The current Atlantic has an interesting piece by Stephanie McCrummen with the scary title “The Army Of God Comes Out Of The Shadows.” As the subtitle explains, “Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation [NAR], which seeks to destroy the secular state.” As I read the article, the author offers solid and presumably accurate reporting of some churches and leaders who do indeed preach the extremely radical ideas she describes. Where I differ very substantially is in her assessment of numbers, which I think are wildly off base, probably by an order of magnitude. If she is wrong on that, she is totally wrong about the potential influence these people wield. Let me explain what I think is happening here.
New Apostles
McCrummen writes about the NAR, a significant movement that I described at some length in my recent book He Will Save You from the Deadly Pestilence: The Many Lives of Psalm 91. The movement loves that text, and treat it with special reverence. She calls the NAR
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. … 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.
So far, I have a few problems with that description, as I will describe shortly, but it is basically accurate. But then we come to this astonishing statement:
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 [these views]
Forty percent of American Christians? Forty? That is, um, VERY counter-intuitive, right? It is doubly impressive because as I know from personal experience, the Atlantic employs very tough fact checkers (or they used to). So where is the number coming from?
I then turn to the Denison studies in question, which have been the subject of several separate articles over the past year or so by Paul Djupe, who emerges as a careful and critical scholar of Religious Studies, and of survey evidence. What he produces is unquestionably reputable work, which doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.
Believing Prophecy
The studies in question focus on “prophecy believers”: how many of them are there, and how many of them want a religious, theocratic state? Using a methodologically sound sampling technique, the researchers asked several questions, which they then combined into a scale. Did people then agree or disagree with the following statements:
- God reveals his plans for the future to humans as prophecy. (39% agree)
- Modern-day prophets continue to reveal God’s plans to humanity. (28% agree)
- God has given some people the power to heal others through prayer and the “laying on of hands.” (36% agree)
- God is in control over the course of events on earth. (37% agree)
Once the prophecy believers have been identified, you can then measure that against the belief in “theonomic” (God-government) questions, and the researchers claim a significant correlation. Put all this together, and you seem to have a sizable body of Christian nationalist believers, some at least of whom hold messianic views of Donald Trump.
As I say, the researchers here are honest and competent, but I just don’t agree with their understandings of prophecy belief, and their definitions. To explain, I am going to assume that I or any mainline believer, Protestant or Catholic, was asked the four prophecy questions above. Is there a way that we could answer that would produce false positives? Well, definitely, and on an industrial scale. Look:
- God reveals his plans for the future to humans as prophecy. (39% agree)
Is that figure only 39 percent? I would have put it far higher, and by no means only among fundamentalists. Is that not a commonly (not universally) accepted plank of orthodox belief and Biblical understanding?
- Modern-day prophets continue to reveal God’s plans to humanity. (28% agree)
I am writing this on the Sunday before MLK day, and have just come out of an Episcopal service where the Collect included these words:
Almighty God, by the hand of Moses your servant you led your people out of slavery, and made them free at last: Grant that your church, following the example of your prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of your love.
There is that pesky P word again. An awful lot of mainline and mainstream Christian believers (the two terms are not the same) think MLK was a prophet, as were and are many other figures of modern times, and you can build as long a list as you like. Remember when Gustavo Gutiérrez died last year, the founder of liberation theology? Look at the obituaries of him in very mainstream Catholic outlets, and count how many times you find the words “prophet” or “prophetic”. Ditto for Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of El Salvador. These were surely, to coin a phrase, “Modern-day prophets [who] continue to reveal God’s plans to humanity,” were they not? Some people might attach such a title to Cesar Chavez, or Billy Graham, or Greta Thunberg, or Pope John Paul II or ….. you get my point. Many, many, people who would agree with that statement are left, liberal, or progressive.
The United Church of Christ is a denomination so liberal and so far out on some issues that you can only see it on a clear day. It often uses the phrase “God is still speaking.” Do they belong to the NAR?
- God has given some people the power to heal others through prayer and the “laying on of hands.” (36% agree)
Certainly a very common belief, and by no means not only with people who have any bizarre political or theocratic views. My Episcopal church has services of healing prayer.
- God is in control over the course of events on earth. (37% agree)
This is amazing. Again, is this really ONLY 37 percent? Do over 60 percent of Christians NOT believe such a basic and obvious theological assertion? That’s appalling. Agreeing with such a statement has nothing whatever to do with religious extremism, or the NAR.
Here is my point. If the prophecy questions are used to discover modern day “prophecy believers” in anything vaguely like the sense of the NAR, they are going to produce far, far, too many examples.
By the way, by these definitions, all Mormons must be members of the NAR, which they are certainly not.
Climbing the Seven Mountains
There is one other possible source for the forty percent thing, and it is even less credible than the prophetic material. Briefly, NAR churches are very fond of an idea derived from the book of Joshua, which envisages Christians dominating the Seven Mountains, exercising hegemony over every aspect of life, whether political, economic, or cultural. That implies a kind of thoroughgoing theocratic state, with no room for outsiders: Dominion theology. Seeking to gauge the extent of support for that theory, the Denison researchers asked a survey question phrased thus:
We asked people if they agree or disagree that, “God wants Christians to stand atop the ‘7 mountains of society,’ including the government, education, media, and others.”
As phrased, the question offers no hint of the origins of the theory, nor of what it implied, most significantly of all in terms of practical policy. As a survey question, shall we say, it leaves a very large amount to be desired. I am not clear whether respondents had been asked first if they had ever heard the Seven Mountains theory or its terminology, but I don’t think so. Do correct me if I am wrong on that.
I am sure that some respondents recognized the theory to which they had already been exposed, and answered in effect, “Seven Mountains Mandate? Hell yeah!” But others were surely puzzled, and that would apply to the vast majority of Americans who had not spent the past few months wading through the depths of wacko far Right theology. Maybe some heard a generic question about how significant Christian belief should be in the material world, however they interpreted that influence, whether viewed through conservative or liberal ideologies. They simply did not recognize the NAR jargon and code words with which they were presented.
Sorry to break this to you, but far from being crypto-NAR followers, the vast majority of us could not name one of these alleged prophets, unless we are specialists in Religious Studies or Contemporary Extremist Thought.
Anyway, for what it is worth, around 42 percent of Christians questioned agreed with the Seven Mountains statement as presented. It is simply not proper to assume that anything like that number can be assumed to accept the associated ideology that goes under that name, nor the policy implications, and it is not legitimate to say that such a number “accepted Seven Mountains ideology” or anything vaguely like that.
I have no idea of the exact number of American Christians who espouse the NAR, but it is assuredly not forty percent. A guesstimate might point to two or three percent, but that would be on the high side.
Do read McCrummen’s informative article, but treat her numbers very, very cautiously.
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