<
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/new-apostolic-reformation-christian-movement-trump/681092/>
https://archive.md/7Yysl
"On the Thursday night after Donald Trump won the presidential election, an
obscure but telling celebration unfolded inside a converted barn off a highway
stretching through the cornfields of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The place
was called Gateway House of Prayer, and it was not exactly a church, and did
not exactly fit into the paradigms of what American Christianity has typically
been. Inside, there were no hymnals, no images of Jesus Christ, no parables
fixed in stained glass. Strings of lights hung from the rafters. A huge map of
the world covered one wall. On the others were seven framed bulletin boards,
each representing a theater of battle between the forces of God and
Satan—government, business, education, family, arts, media, and religion
itself. Gateway House of Prayer, it turned out, was a kind of war room. And if
its patrons are to be believed, at least one person, and at peak times dozens,
had been praying every single minute of every single day for more than 15 years
for the victory that now seemed at hand. God was winning. The Kingdom was
coming.
“Hallelujah!” said a woman arriving for the weekly 7 o’clock “government
watch,” during which a group of 20 or so volunteers sits in a circle and prays
for God’s dominion over the nation.
“Now the work begins!” a man said.
“We have to fight, fight, fight!” a grandmother said as they began talking
about how a crowd at Trump’s election watch party had launched into the hymn
“How Great Thou Art.”
“They were singing that!” another man said.
Yes, people replied; they had seen a video of the moment. As the mood in the
barn became ever more jubilant, the grandmother pulled from her purse a shofar,
a hollowed-out ram’s horn used during Jewish services. She blew, understanding
that the sound would break through the atmosphere, penetrate the demonic realm,
and scatter the forces of Satan, a supernatural strike for the Kingdom of God.
A woman fell to the floor.
“Heaven and Earth are coming into alignment!” a man declared. “The will of
heaven is being done on Earth.”
What was happening in the barn in Lancaster County did not represent some
fringe of American Christianity, but rather what much of the faith is becoming.
A shift is under way, one that scholars have been tracking for years and that
has become startlingly visible with the rise of Trumpism. At this point, tens
of millions of believers—about 40 percent of American Christians, including
Catholics, according to a recent Denison University survey—are embracing an
alluring, charismatic movement that has little use for religious pluralism,
individual rights, or constitutional democracy. It is mystical, emotional, and,
in its way, wildly utopian. It is transnational, multiracial, and
unapologetically political. Early leaders called it the New Apostolic
Reformation, or NAR, although some of those same leaders are now engaged in a
rebranding effort as the antidemocratic character of the movement has come to
light. And people who have never heard the name are nonetheless adopting the
movement’s central ideas. These include the belief that God speaks through
modern-day apostles and prophets. That demonic forces can control not only
individuals, but entire territories and institutions. That the Church is not so
much a place as an active “army of God,” one with a holy mission to claim the
Earth for the Kingdom as humanity barrels ever deeper into the End Times.
Although the secular establishment has struggled to take all of this seriously,
Trump has harnessed this apocalyptic energy to win the presidency twice."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
