SPECIAL REPORT
Faith as a Weapon
Inside America’s Theocratic Vanguard
Introduction
On January 6, 2021, Christian flags, wooden crosses, and “Jesus Saves” signs mingled with pro-Trump banners as insurrectionists, inspired by a buzzing undercurrent of religion and outrage, reacted with violence and stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Inside the breached Senate chamber, Jacob Chansley — the “QAnon Shaman” with his painted face and horned fur hat — led rioters in prayer, thanking God for “filling this chamber with patriots that love you and love Christ.” Joshua Black, another rioter, declared in a video that he entered the building to “plead the blood of Jesus over it.” Jenny Cudd, a Texas business owner and former mayoral candidate, live-streamed afterward, asserting, “To me, God and country are tied — they’re one and the same.
CONTENTS
We were founded as a Christian country.” These acts of violence, steeped in religious zeal, capped weeks of escalating rhetoric that cast the effort to overturn the 2020 election as a holy war ordained by God.
Although Oath Keepers’ armed militiamen and white supremacist Proud Boys drew headlines, the deadly Capitol assault was largely incited by Christian nationalist leaders who wove a narrative of divine mission, rallying thousands to Washington with calls to spiritual and political warfare. In the weeks before January 6, 2021, Jericho Marches — prayerful protests inspired by the biblical siege of Jericho — rallied Christians in Washington, D.C., and state capitols, framing the fight to overturn the 2020 election as a divine mission calling for spiritual warfare. These marches amplified a narrative of spiritual warfare, setting the stage for the Capitol assault.
This fervor found an echo in political rhetoric. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene described the upcoming January 6 events as “our 1776 moment,” a phrase believed to be a coded call to violence, referencing the American Revolution. Lance Wallnau, a New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) figure present on January 6, likened Trump to the biblical King Cyrus, chosen by God. NAR Apostle and televangelist Paula White Cain, Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor, implored God to “let every adversary against democracy, against freedom, against life, against liberty, against justice, against peace, against righteousness be overturned right now in the name of Jesus,” in a prayer session marking a prelude to violence. These voices, amplified by symbols like the Appeal to Heaven flag and a gallows erected outside, fused Christian imagery with militant action, portraying the Capitol breach as a holy quest to reclaim America as a Christian nation.
Many conservatives and Christians condemned the Capitol riot, which journalist Katherine Stewart called “the most serious attempt to overthrow the American constitutional system since the Civil War.” Yet the events of that day exposed a violent flashpoint in the crusade of religious-political movements reshaping American conservatism. Although distinct from one another on many points, three major and ascendant Christian movements — Christian nationalism, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), and Catholic integralism — all reject democracy, insisting America should be governed by their vision of God’s law over democratic consensus.
Studies by sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry show Christian nationalism’s link to anti-democratic attitudes, with adherents more likely to deny Trump’s role in the riot and embrace conspiracy theories blaming antifa for that day’s events. Catholic integralists seek to align courts according to religious doctrine, while the NAR emphasizes “spiritual warfare” through prophecy and worship.
Trump’s relationship with religious nationalist movements extends into policy and personnel choices. His administration institutionalized these connections through the White House Faith Office, led by Paula White Cain, known for speaking in tongues, rebuking “witchcraft in the marine kingdom” and commanding “all satanic pregnancies to miscarry.” Trump’s executive orders addressing “religious liberty” and combating “anti-Christian bias” demonstrate a pattern of elevating particular religious perspectives while marginalizing others, including religious minorities, a large number of Christians, and secular Americans. The Supreme Court has been stacked with judges hand-selected by Leonard Leo, a Catholic integralist who has engineered a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary, and Trump’s second-term cabinet selections further reflect this alignment, including figures like Pete Hegseth and Russell Vought, who have openly championed Christian nationalist viewpoints.
As these movements and leaders continue to gain influence in American politics, the question isn’t whether faith should inform public life — it’s whether one narrow interpretation of faith should control public life. January 6 showed the violent potential when religious language is weaponized for political power.
Understanding these movements, their strategies, and their ultimate aims is essential for protecting America’s constitutional promise of religious freedom for all. What follows is a primer on these movements and profiles on prominent adherents.
Apocalypse Now: Christian Nationalism in America
“We are in a war, and it is not a game,” declared Pastor Douglas Wilson, a leading voice in Christian nationalist circles. “The United States must turn from its secular rebellion and confess Jesus Christ as Lord — not just in our hearts, but in our laws, our courts, and our public square — or we will face the judgment of God that is already falling upon us.”
Wilson’s 2022 blog post echoes the militant Christianity that reverberates through evangelical networks. Christian nationalism, described in broad strokes as the belief that America is divinely ordained for Christian rule, has stormed from the fringes into the heart of American power, poised to reshape the nation. The movement is backed by a bevy of Christian nationalist advisors, appointees, and organizations who have placed Donald Trump at the helm.
This growing, powerful, political ideology steeped in Christian supremacy now commands the stage, its leaders seizing unprecedented control to forge a nation under a divine blueprint for a Christian-based authoritarianism, courtesy of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom, Russell Vought, and more.
These are more than zealots. Christian nationalism seeks a sacred dominion that bends institutions to a holy will and an American identity recast as a Christian birthright. A once-marginal force has grown from a whisper to a roar and is now poised to redefine the soul of the republic. This represents the most significant realignment of church-state relations in American history, with champions of this movement now occupying positions of unprecedented governmental authority.
Christian nationalism isn’t merely religious patriotism with extra fervor; it represents a specific ideological framework positioning America as divinely ordained for Christian governance.
Some Christian nationalists embrace the label, others staunchly reject it, and it is important not to paint all Christians with the same brush. The Christian nationalist movement spans a spectrum and does not apply to all conservatives who like to pray and sing patriotic hymns. This is a Christian supremacist political ideology rooted in bigotry, not the Bible.
Some Christian nationalists are Christian Reconstructionists inspired by R.J. Rushdoony, who seek a return to Biblical law; some are white evangelicals infused with bigotry like Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Catholic integralists like Supreme Court whisperer Leonard Leo. Some are cabinet members with the president’s ear, like Russell Vought and Pete Hegseth. They all believe in their own particular strain of God-granted supremacy to the exclusion of other faiths and viewpoints.
The End of the World as We Know It
Among the most extreme belief systems adjacent to the Christian nationalist movement is the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a Pentecostal and charismatic strain that features direct revelations from God via prophets and apostles who conduct spiritual warfare against their perceived enemies. While NAR adherents share certain Christian nationalist principles, it is important to note that their vision is international, in no way limited to the U.S., and they understand themselves as living in the End Times with a focus on the nation of Israel and its biblical symbolism.
The NAR is another faith-based political movement celebrating Christian supremacy, looking to achieve similar apocalyptic outcomes. Their end game transcends democracy’s mere destruction — it’s the literal obliteration of the world as we know it that represents a necessary prelude to Christ’s triumphant return.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, warns that this vision prioritizes power over compromise — an authoritarian reordering where dissent becomes sacrilege.
Du Mez paints a stark picture of the future under Trump and his Christian nationalist cronies: “There will be no meaningful religious liberty. There will be essentially a two-tier society between the ‘real Americans’ — those who buy into this, or pretend to — and then the rest of Americans,” she remarked. “The laws will be rewritten across the board. Rights as we understand them will cease to exist and instead, we’ll have the framework of biblical law.”
“Apocalypticism is not a theological concept; it’s a marketing concept,” observed David Dault, assistant professor at Loyola University. “It’s designed to mobilize mass movements and to have mass effect.” His analysis reveals NAR leaders’ tactical brilliance. Their selective reading of Revelation — and fascination with wars, plagues and cosmic battles — recasts America as center stage for divine drama, with believers as God’s vanguard tasked with hastening the final act. Donald Trump’s speeches mirror this technique precisely, weaving visions of a once-great nation under existential threat from “woke” forces of evil.
Bradley Onishi, whose journey from Christian nationalist to scholar and critic informed his work Preparing for War, The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — and What Comes Next, connects apocalyptic fervor to concrete political objectives. “There is a real sense that the apocalypse is coming… It’s not just about winning an election; it’s about setting the stage for the end of history as they understand it,” Onishi, who hosts the popular podcast Straight White American Jesus, explained.
Dr. Matthew D. Taylor, a noted scholar whose research produced The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, underscores the primal appeal. “Apocalypticism is where Christians often have found permission to live out their violent fantasies of Christian victory and Christian dominance,” Taylor has said. “The Jesus who is executed by the Roman Empire is a lot less appealing to them than the Jesus who comes as a conqueror at the end of time.” When Christ is viewed not as a suffering servant but as a militarized avenger, political confrontations — including the January 6 insurrection — become sacred skirmishes.
The Doctrine of Dominance
When adherents feel personally selected by God, it’s no wonder the movement has such a broad appeal. According to the Public Religion Research Institute’s (PRRI) “Christian Nationalism Across All 50 States,” adherents rally around five core propositions: America should be officially declared a Christian nation; American law should reflect Christian values; authentic American identity requires Christianity; Christians are divinely mandated to control societal institutions; and deviation from Christian foundations threatens national survival. PRRI reports, “three in 10 Americans qualified as Christian nationalism Adherents (10%) or Sympathizers (20%), compared with two-thirds who qualified as Skeptics (37%) or Rejecters (29%).” The movement’s core values are appealing to those who hold “anti-immigrant views, patriarchal understandings of traditional gender roles, political violence, and QAnon beliefs.” Bigotry in the movement is pervasive.
Religious nationalism expert Katherine Stewart punctures the notion that Christian nationalism represents spontaneous grassroots religiosity. Her analysis reveals it’s not a grassroots uprising but a deliberate strategy led by elites who reframe religion to serve political ends. Christian Nationalism is “the most serious attempt to overthrow the American constitutional system since the Civil War,” she wrote.
The Strategic Ecosystem: Electoral Power and Messaging
Christian nationalism’s political potency derives from its finely calibrated electoral strategy. It’s a strategy that was also on display at the January 6 insurrection. The movement shares similarities with authoritarianism. First, it controls information flows and creates an echo chamber where adherents are primed to accept disinformation from trusted sources —pastors, conservative media, and movement leaders — while dismissing mainstream outlets as “fake news.”
Second, it manufactures a sense of persecution, channeling pre-existing anxieties about secularism, immigration, or cultural change into a unified grievance against political foes. Third, it reconciles a paradox: America is both a divinely ordained Christian nation and a battleground overrun by evil forces that must be reclaimed.
This political ideology is fueled by money and media, with deep-pocketed organizations like the Council for National Policy, a secretive organization supporting extremist ideologies and movements, and the Ziklag Group, bankrolling efforts to mobilize voters and shape policy. Ziklag, a network of wealthy Christian families, poured $12 million into Trump’s 2024 campaign, guided by the Seven Mountain Mandate, an NAR strategy that seeks to influence and dominate seven key spheres of society — religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business —to advance God’s kingdom and hasten the Second Coming of Christ
The movement has also infiltrated traditional Republican bastions — think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute, anti-LGBTQ+ organizations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, and even the GOP party apparatus itself. Project 2025, the Heritage-led blueprint for Trump’s second term, counts Christian nationalists like Russell Vought among its architects, advocating policies from dismantling the Department of Education to banning abortion pills. This isn’t an “other” lurking at the margins; it’s entrenched among the powerful.
The New Administration: Trump’s Faith Warriors
The Trump administration’s second act showcases Christian nationalist influence in stark relief. Consider Christian Zionist and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and Christian nationalist House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who exemplifies this fusion as a self-described “Bible-believing Christian.” Johnson worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom for years and maintains ties to the NAR. He also flies the “Appeal to Heaven” flag — a Christian nationalist symbol — outside his office. He’s called the separation of church and state a “misnomer,” arguing that the Founding Fathers intended a Christian framework for governance. His speakership amplifies this vision, influencing legislative priorities like the Louisiana law mandating Ten Commandments displays in classrooms.
Russell Vought, tapped to lead the powerful Office of Management and Budget under Trump, brings a more radical edge. As president of the Center for Renewing America, Vought has explicitly listed “Christian nationalism” as a priority for Trump’s second term, alongside invoking the Insurrection Act to suppress protests and defy congressional spending limits.
Beyond policy, Christian nationalism is reshaping cultural norms, often through unexpected channels. The “tradwife” trend — celebrating women as submissive homemakers — has exploded on Instagram. Influencers like Nara Smith blend domesticity with a polished, Christian-coded aesthetic, symbolic of the movement’s belief in patriarchy and defined gender roles where women are encouraged to be submissive.
Think tanks and elite institutions play a subtler role. The Claremont Institute, once a staid conservative outfit, now champions a “Christian America” ethos, with leaders like Ryan P. Williams bridging anti-woke rhetoric and religious nationalism.
The Constitutional Stakes: Democracy at a Crossroads
What does this mean for America? The immediate policy stakes are worrisome. Johnson’s legislative clout will help push bills aligning education and family law with Christian nationalist values, among others. Vought’s budgetary authority starves agencies perceived as secular or progressive — the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and USAID, the most important aid provider in the world — while funneling funds to faith-based initiatives. Trump’s campaign promises and executive orders like the task force against “anti-Christian bias” illustrate a willingness to wield executive power to potentially elevate Christian interests at the expense of religious minorities, secular Americans, and the majority of Christians who don’t share these views.
Yet, the deeper threat is to democracy itself. Christian nationalism’s anti-pluralist bent — evident in Congressional Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) calls for a “party of nationalism” or Vought’s disdain for global institutions like the United Nations — clashes with the Constitution’s promise of equal protection.
Opposition exists. Two-thirds of Americans are “Skeptics” or “Rejecters” of Christian nationalism, including many evangelicals and other Christian leaders who decry the manipulation of their faith. Movements like “Reclaiming Jesus” reject Trump’s implementation of Christian nationalism as heretical, advocating for a globalist, inclusive Christianity.
Secular and progressive groups, like Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Christians Against Christian Nationalism, describe the movement as “a distortion of the gospel of Jesus and a threat to American democracy” and warn of a “Christian nationalist nation” eroding religious freedom.
But resistance, both secular and within the faith community, faces hurdles. The movement’s top-down structure means decisions are made by elites — apostles and prophets who are seen as vessels of the Lord, and do not consider the viewpoints of congregants in pews or of other Christian denominations and sects. And as Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer, the former General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ and author of Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right is Hijacking Mainstream Religion, points out, “They don’t wanna humiliate us. They don’t wanna convert us. They want to destroy us,” he notes, calling on people of faith to push back. “The complacency and the decorum characteristic of white Christian liberalism is not going to bring back the justice we seek, nor mitigate the damage being done by those whose brand of Christianity calls them to engage in holy war.”
Christian nationalism’s success hinges on its ability to maintain tension — casting America as a blessed domain under siege — while delivering tangible wins for its base, primarily in the culture wars against women, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized communities, and by seeking to obliterate the separation of church and state. Whether it succeeds in remaking the nation depends on whether its opponents can match its organization, not just its outrage. For now, the levers of influence are in the hands of those who see Trump as a divinely appointed warrior in a cosmic struggle.
The Righteous Horde: Meet The Disciples of Christian Nationalism
As Donald Trump’s second administration takes shape, a once-seemingly marginal movement has secured an unprecedented foothold in America’s corridors of power. Christian Nationalism’s potent fusion of patriotic zeal, evangelical fervor, and a divinely-chosen despot has become a formidable political force.
The movement’s leaders comprise a diverse coalition: congressional firebrands, media mavens, policy architects, and digital disruptors. Each wields distinctive influence in service of a shared vision — a United States reconstituted as an explicitly Christian realm governed by divinely-inspired law.
The Political Power Brokers
Marjorie Taylor Greene: The Provocateur’s Pulpit
Before she commanded congressional hearings and dominated headlines, Marjorie Taylor Greene managed CrossFit gyms and construction businesses across North Georgia’s red clay hills. Her political metamorphosis began in the digital sphere, where her amplification of QAnon conspiracies — allegations of shadowy cabals she would later temper without entirely disavowing — earned her a devoted following in Georgia’s 14th House District.
Greene’s legislative tenure reveals an unabashed embrace of Christian nationalist principles. “We need to be the party of nationalism,” she declared at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in December 2022, “and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”
Her congressional platform operates as a pulpit for provocative declarations: “Many in our government are actively worshiping Satan” (October 2023); “The most mistreated group of people in the United States today are white males” (June 2023); “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.” (April 2024). These assertions, while dismissed by critics as inflammatory theater, resonate with like-minded constituencies who perceive a secular America as an existential threat.
Greene’s support of January 6 rioters as “patriots” exemplifies her worldview — one where disruption in the service of spiritual restoration constitutes a moral rather than a civic transgression. Greene’s propensity for provocation over legislation renders her more of a symbolic figurehead than an adept policymaker — a megaphone rather than an architect.
Lauren Boeberth: Arsenal of Faith
Lauren Boebert’s political origin story begins at Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado, where waitresses served burgers with side orders of visible firearms. Equal parts dining establishment and Second Amendment shrine, similar to Hooter’s but with guns, her attention-grabbing business venture foretold her political persona: defiant, theatrical, and unyieldingly committed to a narrow vision of American identity.
Her 2020 election to Colorado’s 3rd House District — a sprawling constituency on the state’s western slope, encompassing both urban Pueblo and evangelical rural enclaves — elevated her as a congressional voice for Christian nationalist principles. Boebert’s legislative efforts attack progressive policies on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, reflecting the priorities of her evangelical constituency, and she explicitly rejects church-state separation, proclaiming at a Colorado event in June 2022, “The church is supposed to direct the government.”
Boebert’s political antics include boasting about carrying a Glock at Trump rallies and tweeting former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location during the Capitol insurrection. Although these actions clearly represent questionable judgment, they serve to endear her to the movement’s more militant factions.
Josh Hawley: The Intellectual Insurrectionist
“I’m calling America a Christian nation. So I am,” Josh Hawley told the audience at the National Conservatism Conference in July 2024. “Some will say that I’m advocating Christian nationalism. So I do. My question is: Is there any other kind worth having?”
As a Stanford history graduate and Yale Law alumnus, Hawley’s elite credentials make his assault on democratic norms particularly concerning. His embrace of Christian nationalism became evident in December 2020, when he became the first senator to object to Joe Biden’s Electoral College certification. Weeks later, a photograph of Hawley raising his fist to pro-Trump demonstrators outside the Capitol on January 6, moments before they stormed the building, marked his shift toward rejecting democratic principles
His extremist views have only become more intense. Hawley weaponizes religion to justify authoritarianism. At the 2024 NatCon conference, he also declared that progressive movements are anti-Christian: “The left wants religion. They want the religion of the Pride flag. We want the religion of the Bible,” he said. “Instead of Christmas, they want Pride month. Instead of prayer in schools, they venerate the trans flag.”
Hawley’s marriage to Erin Hawley — a senior attorney at the anti-LGBTQ+ Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — bolsters his Christian nationalist agenda. Erin, who argued the Supreme Court’s 2024 medication abortion case, advances the ADF’s mission to reshape American law through cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop (2018) and 303 Creative (2023), which prioritize religious exemptions over civil rights. Together, Josh’s political theater and Erin’s legal advocacy have created a Christian nationalist dynamic duo intent on replacing democratic norms with theocratic rule.
Former academic mentors are dismayed and disillusioned by Josh Hawley’s trajectory. David Kennedy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Stanford historian who supervised Hawley’s undergraduate thesis, confessed to being “more than a little bamboozled” by his former protégé’s embrace of election fraud narratives. Republican former Senator and political mentor John Danforth characterized supporting Hawley as “the worst mistake I ever made in my life.”
Ryan Walters: The Education Zealot
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s State Superintendent, has transformed the state’s education system into a battleground for Christian nationalism, using bureaucratic power to enforce a theocratic vision. At 39, the former history teacher frames secular education as an affront to American identity, dismissing church-state separation as a “myth.”
In June 2024, Walters announced that every Oklahoma classroom must have a Bible and incorporate its teachings; a policy that drew national headlines, only to be struck down by the state Supreme Court for breaching Constitutional boundaries.
On November 15, 2024, Walters announced on the Oklahoma Department of Education’s YouTube channel the creation of the Office of Religious Freedom and Patriotism, tasked with probing “abuses” of religious or patriotic expression. He then led a prayer for Donald Trump.
Walters’s alliances reveal the movement’s radical edge. After unsuccessfully courting podcast host Joe Rogan, he appointed Chaya Raichik, the polarizing anti-LGBTQ+ creator of Libs of TikTok, to a library advisory role, praising her for combating “woke indoctrination.” At a Moms for Liberty event, he cast opponents as existential threats who “want to destroy America as we know it.” Walters is a key player in Christian nationalism’s assault on secular democracy and has embarked on an ambitious crusade that blends politically aggressive politics with apocalyptic rhetoric.
The Strategic Visionaries
Michael Flynn: The General’s Spiritual Battlefield
Michael Flynn’s transformation from three-star Army general to Christian nationalist figurehead represents one of American politics’ most remarkable second acts. His 24-day tenure as Trump’s National Security Advisor ended with a guilty plea for lying to the FBI about Russian contacts — for which he would later be pardoned by Trump. Then, the general decided to reinvent himself as a ringmaster.
Flynn’s “ReAwaken America Tour,” launched in 2021, brought its extremist circus to more than 20 cities, blending election fraud narratives with religious fervor in revival-style gatherings.
“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion,” Flynn, who identifies as Catholic, declared in November 2021 — reframing pluralism as America’s existential weakness.
Like many Christian nationalists, Flynn denounced the 2020 election as fraudulent, a position enriched with QAnon influences he has neither fully embraced nor disavowed. His $45,000 fee for a 2016 speech on Russia’s RT network highlights foreign entanglements that critics have cited as undermining his patriotic posturing.
But never mind all that. Flynn’s military background provides armor against charges of corruption, paranoia and extremism, lending legitimacy to positions that might otherwise be dismissed as fringe. His strategic value lies in translating Christian nationalist ideology into accessible, emotionally resonant narratives. Consider him a charismatic herald and spiritual general leading believers into cultural battle.
Russell Vought: The Bureaucratic Theologian
Amid the movement’s firebrand orators and media personalities, Russ Vought, who reprises his role as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in Trump’s second term, stands apart.
A shadowy, outspoken Yale Law graduate and Heritage Foundation veteran who directed Trump’s Office of Management and Budget from 2019 to 2021, Vought focuses on biblically based policy. His Center for Renewing America, founded in 2021, exists to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God,” and ensure that “far-left ideology must be defeated. We are committed to that mission and stand ready with millions of citizens to stop this cultural revolution,” the website states.
As an intellectual architect of Project 2025 — a 900+-page roadmap for authoritarianism and restructuring the federal government under explicitly Christian principles — Vought translates theological convictions into bureaucratic directives. His influence expanded significantly following his first OMB tenure, positioning him as one of the movement’s premier policy strategists.
Vought openly embraces the Christian nationalist label, including in an opinion essay Newsweek published in 2021 entitled “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With ‘Christian Nationalism?’” This theological framework underpins his strategic vision to dismantle “woke” federal agencies, outlined in his Center for Renewing America’s 2023 policy papers and in Project 2025. Vought staunchly and consistently rejects diversity and the notion that white people have historically oppressed minorities.
His methodical approach to governance contrasts sharply with the movement’s more flamboyant personalities. Steve Bannon praised Vought’s “warrior spirit” — a recognition of his effectiveness as a systematic reformer. While congressional firebrands capture headlines, Vought is behind the scenes, translating Christian nationalist principles into enduring institutional change. “I want to be the person that crushes the deep state. I think there’s a lot of different ways to do that,” he unwittingly told undercover reporters in 2024. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains,” he said, adding, “We want to put them in trauma.”
Vought’s belief that government should exist primarily to advance divine, Judeo-Christian purposes raises profound questions about democratic accountability. Yet Vought’s strategic acumen and bureaucratic expertise make him arguably the movement’s most consequential figure, and perhaps the most dangerous. “I want to make sure that we can say, ‘We’re a Christian nation,´” Vought told the undercover reporters.
Eric Metaxas: The Evangelical Provocateur
“I’d be happy to die in this fight,” Eric Metaxas told Donald Trump during a November 30, 2020, phone call, a pledge of martyrdom coinciding with his embrace of election fraud narratives that would soon catalyze the Capitol insurrection.
Those violent words belonged to the same creative mind that scripted VeggieTales episodes — the 1990s children’s animated television series where Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber imparted Christian morals to millions of American children.
Today, Metaxas is more interested in politics than produce, preaching constitutional revisionism during his daily podcasts. “The separation of church and state refers to the opposite of what most people think,” he proclaimed in June 2023. “It refers to separating the church and state, to protect the church to be the church, not to protect the state from the infiltration of Christians.” When confronted with criticism, he invokes spiritual warfare: “Christian nationalism is the devil’s term for actual Christians who live out their faith in all spheres,” he insisted during a July 2024 interview.
Metaxas’s vision for America leaves no room for secular spaces. “Much of the church has been coasting along, and we’ve really allowed hell free rein in the culture, in the education,” he announced during a June 2023 broadcast. “We’ve got to take that faith, and we’ve got to bring it into every sphere.”
In May 2025, Trump appointed him to the newly created Religious Liberty Commission, a panel ostensibly established to protect “religious freedom” from persecution. This appointment, however, strategically places a Christian nationalist advocating for greater Christian influence in government in a role overseeing policies around religious freedom.
The man who once wrote children’s shows about talking vegetables now calls Christian nationalism simply authentic Christianity — a sleight of hand from a movement that views tearing down the wall between church and state as building up God’s kingdom.
The Media Messengers
Tucker Carlson: Oracle of Cultural Decline
Tucker Carlson’s ideological journey — from bowtied libertarian commentator to Christian nationalist oracle — mirrors the movement’s broader evolution. His Fox News program, Tucker Carlson Tonight, dominated the cable news ratings from 2016 until his abrupt 2023 departure following the network’s $787 million Dominion voting systems settlement. Rather than fading into media obscurity, Carlson, who began his career as a fact-checker, pivoted to independent broadcasting on X, where his audience has expanded alongside his ideological boldness.
His platform regularly features movement luminaries, including Trump and Flynn, while his ongoing praise for Hungary’s Christian governance brings international context to his domestic vision. His March 2024 account of waking to mysterious scratches from a nocturnal “demonic attack,” which he says caused him to reach for his Bible, marked his embrace of the concept of spiritual warfare.
Carlson’s 2022 documentary, The End of Men, positioned declining masculinity as a serious cultural crisis and spiritual affliction. His promotion of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory frames demographic changes as an existential threat to Christian cultural dominance. These media productions, together with his Hungary and Russia pilgrimages and supernatural testimonials, establish him as the movement’s premier cultural interpreter — translating abstract theological principles into compelling narratives of national decline that bring huge ratings.
Steve Bannon: Architect of Disruption
Few figures embody Christian nationalism’s insurgent spirit more than the Catholic Steve Bannon. His unlikely career trajectory — from Goldman Sachs banker to Hollywood producer to Breitbart News executive to Trump campaign chairman — culminated in a seven-month White House tenure in 2017. Trump’s January 2021 pardon for fraud charges related to a fundraising scheme preserved Bannon’s influence and established him as a Christian nationalist martyr. Convictions and prison time for defying a subpoena from the House Select Committee on January 6 have only enhanced his bona fides with his fans.
Bannon’s bombastic War Room podcast, launched in 2019, dominates conservative media with its apocalyptic framing of American politics as spiritual warfare. His platform boasts the already considerable reach of Christian nationalists like Michael Flynn and Charlie Kirk, while his connections to their European counterparts, particularly Italy’s Lega party, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, expand the movement’s reach. Like other key figures, he supports Project 2025 as a blueprint for political transformation.
Bannon’s role centers on fomenting a Christian nationalist revolution, leveraging incendiary language, media prominence, and international connections to ignite a “holy war.”
Charlie Kirk: The Pied Piper
Kirk’s fame escalated by partnering with Trump. Their symbiotic relationship was especially evident in Kirk’s 2024 “Courage Tour” partnership with New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) apostle Lance Wallnau, which strategically targeted churches in electoral battlegrounds to mobilize evangelical voters. “There are demons that are at work,” Kirk told an Arizona audience in March. “The mantra for all of us should be … ‘Lord use me. How can you use me for your purpose to advance the kingdom of God here on Earth.’”
His smugly disparaging cultural commentary viewed “woke” culture through a religious lens: “DEI is institutionalized racism;” “Women’s role is to support men;” “MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe,” and “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.” These provocations reflected his convictions regarding the divine ordering of society, but more so, a worldview threatened by secular progressivism.
Kirk, who was 31 when he was killed, had a firm grip on Christian nationalism’s youth constituency, leveraging Turning Point USA’s substantial organizational infrastructure to transmit the movement’s principles to new generations, which he did at pomp-filled events with booming sound systems and tech-enhanced stages.
Relying mainly on provocative statements to draw attention, Kirk’s strength lay in distilling complex theological positions into shareable content optimized for digital consumption by a new generation of Christian nationalists.
In death, Kirk’s influence, and that of his organization, have surged among those who view him as a martyr for free speech rather than a proponent of bigotry.
The Theological Influencers
Tony Perkins: The Institutionalist
Amid a movement defined by disruptive personalities, Tony Perkins provides continuity. His background as a Marine and Louisiana state legislator, and leadership of the Louisiana Family Council, provided the foundation for his leadership of the Family Research Council (FRC) since 2003. Under his direction, this organization, known for its anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy, has evolved from a conservative think tank to a Christian nationalist church despite the organization’s history of bigotry.
The FRC has been criticized by professional organizations for promoting pseudoscience that falsely links homosexuality to pedophilia and claims children of same-sex parents face more mental health issues. Under Perkins, FRC lobbied against a U.S. congressional resolution condemning Uganda’s proposed death penalty for homosexuality and has claimed that leftists support pedophilia. In 2001, Perkins gave a speech to a white supremacist organization (the Council of Conservative Citizens) while standing in front of a Confederate flag.
Still, Perkins enjoyed unprecedented institutional access during Trump’s first presidency. When he wasn’t visiting Trump at the White House, he was hosting Trump at his Values Voter Summit — five times between 2017 and 2020.
“The Founding Fathers intended for religious values to guide public policy — we’re just fulfilling that vision,” Perkins proclaimed in October 2018, embracing the historical revisionism central to Christian nationalist ideology.
Mike Huckabee: The Down Home Pastor
Mike Huckabee bridges Christian nationalism’s theological foundations with its political aspirations. His career trajectory — Southern Baptist pastor who governed Arkansas from 1996 to 2007 — exemplifies the movement’s ministerial roots. His 2008 presidential campaign secured the Iowa caucus before faltering nationally, demonstrating both the power and limitations of the evangelical constituency as an electoral base.
“Christian convictions are under attack as never before. Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great nation. We are moving rapidly towards the criminalization of Christianity,” Huckabee proclaimed in 2015.
Huckabee’s 2017 launch of a Trinity Broadcasting Network program (2017 – 2024) marked his evolution from politician to folksy media pundit, extending his influence throughout Trump’s first presidency. Trump’s 2024 appointment of Huckabee as ambassador to Israel was particularly significant given Christian nationalism’s eschatological interest in the Middle East.
“America’s greatness comes from its Christian foundation — lose that, and we’re done,” he declared in May 2023. His fervent Christian Zionist perspective connects domestic policy with international relations through a theological framework, positioning support for Israel as a religious obligation. As he told fellow Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk in November 2024, “Without any apology, I believe those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed. I want to be on the blessing side.”
His background provides authenticity that resonates with evangelical audiences, lending spiritual credibility to political positions through an aw-shucks persona that masks the movement’s authoritarian implications. Huckabee has mastered the time-honored preacher’s trick of making the radical feel routine.
Doug Wilson: The Reactionary Reformer
Doug Wilson represents Christian nationalism’s radical side. The self-taught pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, founded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a network of more than 130 churches worldwide, and oversees an expanding network of institutions — including New Saint Andrews College and Canon Press — that constitute a parallel Christian society. His reported influence extends to approximately 500 schools nationwide, establishing him as the movement’s most ambitious community architect.
Wilson’s prominence derives from books like Mere Christendom (2023), which advocates returning to an explicitly Christian social order. “The Lordship of Christ is not an option that we might select from a row of numerous options,” Wilson writes therein. “It is Christ or chaos. It is Christ or Antichrist.”
Wilson’s carefully constructed Moscow community, which he governs according to theocratic principles, represents a microcosm of this vision — a Christian enclave in an already right-leaning state. These efforts align with Project 2025’s dominionist undertones, though Wilson’s vision extends far beyond policy reform. His vision is a comprehensive social transformation.
Positions adopted by Wilson over the past 30 years include criminalizing homosexuality, revoking women’s suffrage, and controversial historical revisionism. The latter can be found in Southern Slavery As It Was (1996) — co-authored with J. Steven Wilkins — where he claimed that slavery fostered “genuine affection” between races.
And then there’s the plagiarism controversy — allegedly lifting content from Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman without attribution in the aforementioned book and again in 2015’s Justice Primer, which was subsequently withdrawn by Canon Press. Racist characterizations of slavery have undermined his scholarly credibility, drawing criticism from historians and ethicists across the political spectrum.
Yet the ethically-challenged Wilson has been embraced by Christian nationalists — U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who is a member of a CREC church in Tennessee, considers him a spiritual mentor. Wilson’s influence fuels Christian nationalism’s goal of fundamentally restructuring American society.
The Militant Vanguard
Pete Hegseth: The Crusading Commander
Pete Hegseth is the epitome of a Christian nationalist soldier. His National Guard service, including deployments to Guantánamo Bay, preceded his Fox News career and 2024 appointment as Defense Secretary. His military tattoos — particularly “Deus Vult” (God Wills It), a Crusader battle cry that has been co-opted by some far-right extremists — visually represent the movement’s militant theological underpinnings.
Hegseth’s prominence expanded through Fox appearances and his 2020 book American Crusade, which The Guardian describes as full of lies, conspiracy theories, and bigotry. His support for Project 2025 specifically focuses on infusing Christian values into defense policy, while his membership in a church in Doug Wilson’s network provides a framework for his holy warrior stance.
Hegseth’s characterization of diversity as “Marxist” extends to disparaging comments about Muslims, transgender people and women in the military. These views echo Wilson’s call for church dominance in civic affairs, framing the medieval Crusades as an aspirational model — a perspective reflected in both Hegseth’s tattoos and rhetoric.
In a 2024 appearance on Doug Wilson’s Crosspolitic podcast, Hegseth made his intentions clear. “We’re in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate and reorganize and as you do so, you build your army underground with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations,” he announced, adding “and obviously all of this is metaphorical and all that good stuff.”
Hegseth advocated for presidential pardons for service members convicted of war crimes in 2019, which he views as an honor. His description of voting as a “weapon” to reclaim America for Christians during a 2024 sermon with Wilson signals his understanding of political participation as part of religious warfare and his intent to reshape the Pentagon accordingly.
His leadership of the Defense Department represents Christian nationalism’s most direct route to institutional power, even though his extremist views — particularly anti-Muslim bias, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-woman sentiment, and Crusader romanticism — are clear threats to military cohesion and constitutional governance.
Andrew Torba: The Digital Warrior
Andrew Torba represents Christian nationalism’s digital frontier. The University of Scranton coding graduate founded Gab in 2016 as a “free speech” platform after mainstream social media began moderating extremist content. The platform gained notoriety following the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting perpetrated by a Gab user, positioning Torba as a technological enabler for the movement’s most radical expressions.
Torba, notorious for antisemitic dogwhistling and outright slurs, supported Doug Mastriano’s failed 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign and that same year authored Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide to Taking Dominion and Discipling Nations, outlining his God-infused political vision. His 2023 reinstatement on X under Elon Musk’s ownership expanded his reach far beyond Gab’s confines.
His rhetoric explicitly rejects pluralism as a governing principle: “If we are going to build a Christian movement, it must be exclusively Christian and we can’t be afraid to say that out loud,” he wrote on Gab’s blog in 2022. “Christian Nationalism is not merely a political movement. It’s a social, cultural, and spiritual one. Christian Nationalism is not merely limited to the right wing in the United States,” he continued. “Our King has dominion over this entire earth. Every square inch.”
William Wolfe: Pack Leader
“Christian nationalism is inevitable,” William Wolfe declared on The Stew Peters Show — a podcast notorious for amplifying white nationalist rhetoric, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories — casting America’s future as a divine mandate. This ambitious former Trump administration official has emerged as one of Christian nationalism’s most brazen keyboard provocateurs.
Wolfe’s educational credentials distinguish him from other online carnival barkers. His B.A. in History from Covenant College and Master of Divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary provided the theological base that fueled his rise through Washington’s power corridors — Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (2020–2021), Director of Legislative Affairs at the State Department, and alumnus of Heritage Action for America — granted him institutional credibility. Now leading the Center for Baptist Leadership while maintaining strategic ties to Russ Vought‘s Center for Renewing America and other Project 2025 supporters, Wolfe operates as both a movement evangelist and a wannabe policy architect.
“Our call as Christian nationalists is twofold. Yes, we want more unapologetic Christians leading in the public square as Christians, but we’re calling on all leaders who exercise authority, whether they’re Christian or not, to recognize that they will answer to the one Supreme authority,” he said. “And they need to learn how to exercise that authority rightly.”
Wolfe’s cultural commentary reflects the scope of his agenda. He conflates progressive movements with foreign terrorism and claims Black Lives Matter and Hamas “share the same spirit of destruction,” while condemning transgender rights as an “assault on God’s design.” Wolfe’s leadership and rhetoric, as well as his 71,000 Twitter followers, position him as a key figure in advancing Christian nationalist ideas within policy and cultural spheres.
The Cross and the Flag: How Catholic Integralists Became Democracy’s Silent Threat
The floorboards of Washington D.C.’s Catholic Information Center bear the imprints of power — traces of Senate-polished oxfords, judicial loafers, think-tank wingtips, designer cowboy boots — a silent ledger of Washington’s conservative Catholic elite.
This bookstore-cum-chapel bills itself as home to “the closest tabernacle to the White House,” a boast that manages to be literal and metaphorical. Within these walls, America’s most consequential conservative Catholics and members of the secretive sect Opus Dei have been gathering for years for Mass, for intellectual communion, and also for the exchange of ideas that reshape jurisprudence and reimagine American democracy itself.
It was here that a silver-haired Opus Dei priest named C. John McCloskey — a former Merrill Lynch broker turned collar-wearing deal-closer who gained notoriety in the early aughts— famously converted to Catholicism, well-known far-right figures such as right-wing publisher Alfred Regnery, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and former Senator and Governor of Kansas Sam Brownback. His doctrine was absolute, and his predictions for America’s future were as black and white as his priestly garb. Twenty years ago, before a sex scandal, Alzheimer’s, and death toppled him, McCloskey was preparing the faithful for a revolution.
“Do I think it’s possible for someone who believes in the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of family, over a period of time to choose to survive with people who think it’s OK to kill women and children or for, quote, homosexual couples to exist and be recognized? No, I don’t think that’s possible,” he said in 2003. “I don’t know how it’s going to work itself out, but I know it’s not possible, and my hope and prayer is that it does not end in violence.”
For McCloskey, liberalism was a failed experiment, and there was no choice but to return society to pre-Enlightenment ecclesiastical rule, an idea he promoted amongst his powerful flock.
According to media reports, McCloskey enjoyed driving that point home, and once asked a gathering of influential senators, including Brownback: “How many constituents do you have?” After hearing their collective answers of millions, he replied with the stark certainty: “May I suggest that you have only one constituent?”
The implication was unmistakable and radical: these elected officials, despite their constitutional obligations to represent millions of citizens, should ultimately answer to God alone — not voters, not the Constitution, but divine authority as interpreted through Church teaching, a centuries-old worldview in which legitimate power flows downward from heaven rather than upward from the governed.
A Theological Vanguard
American democracy is facing a fundamental transformation as a theological vanguard of Christian nationalists captures its institutions. At the intellectual core of the growing movement, which includes Evangelicals, Dominionists, and Pentecostals, stands a coterie of Catholic elites whose medieval vision for governance has moved from obscurity to the corridors of power with remarkable speed and precision, fulfilling McCloskey’s vision for an authoritarian America within a generation.
They answer to various names, these Catholic theoreticians of post-liberal America — integralists, common-good constitutionalists, post-liberal Catholics, or simply traditionalists. Whatever the nomenclature, they represent perhaps the most sophisticated challenge to American liberal democracy since its founding. This far-right iteration of Catholicism holds beliefs far afield from the mainstream church, which mostly remains rooted in Vatican II’s embrace of freedom and dialogue and tends to shun the right-wing zeal these power players embrace.
The integralist vision, as key player Leonard Leo puts it, of “crushing liberal dominance” reveals a blueprint for religious authoritarianism with precisely the same endpoints as its more flamboyant Christian nationalist cousins. While sharing many policy ambitions — criminalizing abortion, eliminating LGBTQ rights, subordinating science to dogma, faith-based governance — Catholic integralists execute their strategy with Harvard Law Review articles rather than faith-healing rallies. This is authoritarianism in worsted wool rather than speaking in tongues, pursuing power through judicial nominations instead of prophetic declarations. The difference is tactical, not substantive.
Whether employing Thomas Aquinas and 13th Century theology or heralding apocalyptic rhetoric with ram horns, both factions seek a state where queer Americans face criminalization and ostracization, women lose bodily autonomy and other rights, religious and racial minorities are demonized, and democratic processes serve merely as window dressing for theocratic rule. The danger lies in the integralists’ effectiveness and newfound proximity to power in Donald Trump, JD Vance, and more.
The Doctrine of Divine Governance
Catholic integralism argues that America should recognize the supremacy of Catholic teaching and ultimately submit to ecclesiastical authority. Unlike other Christian nationalist factions who seek to infuse policy with biblical values, integralists advocate for something far more radical — “the state should recognize Catholicism as true and unite with the Church as body to her soul,” as Catholic integralist philosopher Thomas Pink explains.
The doctrine’s central tenet is unambiguous: when church and state clash, “the church is superior… and can delegate to the state to help enforce its spiritual mission,” author and integralism critic Kavin Vallier says. “Integralists have two inconsistent commitments concerning religious freedom: they oppose forced baptism, but they permit the state to punish Christians who dissent from dogma and leave the church,” Vallier explains in his 2023 book, All the Kingdoms in the World.
The controversial movement’s most ardent proponents argue that baptism creates permanent jurisdiction over individuals regardless of personal belief and that the Church “possesses a right to punish that can extend even to individual belief and practice.”
The Architect of Judicial Transformation
At the nucleus of this movement stands conservative activist and former president of the Federalist Society Leonard Leo, the shadowy Catholic power broker whose decades-long project has reengineered America’s judiciary from district courts to the Supreme Court. Despite never holding elected office, Leo orchestrated the most consequential transformation of American jurisprudence in modern history, resulting in the overturning of Roe v. Wade and other rights-expanding court decisions, with more to come.
Leo’s approach was comprehensive, including state supreme courts and attorney general positions. The Catholic integralist influence on the U.S. Supreme Court represents his crowning achievement. Six of the nine justices on the court were raised Catholic, with at least four maintaining active Catholic identities. His vision encompassed creating a complete machine piece by piece until he eventually created a judiciary designed to enforce the tenets of his faith.
America now confronts an extraordinary historical irony: a nation whose founding constitutional order explicitly rejected religious tests for office has witnessed the installation of a Catholic supermajority on its highest court.
Power Players of America’s Catholic Integralism Movement
Beyond the Protestant Christian nationalist preachers commandeering television cameras and the MAGA faithful rallying beneath stadium lights exists an equally consequential religious revolution — one advanced through judicial opinions, academic papers, and administrative blueprints. The architects of American Catholic integralism have constructed an intellectual edifice whose sophistication conceals its radical ambitions. The theorists profiled here — Leonard Leo, Adrian Vermeule, JD Vance and Kevin Roberts — are only a few public faces of a much broader movement.
Within this ideological ecosystem, just one stream in the broader river of Christian nationalism, players occupy distinct roles: Leo constructs the networks, Vermeule and his academic colleagues articulate the theory, Roberts drafts the administrative blueprints, Vance translates them into electoral politics, and Leo’s handpicked Supreme Court implements them through binding legal precedent. These are just a handful of examples of how Catholic Integralists work together to advance their goals. Along with numerous less visible allies in law schools, think tanks, politics and seminaries, they promote a vision that challenges the foundational premises of American democracy itself.
Leonard Leo: The Shadow Kingmaker
In the exclusive enclave of Northeast Harbor, Maine — a seaside retreat where generational wealth flows as steadily as the Atlantic tides — Leonard Leo’s $3 million Tudor mansion hosted a 2022 gathering of judicial power so concentrated it required armed federal marshals and Coast Guard protection. This assembly represented the culmination of a decades-long project: the systematic capture of America’s judiciary by a network of Christian nationalist organizations funded through Leo’s complex financial architecture.
For Catholic integralists, Leo is viewed as a mastermind. “The participation of the laity is the most important element of the new evangelization. Each of us is called to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and orienting them in accordance with the will of God,” Leo, who has never publicly embraced Catholic integralism, declared while accepting the Catholic Information Center’s John Paul II New Evangelization Award later that same year for his disassembly of democratic principles.
Leo’s transformation of American courts operates through financial structures designed to obscure donors as well as recipients, raising and distributing hundreds of millions through tax-exempt channels that shield donor identities. Between 2014 and 2020, groups in Leo’s orbit raised more than $600 million — a substantial war chest that expanded exponentially in 2021 when businessman Barre Seid transferred $1.6 billion to Leo’s Marble Freedom Trust, which he actively redistributes to groups in his ideological orbit.
Since 2021, Leo’s network has channeled over $50.7 million to groups advising the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — the comprehensive blueprint for restructuring federal administration along traditionalist lines that has become the manual for the Trump administration’s authoritarian policies.
The Supreme Court represents Leo’s most visible conquest. When then-candidate Donald Trump needed to reassure skeptical conservatives in 2016, he outsourced judicial selection to Leo, promising: “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society.” Leo had already assisted in the confirmation of close friends Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and this pledge to Trump yielded three more justices — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett — completing a supermajority that dismantled precedent once considered settled law, most notably the constitutional right to abortion established half a century earlier.
“This evangelizing work extends to every facet of life, including law, public policy, and politics… They need light and salt,” Leo explained in his award acceptance speech. “No less than any other field, and many here have long promoted a legal culture that respects and upholds the dignity of the human person. This work is an integral part of the new evangelization, insofar as it reflects Catholic teaching, spreads Christ’s message, and helps draw others closer to God and what he wants for us.”
The epicenter of Leo’s kingdom is Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center (CIC) in Washington, D.C., a crucial node in his network. Displaying a painting of Leo’s daughter Mary Margaret, who was paralyzed from spina bifida and died at the age of 14, with Jesus Christ’s hand upon her head, the Center embodies the intertwining of faith and power.
Short-statured, bespectacled, and generally mild-mannered in appearance, Leo’s rhetoric is often militant. Accepting a CIC award previously given to Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia, Leo described a civilizational struggle against “vile and immoral current-day barbarians, secularists and bigots” whom he termed “the progressive Ku Klux Klan” attempting to move America from its “natural order” through policies permeating journalism, education, and more “woke” sectors of society.
He characterizes his opponents in explicitly religious terms: “The threats to the new evangelization are not of flesh and blood. This is spiritual warfare… They are often deeply wounded people whom the devil can easily take advantage of. He has hardened their hearts and closed their minds, which means reason alone will not win this struggle. Prayer and reparations are urgently and powerfully important.” This framing — positioning Christian nationalism as cosmic truth against demonic opposition — provides the philosophical justification for dismantling democratic safeguards.
What makes Leo’s plans so threatening to democratic governance is their meticulous execution. Early on, Leo recognized that capturing the judiciary offered more durable power, one largely insulated from electoral checks and balances. His systematic stacking of courts with ideological loyalists creates the infrastructure for authoritarian rule, providing legal scaffolding for potential power grabs and the expansion of the executive branch’s powers, delivering “constitutional” justifications for anti-democratic actions.
Adrian Vermeule: The Academic Integralist
Celebrated scholar Adrian Vermeule converted to Catholicism in 2016 and promptly set about converting American legal thought. The Harvard Law professor — Yale-educated, Scalia-trained — has emerged as an intellectual vanguard of Catholic integralism, a medieval political theology repackaged for America’s constitutional order. His project: dismantling liberal democracy through its own legal machinery.
Vermeule advances what he terms “common-good constitutionalism,” a judicial philosophy that would transform judges from neutral arbiters into moral guardians implementing Catholic natural law principles. This approach reads “into the majestic generalities and ambiguities of the written Constitution” substantive moral principles derived from Thomas Aquinas, as outlined in his controversial 2020 Atlantic article.
His vision of authority advocates the need to “sear the liberal faith with hot irons,” and rejects modern conceptions of individual autonomy. “Just authority in rulers can be exercised for the good of subjects, if necessary even against the subjects’ own perceptions of what is best for them,” Vermeule wrote of what a post-liberal state could look like. “Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.”
Vermeule, articulate and an avid theological provocateur, is supremely skilled at operating within a secular institution while redirecting students toward theological ends. Harvard Law School serves as his pipeline for cultivating judicial disciples who may one day populate federal benches.
What distinguishes Vermeule from less sophisticated religious theorists is his academic respectability. He commands serious attention in elite law schools, has written or co-written nine books, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012, before his conversion to Catholicism. His articles appear in prestigious journals and magazines. This intellectual legitimacy provides integralism with an institutional foothold unimaginable to more populist Christian nationalists.
His sophisticated repackaging of medieval Catholic political thought for modern constitutional interpretation provides intellectual cover for the broader integralist project, lending academic credibility to what might otherwise be dismissed as mere religious fundamentalism.
J.D. Vance: The Hillbilly Cardinal
Vice President J.D. Vance, 40, embodies Catholic integralism’s most politically viable incarnation — cloaking theological principles in the vernacular of heartland populism. His personal trajectory from Appalachia to Yale Law School to the Senate and then the White House makes him uniquely placed to translate elite Catholic intellectual traditions into language that resonates with working-class voters outside the Catholic tradition.
Vance’s 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy established his cultural credentials as interpreter of white working-class disaffection, but his subsequent religious and political evolution proved more consequential. His 2019 conversion to Catholicism coincided with his remarkable transformation from vocal Trump critic — calling him “cultural heroin” in July 2016 — to MAGA stalwart. This ideological flexibility serves him well in navigating the alliance between Catholic integralists — Vance prefers a different term for his beliefs, calling himself a member of the “post-liberal right” — and Protestant nationalists.
Vance’s gift for making regressive theological concepts sound like folksy, Fox News common sense makes him indispensable to the administration’s theocratic ambitions. Unlike cabinet members Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, or Mike Huckabee, whose blatant Christian nationalism has the potential to alienate secular conservatives, Vance’s Appalachian credentials and secular vocabulary make him the perfect salesman for policies that could fundamentally undermine the Constitution he swore to uphold and defend.
Kevin Roberts: The Authoritarian Crusader
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution,” Kevin Roberts declared in July 2024, with the rhetoric of a man accustomed to thinking in military terms. Then came the qualifier that revealed his strategic calculus and hinted at a doctrine rooted not in the Constitution but the catechism: “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Where previous Catholic culture warriors crusaded with rosaries and lances, Roberts has advanced, wielding the policies of Project 2025 — the 900+-page policy manual for dismantling the administrative state and rebuilding it according to an authoritarian vision where “traditional values” and “religious liberty” trump secular governance.
At the helm of the Heritage Foundation, and with the laurels of seeing the Project 2025 policies take root in Trump’s executive orders, Roberts leads a revolution by memorandum, invoking a Catholic integralist vision laundered through the prosaic language of government efficiency and the marginalization of minorities.
This “cowboy Catholic,” armed with a black hat, designer cowboy boots and a PhD in American history, has rapidly ascended to become one of the most influential figures in far-right politics, a journey that began in Lafayette, Louisiana, where poverty formed his earliest impressions of American economic volatility. After securing his doctorate in American history from the University of Texas, Roberts returned home to found John Paul the Great Academy, a Catholic school that considers Opus Dei founder Josemaría Escrivá its “patron.” Escrivá, who considered the movement he founded, in 1928 which now has more than 93,000 members worldwide, to be divinely inspired. Escrivá was canonized in 2002.
Roberts’ first taste of national attention came during his tenure as president of Wyoming Catholic College, where he made waves by rejecting federal funding to maintain the institution’s religious principles. As Roberts plainly stated at the time, “Students who are openly gay and dating, active gay-rights supporters or transgender would be contravening church teaching just by being here.”
This principled stand against the secular state’s financial enticements caught the attention of more prominent conservative players. In 2016, Roberts took the helm of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a Project 2025 supporter and a nursery for Christian Nationalist political operatives. With his reputation as a culture warrior established, Roberts took the helm of the Heritage Foundation in October 2021 and began attending Opus Dei’s D.C. center on a regular basis.
“The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass,” Roberts wrote in the introduction to the Heritage Foundation-produced Project 2025. “The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.” Militaristic with his rhetoric, Roberts has vowed to wage “relentless spiritual warfare” and lead the “fight against evil itself.”
Roberts’ strategic alliance with Protestant Christian nationalists, many of whom contributed to Project 2025, and his cultivation of Trump’s inner circle exemplify his skill at coalition-building. In Roberts, the administrative and the theological merge — not through fiery manifestos but through the accumulation of bureaucratic authority, driven by religious conviction and executed through the mean-spirited language of executive orders.
When Faith and Power Collide
From the steps of the Supreme Court to the drafting tables of Project 2025, Catholic integralists have forged a relentless challenge to American governance years in the making, toppling pluralism with rulings like Dobbs and blueprints that weave religious beliefs into executive orders and legislative fights. This is no fringe tremor — it’s a seismic shift, tilting courts toward dogma and policy toward theocracy, reshaping the country’s foundation with a movement that prizes divine will over democratic voice.
The Kingdom Comes: Prophets, Apostles, and the Battle for America
Believers in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) have a lot of work to do before the end of the world.
Seven cultural strongholds, “mountains,” must be taken: Government institutions must be reconfigured under “biblical authority.” Educational systems must be purged of secular influence. The media landscape needs to be transformed to amplify “prophetic voices” and quash others. Family structures have to return to “divine patterns.” Arts and entertainment must glorify the Kingdom. Business and commerce must be harnessed to fund the final harvest. Religion itself has to be reformed under the true word of God. This is how they intend to build the kingdom of God on Earth.
This is not speculative theology — it’s the operational blueprint of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a strain of Christian nationalism increasingly central to America’s governance. With prophetic networks spanning continents, a congregational reach numbering in the tens of millions, and strategic positioning throughout federal institutions, the NAR has swiftly transitioned from fringe curiosity to administrative reality — all while most Americans remain oblivious to what is going on around them.
Apostles of the Apocalypse: The Architects of Dominion
The New Apostolic Reformation, a fluid and loosely organized movement, emerged from theological tributaries that most Americans — even most Christians — find unfamiliar. It operates primarily within nondenominational charismatic Christianity, a sector characterized by rejecting traditional church hierarchies and prioritizing direct spiritual experiences — speaking in tongues, sundry miracles, exorcisms, divine healing, and prophecy — as Matthew D. Taylor explains in 2024’s The Violent Take It By Force.
Its spiritual architecture, at least in the U.S., was defined and promoted primarily by C. Peter Wagner, a former Fuller Theological Seminary professor who, beginning in the 1990s, articulated a vision for restructuring Christianity around contemporary “apostles” and “prophets” who receive direct revelations from God about governance, politics, and the spiritual reclamation of society.
“Wagner did not see himself as the founder of the NAR but rather coined the term ‘New Apostolic Reformation’ to describe something that he believed already existed: the impetus of a new mode of ecclesiology which focused on apostolic leadership and networks,” writes sociologist André Gagné. “What Wagner did create, however, were networks to sustain the NAR both in the U.S. context and globally.”
Wagner was clear that this NAR term represented a politically potent strategy rather than another revival, as he wrote in his 1999 book Churchquake! “It is a reformation… not centered in theology but in operation.”
Wagner believed God was raising modern-day apostles and prophets with supernatural authority to transform society. By his death in 2016, Wagner had established an impressive infrastructure to guide the movement, including his Eagles’ Vision Apostolic Team, a roster of influential apostolic leaders who would form the core leadership in the Wagner-related networks. Among this inner circle were Apostles Dutch Sheets, Chuck Pierce, Cindy Jacobs, and Lance Wallnau who now lead millions of followers.
Global Gospel: The Charismatic Conquest
Between 1970 and 2025, Pentecostal-charismatic believers, of which the NAR is a subset, grew from 63 million to over 664 million worldwide, with independent networks like the NAR driving much of this explosive growth. In the United States alone, NAR-embracing congregations’ members may number in the millions, though the movement’s inherent amorphousness makes precise numbers challenging.
Throughout the Global South — across the bustling megacities of Africa, the techno-hubs of Asia, and the sprawling barrios of Latin America — nondenominational charismatics fill a vacuum left by rigid colonial-era churches, offering theological adaptability and emotional resonance where other forms of worship have failed to capture imaginations.
Battlefield Earth: The 10/40 Window of Opportunity
This global expansion follows strategic lines. Missionary strategist Luis Bush launched a concept in 1989 that would transform evangelical geopolitics: the 10/40 Window. This rectangular swath of territory — from 10 to 40 degrees north of the equator and stretching from North Africa through the Middle East to East Asia — represents what evangelicals, particularly those in nondenominational charismatic circles, now regard as Christianity’s most crucial battlefield.
The Window encompasses approximately two-thirds of the world’s population but contains 90 percent of the world’s “unreached people groups” — ethnolinguistic communities with minimal Christian presence. The region hosts the cultural heartlands of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and various indigenous belief systems — traditions that charismatic evangelicals frame not as alternative faiths but as demonic strongholds awaiting liberation.
For Wagner and other apostles, the 10/40 Window transcends mere demographic targeting. It represents a theater for “spiritual warfare” — a concept central to Wagnerian theology that envisions unseen battles between divine and demonic forces manifesting in earthly circumstances.
Wagner developed elaborate taxonomies of “territorial spirits,” and encouraged warrior techniques such as “prayer walking” (walking around a targeted area while praying), “spiritual mapping” (identifying alleged demonic strongholds in specific locations), and “prophetic acts” (symbolic actions believed to release spiritual power or open a portal).
The Wider Nationalist Landscape
Unlike mainline denominations, evangelical institutions, or even traditional Pentecostal churches, the NAR is unstructured by design. Independent megachurches embrace the same theology and strategies as the NAR, but so do itinerant prophetic ministries, apostolic networks, and media platforms united by shared spiritual practices. Principal among them is the intense and dramatic use of spiritual warfare, a direct supernatural confrontation with what adherents perceive as satanic forces.
Research suggests that approximately 40 percent of American Christians — including Catholics and mainline Protestants — now embrace a theological strategy central to this movement and the statement, “God wants Christians to stand atop the ‘Seven Mountains of Society.'” Polls show that 68 percent of Americans identify as Christian, and roughly 61 percent of Christians agree that “there are modern-day apostles and prophets.” Approximately half agreed that “there are demonic ‘principalities’ and ‘powers’ who control physical territory” and that the Church should “organize campaigns of spiritual warfare and prayer to displace high-level demons.”
“The adoption of these beliefs is happening at an unprecedented rate,” researcher and political scientist Paul Djupe told The Atlantic. “While the nation continues becoming more secular overall, the Christians who remain are embracing increasingly radical theological positions that fundamentally reject pluralistic democracy.”
Spiritual Warriors Storm the Gates
On January 6, 2021, as insurrectionists breached the U.S. Capitol, an unusual public ritual unfolded amid the chaos. While much of America gawked at Confederate flags and makeshift gallows on their television screens, keen observers noted another, more enigmatic presence: men and women marching around the Capitol in a “Jericho March,” as they had the previous day, where believers tramped around the Capitol building seven times while blowing shofars — hollowed ram’s horns traditionally used in Jewish ceremonies — in order to crumble the Capitol’s walls and destroy the “false gods and corruption” therein.
They repeatedly took to the loudspeaker calling for the blood of Jesus to wash over the Capitol building, flew Christian “Appeal to Heaven” flags, knelt before an 8-foot wooden cross, and spoke in tongues.
This kind of spiritual warfare is common practice in NAR, as C. Peter Wagner explained in 2011. “We don’t believe we can kill demons and sometimes we don’t believe we can completely get ’em out, get ’em away from a city, but we can reduce their power. We can bind them, and then we can move strongly with the kingdom of God into the city.”
Among those present was Pastor Don Lamb of LifeGate church in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, who led a contingent of nearly 200 people from his congregation. While Lamb maintains that no one from his church entered the Capitol, he was outside after attending Trump’s speech. “We went there and stood up for our own sense of injustice,” Lamb said. He claims that what was meant to be a peaceful gathering became violent only after police “were already throwing or launching flash-bang grenades at the audience.”
For Lamb, whose small church has an outsized political influence in Elizabethtown, January 6 was a moment of spiritual reckoning. “I questioned myself like, are we hearing from God or not?” he reflected. “So, of course you go back and you say, ‘Lord, fine-tune my receiver because there could be some static here.”
Four years later, with Donald Trump installed in his second term, Christian nationalists are entrenched in the corridors of power. Trump’s February 9, 2025, executive order established an “anti-Christian bias” task force, a nod to Trump’s evangelical base, but it mainly serves to foment the methodical implementation of Project 2025’s plans for embedding religious nationalist governance throughout the federal government.
Conquering the Heights: The Small-Town Strategy and the Seven Mountain Mandate
The theological framework that has propelled the NAR from obscurity to political influence centers on what adherents call the “Seven Mountain Mandate” — a strategic blueprint for capturing the key institutions of society. These “mountains” represent what NAR leaders identify as the primary spheres of cultural influence and power: government, education, family, religion, media, arts and entertainment, and business.
Lance Wallnau, a former oil industry marketer turned apostle and an early propagator of the Seven Mountains theory, is one of the movement’s most influential leaders, sharing his theological vision with Wagner as a more accessible action plan. “When we say ‘taking the mountain of government,'” Wallnau explains in his 2013 book Invading Babylon: The Seven Mountain Mandate, “We don’t just mean influencing policy. We mean Christians with our worldview need to be the ones writing legislation, making decisions, and determining policy.”
Each “mountain” represents a strategic target for what NAR leaders explicitly term “dominion.”
- Government — The NAR envisions replacing secular governance with “Kingdom rule,” where laws and institutions explicitly reflect their interpretation of biblical principles. Their goal, as stated by C. Peter Wagner, is “to have as many kingdom-minded people in influence in each one of these branches of government as possible so that the blessings of the kingdom will come.” Trump’s February 9, 2025, executive order establishing an “anti-Christian bias” task force to “protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government” epitomizes the methodical implementation of the movement’s plans for embedding Christian nationalist governance throughout the federal system. The current establishment of the White House Faith Office, run by Apostle Paula White-Cain, whose governmental mission is to root out and combat “anti-Christian bias,” is a significant encroachment.
- Education — NAR leaders advocate bringing their vision of religiosity into public schools as “Kingdom education” systems. This explains the movement’s strong support for school choice initiatives, homeschooling, and the elimination of what they term “demonic” influences in curriculum, particularly regarding evolution, sexuality, and critical perspectives on American history.
- Family — The family “mountain” involves establishing households operating under what NAR terms “godly order.” While sharing the broader Christian right’s opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, the NAR goes further, advocating specific models of gender relations and child-rearing they believe will establish God’s pattern on earth.
- Religion — Counterintuitively, organized religion itself represents a “mountain” to be conquered as the NAR adherents view traditional Christian denominations and church structures as spiritually dead and pose demonic obstacles to advancing the Kingdom of God. NAR has a complex relationship with mainstream evangelicalism, which it courts as an ally in transforming this mountain into a victory for shared belief systems. Religious beliefs outside their purview are viewed as satanic constructs.
- Media — NAR leaders believe mainstream media operates under demonic influence and must be co-opted whenever possible. Conquering the media mountain also requires creating parallel media networks through television, podcasts, and social media platforms that reach millions of followers with prophetic updates and spiritual warfare instructions. The movement’s growing influence in this sphere, which now includes a handy Seven Mountain app where social media influencer/extremist/antisemite Candace Owens and the late Rush Limbaugh are lauded for their dominion over media.
- Arts and Entertainment — The arts mountain encompasses capturing cultural production to advance Kingdom values and destroy those who corrupt values and virtue. NAR churches often feature sophisticated production values and contemporary worship styles while simultaneously condemning secular entertainment as spiritually compromised. The movement has focused on music and film as vehicles for spiritual influence. Think Carrie Underwood, lifestyle reality stars Chip and Joanna Gaines, and the Jim Caviezel film Sound of Freedom, the Seven Mountains app suggests.
- Business — The business mountain intertwines with the NAR’s prosperity gospel elements. Leaders teach that godly entrepreneurs should accumulate wealth and influence to fund Kingdom advancement. The movement has developed extensive business networks and coaching programs targeting wealthy executives as key financial supporters and implementers of Seven Mountains strategies within corporate America. Elon Musk’s appearance at Life Center, a prominent NAR church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, just weeks before the 2024 election, signals the movement’s growing alliances with sympathetic business titans. The owners of Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby are held up as examples of business owners trying to summit this mountain, which many view Trump has already conquered.
The interconnected nature of these “mountains” creates a strategy for societal transformation. While previous Christian political movements might have focused on specific policy goals like restricting abortion or allowing prayer in schools, the NAR pursues comprehensive dominion across all spheres simultaneously.
In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, this plays out in microcosm. “How do we keep the gospel center but tune into what’s really taking place in the country and not just be head in the sand, Jesus loves you kind of Christians?” explains Don Lamb, whose LifeGate church has engineered a political transformation in Elizabethtown. “This is not a monastery. This is a mission station. We send people out.”
In 2021, three members of Lamb’s church won seats on the Elizabethtown school board, flipping it to a conservative majority. LifeGate church members also won seats on the local Republican Party committee, including Lamb’s wife and son. That committee controls who gets to run for town board, school board, and other offices on the Republican ticket. Approximately a quarter of local Republican committee seats now have ties back to Lamb’s church.
“This was a takeover to me,” said Kristy Moore, a public school teacher who has run unsuccessfully for the Elizabethtown school board three times. “The line between them as candidates and them as people that belong to this church was very blurred.”
Once established on school boards, NAR-affiliated members often partner with the Independence Law Center, a Christian law firm linked to NAR, partially funded by the Alliance Defending Freedom and with strong ties to Tony Perkins’s Family Research Council, both Christian nationalist and rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-woman groups. In Lancaster County, multiple school districts have engaged this firm to craft policies restricting transgender student athletes to playing only on teams that align with their assigned gender at birth.
The Chaos Candidate: Trump’s Cyrus Anointing
The NAR’s rise is inextricably linked to Donald Trump, yet their relationship defies conventional understanding. Unlike traditional evangelical supporters who reluctantly backed Trump despite character concerns, NAR prophets and apostles emerged as his earliest and most enthusiastic religious champions, providing theological frameworks that transformed his obvious moral failings from liabilities into assets.
In 2015, NAR minister Lance Wallnau, who coined the term “Seven Mountain Mandate,” declared Trump a modern-day King Cyrus — a pagan ruler whom God nonetheless anointed to restore Israel. This “Cyrus anointing” explanation offered a convenient solution to the character problem: Trump needn’t be personally virtuous to be divinely appointed for a specific historical purpose. His sins, lies, and transgressions were beside the point: all he had to be was a “wrecking ball.”
“It’s not about electing a pastor,” Wallnau explained to his followers. “It’s about electing a Cyrus, someone with authority in the governmental mountain to restore what has been lost.”
For NAR leaders, Trump’s primary purpose was and is to create sufficient disruption in government, and he is considered a divinely chosen leader who has personally scaled the mountains of media and business. His usefulness outweighs his checkered past and questionable morals.
When Trump lost the 2020 election, the NAR faced an existential crisis. Many major NAR figures had confidently predicted that Trump’s victory was foretold by God. Either their prophecies were wrong, or the election was stolen. Predictably, most chose the latter explanation, fueling the burgeoning election denial movement.
Apostle Dutch Sheets, a prominent NAR leader whose daily broadcast “Give Him 15” reaches hundreds of thousands of followers, spent December 2020 and January 2021 leading daily prayer campaigns to supernaturally overturn the election results. which directly contributed to the January 6 insurrection. “Pray today as if the life of our Republic depends on it,” Sheets told his followers. And so they did.
In the months preceding the Capitol assault, apostles and prophets had spiritually mobilized their followers through 24/7 prayer campaigns, “Jericho Marches” around government buildings, and prophecies of divine intervention.
Footage shows participants at the Capitol engaging in distinctive NAR-style spiritual warfare practices. Some blew shofars to “break demonic strongholds.” Others conducted “spiritual mapping” of the Capitol, identifying demonic principalities they believed controlled different areas of the building. Many engaged in glossolalia (speaking in tongues) and demonstrative prayers.
Apostle Cindy Jacobs conducted spiritual warfare just outside the Capitol as rioters breached the building, telling her followers that the Lord had given her a vision.
Perhaps most tellingly, Apostle Paula White-Cain — now senior advisor to Trump’s Faith Office — prayed at the preceding “Stop the Steal” rally for the destruction of those opposing Trump, explicitly framing political opposition as spiritual warfare.
Beyond Christian Nationalism: A Theology of Conquest
The NAR phenomenon defies conventional categories of religious political engagement. While under the Christian nationalism umbrella, its distinctive theology and organizational structure make it both more complex and potentially more dangerous than some other forms of religious nationalism.
Unlike historical Christian nationalist movements centered on white supremacy and American exceptionalism, the NAR is remarkably multi-racial, multiethnic and transnational. Its leadership includes significant representation from Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Asian communities.
The movement demonstrates surprising gender egalitarianism in leadership, with women like Cindy Jacobs, Paula White-Cain, Abby Abildness, Jenny Donnelly, and Jennifer LeClaire (to name a few) serving as apostles and prophets with authority equal to their male counterparts.
“They mobilize not primarily out of cultural grievance but theological conviction,” explains professor André Gagné in his book American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times. “These aren’t just culture warriors; they’re spiritual revolutionaries who believe they’re establishing God’s Kingdom on earth.”
This theological foundation makes the NAR particularly resistant to opposing points of view. When political differences are framed as spiritual warfare against Satan himself, the give-and-take essential to democratic governance becomes not just difficult but spiritually forbidden.
Theocracy Rising: The Constitutional Crisis Looms
With apostles and prophets advising the president, and spiritual warfare theology infusing administrative decisions, theocratic governance looms large on America’s horizon.
The constitutional firewall separating church and state isn’t merely being eroded — it’s being methodically demolished. January 6 was the violent expression of a movement that views the democratic transfer of power as spiritual treason. Project 2025 is the administrative codification of “Kingdom rule.” And Paula White-Cain stands as the visible symbol of a movement that has successfully infiltrated every branch of government.
For a movement that views democratic compromise as collaboration with demonic forces, the NAR’s endgame has always been conquest, not coexistence. As America’s constitutional order faces its gravest challenge in generations, the threat comes not from secularization but from a theological revolution determined to establish divine rule through human proxies. What began as fringe apocalypticism seeks to become the operating system of American governance — a transformation that may prove irreversible if pluralistic democracy cannot mount an effective defense against those who see its destruction as divinely ordained.
Apostles Among Us: NAR’s Power Players
The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is one of the most consequential religious-political movements in contemporary American life. Its leadership cadre — headed up by those viewed as “apostles” and “prophets” — has created an effective synthesis of charismatic Christianity, dominionist theology, and hardball politics. It’s a movement with fluidity and minimal structure. There are no card-carrying members, no mission statement or common rules, and some adherents and churches use other words to describe themselves and their beliefs.
Yet the NAR’s leaders share some common theological commitments — belief in modern-day apostolic authority, prophetic revelation, territorial spiritual warfare, and the “Seven Mountain Mandate” to dominate cultural and societal spheres — and each has carved out a distinctive niche — from Apostle Dutch Sheets’ political prayer campaigns to Apostle Bill Johnson’s “signs and wonders” ministry to Apostle Lance Wallnau’s corporate-style dominionism. The following profiles examine 10 prominent figures, by no means a definitive list, and how their distinctive blend of supernatural claims and cultural warfare is having a profound impact on America’s political landscape.
Dutch Sheets: The Strategist
With the gravitas of a statesman and the zeal of an Old Testament prophet, Apostle Dutch Sheets has emerged as NAR’s preeminent political prayer warrior. From his South Carolina base, Sheets orchestrates nationwide campaigns to “shift” America’s spiritual atmosphere through what he terms “governmental intercession.” His influence transcends conventional ministry boundaries. He doesn’t pastor a church, but he coordinates an invisible army of intercessors through his daily “Give Him 15” prayer app, leading more than 50,000 listeners in prayer for America’s future as a Christian nation.
Sheets has long been a Trumpist, and following the 2020 election, his “Pray for America Tour” rallied followers to contest Biden’s victory through supernatural means, framing electoral politics as cosmic warfare.
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag — a Revolutionary War-era banner Sheets popularized — symbolizes his strategic fusion of historical mythology, religious fervor, and political ambition. When this flag was brandished during the January 6th Capitol incursion (and later flown outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and outside the office of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson) it symbolized the marshaling of prayer as a weapon for tangible political conquest.
In the days preceding January 6th, Sheets’ involvement in the insurrection transcended mere rhetorical support — he apparently operated within the inner sanctum of power itself. Eight days before the Capitol assault, Sheets and 14 fellow apostles convened at the White House for a multi-hour meeting with Trump administration officials, documenting their presence with visitor passes in hand. This clandestine summit reveals a carefully orchestrated alignment between spiritual warfare tacticians and political operatives. The ubiquitous “Appeal to Heaven” flags that later saturated the Capitol grounds symbolized the movement’s mobilizing power — and its potential to turn violent.
Bill Johnson: The Supernatural Kingmaker
With his unassuming demeanor and soft-spoken delivery, Apostle Bill Johnson seems an unlikely architect of religious revolution. Yet from his understated perch in Redding, California, Johnson has transformed his 11,000-member Bethel Church into a laboratory for “Kingdom Culture,” fusing supernatural experience, cultural entrepreneurship, and dominionist theology into a seductive package that has captivated a generation.
Johnson’s genius lies in making the extraordinary — miracles and the supernatural — seem everyday. This teaching, explored in his book, When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles, has spawned an entire ecosystem of supernatural entrepreneurship: The Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (which locals dub “Christian Hogwarts”), which trains students to become prophets and faith healers, the multi-million dollar Bethel Music empire, and a steady stream of bestselling books promoting “everyday miracles.” Where other NAR leaders focus on prophetic proclamations or political engagement, Johnson has created an experiential playground where young believers learn to perform miracles and fight demons. Bethel is still perfecting the teachings on raising the dead after field-testing them on a toddler for days with no success.
What distinguishes Johnson from conventional prosperity preachers is his sophisticated theological framework. By training thousands of international students annually in these principles, Johnson has created a global apostolic pipeline that exports NAR theology under the banner of “revival culture.”
Johnson embodies NAR’s notion of modern apostolic authority. His careful image cultivation — preferring terms like “revivalist” over “apostle” — has allowed Bethel to attain mainstream influence through worship music (Justin Bieber is a fan) while simultaneously promoting a radical kingdom-now theology, as members of Bethel make up a majority of the Redding, California, city council.
Paula White-Cain: Apostle of Prosperity
From trailer park to televangelism to the Trump White House Faith Office, the President’s personal spiritual advisor, Apostle Paula White-Cain’s trajectory has been nothing short of remarkable.
White-Cain’s theatrical November 2020 prayer for Trump’s victory — calling for African and South American angels to intervene in the electoral process and speaking in tongues — crystallized the NAR worldview. “Let every demonic network that has aligned itself against the purpose, against the calling of President Trump, let it be broken, let it be torn down in the name of Jesus,” she intoned in a video that went viral.
Her explicit fusion of personal financial blessing with national destiny separates White-Cain from conventional prosperity gospel preachers. Her theology positions America as a divinely chosen nation whose covenant with God operates like an individual prosperity contract — obedience brings blessing, and disobedience brings judgment.
White-Cain sells courses on how to become a prophet and is not shy about emphasizing that donations to her church can lead to eternal salvation. “You need to send in $35,000. You need to send in that hundred-thousand-dollar check. I’m telling you, and God has mandated, if you do not write that PO Box and you do not call that toll-free number, and you do not become a ministry of sustainer, you will never see sustainment in your life and your dream will die,” she regularly preaches, implying that a donation to her is a direct conduit to God. “When I walk on White House grounds, God walks on White House grounds,” she explains.
Her genius lies in her chameleon-like adaptability. White-Cain moves seamlessly between prosperity preaching, charismatic worship, and political advising. She uses her power to build coalitions among disparate conservative constituencies, from traditional evangelicals to prosperity gospel adherents to NAR dominionists and Christian Zionists.
Her legacy transcends her ministry, normalizing the integration of NAR’s overtly supernatural framework into mainstream politics.
Lance Wallnau: The Mountain Man
If NAR has a strategic mastermind, it’s Lance Wallnau — part business consultant, part political prophet, part media impresario — whose articulation and popularization of the “Seven Mountain Mandate” has provided the blueprint for NAR’s cultural dominance campaign.
From his Dallas base, Wallnau repackages dominionist theology and mandates in secular-friendly corporate language, making concepts like “territorial spirits” and tangible spiritual warfare accessible to business leaders looking to “bring Heaven’s blueprint into our workplaces and beyond.”
Wallnau’s prophetic branding of Trump as a “wrecking ball for God” and divinely appointed “Cyrus” figure in 2015 catapulted him from obscure business consultant to influential political voice. His 2016 book, God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling, presciently identified Trump’s appeal to evangelicals, establishing Wallnau as a prophetic interpreter of political events. His 2024 assertion that Kamala Harris employed “witchcraft” against Trump during a debate exemplifies his approach: framing conventional political conflicts as manifestations of spiritual warfare.
“I am a Christian nationalist,” Wallnau declared in 2021. “And I will take the flag that God gave us, with his blessed freedom and blessed government and blessed nation, and I will take that flag and lead them to the cross.”
What distinguishes Wallnau is his entrepreneurial methodology. His online 7M University trains believers to strategically infiltrate and dominate the seven mountains: (government, education, media, arts, religion, family, and business) through stealth influence. “We should tell amazing stories and do inexplicable stuff that makes people curious and hungry…and as they keep pressing in, the deeper quest will draw them into a more powerful conversation and conversion,” he advises followers.
Wallnau represents NAR’s most vigorous strategic contribution to modern religious-political discourse. He has created an exportable strategy for NAR’s advancement that transcends religious boundaries, and has worked in coordination with the Trump campaign in the 2024 election as part of the “19 county strategy,” staging trainings for NAR activists to build their electoral base in swing states.
Cindy Jacobs: The Spiritual Geopolitician
With the imperious bearing of an Old Testament seer, Dallas-based Apostle-Prophet Cindy Jacobs has built her reputation on dramatic prophecies linking natural disasters to divine judgment for political decisions. As co-founder of Generals International,” according to its website, and the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, Jacobs puts to action NAR’s emphasis on territorial spiritual warfare, mapping demonic strongholds and orchestrating prayer campaigns to “shift” spiritual atmospheres over nations and regions.
Jacobs boldly asserted that the 2011 Fukushima Tsunami represented divine judgment on Japan for President Obama’s repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. “I had received some criticism by people who did not understand the warnings that I gave about natural disasters coming as a result of us repealing in the U.S. ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ opening up our military to open homosexuality,” Jacobs proclaimed. “Everything I said has happened.”
Through books like The Voice of God and Possessing the Gates of the Enemy, she has developed a methodology for “strategic-level spiritual warfare” that targets geographical regions, governmental structures, and cultural institutions.
Jacobs represents NAR’s feminine prophetic wing, wielding authority rare in conservative religious circles. Her influence reveals NAR’s paradoxical gender politics — while promoting traditional family structures, the movement has elevated women like Jacobs, acknowledging her prophetic and apostolic gifts with no gender-based disparagement.
Sean Feucht: NAR’s Golden Bro
Appealing to a new generation of the NAR movement, Sean Feucht is a golden-locked musician who started out as a worship leader at Bethel Church. Now, this star’s ascent reveals the movement’s adaptable, media-savvy future. Blending charismatic fervor with contemporary aesthetics, Feucht, 41, rocketed to prominence during the pandemic with a combustible fusion of godliness and grievance, transforming public health restrictions into a religious liberty crusade that captured the MAGA imagination.
With an American flag-adorned guitar personally signed by Trump, Feucht stands at the nexus of worship culture and political activism. His “Let Us Worship” tour — framed as protests against pandemic restrictions — drew thousands of followers to outdoor revival events, strategically targeting sites of progressive activism, including the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis and BLM protest zones in Portland, where white supremacist Proud Boys brawler Tiny Toese was part of his security detail.
After a failed 2020 congressional bid in California’s 3rd District, Feucht drew the attention of Donald Trump. Invited to the Oval Office during Trump’s first impeachment, Feucht and other faith leaders “laid hands” on the embattled president. His rhetorical style, reminiscent of Trump’s combative approach, demonizes opponents. When celebrating the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Feucht warned: “When the devil’s sacrifice is no longer protected by our Supreme Court, watch how his people rage.”
Feucht’s faith is paired with a savvy understanding of contemporary culture. His Instagram-optimized branding features emotive worship set against dramatic backdrops like beaches and mountains, attracting younger followers who might reject traditional religious institutions. By repackaging NAR’s dominionist theology in the language of “authenticity” and “freedom,” his “bro” persona has created an on-ramp for politically conservative young people seeking spiritual experience without institutional constraints.
Chuck Pierce: The Prophetic Decoder
Texas Apostle Chuck Pierce embodies the enigmatic prophet archetype within NAR’s leadership pantheon with his distinctive silver mane and cryptic pronouncements. As president of ministry network Global Spheres and a founding member of the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, Pierce functions as NAR’s chief forecaster, issuing temporal prophecies that link biblical patterns to contemporary events through elaborate symbolic systems.
Pierce’s influence derives from his perceived prophetic accuracy. His supporters point to his early 2020 prediction of a “massive plague-like invasion” as evidence of supernatural foresight regarding the COVID pandemic. He’s also astute at framing contemporary crises as spiritual problems NAR will solve. “We’ve allowed a small minority to determine what is acceptable in society, such as same-sex marriages and allowing those couples to adopt children,” he and co-author Rebecca Wagner Sytsema wrote in The Spiritual Warfare Handbook: How to Battle, Pray and Prepare Your House for Triumph. “Now God wants back what is His, and He is looking to us to go get it. … It is time for a breakout.”
Other books, such as The Passover Prophecies and Time to Advance, connect Hebrew calendar cycles, biblical feast days, and modern events, giving followers a sense of divine order amid chaotic world events — a prophetic map for navigating uncertain times.
Ché Ahn: The Apostolic Governor
With the bearing of a corporate executive and the ambition of an ecclesiastical empire-builder, Apostle Ché Ahn has constructed perhaps NAR’s most extensive formal apostolic network as president of Harvest International Ministry, overseeing some 25,000 churches worldwide. From his Pasadena base, Ahn exemplifies NAR’s hierarchical governance vision, functioning as “Papa Ché” to thousands of ministers who accept his apostolic “covering” and authority.
Ahn has a systematic approach to apostolic governance. Through books like Modern-Day Apostles and his sprawling HIM network, he has constructed an alternative ecclesiastical structure that rejects traditional church governance in favor of the apostolic five-fold ministry.
Ahn also spoke at the January 5, 2021 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C.
During his speech at the Capitol on the day before the insurrection, Ahn told the crowd, “we are here to change history,” prophesying, “We’re gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.”
Lou Engle: The Prayer General
Prophet Lou Engle, who was featured in the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp showing plastic fetuses to children, has built his reputation on mobilizing mass prayer events that blend spiritual fervor with political activism. As founder of TheCall (replaced by Lou Engle Ministries in 2018), he has organized stadium gatherings drawing hundreds of thousands, most notably a 2000 Washington D.C. event attended by, reportedly, 400,000 people.
His prayer events, strategically staged near government buildings or abortion clinics, use worship to target specific policies or court decisions. By positioning prayer as warfare against demonic forces controlling the government, he provides religious framing for political opposition — a spiritual justification for policies targeting a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, Islam and LGBTQ+ rights, among others.
Engle stands out from conventional prayer leaders with his focus on youth mobilization through asceticism. His “Nazarite” movement calls young people to seasons of fasting, celibacy, and intense prayer as preparation for cultural transformation. This emphasis on physical discipline as spiritual training creates committed activists willing to endure hardship for the cause — a cadre of prayer warriors primed for long-term cultural engagement.
Rick Joyner: The Apocalyptic Visionary
Few NAR figures have prophesied imminent, apocalyptic civil conflict as explicitly as Apostle Rick Joyner. From his MorningStar Ministries base in Fort Mill, South Carolina, Joyner has cultivated a following through books like The Final Quest and The Call, which blend vivid spiritual visions with explicit political commentary.
Joyner’s December 2018 prophetic dream warned that America had already entered “the first stages” of a “second American Revolutionary/Civil War,” and he’s continued in his militancy that a great battle is brewing. “It will be a civil war, and it’s going to be increasingly worse with the increasing time it takes for Americans to stand up and push back against this evil that has taken over our land,” Joyner said in March 2021. “You know, there’s a time for peace and a time for war. It says in [the biblical book of] Ecclesiastes, well, we’re not headed towards peace right now, we’re headed towards conflict of war. And we need to prepare for it. We need to put out the word that people need to be prepared.”
This puts Joyner at odds with his own children, including daughter Anna Jane Joyner, a documentarian who has spent decades advocating for progressive policies, including climate change. He believes extreme weather is caused by God’s anger at gay people, not climate change. Father and daughter would be on opposing sides of eternity should his predictions hold true.
Prayer Warriors and Political Power: A Glossary of Christian Nationalist Terms
In American politics, where church and state are increasingly commingling, certain theological movements wield outsized influence while remaining somewhat opaque to mainstream scrutiny.
The vocabulary of Christian nationalism — particularly its charismatic variants — helps articulate its revolutionary vision for American governance.
What follows is a brief field guide to some of the Christian nationalist, New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and Catholic Integralist terms that shape rhetorical landscapes where political operatives deploy prophetic declarations as campaign strategies, where spiritual warfare is a tactic in electoral mobilization, and where biblical narratives serve as templates for transforming democratic institutions.
Appeal to Heaven Flag: A historic banner featuring a pine tree on a white background with the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven,” originally flown on Revolutionary War naval vessels, is now repurposed as a Christian nationalist emblem through the advocacy of Apostle Dutch Sheets and other NAR leaders. Its contemporary display — seen outside House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Capitol office, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s beach house, and prominently during the January 6 insurrection — signals the movement’s dominionist aspirations.
Apostle: A contemporary leadership position claiming direct, divine authority, such as that given to biblical apostles. Unlike traditional church hierarchies, modern NAR apostles, who can be men or women, assert jurisdiction over territories, networks, and institutions, positioning themselves as divinely commissioned generals in a campaign to recapture authority from secular influences.
Catholic Integralists: This variation of traditional Catholicism embraces a political philosophy advocating the integration of Catholic doctrine into government. Distinguished from broader Christian nationalism by its specific allegiance to Catholic theological frameworks, integralists reject liberal democracy’s secular foundations, instead proposing a hierarchical social order where temporal authority remains subordinate to religious authority..
Charismatic: A Christian movement, not exclusive to Christian nationalism, emphasizing ongoing supernatural experiences and spiritual gifts. Derived from the Greek “charisma” (divine endowment), believers maintain that the Holy Spirit actively distributes extraordinary abilities — healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues — replicating the experiential spirituality described in early Christian texts.
Charismatic Nondenominational: A rapidly expanding sector of American Christianity characterized by both charismatic theology and independence from traditional ecclesiastical oversight. These communities — sometimes called “Independent Charismatics” or “neo-Pentecostals” — emphasize supernatural manifestations while rejecting denominational structures, creating fluid networks united by shared spiritual experiences.
Christian Supremacy: The theological assertion that Christians possess moral authority across all social domains. This framework positions believers to combat secular or, as they refer to them, “demonic” influences, justifying Christian control over cultural institutions, legal frameworks, and political systems as fulfillment of divine mandate.
Christian Zionism: An end times perspective rooted in unconditional support for the modern state of Israel as essential to fulfilling biblical prophecy. Within Christian nationalism, Christian Zionists advocate for expansionist Israeli policies, oppose Palestinian statehood, and anticipate apocalyptic scenarios in the Holy Lands as necessary preludes to Christ’s return.
Church Militant: A rhetorical framework portraying the Catholic church as an actively engaged combatant in an existential spiritual and cultural conflict. Nationalist figures deploy this martial imagery to mobilize believers against secular governance, progressive social policies, or religious pluralism.
Cyrus Anointing: Popularized through Apostle Lance Wallnau’s 2015 application of the term to Donald Trump, it references the biblical Persian king Cyrus, who, though not Jewish, liberated Hebrews from Babylonian captivity and supported Jerusalem’s rebuilding. The example of Cyrus provides theological justification for Christian support of morally compromised political figures who advance movement objectives.
Deliverance Ministry: A pastoral practice focused on identifying and expelling demonic influences through prayer, exorcism, and ritualized spiritual warfare. In nationalist contexts, it expands beyond personal ministry to include “delivering” entire nations from perceived moral corruption or satanic manipulation through both spiritual and political interventions.
Demonization: This concept transforms political opponents from fellow citizens into dehumanized cosmic enemies, justifying extraordinary measures to combat their influence. NAR leaders routinely identify specific demonic entities — like Jezebel, Baal, or Leviathan — as controlling political movements, demographic groups, or geographic regions.
Dominionism: A theological framework asserting Christians’ divine mandate to exercise comprehensive authority over all creation. Christians can and must reform society and government in order for Christ to return.
Divinely Appointed: A term based on selective Biblical interpretations used to assert that certain leaders, movements, or nations (particularly the United States) are chosen by God to fulfill a sacred purpose, and any opposition is a defiance of God’s will. The doctrine transforms policy debates into cosmic battles between God’s anointed representatives and perceived enemies, privileging religiously derived authority over the constitutional separation of church and state.
Ekklesia: A Greek term traditionally translated as “church” or “assembly,” reconceptualized in nationalist circles as a divinely authorized governing body.
End-Times Revival: Christian Nationalists generally view the End Times as a period when global suffering signals Jesus’s imminent return. Their interpretation of biblical prophecies frames disasters and conflicts not as problems to solve but as divine signs to welcome. For them, societal breakdown isn’t something to prevent but rather evidence that their beliefs are being confirmed.
Enlightenment: The 17th-18th century intellectual movement championing reason and individual rights over religious authority. In Christian nationalist circles, it serves as the original sin in America’s narrative — the moment when godless rationalism supplanted divine order.
Fivefold Ministry: An NAR leadership structure derived from Ephesians 4:11, emphasizing five distinct roles — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers — as the only legitimate church offices.
Intercessory Prayer: Strategic prayer initiatives undertaken on behalf of others — including political candidates, governmental bodies, or entire nations — which are believed to directly influence spiritual and temporal outcomes.
Jericho March: A strategic prayer demonstration inspired by the biblical conquest of Jericho, involving coordinated processions around targeted locations accompanied by prayer, worship, and shofar blasts. Contemporary applications, such as the pro-Trump demonstrations following the 2020 election and leading up to January 6, ritualize political objectives as spiritual warfare. This ritual involves physically encircling government buildings in the hopes that the physical walls will crumble and allow God’s people entrance.
Jezebel Spirit: A demonic entity in charismatic theology, derived from the biblical queen, personifying moral corruption and resistance to divine authority. Frequently invoked to demonize political opponents, particularly female leaders or progressive movements, this conceptual framework transforms policy disagreements into spiritual battles against personified evil.
Kingdom Now Theology: A theological strain within the NAR that says Christians must establish God’s kingdom in the present age rather than awaiting future divine intervention. This dominionist perspective emphasizes immediate action to transform social and political structures through both spiritual practices and political engagement.
Latter Rain: a theological concept comparing the early church’s spiritual empowerment to Israel’s “former rains” — which occur in autumn to replenish the soil — and anticipating an imminent, more powerful “latter rains” — spring rains that ripen the crops — revival before Christ’s return, with rain symbolizing God’s spiritual empowerment, blessing and a Christian awakening. The Latter Rain movement, which arose in Canada in the 1940s, is a strong influence on NAR.
Opus Dei: Latin for “Work of God,” Opus Dei is a secretive Catholic sect founded in 1928 by Josemaría Escrivá, emphasizing the sanctification of ordinary work and promoting conservative Catholic doctrine within elite professional circles. Its cultivated networks of wealthy, powerful adherents — particularly in legal, academic, and governmental spheres — function as strategic nodes of conservative Catholic influence within secular institutions. Author Gareth Gore, in his 2024 book Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church, characterizes Opus Dei as “a danger to itself, to its members, to the Church and to the world,” and notes that in the U.S., “Opus Dei has devoted many resources towards increasing its influence. It’s no coincidence that it has flourished in times of deep division and cultural wars.”
Pentecostalism: A theological tradition emphasizing the contemporary manifestation of spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues, prophecy, and divine healing. While many Pentecostals belong to established denominations outside of Christian nationalism, their emphasis on direct spiritual experience and supernatural authority provides the theological underpinning for the dominionist claims of the NAR.
Prayer Warrior: A believer dedicated to intensive, strategic prayer, conceptualized as engaging in direct spiritual combat against demons. In Christian nationalist contexts, prayer warriors act as spiritual special forces, whose mission is to influence elections, court decisions, legislative outcomes, and cultural trends deemed spiritually significant.
Prosperity Gospel: A theological framework asserting that material wealth and physical health are divine entitlements for faithful believers, activated through positive confession and financial “seed-faith” giving. Though not necessarily nationalist, this teaching frequently intersects with dominionist aspirations by equating material success with divine favor and spiritual authority. Some NAR figures, such as Apostle Paula White Cain, are also practitioners of the prosperity gospel.
Seven Mountain Mandate: A strategic framework urging Christians to establish dominance over seven key spheres of cultural influence — religion, family, education, government, media, arts, and business. This conceptual model provides a tactical blueprint for systematic Christian reclamation of cultural institutions and has become influential beyond NAR.
Shofar: A ram’s horn trumpet with deep Jewish ritualistic significance is used by NAR as an instrument of spiritual warfare. Its distinctive blast is believed to disrupt demonic activities, declare divine victory, and transmit spiritual power into targeted locations during events like Jericho Marches.
Spiritual Mapping: A strategic NAR practice involving the identification and naming of territorial spirits or demonic strongholds believed to exercise supernatural influence over specific geographic locations. This reconnaissance precedes targeted prayer initiatives and spiritual warfare campaigns aimed at displacing these entities and claiming locations.
Strategic Spiritual Warfare: Coordinated prayer campaigns targeting specific geographic locations, institutions, or cultural domains believed to be under demonic influence.
Vatican II: The Catholic Church’s transformative 1962-1965 council that reformed and modernized religious practices and engaged with contemporary society. For Catholic integralists, it represents the church’s surrender to secular values — a theological Watergate that betrayed authentic Catholicism. They view reversing these reforms as essential spiritual resistance, mirroring how other Christian nationalists seek to “restore” America’s religious foundations.