In the three and a half years since Donald Trump incited an insurrection on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Americans have come to learn how much Christian nationalism played a role in the riot. What is less known, however, is how the fringe Christian movement the New Apostolic Reformation dominated and shaped the effort to overturn the 2020 election. The group, once considered extreme even by most white evangelicals, was instrumental in organizing and spurring the crowd that stormed the Capitol that day.
In his book "The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy," religious studies scholar Dr. Matthew Taylor explores how this group of self-proclaimed "prophets" and "apostles" became central to the MAGA movement and, eventually, an attempted coup. He spoke with Salon about this poorly understood fringe religious group and why they matter so much to Trump.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
At the end of the book, you emphasize the importance of Christians speaking up against the far-right Christian nationalism that drove the January 6 insurrection. Why do you believe liberal Christians need to speak out more?
To be clear, I'm also calling conservative Christians to be in that mix. I grew up as a conservative Christian. Many members of my family and many of my friends growing up are still conservative Christians. They're also shocked and appalled by a lot of this. There's a principled form of conservative Christianity in the United States that is not in bed with Christian nationalism. Those people need to be speaking up too. It's important for atheists and non-Christians to speak up, because their rights are going to be more infringed upon by Christian supremacists. But it's a duty for Christians to face when our fellow Christians go off the rails and become harmful.
A lot of the dialogue that needs to happen is a theological conversation. Part of the challenge here is that it's not simply politics or power that is driving this dynamic. Theology is also very much in the mix. And Christians are the ones who can talk about Christian theology. We desperately need intra-Christian dialogue and even intra-Christian debate, which can be quite heated at times. I'm OK with that, because the consequences are so dire. There's real peril that some of our fellow Christians are posing to our democracy and we need to challenge them.
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As someone who is outside of the Christian world, I learned a lot from your book about the complexities of it. I had heard of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) but had no idea what it is and how central it was to the January 6 insurrection. Can you briefly explain what it is and why it was so important to the Capitol riot?
The New........