The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, with Matthew Taylor

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor is a scholar of religion specializing in American religious movements, evangelical Christianity, and Islamic-Christian relations. He holds a PhD in theology and religious studies from Georgetown University, and is currently a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish studies.

Dr. Taylor is widely recognized for his research on Christian nationalism and the New Apostolic Reformation, NAR, and we're going to get much more into that.

We are so happy to speak with him, because he has a brand new book out - which is the must-read of this moment - The Violent Take It By Force: tThe Christian Movement That is Threatening Our Democracy.

Matthew Taylor, welcome to The State of Belief!

Matthew Taylor:

Thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to be here.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Oh my goodness. This book is so informative, so smart. The Violent Take It By Force. Can we just start with that title? Because that's not an arbitrary, random thing that you just made up. That's really central. And so let's just start there, because it'll get us right into the conversation.

Matthew Taylor:

Yeah, so those are words that, at least according to the Bible, came out of the mouth of Jesus.

The passage is Matthew 11. Jesus is speaking about his cousin John the Baptist, who's recently been executed at the hands of the Roman empire and its proxies, and he makes this very cryptic comment. And he says, “Since the days of John the Baptist” - which is like a couple of months ago, right? “Since the days of John the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence - and the violent take it by force.”

And Christians have been divided throughout the centuries about what does Jesus mean by “the violent take it by force.” Is this saying that to be Christian is to experience violent persecution? Is it a descriptive kind of comment? Is he using, maybe, violence as a positive metaphor for eagerness and passion - we seize the kingdom of God passionately? Some Christians have thought that.

In the lead-up to January 6th - I've spent the last four years of my life just studying and trying to understand the Christians who participated in January 6th and the theologies that were behind that - this verse just shows up everywhere on social media by supporters of the Capitol riot. And in their interpretation of this verse in that time, they're saying: the kingdom of heaven is represented in the Trump administration. And it is suffering violence in the form of people trying to steal, quote, unquote, “steal” the election from Trump, this demonic conspiracy that they believed was stealing the election from Trump. And we, as the Christians, need to use spiritual violence in order to take it - and they would even sometimes insert the word “back.” We need to get it back by force. And there were all kinds of Bible references surrounding the Capitol riot, but this was one that was central to their understanding of what they were doing that day.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Wow. In the introduction, you reference a line from Peter Mansour, who is a really important religious scholar alongside yourself, and he said, religion was the story of that day. It just wasn't like a small little corollary. It was the story.

Of course, as religious people, we tend to think of ourselves as at the center of the story. But actually, it was something that people were like, oh, isn't that weird that there were some Jesus flags there? That's kind of interesting. But your whole point, here, is that it not just happened to be there alongside, but actually it was part of the animating force of the January 6th insurrection.

Talk a little bit more about that. And I think that's an interesting place for us to get into your book, because this was part of the reason that you decided to write this book, right?

Matthew Taylor:

Yeah. I was not looking to research Christian extremism or Christian nationalism. My PhD is in Muslim Christian dialogue and modern religious movements. I would be very happy just publishing stuff in that realm. But January 6th shocked me. It traumatized me in a certain way. I grew up evangelical. I grew up even charismatic evangelical, kind of what we would call today called Christian nationalism, we were then calling the religious right. That's the environment I was raised in, and I still have many family members and friends who are evangelical. And seeing the symbols of American evangelicalism weaponized the way that they were on January 6th, seeing the Christian flags; seeing people, Christians, blowing shofars; seeing Christians using Christian prayers and Christian worship music to help propagate an anti-democratic riot, an attack on our democracy, I felt like I have to understand what's going on here.

And yes, I think Peter Manseur is correct. Religion was not the only force. Christianity was not the only force that day. There was QAnon, there were the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. There was Donald Trump's political agenda. All of those things dovetailed and spiraled into what we understand as the Capitol riot. But religion was a very important part of that.

And it wasn't just Christianity. It was a particular style of Christianity, I argue in the book, that was central both to the ideological and theological organization of the riot, and then a certain style and set of leaders that were central to the orchestration and mobilization of that day.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Yeah. One of the things that was moving to me just as you were talking about your own background was, you come out of this movement, and for much of even your education, you participated in theological institutions that were adjacent. I wouldn't say they're radical, but they were very much in the evangelical ethos.

You moved to Washington, DC to attend Georgetown. And then you said, “I kind of fell in love with my new city.” And I was very moved by that. And in some ways this felt like an attack, not only on the Capitol, but also why, what part of this background of mine was weaponized to do this on January 6th? And I think that was a great place to start for you, and then unpeel and unpeel. And so maybe what we can start with is, there's something that has been deemed the New Apostolic Reformation. Now, what is that term and where did it come from? And why is it so important that those of us who are interested in this animating force that's in American democracy right now, understand what that is?

Matthew Taylor:

In order to understand the phrase and the meaning of the New Apostolic Reformation, you have to understand the character behind it. And he's, in many ways, the central character of my book. I argue that he had an immense impact on January 6th, even though he died four years before January 6th. And his name is C. Peter Wagner. And Wagner was a seminary professor. He was a missionary. He spent 15 years as a missionary in Bolivia. And then he comes back to the US and becomes a seminary professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, my alma mater.

He was a seminary professor for 30 years at Fuller Theological Seminary, very mainstream evangelical figure for most of his career was a kind of minor evangelical celebrity. He was an expert in what was then called church growth, a kind of a faddish theory among many evangelical theologians and scholars about how you could take the data of social science, the social science of sociology, psychology, blend that with evangelical theology, and produce growth, produce megachurches, produce movements, missionary movements, that would grow rapidly. And this was Wagner's area. This was his specialization.

Over time, towards the end of his career teaching, he became obsessed with a particular sector of Christianity, where nondenominational governance meets charismatic spirituality, what we scholars would call the independent charismatic sector of Christianity. Think of it as like a kind of nondenominational version of Pentecostalism. And Wagner believed that in that sector was the growth edge of modern Christianity. In the 21st century, that would be the leading, the bleeding edge of Christian growth and Christianity.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

And he wasn't wrong, right? As all these, as my tradition, mainline Protestant, and even evangelical, like more traditional evangelical from whence you come, perhaps, and Catholic and other are declining. This is the one area that's increasing. So he wasn't completely off base there.

Matthew Taylor:

Yeah. In fact, I think in many ways, Peter Wagner was a man before his time. He recognized things that were congealing in the 1990s that it took many other scholars decades to to recognize were really this catalyzing force. He did see and understand some things that I think many people, at the time, were missing.

The challenge is that Wagner inculcated himself in that space. He was not merely an arm's length scholar. He became a figure in that world. And there had been ideas percolating in that world for a very long time about the need for new apostles and prophets to lead the church.

If you know your New Testament, the apostles and prophets are, in many ways, these foundational leaders for the early Christian Church, these leadership roles that are described in the New Testament. But most Christian traditions would say, oh, hat was for the past, right? That was for the early Church. Now we have bishops, we have pastors, we have the Pope, right? Whichever tradition you're in, we've got different forms of leadership now. But in this independent, charismatic space, they believe we need modern apostles and prophets. And Wagner came to believe he was one of these apostles.

And so in 1996 he convenes a symposium at Fuller Theological Seminary under the auspices of Fuller, called the Symposium on the Postdenominational Church, which is his alternative title that he was working with for a while. But in the course of that, they said, no, let's call it the New Apostolic Reformation, because they thought it would be a transformation in the life of the Church on par with the Protestant Reformation in terms of the radical change it would bring about in the life of the Church.

And he started gathering leaders, these fledgling apostles and prophets around him. And he left Fuller in 1999. He retired early to build networks of these leaders that believed they were the vanguard that would transform the life of the Christian church in the 21st century.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

When we talk about vanguards, it's not like, I'm going to go out there and do some church-planting. It was actually that they were the new prophets, right? That's what we're really talking about. People who feel like they have a special relationship with God, that they're channeling. Say a little bit more, because that gets into the really important point about: I'm seeing things you are not seeing, in a way. I'm hearing things that you're not hearing. I know things you don't know.

It seems to me, now, you can correct me if I'm wrong, when I hear about these self-proclaimed prophets, it seems like that's what they're saying about themselves. And that's where they get the confidence to start developing what becomes, also, a political movement.

Matthew Taylor:

Yeah. In Wagner's understanding of things, and this is part of why he was calling it the post-denominational Church, he sees denominational governance, the structures that most churches live within, as hamstringing the growth of the Church.

And so part of his theory of the New Apostolic Reformation was, instead of investing in bureaucracies and democracy and middling pastors and instead of all that, what if we just invested in charismatic leaders, these anointed leaders, people who can hear directly from God, people who are literal prophets, people who are apostles, who get the vision of God and can enact that vision with no bureaucratic constraints, no bylaws that hold them together? These are dynamic leaders. And he would even say, we're moving beyond democratic governance into an investment in these charismatic individuals.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

That's a very, potentially, frightening thought, because you can see where that can take you. So just wanted to pause there for a second, because that, I think, does begin to presage where we arrived on January 6th.

Matthew Taylor:

Yes, absolutely. And in fact, I argue that in many ways, the spirituality of January 6th has its origins in that symposium in 1996, where you start to have this movement of the New Apostolic Reformation and these leaders gathering together around this set of ideas.

What happens over time, though - and sometimes people will talk about the NAR as a cult, as built around a leader, that Peter Wagner is the leader of a cult - that's not actually the leadership model. It's distinct, it's what I call, actually, a model of a spiritual oligarchy: that Wagner and the other apostles and prophets all support each other, all recognize each other, all uphold each other and see themselves as partnering together to transform the landscape of global Christianity.

And so they all affirm each other as apostles and prophets; all understand themselves as this kind of elite tier of Christian leaders who can hear directly from God. And then they come to believe that they have also been commissioned by God. It starts out as being about changing the Church, about reforming the Church, about transforming Church leadership; but then they become more and more radicalized 2000s around some of these political ideas. It's something called the Seven Mountain Mandate, and they come to believe that they are not only there to transform the Church, but that it is their role, actually, to conquer the world and Christianize it.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Yeah. And so you mentioned seven mountain talk about that because that, that these are things that are out there that come up from time to time, but I think sometimes we don't get a clear explanation of what all this is. But this is a really important idea that is within these movements. Talk about the seven mountains, and what that is.

Matthew Taylor:

So the Seven Mountain Mandate originates with a guy named Lance Wallnau. And he's playing around with other people's ideas. The thing is this, there's a lot of borrowing in this world, right? This is not a world of systematic theology. This is not a world of elaborate statements of faith. This is a world of apostles and prophets and televangelists and people remixing other people's ideas. So Wallnau was a pastor, a kind of entrepreneurial business consultant, motivational speaker type. But he understands himself as one of these apostles and prophets, and he starts hearing these stories about these different figures getting revelations about dividing society up into seven different arenas of influence. And he hears about somebody else's near-death experience.

He blends these ideas together into what he calls the Seven Mountain Mandate. Is it framed as a prophecy that he's received from God, but it's also an outline of social transformation: How do you change the society? And it's also a program of Christian supremacy, of how do Christians take power over society?

And the basic concept is, you can divide society up into seven arenas of influence. Family, government, education, arts and entertainment, media, commerce. And that in each of those arenas, they imagine it as a mountain. And the top of that mountain, in every society, at every level in society, is either controlled by Satan and the demons, or God and the Christians.

There's no in between, right? Totally manichean, right? There are no neutral parties in this worldview. It's either Satan is ruling over your society, or God and the Christians are progressively taking that back. And so the mandate is that God is, in this vision, telling Christians: You need to go and conquer those seven mountains of society. You need to go and take over the tops of those mountains. You need to become the elites in society, and then have Christian power and influence flow down.

And I just want to note, I grew up in the religious right in the 1980s and 1990s. I have plenty of criticisms of the religious right and Jerry Falwell and all those folks. But that movement in the 80s and 90s wanted to abide by the rules of democracy. They believed that they were the moral majority, right? We can use the grassroots mobilization of Christians to transform our society using the tools of democracy. And we need to get Christians voting. We need to get Christians running for office. We need to get Christians into positions of power through democracy so that then they can enact our kind of legislation.

This model is not a grassroots model of transformation. It's a vanguard model. It's a revolutionary model. You take over the positions of power in society and then have a trickle down effect. It's almost a trickle down theocracy, right? We put our people in positions of power, and then we can take over society from the top down.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Yeah. It's worth mentioning that Wallnau was recently in the media. This fellow who has this quite radical theory was visited by one of the candidates recently.

Matthew Taylor:

Yeah, so right now, Lance Wallnau, who was one of the first Christians to endorse Donald Trump, who was one of the key instigators for January 6th, who is one of the most influential evangelical political theologians today, even though he's not recognized as a theologian - he is currently running this extremely hyperpartisan revival tour called the Courage Tour that is only to the swing states; is entirely about mobilizing voters for the election, but it's got the masquerade of being a Christian revival tour. He, this last weekend in Pennsylvania, hosted JD Vance at the Courage Tour. And the Trump campaign was careful. They were never on stage together. There was no photograph of them together. But Wallnow hosted Vance at the Courage Tour. He was featured on Lance Wallnow’s show there. They did a town hall there. This was a kind of pat on the back. A subtle one; one that was kind of plausible deniability, but a pat on the back from the Trump campaign acknowledging Wallnau and his movement as central to the organizing and build up of their election and campaign efforts.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

It's pretty remarkable, because in the middle of this story, you're mentioning this person who comes up with quite a theocratic proposal for how society should be built, and basically placing themselves as the power of God, always, and those who oppose them as the power of Satan. And they get to be on top, and they get to make the decisions. And that's who the vice presidential candidate was showing up with. It's a radical moment, and worth noting.

I keep interrupting your flow. We have this new movement, and then people start developing these ideas that go into this, and then more and more prophets move into a political realm? What has happened since the starting in the 90s? Keep telling the story as it leads up to to January 6th and what happened that day.

Matthew Taylor:

Part of the underlying worldview of the NAR is, they are deeply immersed and deeply believing in something called spiritual warfare. And spiritual warfare, a very common idea, popular throughout evangelicals and pentecostals and parts of Catholicism. The basic idea is that we live in this kind of visible natural realm, but there's a supernatural realm, a spiritual realm all around us, where angels and demons are battling over control of the earth. And that warfare affects us, and that Christians can participate in that warfare through prayer, through Bible reading, through spiritual practices, through worship, even at more extreme ends through exorcism, right? Casting demons out of people.

It's a very common idea, but in the NAR  they came to believe that the apostles and prophets are generals of spiritual warfare, who have special authority to cast out high level demons; who have visions of the spiritual realm to be able to develop strategies; and who also can organize mass campaigns of spiritual warfare in order to, they would say, conquer spiritual territory. It's a very physical imagination of how we enact this spiritual warfare.

So when Trump enters the race in the summer of 2015, he is obviously a very fringe figure in Republican politics. And if you recall, many evangelicals, many Christians thought he was uncouth, thought he was disgusting, thought that he was a reprobate, they did not want anything to do with him.

And so Trump turns to his his personal pastor, his closest religious advisor, a woman named Paula White, and says to her - they have been friends for 13 years at this point - and he turns to her and says, I need you to be my liaison to the evangelicals.

The problem is Paula White is herself a fringe character in evangelicalism. She's a female preacher, which most evangelicals do not accept as legitimate. She's a prosperity gospel preacher. She's a televangelist. She's a megachurch pastor, and she's an apostle, right? And on all these categories, many mainstream evangelicals at the time would have seen her as at best heterodox. Probably more of a heretic, if they were being honest.

And so what Paula White does is she reaches out to the people that she knows, the Christian leaders that she knows. She reaches out to televangelists. She reaches out to messianic rabbis. She reaches out to apostles and prophets. And these are some of the first leaders to come and meet with Donald Trump in the fall of 2015 at Trump Tower, including Lance Wallnau.

He's in some of these first meetings with Donald Trump at Trump Tower. And Lance Wallnau claims, as he's in these meetings with Trump, that he receives a revelation. He receives a prophecy that says that Donald Trump is a type of an Isaiah 45 Cyrus. And let me unpack that, because this is very, very important to understanding the Trump Christian story.

In the Hebrew Bible narrative, the Jewish people are conquered by the Babylonian empire, taken away into exile in Babylon. Then the Persian Empire conquers the Babylonian Empire, and the Persian Emperor Cyrus decides that he's not going to continue this Babylonian policy of keeping people groups in exile and redistributing people groups geographically. He's going to send the Jewish people back to their homeland to rebuild Jerusalem.

And so in the book of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah comes along and compliments Cyrus, and sees Cyrus as an instrument in the hand of God to deliver God's people back. And so in Isaiah 45, Cyrus is referred to as the anointed of God.

And that word “anointed” in Hebrew is “Mashiach.” It's where we get the term Messiah, right? The Messiah is the anointed one. And so Cyrus is a type of a Messiah. He's not the Messiah. He's a Messiah. He's a savior for Israel, even though he's not Jewish. He's not a believer in God, but the logic is, God uses Cyrus. God anoints Cyrus for this purpose.

And so Wallnau is saying in this prophecy, Donald Trump might not be a good Christian. He might not even be a Christian at all, but he is an instrument in the hand of God to be a sort of a secular savior to conservative Christians in America, to bring us back from cultural exile, to give us power.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: I remember when that news came out. I didn't have the benefit of knowing you and all of your research. And I was like, What?! It was mystifying to me; but actually, the more you understand this broader movement and the context… And Donald Trump certainly understood that this works for me! What, I don't have to pretend like I'm a really good Christian. I can still be the savior for Christians. And then he, it seems to me, he started using this language. I'm the one who can save you - and continues to this day.

But it's just a really interesting kind of almost jujitsu: let me turn my weakness into a strength, and let me turn this around. And he really takes that seriously. And so eventually, he begins to speak to, I think, the evangelicals in a certain way, as, I'm going to be your guy.

Matthew Taylor:

Yes.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

And they were like, okay, this makes sense to me. This makes a weird kind of biblical sense to me. Right?

Matthew Taylor:

Right, and that's the thing about the Cyrus idea. For Wallnow, it's a prophecy. It's a revelation from God; but it's attached to a Bible reference. So you don't have to believe in the prophecy to see the logic of the reference. And so it can speak. Even though Wallnau himself exists in these kind of charismatic circles that believe in prophecy, broader evangelicals can jump on board with this Cyrus idea because, oh, it's just a Bible reference.

And so this becomes one of the core rationales for why evangelicals support Donald Trump. And there are many evangelicals - the evangelical elites really did not like Trump early on, and were very reluctant; and even by 2016 were saying, we're holding our noses and we're voting for the man, because we don't like him, but he's the lesser of two evils.

Wallnau is the one who's saying - and he's saying this before a single vote has been cast in any of the primaries, - he's saying, Donald Trump is anointed by God. Donald Trump - he even calls him God's chaos candidate, a wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness, right? So Wallnau has this kind of populist vision, and he thinks that Donald Trump can enact his populist vision of Christianity and can be this Cyrus, can be a bully on behalf of Christians. And gives this kind of theological prophecy rationale for positively supporting Donald Trump - not just the lesser of two evils, but as a positive good.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

And, I think he probably calls it. When Donald Trump wins, kind of miraculously, in 2016, that was a confirmation: I was right.

And, just to fast forward, then we have another election in 2020, where these kind of generals, or apostles, prophets, generals, slash, slash, slash, have been continuing to build these ideas. And what was true in 2016, why couldn't that be true in 2020? And this is the rub to me.

This is so interesting, and how it really does contradict democracy at its core if someone has been proclaimed the anointed one. They simply cannot lose. Is that one of the operative ideas, here, that maybe fed into January 6th?

Matthew Taylor:

Yeah. So in 2016 or 2015, when Wallnau was saying this, he's seen as a marginal figure, right? Oh, this guy claims he has a prophecy about Trump, whatever. And everyone thought that Trump would lose.

When Trump wins, Wallnau and this handful of other prophets who had said that he was destined to hold office looked really good in their world. And so what this creates is, it starts this cascade of prophecies, an avalanche of charismatic prophecies about Donald Trump. By the time the 2020 election hits, you have hundreds of charismatic prophets, all singing in unison, all in chorus, saying: Donald Trump is anointed for office. I received a revelation from God. Donald Trump is destined to win this. Donald Trump…

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Well, in part because they're borrowing from each other. And it works, if you're trying to build your brand - sorry to put it in such crass terms - and so of course they're all chiming in. What would be the advantage to say, Oh, I think he's going to lose. There's nothing to that.

That is so interesting. This multiplied up to the run-up to 2020.

Matthew Taylor:

And this creates an environment. Remember, 2020 was an absolutely bananas year. You got COVID starting in March. At the end of May, you have George Floyd's murder. Throughout the summer, you have Black Lives Matter protests. You have riots going back and forth between left and right activists in Portland and in Seattle. And then you have the crackdown by Trump on some of those protests, especially in Washington, D. C. The buildup to the election; Trump gets COVID.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Well, and walking through Lafayette Square, smoke-bombing the protesters there, and then holding up a Bible next to St. John's Church - that didn't ask him to come - and claiming that this is what we're going to do. It's all there.

Matthew Taylor:

And that all fueled this kind of apocalyptic environment around the 2020 election. And these prophecies were a huge factor in that, in instilling in the believers in these prophecies a certain certainty, a radicalization, a belief that Trump has to win this. Otherwise we're over. Otherwise we lose control of the seven mountains. We lose our Cyrus if he doesn't win.

And so when Trump denies the results of the election, almost all of these prophets, to a person say: We are not recanting our prophecies. God is going to have to intervene. Donald Trump is not conceding. We're not conceding. We need a miracle. We need a divine intervention.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

And you know, it’s so interesting, because the media was showing all these people praying outside of election areas and all this stuff. And I think a lot of the framing was like, what are they doing? This is odd. What do they think, do they really think that their prayers… There was a kind of puzzlement. And actually, what was going on was something much deeper.

Matthew Taylor:

And what I'm trying to show, in part, in the book is the media was not understanding it. The American public was not understanding it. Congress was not understanding it. The FBI and law enforcement were not understanding it. The Trump administration understood it. They knew the energy. They knew the fervency. They knew just how wild-eyed some of these supporters were getting - and they kept fueling that fire. They kept throwing more gasoline on that fire of Christian fervency around Donald Trump.

And that campaign, the spiritual warfare campaign orchestrated by many of these NAR leaders, evident through things like the Jericho marches that we saw leading up to January 6th, evident in prayer and prophecy gatherings

that were happening all over the country, that were hyperpoliticized. There were conference calls. There's podcasts, there's TV shows. This was a multimedia campaign to mobilize and radicalize Christians around this idea that Donald Trump must be put back in office. We have to fight. We have to stand with him. We can not accept a Joe Biden presidency.

That spirals and feeds directly into what happens on January 6th. And many of the people that Wagner mentored show up on January 6th at the Capitol to do spiritual warfare, to keep that fervency at a high boil among their followers. They became the spiritual adjunct to the Stop the Steal campaign.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

And it's just worth pausing for a second, back to the title of your really unbelievably important book: The Violent Take It By Force. And they feel this is a biblical moment, almost. And if you understand yourself to be a prophet and an apostle, but also a general - and here you have Jesus saying violent take it by force - which is very interesting. Because many of us - I'm hopelessly mainstream, mainline Protestant. So, Peaceful Jesus. Loving Jesus. We never really heard about. We didn't even preach that much from John. So we were never really like, Jesus with a big sword or anything.

So this goes directly into January 6th. And your painting of January 6th is so important; but even more so, your book is not just about the run-up to January 6th - because it didn't end there. And we are in the middle of this, in case people are thinking, oh, interesting history, I'm glad I know that. This isn't history, this is now. This is still happening. And it's part of the reason we should be extremely nervous about what is about to go down. You tell me, has it diminished in fervor, or have the last four years caused an increase? What's happened since January 6th?

A lot of those people went to jail. But where are we now with a sense of spiritual warfare - it seems like they're still using that kind of rhetoric, but what's the latest on the NAR And all these generals? Obviously, Wallnau is still up and running.

Matthew Taylor:

I have tracked 60 independent charismatics, so nondenominational charismatic Christian leaders - to Washington DC on January 6th. And this is everything from local pastor to global celebrity prophet who were there on January 6th. Of those 60, seven have faced individual consequences because they actually went into the Capitol. But the rest have faced no consequences. Of the the seven characters in my book, not a single one of them has faced any congressional scrutiny or any legal consequences. Even though I argued they were the principal theological architects of the Capitol Riot. The religious leaders were protected by the First Amendment, who claimed that they were just there to do spiritual violence.

And so what has happened in the aftermath of January 6th, I would say that January 6th was more the end of the beginning than the beginning of the end. It was a harbinger of more of this to come. And since January 6th, the leaders that I describe in my book, that I tell their stories and outline their biographies and help to understand where they come from, those leaders are more popular today than they were on January 6th. Their ideas are more popular today than they were on January 6th. And this fever pitch of prophecy, of quasi-messianic attachment to Donald Trump, of belief in the divine destiny of Trump - and fervency and apocalyptic reasoning that if Trump doesn't get back in office, then it's all over for American Christianity. That's only gotten worse since January 6.

In fact, I would argue that the two assassination attempts that we've seen in the last few months on Trump have only cemented those narratives for a larger swath of Christians. There were a lot of Christians who were saying, like, prophecies about Trump, come on… And then he seemingly miraculously survives an assassination attempt by turning his head at the last minute. And they say, that is the hand of God. There's the hand of God on the man. And we have to trust in the prophecies. We have to believe in the prophecies. And it's created this, once again, this certainty that this is the hand of God.

Just last week, Mike Johnson - the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who's very close to a number of NAR leaders, who flies an appeal to heaven flag outside of his congressional office…

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Just pause for a second. What is that flag?

Matthew Taylor:

So the appeal to heaven flag, it's a Revolutionary War flag, white background, green pine tree at the center of it, and the phrase “An appeal to heaven” across the top.

This is a Revolutionary War flag. It was one of many Revolutionary War flags that was flown over the Massachusetts Navy, but this flag has been appropriated by the NAR and fellow travelers as a symbol of a prophecy over America; a prophecy of a revolution, a spiritual revolution in America to retake America. This is why you see these flags everywhere.

There was actually a particular NAR leader named Dutch Sheets, who I profile in my book, who really came up with this idea, claimed it as a prophecy, and then popularized this flag. And this flag is everywhere.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House.

Matthew Taylor:

He was given this by an NAR leader. He flies it outside of his congressional office, and Mike Johnson called in to their ongoing prayer calls led by Paula White and a number of NAR leaders. This is the latest iteration of Trump's evangelical advisory circle. It's called the National Faith Advisory Board, now.

They're holding these prayer calls, and Mike Johnson calls into the call last week. And he describes how he was with Donald Trump the day of the second assassination attempt in Mar a Lago. He just happened to be in Mar a Lago that day, and was meeting with Trump; and spent three hours with Trump after that assassination attempt.

And he was reassuring Trump, This was not an accident. This was the hand of divine providence that is protecting you. And he goes on to say on the prayer call, I believe that God has chosen Donald Trump to, once again, lead this country for another term. This is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, second in line to the presidency, making a theological statement that he believes God has chosen Donald Trump to serve another term.

And Mike Johnson has a not insignificant role to play in certifying the results of this election and validating the results of this election. And I have to ask: for Mike Johnson, if it comes down to the certified, verified results of the will of the people of America or the will of God that he perceives theologically, which is he going to go with?

I don't know. I honestly do not know. Because he is immersed in these circles. He is surrounded by leaders like the NAR leaders, including a number of NAR leaders who are close friends of his, who are going to be in his ear after this election saying, we need to fulfill the will of God.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Wow. This is terrifying stuff.

And I hope our listeners are appreciating what this is. Because, also, you and I had a chance to talk recently, and you were talking about the questioning of how ballots are being cast. And that even being able to see things that no one else sees allows them to say things about election integrity that have nothing to do with the way we normally think of election integrity. But again, in the spiritual realm.. Say a little bit about that, because that's going to factor into this.

Matthew Taylor:

One of the ongoing mysteries of contemporary American culture is that one third – one third – of Americans believe that the 2020 election was stolen.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

And JD Vance refused to say it wasn't, at the debate, and Trump still refuses to acknowledge it. It’s absolutely shocking.

Matthew Taylor:

And that narrative has become a lost cause narrative that is radicalizing many, many Americans around this belief that the government itself is illegitimate. The government itself has been put in office through conspiracy and through corruption, and that we have to get Donald Trump. And the attitude in these circles is: they stole one election from us. We're not gonna let them do it again. So Trump has to win.

So right now, Lance Wallnau is running this Courage Tour, the same tour that JD Vance visited last week. And the premise of the Courage Tour is the 2020 election was stolen. That is the constant message that they are sending out. In fact, at one of the stops, Lance Wallnau, was there on January 6th, who witnessed it firsthand, said: January 6th was not an insurrection, it was an election fraud intervention.

At the Courage Tour, they are trying to enlist swing state Christians who believe the 2020 election was stolen to become election workers. They're training them and coaching them. Here's how you get through the process. Here's who you talk to. Here's what you say. Here's the form letter that you write to become an election worker. And then they're telling them: watch out, because they're going to try to steal this election again.

It's already happening. We can't let it happen again. And they're saying, if you see anything suspicious, Come tell us first. Give us all the evidence that you have first, and then go report it to the state. They are pre-positioning people who are not living in factual reality to be counting the votes in the swing states and telling them, watch out for suspicious activity. And these are people who already have it in their head that this election is going to be stolen.

And if you think back to what happened in 2020, what did Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell make a big deal out of? It was, like, election workers handing mints back to each other. That is the thing that they blew up and claimed this was a conspiracy, this was the fraud they were claiming. It was absurd. But that's the mentality these folks are in. They're not living in reality.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Yeah. And isn't it also true that the polls can be attacked by demons, as well? That there's ways that demonic forces can be attacking our polling stations? Once your mind expands to that kind of spiritual warfare that is being waged against you, there's almost nothing that… I don't know. I don't even know what we do at that point.

Matthew Taylor:

Yeah, if your premise - and for the NAR, this is the premise - if the 2020 election was stolen by witchcraft and demonic conspiracy, you don't need any evidence for that. All you need is the testimony of prophets who can see into the spiritual realm. Who, Oh, this is a stolen election. I got the voice of God in my ear telling me that this is a stolen election, right? At that point, you don't need any factual evidence.

And part of the problem is: if it's a demonic conspiracy, it could look like a perfectly normal by the books election. And you could still believe the demons orchestrated to steal it. You don't need facts at that point. And part of the problem that we're coming into is…

We've had some reforms. People are aware. I think the chance that Donald Trump actually succeeds in stealing this election is relatively low. We do have checks and balances. The damage that can be done to American civil society by people lying about this election, by people delegitimizing this election - they have already inculcated in a third of the population the belief that the current government is illegitimate. And if you keep playing that out, keep playing out the violent rhetoric, keep playing out the anti-democratic organizing, keep playing out the religious fervor - that is a formula for civil strife, and at the far end of it, civil war. Or at least another insurrection attempt, right?

And that's the ferment that is building and building and building, that JD Vance and Donald Trump keep ratcheting up. That Lance Wallnau and these other figures keep ratcheting up before this election. I think we are in line for a mass amount of chaos, of confusion, of disinformation in the aftermath of this election if Donald Trump his declared the loser. And if he's declared the winner, these people are going to be in lockstep behind him saying, there is nothing that can stop us now.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Okay you have convinced me. I officially need to change my underpants. What should we do? What can we do? I will say, Interfaith Alliance and others, many other groups, religious and non, are also trying to show up to the polls - we're not battling for spiritual warfare, but we do believe in the civic right of people to have the vote, and we have the an effort to keep our democracy. What should we be doing right now?

Matthew Taylor:

First off, I think we need to get educated and get informed and spread the word. And one of the best tools out there - I know I'm pitching my book, so please buy my book - but there is an excellent, excellent documentary right now that just came out in September. It's called, Stopping the Steal. It's on HBO. And this is the story, in this documentary, of the local elected officials who were on the front lines of Donald Trump's attempt to steal the election. Most of them are Republicans. And these are people like Brad Raffensperger, the Speaker of the House of Representatives in Arizona.

And you get to actually hear from them the experience that they had. This is not a documentary about the past. It's a documentary about the future. It's a documentary about what's coming down the pike at us, once again, and that is either going to be the power of the elected executive in trying to impose its will through coercion on local elected officials and bureaucrats, or it's going to be the power of the outside party trying to overturn the election. That's what's coming at us.

We need to get our heads and our hearts into a place that says, democracy is more important than my need to be entertained. Democracy is more important than my need to be in perfect civility with members of my family. This democracy is more important than me being chummy with people right now.

We need to stand and fight for our democracy, and some of that's going to have to happen through persuasion. This is a civic crisis. We have a lot of freedom of religion in this country, and that means that there is not a legal or policy path to regulating or stopping the NAR, as I understand it. It's going to have to happen through persuasion.

And I don't think you can persuade the NAR leaders. I've talked to some of them. They are far gone. But some of their followers, people who might just, Oh, like, prophecy. That sounds nice. Donald Trump's pitch sounds nice, right? These are our fellow human beings. They are persuadable.

And it's not an easy conversation. I know it's not an easy conversation, but we have to be trying to persuade them, trying to call them back. I'm thinking a lot, these days, about Lincoln's first inaugural address. Lincoln's elected in 1860, gives his first inaugural. The states are already moving towards session, and yet in his first inaugural, he speaks about the better angels of our nature. We're not enemies, but friends, right?

This is what we need right now, is we need to be able to persuade and plead with - especially as Christians with our fellow Christians - and say, this is so wrong. The way that you are attacking the very foundations of our society, attacking the very foundations of our democracy, you are attacking Haitian immigrants, our fellow human beings created in the image of God, and you're normalizing this demonization of them.

Can we at least get on the same page? That is wrong. That is wrong. That is anti-biblical. That is anti-Christian, right? I think we need to be making those cases, but then we also need to be able to stand on the ramparts of democracy, using the tools of democracy, using nonviolent resistance.

I am not a protester, Paul. I am not somebody who shows up at protests. I'm not an activist. I'm an egghead. I like all the books on my shelves. I like sitting in my office and reading and writing. But we're coming into a season where we need to know where our bright lines are. What is it going to take for you to be in the streets to protest?

Because the NAR people are very good at putting their people in the streets. And it doesn't take that much to sway a democracy. By the point you have people in the streets, the democracy, the society is really on edge. nd we need to be able to stand for American democracy. We need to defend our democracy.

And it's going to come down to those moments, in the coming months, I think. And if Donald Trump gets back in office, Lord help us. We need a cohesive and coherent and united and pluralistic and diverse democracy movement to stand against the rising tide of authoritarians that he will bring in with him.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Okay, well I feel much better. No, but I do thank you for that call. Thank you for that. That it's absolutely right on.

We end this show, always, with asking our folks one question. So, Matthew Taylor, what gives you hope?

Matthew Taylor:

My children give me hope. They're oblivious to all this. And they just are growing up in the America that I want them to grow up in. And I have hope that they could.

I'm hopeful because I interact with a lot of Christian leaders, conservative Christian leaders, even charismatic and Pentecostal Christian leaders. I'm writing about the worst of the worst in the charismatic world. I'm in conversation and even friendship with a number of leaders in that world who are appalled by this, who are standing against this - and these are people who know some of the characters in my book, know them intimately, and are saying, we need to stand against this. We need to fight against this.

So we need to not paint with a broad brush; not say: all evangelicals are bad, all charismatics are bad. All Christians are bad. No, no, no, no, no. We need to try to find all the allies we can, all the fellow travelers we can, and try to build a coalition that is pro-democracy.

And I see the edges of that. I see the glimpses of that, and it does fill me with hope - because I think there are people who are listening to the better angels of our nature right now. God help us, we need their voices to be louder. We need them to be amplified. We need their leadership. We need a coalition of goodwill in the coming year to stand up for the promise of American pluralism and for the promise of a multi-religious, multiracial democracy that we could become. If we listen to those better angels of our nature.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush:

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor is a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, and the author of a critical new book that everyone needs to read, The Violent,Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy.

Matt, thank you so much for your scholarship, but also thank you for joining me here on The State of Belief.

Matthew Taylor:

Thank you, Paul. I really appreciate it.