(This is part 2 of the series on why I left the New Apostolic Reformation. You can read Part 1 here:)

“Every time you wake up you’re in a battle” he told us. “Every time you go to school, you’re at war. Every time you hang out with your friends, the fight is on. Even getting ready to go to church, the war wages on around you. And, if you’re not prepared, you will lose the battle!”

I was fourteen years old and a member of a group of eight teen boys who were being taught the bible by our 9th grade English teacher in his home after school. This particular day, he wanted us to know about something he called Spiritual Warfare. He taught us that every physical space we would ever enter was already filled with spirits called “demons”. He made it clear every non-christian we knew was part of this battle against us. From this teaching, I gathered that the world around me was chock-full of combatants and they all wanted to destroy me.

Many times, I asked, “What had I done to deserve this?” Apparently, it was all because I had decided to follow Jesus. After several of these teaching studies on Spiritual Warfare, I wondered whether being a christian was worth it if all I could look forward to was fighting.

This was not how I was raised. My mother was a spiritist. She believed in the spirit realm, but though she would caution me, I never got any sense of a battle.

My father was an atheist who despised religious people. Yet, in that home atmosphere, I never thought I was in a battle. My parents were both Pacifists. They did not believe in violence. Other than my dad watching football on TV, I never witnessed him get into a battle with anyone.

I was a skinny kid and was picked on occasionally at school. Yet I never considered school a battle zone.

I suffered through a year in foster care early in life where I was sexually assaulted. I also experienced sexual assault from a babysitter when I was 8. But I never saw the other elements of my life as a battle. I loved life. I loved riding my bike, hanging out with friends, reading JRR Tolkien and A. A. Milne. I never knew I was in a war. Not until I became a Christian.

After that, it seemed every pastor, bible teacher, and christian leader talked about this pugilistic viewpoint on spirituality. Slowly, I viewed life as “them” vs. “Us”. In their presentation of spiritual warfare, christians were always the heroic combatants in these battles. Our enemies consisted not only of demons and something called “principalities”, but also people who didn’t believe or behave as we did.

When I went to a religious college, I was taught this spiritual warfare was more intense and complicated than I ever knew. By my senior year of my Theology degree, I had been indoctrinated so much into warfare ideology, I was teaching others about this warfare.

I had deep reservations about building a complicated taxonomy of spiritual beings. How could these christian leaders know so much about things they could not verify or prove consistently? Just because a person rolls around on the floor and spews profanity, it doesn’t have to mean a spirit is in control of them.

And though I would occasionally teach on spiritual warfare myself, my enthusiasm was never there. It seemed like fantasy novel with a bad plot and worse characters.

I am writing this article just a week after Los Angeles suffered from devastating wildfires. The loss of life and homes boggles my mind, and the sensibilities of most people are turned toward sorrow for those affected. At least, that’s how the average person in our country reacted.

Some christians—mostly evangelicals—decided the Los Angeles wildfires are the result of God’s judgment wrath against the sins of Angelinos in particular and Californians in general. In their podcast, Evangelists Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron (former child star of “Growing Pains” television show) made this claim several times on their podcast. This is nothing new. Other christians have claimed similar things in the past.

Either it’s god’s judgment against sin at the heart of disasters, or it is satan’s attack on believers. Either way, it is spiritual warfare.

This belief in Spiritual Warfare has been a convenient tool for politically minded christians to control others and dominate the American culture. Whether it’s the Witch Hunts of 17th century New England, or the Christian Nationalists who wrote “Project 2025”, the motivation for all the most egregious activities of christianity has been this warfare focus.

Let’s take a closer look at this.

The Roots of Spiritual Warfare

It doesn’t take much digging into Christian history before one learns that the focus on spiritual warfare can be found all over the Christian scriptures and the Hebrew Scriptures. It’s not an exaggeration to say that all ancient cultures and their belief systems had some version of warfare in spiritual places. The religions conceived and developed in the ancient near east mirror this focus.

Without the advantage of scientific discoveries, it makes sense to ascribe threats of unknown origin to spiritual beings.

Without knowing about bacteria, fungi, or viruses, deadly illnesses are impossible to understand. It is simpler to conclude a spiritual entity causes it.

Without the advantage of satellites and international news reports, the ancients would have no way of knowing that the eruption of a volcano on the other side of the planet was the cause of three years of drought and ultra-cold temperatures.

It makes more sense to see existence as a war between things we can see and those we cannot see.

In the ancient world, if a poor person’s neighbor is prosperous and they are not, an internal sense of injustice would readily blame a curse or a hex. At the same time, the prosperous neighbor may conclude their good fortune is the result of following a deity more acceptably than the unfortunate neighbor.

With a few exceptions, religions also developed a dualistic viewpoint to explain the origins of evil. Many cultures in addition to christianity, like Zoroastrianism and Manicheism, hold to a belief in a fundamental cosmic battle between good and evil entities, where humans could be caught in the crossfire.

As I wrote in an article last year, otherism can even affect the sexual ethics of a culture. Having sex wasn’t about fun or reproduction in a world of spiritual warfare—sex could make you vulnerable to attack and defeat.

Therefore, to understand how this affects people today, let’s agree to the following:

1. Spiritual Warfare and cosmic dualism were ancient attempts to explain tragic events and relationship difficulties without the advantages of modern science.
2. Christianity followed this practice thoroughly, using the devil and Yahweh as the two combatants.
3. As Christianity encountered the Enlightenment and the scientific method for discovering truths about the universe, there was a dichotomy created: Some christians accepted science and ceased seeing life as a continuous battle. Some christians rejected science’s claims and continued to believe in cosmic dualism, good versus evil, spiritual forces arrayed against the church, and the responsibility of christians to battle their enemies.
   

For a good portion of the 20th century, this focus on spiritual warfare waxed and waned. There was a spike of interest during the Depression, and another one following World War 2 (known as the Latter Rain movement). Because the christian scriptures mention a lot about spiritual warfare, the teaching never really goes away.

But the emergence of spiritual warfare as a theme of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) has more immediate roots in something called the Satanic Panic of the late 70s and 80s. That movement focused on demons/spirits forcing humans to indulge in sinful behaviors such as extramarital and homosexual sexuality, drug and alcohol use, and other behaviors the church deems harmful.

This focus on supernatural malevolent spirits reached a ridiculous climax when some people involved in Spiritual Warfare began ascribing everything from dandruff to hiccuping to a spirit. This was a ‘bridge too far’ for many evangelical teachers. Overreach in spiritual warfare led many christian leaders to refine their beliefs about spiritual warfare and focus more on larger political issues instead of individual demon possession. This is where today’s leaders of the NAR were birthed.

Cindy Jacobs, Dutch Sheets, Lance Walnau, Peter Wagner, Bill Johnson, and many others began to focus their efforts.

Starting in the early 90s, the NAR developed a strategic plan concerning spiritual warfare focusing on these five elements:

1. Three Levels of Spiritual Warfare:

• Ground-Level Warfare: This involves confrontation with personal demons that affect individuals. It includes practices like deliverance ministry to cast out demons that cause sin, sickness, or oppression.

• Occult-Level Warfare: This focuses on confronting demonic forces behind occult practices, witchcraft, and false religions. Believers are encouraged to discern and combat spiritual influences linked to these practices.

• Strategic-Level Warfare: This is the most distinctive and controversial aspect of NAR spiritual warfare. It involves confronting territorial spirits—powerful demonic beings believed to have authority over specific geographic regions, institutions, or cultures.

2. Spiritual Mapping:

NAR proponents often teach the practice of spiritual mapping, where believers identify spiritual strongholds in specific areas. This involves research into the history of a region to uncover patterns of sin, oppression, or idolatry that may have given demonic powers a foothold. For example, past events such as wars, genocides, or prevalent idolatry may be causes of current spiritual bondage.

3. Binding and Loosing:

Based on Matthew 16:19 and 18:18, NAR adherents emphasize the power to “bind” demonic spirits and “loose” the blessings of God through prayer and declaration. This is a way to disrupt the activity of the devil and his forces in various spheres of life.

4. Territorial Spirits:

NAR theology teaches that demonic entities are organized hierarchically, with some assigned to rule over nations, cities, or even industries (like entertainment or finance). These territorial spirits are thought to influence human behavior and societal structures, creating systemic sin. Believers are called to engage these spirits through prayer, fasting, and coordinated spiritual warfare efforts.

5. Prophetic Intercession:

Intercessors and prophets play a key role in NAR spiritual warfare. They are believed to receive divine insight into the plans and movements of the enemy. Prophetic intercession involves praying according to God’s revealed will to dismantle demonic schemes and release God’s purposes in a specific context.

Why I Left Behind Spiritual Warfare

I joined the spiritual warfare movement in the mid-90s. (In this article I write what happened in my life to lead me temporarily into the NAR’s influence).

I was recruited to play a leadership role in a Peter Wagner inspired group. This “school of prayer” was actually a front for spiritual warfare. We organized with 100s of christian leaders all over our state. We conducted prayer walks where we relied on prophetic messages from the Holy Spirit to map where the “strongholds” of the enemy were found.

What always bothered me was that even though we said our battle was “not against flesh and blood” it always ended up focused on cultural groups that christians defined as the Enemy: Abortionists, LGBTQ people, entertainers, public school system, and the media.

Not surprisingly, this lines up exactly with the 7 “mountains” of influence that the NAR wants to conquer. You cannot read any documents prepared for the 2024 election of Donald Trump and his subsequent political agenda without seeing the exact blueprint drawn up by the NAR.

At one point, I got so disgusted by the warfare theme that I had to pull away. The more I pulled away, the less I hated people. The more I stopped seeing people as combatants, the less I tried to destroy our culture. The more I paid attention to psychological roots to most conflict in our world, the more I moved into doing Trauma Therapy with individuals.

One day, I was listening to people in the church I pastored praying against the evil “abortion industry”. I realized I knew nothing about the people who provided abortions in our town. So I found out.

I learned only one doctor was still doing the procedure for women’s health. He had a staff of three. My wife knew one of the nurses and she described her as one of the most loving people she knew.

I despised my involvement in all the hate I was witnessing in this spiritual warfare movement. So many families had been damaged or destroyed by this relentless fear of others.

I decided to publicly apologize. I figured the best place to start was with the doctor who was providing abortion access in our town.

I wrote a letter to the editor of our local newspaper, owning my hatred and ignorance of how he was helping women. I asked him to forgive me. I asked all who had been demonized by the church as enemies to forgive me. I sent this letter first to him and his staff before sending the letter to the newspaper.

The result of this action cemented forever my break with the NAR.

I received hundreds of responses to the letter. Some of them came from women who thanked me. They had lived in the shame that christians had heaped on them for doing what they had to do for the sanity of their lives.

Some told about needing abortion to save their lives.

Some talked about marital rape.

I read every letter. At no point did any of these people feel like combatants or demon possessed.

The doctor who provided abortions called me up and asked to meet for lunch. We had a series of lunches over the next two years and became good friends. I had only met one doctor in that town who had as much compassion and thoughtfulness as he had.

His first lunch with me, he wept as he thanked me for my letter. He had always assumed christians hated him. He revealed that he loved Jesus and felt he was showing love with his medical experience and knowledge.

That was one side of the response I got. This was the minority response to say the least.

The rest came from christians. Almost to a person, they identified me as the enemy. Some people left our church. My kids at their schools had friends call them names. My wife received a threat on the phone, telling her how we would be treated if we didn’t stop loving on those baby-killers.

I’m not exaggerating. It was the end of my relationship with the anti-abortion movement. I have never seen hatred like I have seen with the NAR and the Spiritual Warfare people.

Many of my friends involved with the School of Prayer lost marriages, relationships with children and in one case, her sanity. It was this season in my life that I decided I wanted to live in logical sanity instead of focusing on beliefs which have no verifiable proof, and which devastate the lives of others.

In the next article, we’ll look at the implications of all this warfare focus. But I want to end with a sobering message from a musical representative of both the Prophetic and Spiritual Warfare messages in the NAR: Sean Feucht.

From an article in 2024, he wrote:

“We are engaged in spiritual warfare, locked in battle with both the physical and spiritual realms. Almost one year ago, I wrote an op-ed in hopes of bringing awareness to the spiritual battles, both seen and unseen, being waged all around us.”

He wrote this in response to President Biden’s State of the Union address where he talked about human rights, healthcare, and financial stability.

These are issues that Feucht and the NAR see as battles.

He also was responding to Taylor Swift attending the Super Bowl and cheering for her boyfriend. Sean Feucht and other leaders of the NAR believe that human rights and cheering for one’s boyfriend are part of spiritual warfare.

Evangelical leaders are still teaching people to see battles where the reasonable mind could never see them.

Once you start fighting, it is hard to ever stop.

Next time, I want to share a couple of stories that will make it more clear what warfare thinking is doing to them, and by extension, to our country.