# 2026-07-21 The Identifying Markers of Christian Supremacy — Matthew D. Taylor An excerpt from the introduction of **Matthew D. Taylor**'s forthcoming *Defying Tyrants* (Broadleaf, Oct 2026), posted on his Reckonings Substack. It does definitional work: names a cross-tradition phenomenon, lists its behavioral markers, and maps the different labels it takes across Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. Taylor is the author of [[readwise-violent-take-it-by-force-taylor|The Violent Take It by Force]], the wiki's book-length [[new-apostolic-reformation|NAR]] source. Published 2026-07-21. (Source: `Readwise/Articles/The Identifying Markers of Christian Supremacy.md`, [post](https://matthewdtaylor.substack.com/p/the-identifying-markers-of-christian)) > [!note] Source caution > A book-promotion excerpt written to persuade, not to survey. No individual is named, no incident cited, no data given — the evidence is deferred to Taylor's prior book and to his standing as a religion researcher. The register is homiletic ("I have seen the rising face of Christian evil"; biological metaphors of "species," "invasive," "plague," "host habitats"). Taylor discloses the commercial context openly. Read it as a definitional essay and a sermon; go to the earlier book for the receipts. --- ## The definition (the load-bearing contribution) > [!quote] Verbatim (Taylor) > Christian supremacy, at its most basic, is the idea that Christians are entitled to power over other people. Everything hangs off this. It is deliberately narrow — about **entitlement to power**, not about belief, conservatism, or public religiosity — and that narrowness makes it usable as a diagnostic rather than as a slur. In principle it is falsifiable: a movement that seeks no power over non-adherents does not qualify. (Source: this article, highlight h1) --- ## The cross-tradition vocabulary map (the most reference-useful passage) Taylor's claim is that one impulse carries a different name in each community it enters, so participants in each see a local phenomenon and miss the shared one: | Tradition | Local term | |---|---| | Catholic | integralism / radical traditionalism | | Orthodox | phyletism | | Protestant | dominion theology / dominionism | | Charismatic-Protestant | ruling *Ekklesia* / "conquering the Seven Mountains" | | Reformed | theonomy | This is the crosswalk the wiki should hold — the article's own action item asks for exactly this. It connects the wiki's existing [[dominionism|Dominionism]] and [[seven-mountain-mandate|Seven Mountain Mandate]] pages to their Catholic and Orthodox cousins, which the wiki has not previously named. (Source: this article, highlight h2) > [!contradiction] Taylor's Orthodox gloss vs. the 1872 condemnation. > Taylor glosses *phyletism* as "the elevation of a select set of Christians to premier status." The term as condemned at the 1872 Council of Constantinople means **ecclesiastical nationalism** — organizing the church along ethnic lines. Related, but not identical. Verify the conciliar text before citing this gloss anywhere. --- ## The argumentative pivot, and its convenient shape Taylor grants that people seek power for many reasons, then argues what distinguishes Christian supremacy is its **theological** nature — so it cannot be answered by political organizing alone and must be resisted inside churches. Worth holding both facts at once: the claim is defensible, and it is also the claim that justifies writing the book. He bounds the scale honestly — adherents are "not a majority of the church" but wield outsized influence — which is the point where overreach would be most tempting. (Source: this article, highlight h3) > [!caution] The unfalsifiable marker. > One behavioral marker — "in their own minds, Christian supremacists are always the good guys or the victims, even when they are the ones inflicting harm" — is [[darvo|DARVO]] under another name, but as a *diagnostic* it cannot be failed: a person who denies being a supremacist and claims good faith has thereby exhibited the marker. A test that treats denial as confirmation has stopped being a test. The permanent-note candidate the article seeds ("a diagnostic that treats denial as confirmation cannot diagnose") is the durable methodological point. --- ## Connections This is the definitional companion to Taylor's [[readwise-violent-take-it-by-force-taylor|The Violent Take It by Force]] (the NAR case study) and to [[2026-06-15-taylor-christian-nationalism-zionism-antisemitism|his Christian-nationalism series]] (the intra-coalition taxonomy). The theological counter-argument he builds — the temptation narrative as a devil's bargain over "all the kingdoms," Jesus's status inversions, "the renunciation of status" — is internal critique from shared scripture, the strongest form for his intended readership. Its exegetical gap: Romans 13 and the household codes, the passages his opponents cite, go unmentioned. > [!question] Open threads — entity/concept candidates > **Matthew D. Taylor** now has three ingested sources (the book plus two articles) and is past the entity threshold — an author page would anchor the growing cluster. A **Christian supremacy** concept page is a candidate (the definition + the cross-tradition crosswalk are the natural contents), with **integralism** and **phyletism** as sub-nodes. Deferred to a directed pass per surgical-ingest discipline.