■ Now that Donald Trump has been elected again, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement and its impact on conservative politics will receive renewed attention, making a special issue on this topic in the journal of new religious movements, Nova Religio (November), especially timely. Most of the contributors, in contrast to most new religious movement scholarship, take a strongly critical, perhaps alarmist, tone about the violent and potentially violent tendencies in the actions and beliefs of evangelicals associated with this movement, even linking it with far-right terrorism. The issue particularly focuses on this Pentecostal movement’s relation to the events of January 6, 2021, ranging from the circle of “prophets” and “apostles” who predicted that Trump would be reelected to the influence of Messianic Judaism on the riots and protests surrounding the 2020 elections, such as the Jericho March.
Stuart Wright’s article looks at how the failures of the prophesies and these Pentecostal leaders’ interpretations of the election results played a part in the riots of January 6. The Messianic Jewish factor is due to an increasingly porous flow between charismatic and Pentecostal NAR churches and Messianic Jewish groups, as they share symbols (as seen in the blowing of the shofar at the January 6 events), memes, prophesies, and such leaders Daniel Juster, Curt Landry, and Paul Wilbur. The contributors see the NAR rhetoric of spiritual warfare and the “Seven Mountains” (teachings about Christians gaining dominion in society) as stoking sympathy for political violence in recent years. Damon Berry writes that NAR proponents like Lance Wallnau and Messianic Jewish leader Jonathan Cahn have employed such spiritual warfare language in their support of Israel’s war in Gaza after the attacks of October 7. For more information on this issue, visit: https://www.pennpress.org/journals/journal/nova-religio/
