New article looks at Dominionist group
New Apostolic Reformation has targeted Pennsylvania for recruitment and campaign
A new piece appeared in Salon that discusses a Christian Right group taking over American politics, with a specific focus on how it has been organized in Pennsylvania.
Frederick Clarkson wrote the article, "Unfriending" America: The Christian right is coming for the enemies of God — like you and me,” which details the rise of the New Apostolic Reformation, which is a mixture of Pentecostal and Charismatic evangelicalism.
It is now the second-largest Christian faction in the world after the Roman Catholic Church and the largest growth sector in American and global Christianity. According to Clarkson, most believe in Christian dominion over what they call the "seven mountains": religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment, and business. That is also known as dominionism.
These congregations seek to dissolve traditional denominations and take away their members.
There is some useful political context here. In the 1980s, Republican operatives attacked mainstream religion by gaining control of church councils and then voting to take the organization in a conservative direction while using the pulpit to advance the careers of Republicans.
The effort began with the founding of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in 1981. Part of the effort was to stage endless policy fights in the national and local churches in an effort to divide and conquer them from the inside. And failing that, encourage schisms. Authors Sheldon Culver and John Dorhauer, leaders in the United Church of Christ, coined the term steeplejacking to refer to this strategy of dividing and conquering local churches.
For more on dominionism, here’s another article by Clarkson written in 2016.