(In Part 1 of this series, I examine the connection between Prophecy and the NAR. Part 2 focused on “Spiritual Warfare” and the role it plays with the NAR and today’s Christian Nationalists.
People have asked me to spell out who I am referring to when I talk about the NAR. The NAR is my shorthand for all the groups that leverage their Christianity to get political power and pass laws that fit their christian nationalist agenda. This is led by NAR leaders, but also encompasses 80% of evangelicals, former members of the Moral Majority, and Reformed christians who ascribe to the teachings of R. J. Rushdoony and Gary North.)
Actor Robert Duvall had a vision for a movie about a Pentecostal preacher. As he says, “I was always intrigued by the spirit-filled preacher, the guy who could talk in tongues and have this personal connection to God. I wanted to tell a story about a man who had faith but was also very human—someone who struggles, fails, and seeks redemption.”
In an interview with the Journal of Religion and Film, Duvall mentioned his determination to show this charismatic world without judgment, saying: “I wanted to present it honestly—good, bad, and in-between—and let the audience decide for themselves.”
Duvall’s commitment to authenticity and nuance made the film a labor of love, as he not only wrote and directed it, but also funded it when Hollywood studios hesitated.
The story is about a preacher named Euliss “Sonny” Dewey, a Texas Pentecostal Preacher. He is eloquent, committed to Christ, and faithful in his focus on the power of God. He is presented as the genuine article, a man dedicated to God and the preaching ministry.
At the same time, he is a deeply toxic human. He has multiple affairs, is violent and demanding toward his wife, bullying the church people into doing things his way. At one point, he discovers his wife is cheating on him. In a fit of rage at a church baseball party, he kills his wife’s lover with a baseball bat.
Escaping custody, he exiles himself. He symbolically reinvents his image by baptizing himself in a river and calling himself “The Apostle EF”. With his natural charisma and oratory skills, Sonny builds a new life, founding a small church, and gaining the trust and admiration of the small Louisiana town.
His efforts bring together a diverse congregation, including members from different racial and social backgrounds, highlighting themes of unity and reconciliation.
At the same time, he cannot shake his personal demons of control and manipulation.
In the film’s climax, he sees how his desire for power and control have destroyed not only his life, but the lives of many. He also realizes that his preaching is not the problem—it is his attitude and need to control others. This epiphany compels him to surrender peacefully to the police. At the end of the movie he embraces the consequences of his crimes as he finishes his life in prison.
The movie garnered many awards because people saw on the screen what many have experienced from the Evangelical church over the years: Genuine leaders who have devotion for god, but whose personal desire to possess and control the world destroys their morals.
In this series, I am addressing both the dangers of a movement named the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and my personal reasons for leaving it in the late 1990s. I mention in the first two articles how the christian nationalist movement relies on prophecy and spiritual warfare to control their agendas. I emphasize these are are not aberrations in the christian faith, but actually rooted in their scriptures.
Church History features many groups who sought to control others by claiming to hear the voice of god. They usually reinforce this by claiming the battle against non-christians and spirits is enough rationale to conquer others. The Crusades, the Conquistadors, and the destruction of indigenous cultures in many countries including America, all illustrate this dual justification of prophecy and spiritual warfare.
As I write this, the President of the United States has appointed Paula White, a leader in the NAR, to lead the White House Office of Faith. By “Faith” he refers to the evangelical/pentecostal faith she teaches, and which many of his supporters also ascribe to.
Paula White, like her President, has cheated on multiple spouses and has created Ponzi schemes to make money. She and Trump have much in common.
Now, as we live in the midst of a season in American history where the NAR has been given a unique place by the Republican government of Donald Trump, we should examine carefully why this movement is so toxic. Though doctrine is used by NAR leaders to win followers, their actions are dangerous because they are able to justify their bad treatment of other people through religion.
Here are the ways this happens.
Toxic Behaviors of the NAR and Evangelicalism
I started having trouble with Evangelicalism because of doctrines like Inerrancy, Hell, and the Depravity of man. The doctrines of Original Sin and Human Depravity in particular paint humanity as enemies of god. The christian scriptures even claim the entire human race has “become worthless” (Romans 3:12).
When you accept a human is essentially worthless without god, it is easier to treat them badly.
I passively refused to teach on any of these, even though I was required to nod ascent to them as a pastor of an Evangelical denomination.
But it was the abuses within the NAR that accelerated my withdrawal from the Evangelical approach to faith. As I walked on the inside of the movement, I noticed the following behaviors: .
- They Gave Power to a Few People with Charismatic Personalities.
To be clear, the New Apostolic Reformation—and other christian nationalist groups— is not a structured community per se. It seems loosely bound together by certain ideals, beliefs, and practices. Some of these I have mentioned already. But just because there is no official hierarchy to the movement, this doesn’t imply there are no leaders. The leaders are certainly there, and they have been given very powerful titles to distinguish them from the non-leaders.
They may be called Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Teachers, and several other sobriquets. To an outsider, these nicknames may seen harmless. But the names themselves, originating in the christian scriptures, carry a huge amount of power and influence.
This is why, even though Jesus warned against people using honorifics of this sort, it has never stopped happening since the days when Saul of Tarsus took over leadership of christianity.
Notice these verses in Matthew 23:8-11 (NIV):
8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant.
The man Jesus saw the dangers of people being given power over other people in a movement based in fear such as religion. But in history, it is almost always the leaders that lead the charge to harm others.
Shawn Bolz was given the title of Prophet. To this movement, this means more than he prophesies. It means he has a sustained authority from god.
What is the problem with this? First, there is no way to verify if a single word coming out of a Prophet’s mouth originates with a deity. It may be wishful thinking, tuning into the Collective Unconscious of society, or made up in a person’s head.
Or, in the case of Shawn Bolz, it may be a man who seeks power to manipulate others.
Just recently, leaders within the NAR have had to publicly denounce Bolz. According to many sources, he has been collecting information from people’s Facebook pages and then using that information in meetings to convince people he “heard it from God.” Read about it here.
I find it strange that though these accusations were first made 6 years ago, other leaders in the NAR are only addressing them now.
Christians have been conditioned to passively accept leadership abuse. From its inception as a religion under the “Apostle” Paul and others, there has always been a hierarchy. Men, supposedly chosen by god with convenient charismatic personalities, rule over the church and order people to do god’s will.
Therefore, today’s Apostles and Prophets can easily manipulate people to believe their word is god’s law. - Reducing complex problems by claiming they are simply the result of spiritual warfare.
Decades ago, I sat with a woman dying of pancreatic cancer at age 29. She had several small children and was wasting away rapidly. A group of around 40 people took turns in her bedroom, doing “spiritual warfare” praying against the forces of evil and their demonic cancer. Many of them blamed both her and her husband for their lack of faith. There were days I had to leave because I was so sick of their antics.
Cancer is not spiritual warfare. It begins as rogue cells in the body form tumors. Calling it “spiritual warfare” over-simplifies something that medical science has spent a century to understand. The amount of people NOT dying of cancer now who would have died just a few years ago is staggering. And the reason they are not dying is because some people—namely medical scientists—did not accept cancer as the attack of a spirit. They sought to solve it by knowing how it works and stopping it medically.
I personally witnessed people ascribe spiritual warfare to illnesses, loss of employment, how people voted, how much money they gave to the church, why certain families get rheumatoid arthritis, and so many other things.
It is this ease with which christians can reduce mind-bending complex problems to simple ones which the leaders of the NAR use to their advantage.
When supporters of Donald Trump—many of whom were leaders in the NAR—were unable to convince anyone that he had actually won the election in 2020, Michael Flynn started the Reawaken Tour. This was a group of politicians, preachers, and NAR leaders who traveled the country to convince people about two things. First, that the entire nation was in a spiritual warfare and that the people of God were currently losing. Second, that the only answer to ALL the country’s problems were a spiritual revival, led by Donald Trump.
In this article, we read:
“In the version of America laid out at the ReAwaken tour, Christianity should be at the center of American life and institutions. Instead, it’s under attack, and attendees need to fight to restore the nation’s Christian roots. It’s a message repeated over and over at ReAwaken — one that upends the constitutional ideal of a pluralist democracy. But it’s a message that is taking hold.”
There are no simple problems in our American society. We certainly have systemic challenges with healthcare, poverty, the incarceration system, educational system, housing, our role as the world’s policeman, etc. Not one of these will be solved spiritually. Each of these requires bipartisan and studied responses just to understand what is wrong. But that doesn’t play well with people who are angry or afraid. Fear especially makes christians susceptible to the reductionistic preaching of the NAR. - Abuses By Leaders are Covered Up:
Almost a decade ago, I was approached by people who had been hurt by a certain evangelist who had credentials with my denomination. His name was Ravi Zacharias. One person recounted how he had groomed and manipulated her for his own sexual gratification. This happened over a matter of years. When the woman’s husband confronted him, Zacharias launched a lawsuit against them to protect his image. Because of his millions of dollars of resources, he was able to bully them into a settlement.
But, even though they had signed a non-disclosure agreement, I was given a copy of the court transcripts by a lawyer friend. This friend also sent these transcripts to the denomination. In those documents, Zacharias’ own legal team presented email evidence of his crimes. They did this, assuming no one but the court would read them. They figured because she had a non-disclosure agreement that no one would ever see them.
And even though she had an NDA, I did not. She is not the one who gave the evidence to me. Neither did she give it to the denomination.
I approached my denomination to get them to discipline him. Not only did they refuse, they threatened to remove my credentials if I didn’t stop making a scene about it. I did not stop. Neither did my lawyer friend.
But no matter what we did, they did not publicly renounce his actions. This was the final nail in the coffin for me. I stopped being part of them from that time on.
Since then, evidence was presented showing he had illegitimate children. He owned massage parlors which were fronts for prostitution. He falsified his academic credentials. And, he committed sexual crimes against other women. All of this came out after he passed away. Still, the denomination said nothing.
This is typical of church leaders among the NAR also. The case of Shawn Bolz is one of many that have been revealed in the past few years. Many cases have happened within the churches of evangelicals. In so many situations, the churches end up kicking the victims out of the church. The leaders are often put on administrative leave for a “period of repentance”. Then, once other leaders feel that the public has forgotten about their crimes, they sneak them back in.
In a future article, I hope to address the connections between sexual repression and sexual crimes. This has become an epidemic among the NAR and evangelicalism in general. And when its leaders commit these crimes, most people try and gloss it over “for the sake of god’s church.” - A Lust for Power:
The list of christians in history who lusted after political power, and then were known for committing horrible crimes when they got that power, is long.
Rasputin, Cardinal Richelieu, the Borgia family, Tomás de Torquemada (leader of the Spanish Inquisition), John Calvin, Oliver Cromwell, Pierre Cauchon, Jerry Falwell and so many of the popes were accused credibly of manipulation, deceptions, murders, torture, mayhem, and abuse of many.
Many of today’s christians who support the NAR look at that list and say “Yeah, but they were mostly Catholics and Eastern Orthodox.”
They will excuse John Calvin because he was fighting Catholics. They excuse Cromwell because of the pain of persecution his people faced at the hands of the descendants of Henry VIII.
But they cannot defend those who sanctioned the killing of witches at the beginning of our country’s European settlement history. They want to ignore how many millions of Native Americans were killed by christians who saw them as heathen. They cannot deny how Falwell manipulated the Republican Party into accepting his particular moral agenda in order to get Reagan elected.
They still want to say that today’s christian won’t do the same things as they did. But look at the current government leadership of the Republicans. The vice-president is an outspoken christian and supporter of the NAR. So too is the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. The newly appointed Russell Vought is in charge of the White House Budget Office and the co-author of the deeply religious document “Project 2025”. Though Trump tried to deny this document would be the ideological basis for this term in office, many of the tenets of that document are being implemented by Executive Order, without the permission or involvement of Congress.
All of these christian leaders want America to go back to the power they felt they had when the country was founded. When wielded by Christian nationalists, this power always hurts marginalized people.
This desire for power trickles down through all levels of the NAR. Because they believe that leaders are chosen and constituted by god to be in those positions of power, they proclaim that any opposition to christian leaders is tantamount to opposition to God.
I remember the day when my District Superintendent called me on the phone to talk about Ravi Zacharias.
“Do you believe in the doctrine of Constituted Authority” he asked. (Just for clarity, this doctrine states that in order to be a good christian, I need to submit to anything a leader told me to do or not do, and if I couldn’t do that, I had to leave).
“I know this is the accepted teaching of this denomination.”
He took that as my agreement to the principle. “Then, I am telling you that you must no longer talk publicly about Ravi Zacharias.”
That was it. That was the bottom line. I decided that day I would keep speaking about him even if it got me removed from pastoral office.
Now that I don’t have anything to do with Christianity, I am not sorry for that day. It was the right decision.
Unfortunately, many people who ascribe to the NAR leadership over their lives may never see how this heavy-handed approach to religion is hurting them. They’ll just blame whomever the NAR tells them to blame for all the pain this group is causing them.
In the next article, I will look at why the NAR hates pluralism and seeks to enforce their flavor of Exclusivism.