The Christian right's "dominionist" strategy
BY SARAH POSNER

An article in the Texas Observer last month about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's relationship with followers of a little-known neo-Pentecostal movement sparked a frenzied reaction from many commentators: Dominionism! Spiritual warfare! Strange prophecies!

All the attention came in the weeks before and after "The Response," Perry's highly publicized prayer rally modeled on what organizers believe is the "solemn assembly" described in Joel 2, in which "end-times warriors" prepare the nation for God's judgment and, ultimately, Christ's return. This "new" movement, the New Apostolic Reformation, is one strand of neo-Pentecostalism that draws on the ideas of dominionism and spiritual warfare. Its adherents display gifts of the spirit, the religious expression of Pentecostal and charismatic believers that includes speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing and a belief in signs, wonders and miracles. These evangelists also preach the "Seven Mountains" theory of dominionism: that Christians need to take control of different sectors of public life, such as government, the media and the law.

The NAR is not new, but rather derivative of charismatic movements that came before it. Its founder, C. Peter Wagner, set out in the 1990s to create more churches, and more believers. Wagner's movement involves new jargon, notably demanding that believers take control of the "Seven Mountains" of society (government, law, media and so forth), but that's no different from other iterations of dominionism that call on Christians to enter these fields so that they are controlled by Christians.

After Perry's prayer rally, Rachel Maddow featured a segment on her MSNBC show in which she warned,

"The main idea of the New Apostolic Reformation theology is that they are modern day prophets and apostles. They believe they have a direct line to God ... the way that they're going to clear the way for it [the end of the world] is by infiltrating and taking over politics and government."

Maddow's ahistorical treatment of the NAR, however, overlooked several important realities. For anyone who has followed the growth of neo-Pentecostal movements, and in particular the coalition-building between the political operatives of the religious right and these lesser-known but still influential religious leaders, the NAR is just another development in the competitive, controversial, outrageous, authoritarian and often corrupt tapestry of the world of charismatic evangelists.

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Most chilling, though, is the willingness to engage in what's known in the Word of Faith world as "revelation knowledge," or believing, as Copeland exhorted his audience to do, that you learn nothing from journalism or academia, but rather just from the Bible and its modern "prophets." It is in this way that the self-styled prophets have had their greatest impact on our political culture: by producing a political class, and its foot soldiers, who believe that God has imparted them with divine knowledge that supersedes what all the evil secularists would have you believe.

Last week CNN's Jack Cafferty asked, "How much does it worry you if both Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have ties to dominionism?" That worry crops up every election cycle. If people really understood dominionism, they'd worry about it between election cycles.