The Violent Take It by Force  🔗 **Source:** [The Violent Take It by Force]() ## Highlights - observers frequently draw an explicit connection between Christian nationalism and patriarchy. ([Location 202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=202)) - When you seek out the underlying leaders and the theologies that spurred thousands of Christians to pursue the illegitimate reinstatement of Donald Trump, you inevitably come to the people mentored and the ideas propagated by a renegade evangelical seminary professor, C. Peter Wagner, the “intellectual godfather” of the NAR.14 ([Location 322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=322)) - me explain. Denominations evolved to manage Protestant sectarianism. One of the core features of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century was a renewed focus on reading and interpreting the Bible. ([Location 370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=370)) - This language of “spiritual father” or “spiritual mother” is very common in Independent Charismatic leadership circles, where, without the structures of denominational leadership hierarchies and seminary training, ambitious leaders defer to familial models of being raised and apprenticed. ([Location 580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=580)) - All three are what Pentecostals and charismatics call revivals: intense, timebound, and geographically localized outbursts of piety and charismatic activity that they understand to be specially ordained manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s work. ([Location 614](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=614)) - The Latter Rain name was a biblical reference to the distinct weather patterns in Israel, where the rainy season begins with heavy rain in October (the former rains) and ends with heavy rain in May (the latter rains). For Latter Rain theologians, the highly charismatic early church represented the former rains, and they believed they were prophetically living into the latter rains: an end-times deluge of the Holy Spirit. ([Location 660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=660)) - Frustrated with slow-moving and bureaucratic denominations, the Latter Rain leaders especially fixated on passages in the book of Ephesians, including Ephesians 2:20, which says that Christ’s church is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,” ([Location 665](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=665)) - This Ephesians list of five gifts, and the aligning of church leadership around them, is often called the fivefold ministry model by proponents, and it usually includes an emphasis on the centrality of apostles and prophets. Slowly, over the next few decades, these fivefold teachings and prophecies spread into the diffuse Independent Charismatic networks. ([Location 671](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=671)) - So Trump opted, on White’s recommendation, to be candid about faith in private, with small groups of leaders, but to publicly offer only vague platitudes. This meant that Paula White became Trump’s spokesperson on matters of faith. She became the one to vouch for his sincerity and piety, and she became the gatekeeper for religious leaders wanting access to him. This had the added benefit of making Trump’s personal spirituality a Rorschach test, of sorts, which different Christian audiences could interpret variously. ([Location 850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=850)) - We have already seen how the theology and practice of being charismatic—building one’s spirituality around supernatural experiences and extraordinary gifts given through the Holy Spirit—has created divisions in modern Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, evangelicalism, and Historically Black Protestantism. In formal theological terms, this is often talked about as the divide between “continuationists” and “cessationists.” Continuationist is a synonym for charismatic: the belief that the extraordinary elements of early Christianity continue today. Cessationists are not anti-supernatural or anti-miracles per se, but they argue that those supernatural aspects of Christianity largely ceased to manifest after the founding of the early church—that they were a special dispensation for a special time. ([Location 1008](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1008)) - Kay Hiramine, an entrepreneurial Fuller student who became a teaching assistant and right-hand administrator for Wagner through most of the 1990s. One day, after receiving what he characterized as a “blistering letter” critiquing something Wagner had written, Kay asked him, “Pete, does it wear on you that you’re like a lightning rod?” ([Location 1069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1069)) - Peter Wagner, ever ready to make an intellectual pivot, immediately proposed that they change the name. Over the course of their lunch, the group tossed out different titles and options until one of the people there threw out the phrase “New Apostolic Reformation.” Hiramine, who was present, does not recall whose idea it was, but he’s confident it wasn’t Wagner’s. The whole group seized on this, and, Hiramine quips, “we banged that name out—the New Apostolic Reformation—in less than a lunch.”26 ([Location 1192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1192)) - EVAT was unique among the NAR structures because, in Wagner’s vocabulary, the EVAT members had a “Covenant Relationship” with him.33 For the select group of EVAT members, Peter Wagner was their own apostle. In fact, even though some of them were his contemporaries in terms of age, the EVAT members called Wagner their “spiritual father,” and he called them “spiritual sons and daughters.” ([Location 1262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1262)) - Wagner said, “I am more certain than ever that God is calling his people to experience the most radical paradigm shift at least since I have been in Christian ministry which is well over half a century.”35 And that “paradigm shift” was the Seven Mountains concept and dominion theology. This aggressive political theology became the third and final leg—along with strategic spiritual warfare and the leadership of apostles and prophets—of the NAR stool. ([Location 1295](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1295)) - “Alignment” was a very important word for Wagner, signaling that a person or ministry was connected and submissive to an apostle’s authority. ([Location 1349](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1349)) - As we’ve seen, Independent Charismatic culture is fast-paced, entrepreneurial, and faddish. This is the nature of nondenominational and deinstitutionalized spaces: parlance and terminology are ephemeral, with few abiding institutions to hold memory or create traditions. Leaders are constantly reinventing themselves, polishing their brands, and looking for a receptive audience. ([Location 1395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1395)) - “spiritual mapping”: a practice in which prophetic intercessors walk around cities and neighborhoods to discern and name the territorial spirits and occult footholds that buttress those invisible demonic forces. ([Location 1636](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1636)) - Spiritual warfare, as a concept, already invokes violence, and this group of strategic-level spiritual warriors around Wagner and Jacobs vigorously leaned into that military jargon. ([Location 1638](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1638)) - The 10/40 Window effort had become the beating heart of the global evangelical missions focus of the 1990s. Tens of millions of Christians in the United States and around the world were praying for the 10/40 Window, donating to mission agencies to send missionaries there, and doing spiritual warfare against the demons in control of that territory. Peter Wagner was the central person coordinating prayer mobilization for this global campaign, and he used the opportunity to implant his newfound strategic-level spiritual warfare ideas into broader prayer organizations and networks. ([Location 1662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1662)) - A month later, Wagner was having dinner with a dozen of his apostolic mentees, and one of them asked him, “Peter, why are you at Fuller?” Slightly flustered, Wagner responded, “Well, I need the money.” The group of apostles in the room began to exhort Peter, “We’re your biggest supporters. We need time with you. We need you to mentor us and father us.” Kay Hiramine, who was running Wagner’s non-Fuller projects, eventually turned to Peter and asked, “Well, Pete, how much are you making?” ([Location 1732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1732)) - Through POTUS Shield, Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board, and Paula White’s advocacy, NAR leaders had multiple inroads to White House access and influence. But a crucial hinge around which much of the NAR-Trump administration activity turned was that same couple, Jon and Jolene Hamill, who had worked with Cindy Jacobs and Peter Wagner in Colorado Springs. ([Location 1839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1839)) - On the Election Integrity calls, NAR apostles and prophets mingled with like-minded Trump evangelical advisers but also with right-wing leaders such as Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano, provocateur and strategist Steve Bannon, Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and evangelical heavy hitters like James Dobson. ([Location 1884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1884)) - When the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden in early November and Trump refused to accept those results, all of the prayer and spiritual warfare systems that the NAR had built around Trump—POTUS Shield, the One Voice Prayer Movement, and the myriad charismatic prophets and prophecies assuring Trump’s reelection—became the machinery of a spiritual warfare blitzkrieg. These NAR networks furiously and rapidly flexed, enlisting thousands and even millions of intercessors to join the unprecedented spiritual warfare campaign to see Trump reinstated. ([Location 1896](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1896)) - Lord Jesus, we pray right now against the territorial spirits right over this place. . . . And though we see this violence over these protests, I pray a prayer of peaceful protest going on right now. Lord, we will not be distracted from what the real issue is, and that is the territorial spirits that have been controlling the chambers of our Congress. . . . Lord, we ask you, God of the heavens, Lord of the armies of heaven, dispatch your warriors today in order to take care of those territorial spirits and in order to see your destiny for this nation released. ([Location 1955](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1955)) - It is difficult to imagine that a more direct line could be drawn between the NAR and the theology of Peter Wagner and the Capitol Riot. ([Location 1959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=1959)) - escalating force in political polarization, one it is difficult to imagine ratcheting down. If your political opponents are, literally, inspired by demons, then there’s no negotiating with them. Demons are not meant to be negotiated with; they are meant to be battled, exorcised, and expelled. As we saw on January 6, this rhetoric of spiritual violence stokes real-world violence. You can only proclaim that a group of people or a political party is filled with demons for so long before someone decides that those demonic vessels must actually be physically attacked. ([Location 2004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2004)) - But for more hardline or institutionally suspicious charismatics, this curbing and hemming in of the charismata by human institutions is misbegotten and invalid. After all, shouldn’t the Holy Spirit guide the church, unfettered and uncircumscribed by human bureaucracies? ([Location 2073](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2073)) - Option 2 is what I call the charismatic pastoral dictatorship. This model of church governance elevates a single person—a man or a woman but usually a man—as the iconic pastor. In this model, the charismatic pastor has near autocratic power, and the rest of the community wraps itself around that person’s giftedness and insight. You can find churches like this in nearly every branch of Christianity as charismatic pastors certainly have no monopoly on Christian-leadership narcissism. But it’s an especially acute phenomenon among Independent Charismatics, where institutional constraints are few. ([Location 2080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2080)) - in 1982 that Covenant Life Church created an apostolic umbrella organization called People of Destiny International (PDI). ([Location 2120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2120)) - another PDI member named Lou Engle, to make the cross-country move with him and help seek revival and pioneer the new church. At the time, Engle was aimlessly mowing lawns, experimenting with the gift of prophecy, and leading Bible studies for People of Destiny.5 Engle and Ahn would become fast friends and, eventually, global celebrities in Independent Charismaticism. ([Location 2125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2125)) - Even as Ché was entering Wagner’s orbit, things were shifting back home at People of Destiny headquarters. The apostolic network ([Location 2144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2144)) - effort was foundering and the leadership team was pivoting away from the charismatic, ex-hippie, Jesus People culture that Ahn and Engle knew toward becoming a very prominent network of Calvinist churches. A power struggle emerged between Ahn’s mentor Larry Tomczak and the People of Destiny cofounder, C. J. Mahaney. Mahaney took over as primary leader of the network in 1991 and began guiding it in a more Calvinist and less freewheeling charismatic direction. Eventually, they would change the name of the network from People of Destiny to Sovereign Grace Ministries, and shortly thereafter, Tomczak was forced out. ([Location 2145](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2145)) - Depending on your religious background and what you were doing in the mid-1990s, the phrase Toronto Blessing may mean absolutely nothing. Or it may conjure images of people rolling on the ground laughing in spiritual rapture. It started at a Vineyard church, one in John Wimber’s by-then-burgeoning quasi-denomination. ([Location 2160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2160)) - The Toronto experience was, for those who embraced it, an encounter of joyous liberation and catharsis. They believed that the Holy Spirit was unleashing these new rapturous manifestations, which not only included holy laughter but also what people described as being “drunk in the Spirit,” jumping up and down (“pogo-ing”), and occasionally even barking like dogs, roaring like lions, or squawking like chickens. In Toronto, the revival-driven charismatic energy was off the chain. ([Location 2168](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2168)) - Wagner was suggesting a spiritual oligarchy, one in which the newly commissioned apostles and prophets take over huge chunks of the Independent Charismatic landscape. He built on the foundation of Latter Rain ideas about the rebirth of the apostolic and prophetic roles (fivefold ministries) that had been kicking around for decades. ([Location 2215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2215)) - Peter Wagner was not a scholarly theologian. He was a social scientist who dabbled in Christian theology. ([Location 2219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2219)) - If I had to boil the spiritual genre of the Capitol Riot down to one phrase, I would call it charismatic revival fury. It was a potent mix: charismatic supernaturalism, the craving for revival, and militant fury at an American culture gone morally and spiritually awry. ([Location 2270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2270)) - By 2004, HIM was up to 120 churches, most of them in the United States or South Korea. By 2008, there were 8,000 churches and ministries, spread over six continents, under Ahn’s apostolic leadership. By 2015, it was 20,000 ministries all over the world. And today, Ché Ahn’s HIM has over 25,000 churches and ministries in more than 65 countries. Just to put these numbers in context, today the Vineyard Association of Churches has around 2,500 churches globally. Ahn’s apostolic network is now more than ten times the size of the denomination he was cast out of. ([Location 2293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2293)) - apostolic and prophetic governance is charismatic. It is facilitated through supernaturally gifted leaders, not bureaucrats or administrators. It’s a personality-and-spiritual-gifting driven form of leadership. ([Location 2305](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2305)) - Apostles and prophets don’t go around saying, “So after much deliberation, many meetings, and a long budgeting process, here’s what we came up with.” They say, “I prayed about it, and God revealed to me that we should move forward with this budget.” ([Location 2306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2306)) - apostolic and prophetic governance is cooperative. It’s outward-facing. Apostles aren’t fighting with each other or bickering over individual congregations. Instead, each apostle is focused on building out their own network. ([Location 2309](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2309)) - apostolic and prophetic governance feels extraordinary to everyone involved. ([Location 2314](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2314)) - At the congregational level, pastors and church members don’t feel like they are merely a generic, autonomous, local nondenominational church. No, they are part of an ambitious, expansive revival network! ([Location 2316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2316)) - as Ché Ahn makes clear in his 2019 book Modern-day Apostles, those governance boards are appointed by Ahn himself and are made up of other apostles and prophets—his fellow oligarchs. They have little independent accountability or oversight. ([Location 2326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2326)) - I would not count the Revival Alliance partners, beyond the Ahns, as properly within Wagner’s NAR as none of the others formally aligned with Wagner or sought his mentorship, preferring to develop their own brands. Yet the alliance members are vital hubs for carrying and propagating the new way of doing church that Wagner articulated. ([Location 2357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2357)) - When Ché Ahn says, “We are to be the head and not the tail,” this is charismatic-speak for Christians should be supernaturally empowered by God to lead society. ([Location 2501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2501)) - So in the 1940s, a still-conservative but more congenial and erudite group of Fundamentalist leaders decided that they were tired of the gloomy separatism and internal bickering of Fundamentalism, and they invested in identifying with a different term: evangelical. ([Location 2557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2557)) - So when we come to an event like the Capitol Riot, some analysts were quick to note the many signs and signals of evangelical piety and Christian nationalism in the crowds. But some evangelical leaders and their allies pushed back, arguing that while some of the rioters and their crowd of supporters may have been using evangelical symbols or invoking evangelical shibboleths, they were not representing “evangelicalism.” ([Location 2568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2568)) - In 2000, Lance Wallnau heard Cunningham’s story, blended it with a dubious near-death experience report, and created a charismatic prophetic meme. Today, more than one-fifth of all Americans recognize and endorse that concept. ([Location 2738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2738)) - Peter Wagner was extremely fond of the concept of paradigm shifts, and, in his memoir, he describes at least fifteen discrete paradigm shifts he personally underwent, including key pivot points we’ve observed in his biography like his embrace of church growth theory, his rejection of cessationism through his partnership with John Wimber, his move into strategic-level spiritual warfare, and his migration toward apostolic and prophetic governance for the church. So we should not take it lightly when Wagner describes the changes in his own thinking after meeting Wallnau in 2001 as “what I now consider to be the most radical and potentially world-changing paradigm shift of all.”23 ([Location 2766](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2766)) - While he was still technically pastoring the little church in Rhode Island, his nonprofit, Lance Wallnau Ministries, jumped from an income of $131,000 in 2004 to $955,000 in 2008, driven largely by Wallnau’s speaking fees, conference honoraria, and CD sales.32 Shortly thereafter, he officially left his Rhode Island church, moved to Texas, began casting himself as a business consultant, and took to speaking and teaching full time. ([Location 2846](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2846)) - Calling Trump a Cyrus implicitly acknowledges that his approach to power and governing mentality are not Christian in any ethical or moral sense. ([Location 2941](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2941)) - About a week after God’s Chaos Candidate was published, the Access Hollywood October surprise hit the news, with Donald Trump claiming blithely on video that he could “grab [women] by the pussy” with no consequences. This was a crisis for Lance Wallnau, ([Location 2953](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2953)) - who had made himself the prophetic face of Christian Trump support. ([Location 2955](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=2955)) - Wallnau was invited to campaign on stage with the NAR-aligned Christian nationalist candidate Doug Mastriano in his ill-fated bid for Pennsylvania governor in 2022. He has spoken at the ReAwaken America events led by Michael Flynn. Right-wing politicians like Kari Lake, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and even Donald Trump book appearances on FlashPoint to reach the charismatic, prophecy-believing audiences that Wallnau has spent decades galvanizing. And, incredibly, one-fifth of all Americans have embraced his Seven Mountains schema. ([Location 3066](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3066)) - But a shift has occurred over the past decade, accelerating greatly since 2020: worship is now political. Today many right-wing and Republican rallies have taken on the ethos and aesthetic of a charismatic worship service, with worship leaders deploying styles of music and participation that were developed to spark Christian faith formation to now enliven Christian nationalism. Sean Feucht is at the forefront of this shift. ([Location 3099](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3099)) - A core part of the curriculum at BSSM is worship, and students participate in extensive prayer and worship sessions that are so engrossing they sometimes border on trance-like. Bethelites sometimes claim that they collectively see “glory clouds” in the midst of worship: inexplicable gold dust or angel feathers suddenly materializing and floating around in the sanctuary.18 ([Location 3225](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3225)) - As I see it, the problem occurs when these energetic charismatic experiences are publicly leveraged and antidemocratically politicized. Mesmerizing charismatic experiences have a way of bypassing our analytical filters. Such experiences can smuggle ideas and practices across the semi-rational blood-brain barrier to convince people that some things are real or true, even if we have no evidence for them otherwise. When leveraged for political muster, this is profoundly destabilizing to a democracy. ([Location 3539](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3539)) - One takeaway from these two studies is that charismatic experiences and theology—the things that separate charismatic evangelicals from other evangelicals—are accelerants for more extreme political views and behavior. Put differently, the epistemic confidence of charismatic experiences adds a premium of radicalization for folks who might otherwise incline toward extreme views. ([Location 3582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3582)) - all of these instances, Sean also identifies deeply with the prophecy about being the “man of war [with] blood all over your hands.” He’s the bully, forcing himself into public spaces, permits be damned. He’s the superspreader, who won’t encourage his worshippers to wear masks to protect the immunocompromised and elderly. He’s the long-haired innocent, standing with Proud Boys and threatening his enemies with their violence. ([Location 3664](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3664)) - Sean Feucht is a Goliath with a David complex. It turns out that’s been Donald Trump’s secret sauce too. ([Location 3667](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3667)) - Much of what transpired that afternoon remains shrouded in mystery.1 The participants in the meeting clearly agreed that they were not supposed to discuss it publicly. The more loose-lipped among them, however, have let slip some details. They describe traveling ([Location 3674](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3674)) - to DC on very short notice because of a prophetic dream given to one of the members of the group. They claim that they were prophesying and making apostolic decrees inside the White House while also receiving “strategy” from “people in the know.” ([Location 3676](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3676)) - I have found some handwritten notes from various meetings that Peter Wagner had with Dutch Sheets and some of Sheets’s associates around 2010. In those notes, you can see a potent new theological idea forming for Sheets: he reinterprets the term ekklesia by hearkening back to the older Greek usage. Sheets told Wagner that ekklesia should be translated as “a governing body” and that Jesus employed the term to mean “my governing body in the earth.” ([Location 3877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3877)) - Sheets abhorred the Obama administration, viewing the Obama presidency itself as a judgment from God on America. ([Location 3932](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=3932)) - everything down around them, but also by true believers. Democracy is jeopardized by people so locked into the narratives of their own righteousness, their own certainty that they know what God wants, that they march right past the deadly conflagration they helped to instigate and never pause to consider the consequences. ([Location 4275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=4275)) - If we don’t pay close attention to the theologies, prophecies, decrees, and declarations of far-right charismatic Christians, we may sleepwalk into another Christianity-inflected insurrection. ([Location 4321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=4321)) - My objection to the NAR leaders is not that they believe in demons or practice spiritual warfare, which is fairly common across many forms of Christian belief and practice. My complaint is that they are spiritual warmongers, constantly expanding the arena of spiritual warfare, mapping it onto geographical territory and divisive politics in a deeply destabilizing and antidemocratic manner. Buttressed by latent American Christian entitlement and indignation, that impulse to violence is the iceberg from which the outcropping of violence on January 6 protrudes. And that iceberg still sits just under the surface of the waters of American Christianity. ([Location 4389](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=4389)) - Between erroneous claims of coincidence, on the one hand, and misguided claims of conspiracy, on the other, I contend that the mass mobilization of charismatic Christians for January 6 is a great example of what we could call a network effect. In essence, Peter Wagner took a highly charged but disordered religious leadership culture—eccentric Latter Rain holdouts, hawkish dominion theology proponents, aspiring apostles and prophets, and ambitious spiritual warriors on the outskirts of the Independent Charismatic world—and wove them into a nation-spanning, globe-encircling mesh of networks. He bonded together key sets of these leaders through his mentoring circles (especially EVAT) and the leadership of his institutions that he called the NAR. He gave them enough sense of shared purpose and identity that they’re still rowing together in the same direction but enough sense of autonomy and freedom to run their own oligarchic estates. ([Location 4462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CTJHYQ9J&location=4462))