New Apostolic Reformation comes to Pittsburgh

Leading experts have warned what theological justification for violence could do to political debates on abortion, LGBTQ issues

(Lance Wallnau, leader of the New Apostolic Reformation, exorcises a musician at the group’s event in Monroeville on Saturday)

Experts on right-wing extremism have flagged the New Apostolic Reformation for providing theological justification for potential violence against liberals, especially those within the LGBTQ and reproductive rights movements. 

The New Apostolic Reformation's influence was palpable at an event I attended over the weekend in Monroeville, a suburb on Pittsburgh's outskirts. The event had information tables that distributed pamphlets and mementos associated with groups such as the Faith & Freedom Coalition, Patriot Academy, and the Lion of Judah, each contributing to the NAR's broad reach. 

The main program featured a musical act, followed by speeches from Lance Wallnau, the NAR’s leader, and the Rev. Jonathan Shuttlesworth, a minister with Revival Today. This burgeoning evangelical group recently established a 24/7 broadcasting channel. 

Earlier in the day, Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance joined a nationwide series of events dubbed The Courage Tour, which spreads the NAR philosophy in crucial battleground states like Pennsylvania. 

When I walked in, I went to one information table. Behind it was a placard that read, “Tolerance is not one of the Ten Commandments.” 

When I asked the woman at the table what it meant, she indicated that the left wing of America had treated tolerance of certain groups, particularly those in the LGBTQ community, as a holy matter. Other tables spread the belief that the sanctity of elections was under threat if Donald Trump didn’t win. 

As I listened to the speakers, I heard them demonize Democrats and liberals and then call upon those in attendance to drive them out of their community. 

“There's enough firepower in this room to throw the devil clean out of Allegheny County into the Mississippi River,” Rev. Shuttlesworth said. 

Shuttlesworth later corrected himself by saying the devil must first be in the Ohio River, Pittsburgh's main tributary. It feeds into the Mississippi. That’s a digression. But it’s a necessary clarification for people who say I misquoted him. 

Drawing on earlier movements like Pentecostalism, evangelism, and Christian Reconstructionism, the New Apostolic Reformation adopts a warfare approach to spiritualism. This approach, which seeks to demonize most of their political opponents, should raise concerns about the NAR's tactics and beliefs.

At its core is the seven-mountain mandate, which holds that believers seek to influence seven aspects of society: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government. 

Earlier this year, I reported on a panel discussion about the NAR. The event featured experts Anthea Butler, Frederick Clarkson, Andre Gagne, Julie Ingersoll, Rev. Naomi Washington-Leaphart, Peter Montgomery, Rachel Tabachnick, and Joe Wiinikka-Lydon. 

Gagne, who wrote American Evangelicals for Trump, is one the nation’s leading experts on the NAR. He was featured in a recorded video at the event. He said that many in the NAR had started portraying Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris as representing Jezebel, a biblical figure who was depicted as promoting promiscuity. 

“Those that practice spiritual warfare see Jezebel not as a person anymore, but a spirit that is alive again today,” Gagne said. 

The NAR link Harris’ candidacy to the massive increase of pornography and sexual temptation, the militant spirit of abortion, the rise of radical feminism, and, more importantly, the attempt to silence prophetic voices.

“So they see Jezebel as a demonic force representing what Jezebel did in the Old Testament, but now Jezebel is a supernatural entity that tries to impede on what the Church wants to do in America, to bring the kingdom of God on earth, essentially in America,” Gagne said. 

Montgomery, senior research director for People for the American Way, has studied the Christian right for decades. He also spoke at the event. He dispelled the notion that the NAR is a fringe group. It’s closely connected to power. Members have appeared at speeches with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. They had steady access to Trump during his time in the White House. 

Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, also presented. She spoke about the history of Christian reconstructionism, from which Dominionism and later the NAR grew. Ingersoll explained how the theology worked. 

“Dominionism and the NAR is a fluid assemblage of ideas, traditions, and practices, invoked in a kind of ad hoc manner as they apply to any particular circumstance,” Ingersoll said. “The NAR is incredibly diffused by design. Part of this is because it provides a level of plausible deniability.” 

Rachel Tabachnick, a researcher and writer on Christian Zionism and dominionism, also spoke about the threats the NAR posed to the principles of separating church from state affairs. 

“It's important for us to understand how a movement can be anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic, theocratic, but also market itself to the public as in pursuit of freedom and liberty and a battle against tyranny,” Tabachnick said. 

Clarkson spoke about Project 19, the NAR’s effort to mobilize Christians to swing some key urban counties for Trump in 2024. Project 19 seeks to advance the Seven Mountain Mandate. They have sought to get pastors to register their parishioners as Republicans in suburban areas in 19 swing state counties. While this may seem like regular campaigning, the people who engage in Project 19 often demonize people who have different political differences, especially women.

“The tour sought to embolden reluctant conservative evangelicals in blue suburbs and make them feel part of a religious and political cause far greater than themselves,” Clarkson said. 

Wallnau said a woman asked him to bless her father and rid him of his Hodgkin’s Disease at the Saturday event. Wallnau said she later called him and said he had been healed. He also criticized the media for providing such negative coverage of him. He linked his sermons and ministry to fighting against devils and cast journalists as part of the forces resisting his divine mission. 

“If God visits you the way I think it's going to visit you, you must be prepared to have more favor than you ever had, and favor always creates bigger enemies,” he said. 

Rhetoric often precedes action. It may not directly incite antiabortion violence, but it plants the seeds that lead to it. If you look at the 1980s, much of the justification for blockades and clinic attacks came from the theological writings and speeches of Francis Schaeffer.

Schaeffer and his wife ran L’Abri, a Christian community in Switzerland. The evangelical Christian community greatly respected Schaeffer, and he had even drawn left-leaning musicians and thinkers, including Timothy Leary and Jimmy Page, to his retreat. Eric Clapton praised his study retreat while not commenting on his later antiabortion work. However, he is perhaps better known because of his association with releasing two documentaries, How Should We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race?

Both of those films, in part or in most of their entirety, decried the Roe v. Wade decision as emblematic of the decline of Western civilization. The subsequent promotional tour galvanized the antiabortion movement around the issue of abortion. Several years after abortion was legalized, his son Frank persuaded him to take a stronger stance against it. The pair filmed a documentary series, How Should We Then Live?, in which the final two episodes focused on abortion. The thrust of the whole work was that secular humanism had supposedly destroyed the Christian foundation on which Western civilization had been built. Abortion was the prime example of that erosion. 

Francis Schaeffer hadn’t wanted to focus on abortion. He acquiesced to his son’s demand. Following its release, Schaeffer toured the U.S. to promote the film and its related book. They showcased it in Madison Square Garden. Schaeffer followed that documentary series with another called Whatever Happened to the Human Race?

Schaeffer picketed clinics toward the end of his life. He cautioned against violence but simultaneously wrote that revolution must be considered to stop it if the instruments of government wouldn’t. That was seen in his book Christian Manifesto. Many within the antiabortion movement, including Randall Terry, credited Schaeffer for providing the theological justification for their actions.

The anti-abortion movement continued to be radicalized as time went on until it developed what was known as the justifiable homicide theory, where the murder of abortion providers was warranted to stop abortions altogether. They saw abortion work as a form of genocide. And they felt they were righteously rescuing innocent life by taking one they perceived was guilty of murder and apt to commit another. 

One of those groups was the Army of God, an underground, revolutionary network with far more support than has sometimes met the eye.  Donald Spitz runs its website, which includes misrepresentations of Margaret Sanger, pictures of dead fetuses, praise for the murderers of abortion providers, and publishes their writings. 

They were linked to the abduction of Dr. Hector Zevallos, who was an abortion provider who went missing for several days before his kidnappers released him. Letters purporting to be from the Army of God also took credit for other antiabortion terrorist incidents. 

This same theology animated the murderers of Dr. David Gunn, Dr. John Britton, Dr. Barnett Slepian, and Dr. George Tiller. Additionally, countless bombings, arson, and acid attacks were justified with the same rhetoric. 

It’s fair to say that there is danger in injecting demonic rhetoric into political discourse about something as explosive as abortion, especially when it’s in an unprecedented time historically with so many demonstrations and upheaval of abortion politics as it had been defined for five decades. There are plenty of targets, at either rallies or with the arrival of a new generation of abortion rights leaders. I hope that calmer voices will prevail, but history tells us that may not be true.