes a book called an appeal to heaven all about this flag and his vision of it. And this just starts rolling out in these NAR networks starting around 2015, which is when the book comes out. This is right at the height of the presidential campaign. And so over time, this appeal to heaven flag is very attached to Donald Trump. And because he's the Cyrus, he's the conquering the government mountain and the appeal to heaven flag becomes kind of synchronized with Trump. And so when it comes to the 2020 election, once the election gets called for Joe Biden and Donald Trump refuses to concede, and there's all these hundreds of prophecies about Donald Trump is supposed to have a second term. Donald Trump's supposed to have a second term. Dutch sheets goes into George Washington mode and he says, I'm the commander in chief. I'm going to lead this campaign to see Trump reinstated as president. And he uses the appeal to heaven flag. He starts filming every day. He does a 15 minute video with the appeal to heaven flag in the background. He's talking about the ecclesia. He's talking about spiritual warfare. He's talking about the prophecies. And we need to make our appeals to heaven. And so this is why you see dozens, maybe even hundreds of appeal to heaven flag. It's very hard. Actually, when you go through the footage of January 6th to pinpoint and make any sort of count of anything, it's all chaotic. I mean, it's all footage from within the crowds. But you can find the way if you go and start looking at the footage from January 6th, you just see these appeal to heaven flags everywhere. And reporters are interviewing people with these flags. And they're saying, I'm here because of Dutch sheetlets. I'm here because I believe in the prophecies. And and so that flag has become this very potent symbol for this very aggressive form of Christian nationalism. My colleague Bradley O'Nishinai wrote an article back in November, revealing that Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the house at the time, flies an appeal to heaven flag outside of his office. And there's been a whole movement. I mean, part of this campaign has been that they've been trying to get Christian lawmakers to fly the appeal to heaven flag, either in their offices or on their desks above government buildings. And to use this as a kind of coded symbol saying, I'm in solidarity with this spiritual warfare revolution. And so Mike Johnson was given this appeal to heaven flag by somebody who's close to Dutch sheets. He's very close to an apostle in Mike Johnson is in his district in Shreveport, Louisiana, who is a mentee of Dutch sheets. And so and he's hung out with Dutch sheets at different points. And so there's there's this very clear connection that Mike Johnson, I wouldn't call him in AR. He's Southern Baptist in his own orientation. But but he hangs out. He's a fellow traveler with these M.E.R. folks. And then the story broke just a couple of months ago that that Sam Alito, the Supreme Court Justice had built an appeal to heaven flag outside of his summer home in New Jersey last summer for a couple of months. He claimed that he's Catholic, right? He is, he's Catholic. Yeah. And in fact, when that when that story broke in the time and the New York Times that same day, a bunch of neighbors of Leonard Leo, who is a very important Catholic activist, in fact, he's in many ways the the conservative architect of the Supreme Court. He was a very important leader in the Federalist Society, very traditionalist Catholic. Well, he's also flying an appeal to heaven flag outside of his house of Maine. And when they asked the Leonard Leo about it, this is the thing about the appeal to heaven flag. They're they're trying to get all these government officials to do this thing, right? But then when they get asked, when they get called, like, are you a Christian nationalist? Is that what that flag's about? They'll all say, Oh, I just love the history. Yeah, a pretty tree. It's a little tree. My favorite though, Leo, he said, I am just a fan of New England maritime history, right? Oh, you just happened to be flying the same flag that Mike Johnson and Sam Alito, your friend, who's also Catholic, are flying. And you just came to it because you're a real New England maritime history buff, right? At some point, you have to call out and say like that, that just kind of defies the reason that you just happened to stumble across this cross this flag that all your friends happen to be flying at the same time. But you don't know the meaning of it, right? Wow. So I sort of want to close where we opened with our good friend and potentially next lieutenant governor of the state of Indiana, Michael Beckwith. Sounds like he was watching those Dutch sheets videos. Is he an AR guy? Beckwith? I had never heard a Beckwith. You sent me an email and asked about him. And I went and looked him up. I would say he is an AR aligned, maybe an AR adjacent. I have a pretty careful definition of the NAR. For me to call somebody part of the NAR, I need to be able to point to their connection to Peter Wagner and Peter Wagner as a network. Because this was Peter Wagner's terminology, if you become very controversial, a lot of people have run away from this terminology of NAR. They don't want to say that they're part of the NAR. I try to be pretty careful and I don't have any evidence that Mike and Beckwith ever had a relationship with Peter Wagner as part of his networks. But if you look at what Mike and Beckwith is saying and doing, he is tracking and mimicking NAR leaders. He is quoting Cindy Jacobs. He is tracking with Dutch sheets. He is talking. He's using the language of ecclesia, right? So I would say he's swimming in the same waters as the NAR. And at some point, it doesn't really matter whether somebody is officially part of the NAR or not. Right? What the NAR has done is they've shaped that they've oxygenated this independent charismatic world with certain ideas. The NAR are thought leaders. They've shaped memes and theologies that have filled that world and have filled Trump with this special spiritual meaning. Theologically propagandized Donald Trump. And when I looked, I spent just a few minutes kind of browsing around Mike and Beckwith and his his social media and some of his news profile. And the markers are all over him that he is connected these things. In fact, there's a disciple of Dutch sheets named Janet Douglas who leads a church in Evansville, Indiana. And she was quite involved in some of the efforts around January 6 and mobilizing for January 6. She's had Mike and Beckwith at her church. They have all these conversations about the ecclesia. I mean, it's not like seven degrees of separation here. Like Mike Beckwith is using NAR language, hanging out with NAR leaders, being promoted by NAR leaders. To me, he's in their world, whether he's officially part of the movement or not. In much the same way that Mike Johnson is in their world, even though I wouldn't call him part of the NAR, he's very clearly signaling that he's a fellow traveler with them. So there's not a big sign out in front with the little movable letters that says like NAR church service Sunday at 1030. Right. It doesn't say that. So how do you know if your friends and family or your elected officials are attending such congregations or swimming in the same stream with these NAR leaders? So I mean, basically everything that we've talked about in the last hour, right, the markers of somebody's kinship with the NAR is how much they are echoing the ideas of these leaders, mimicking the ideas of these leaders, quoting these leaders, looking to these leaders as authoritative. But part of the reality today, Scott, is that these ideas have leaked far beyond the NAR, far beyond even the independent charismatic world. They've leaked out, they've leached out into broader evangelicalism into broader American Christianity. Why is Sam Alito flying an appeal to heaven? Why is Leonard Leo? Why is Mike Johnson flying an appeal to heaven? It's not that those people are saying, oh, I'm secretly NAR and I'm hiding it from it. Those people might not even know the term NAR, right? Because even the leaders of the NAR don't necessarily use that language anymore. The independent charismatic leadership culture has the memory of a goldfish, right? Because everything's constantly moving. Everything's constantly changing. There's always new prophecies. There's always new revelation. There's always new revelations. And so everything's always kind of shifting and changing. These organizations change names constantly. But what what remains is the relationships among the networks among the leaders and the set of ideas that get carried through those networks, right? Ideas like the set of mountains, ideas like the ecclesia, ideas like the appeal to heaven campaign, ideas like apostles and prophets being generals of spiritual warfare. And so when you find people using and playing with those ideas, it tells you that they're somewhere downstream of these NAR folks. And at some point, to me, it doesn't really matter whether somebody is officially part of the NAR. I think what we need to be doing is paying attention to the ideas that are flooding into far-right Christian circles and they're radicalizing people actively today. And the NAR has put a very important role in radicalizing a whole segment of American Christianity around Donald Trump to make them the most devout followers of Donald Trump who see him as a leader with a special anointing from God. And that is what has fueled this fervor, this Christian fervor around Donald Trump that we're still seeing today. I mean, you would not believe in the aftermath of this assassination attempt that we witnessed on Saturday that the number of prophets who have come forward and said, "Oh, I had a prophecy about this." And they're all pointing back to the different prophecies. They're all trying to correlate their prophecies and say, "See, this fills Trump with even more significance, even more meaning," because God has a hand of protection on him. God has a destiny for Donald Trump, right? Everything gets interpreted into their narrative. But that narrative itself is an authoritarian narrative, that they are saying they're using spirituality, they're using Christian theology to reinforce an authoritarian devotion to Donald Trump and to say that the true faithful Christian thing to do is to support this man and to support the Maga movement. And that is a true threat to American liberal democracy, not liberal with a capital L like, "Oh, it's all be liberal." Like, liberal is it in the sense of we have liberty, we have rights, we have individual conscience, we have separation of church and state, we have freedom, right? Those things are on the chopping block right now because of this Maga movement and because of this Christian attachment, this quasi-investing attachment that so many Christians have to Donald Trump. And it is driving a shift in our politics that is very, very, very dangerous and that I fear is going to lead to a lot more violence. Scary, scary times. Dr. Matthew Taylor, appreciate you very much. Join him here tonight. Thank you for having me. Once again, that was Dr. Matthew Taylor, senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies whose new book, The Violent Take It By Force, the Christian movement that is threatening our democracy, is available for pre-order now. You know, I'm surprised it's taken us this long to coalesce around weird as a pejorative for the Maga ultra right when this has been there the whole time. Like, I'm sorry, I try to be respectful of people's various beliefs. There are thousands of religions and thousands of gods I just happen to believe in one less than most people. Whatever, you do you. I thought we had freedom of and from religion in this country. But some of this shit isn't just weird. It's bat shit insane. It's Pokemon Go with demons. Seriously, it's like an augmented reality game where agents of Satan control pieces of physical world real estate, Planned Parenthood, the Kinsey Institute, the United States Capitol building, like their friggin Pokemon gyms. But only those anointed by God can see it. And they really need your prayers and your money to help them conquer the demonic forces and establish the kingdom of God on Earth. It would be so easy to laugh at and I had to stifle myself repeatedly during the interview. So easy. If so many millions of Americans didn't believe it. Like really believe it. But I get it. It's the oldest trick in the book, right? It's always worked. And obviously, it still works. It's us and them in group out group dynamic. In this case, literally demonizing one's political opponent while also proclaiming divine mandate for oneself. And this is how warlords, despots, kings and colonizers, authoritarians of all stripes have seized, held, and expanded their power for millennia. Now, I don't believe in God, special gifts from God, but charisma, that ability to captivate and move people is a real phenomenon. Some people have the riz. Most do not. And this gift can be used for good or ill. Unfortunately, we have plenty examples of the ill. Religious charlatans, grifters, con artists, gold bugs, snake oil salesmen, supplement salesmen, crypto bros. And that three way intersection of charisma, politics, and religion, like some of those tricky crossings in downtown Indianapolis, is an especially dangerous junction. Demagoguery. These apostles and prophets are right wing demagogues using religion as the most useful weapon in the authoritarian playbook. Like I said, I don't believe in God, and I certainly don't believe in hell. But my best understanding of just about every religion seems to suggest that claiming divinity in order to pursue wealth and power for oneself is an affront, blast for me of the highest order. One way ticket straight to hell. How presumptuous, how convenient that God agrees with you 100% of the time. I mean, what's to shut us up at each mug from claiming to receive messages from God in order to push me? Hi, this is Scott. God God? Like, V? I didn't think he was real. Oh, God, I mean, sorry. Oh, God, the fiddle sticks. Yeah, of course. Sorry. Yeah, put her through. Oh, no, no, no, no, please don't spite me. I didn't think it could be real anymore. After that time, you let me audibly fart in youth group. And also, you know, the world full of suffering innocence. Just one thing. That's it. One thing. I think you say, give up all my worldly possessions, spread your message to every quarter of the earth. Yeah, thank you, my Lord. Yeah, praise you for this vision. And sorry about that whole denying your existence. Thank you. Yeah, so that was God. Surprise, right? And she says she sit first of all, she's sick of being misgendered. But mostly, she's sick of grifters using her to swindle people sick of bigots using her as an excuse for hate and sick of demagogues using her as a reason for violence and conquest. And she also says she's never spoken to that back with guy that he's a total douche. And all the swindlers, bigots and demagogues and false prophets of the world have a big smite awaiting them. Just be good to one another. Well, there you have it. A revelation. The Lord hath spoken impeccable timing, by the way, just almost got like it. Thank you for listening. Thanks again to Dr. Matthew Taylor. I know you like podcasts, so check out charismatic revival fury and find his new book, The Violent Take It By Force, the Christian movement that is threatening our democracy, preferably from your local independent bookseller. If you got some change leftover after that purchase, head over to scottarrenrogers.substack.com and help me expand our pro democracy footprint with a paid subscription. That's where you'll find everything I publish. And you can also find me on social media on Facebook, blue sky YouTube and tick tock at who's left and on most other sites at scottroge78. Please give me feedback tips, ideas, concerns. My DMS are open or email me at scottroge78@gmail.com. Forward the show to a friend and have them forward it to another friend. Let's keep building this project and a democratic Indiana brick by brick. Until next time, this has been the news left podcast. I'm scottarrenrogers. Love each other Indiana. [Music]