Understanding the political radicalization of Charismatic Christians, with Matthew D. Taylor

This interview is with Matthew D. Taylor, who wrote and created a recent podcast series called "Charismatic Revival Fury." Taylor is the Protestant Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, in Baltimore.

We know about the Proud Boys, and the Big Lie, and former President Trump's role in spreading it and deceiving millions of Americans into believing the 2020 election was stolen from them.

But there was an element in the crowd spurred on to radical anti-democratic lawlessness by something more than politics. It was "revival fury."

That's the phrase created by Taylor, who has studied a sub-culture of American evangelicalism — called the New Apostolic Reformation — and mapped its 30-year history as well as its many links to the January 6 insurrection.

Taylor's extensive historical research provides a depth of context to a shocking revelation: the Trump White House itself was in touch with key NAR leaders in the weeks after the 2020 election and leading up to the attack on the Capitol.

In fact, one key NAR leader said "government leaders" asked him to conduct a tour of churches after the 2020 election to energize and mobilize Trump supporters to support the effort to overturn the election results. This NAR leader, Dutch Sheets, had already been part of a Trump White House outreach effort in 2019 led by Trump faith adviser Paula White Cain.

The Sheets tour turned into a whirlwind tour of seven swing states over a month's time, in which roughly two-dozen self-proclaimed prophets whipped large crowds into a frenzy of religious fervor mixed with apocalyptic and violent imagery of defeating demonic forces, which were attributed to Democrats and President Biden.

He calls it "charismatic revival fury" and has produced a podcast series by that name. Many of these NAR followers believed that if Trump were reinstated it would spark a religious revival leading to the conversion of a billion people to not just Christianity, but their brand of the faith.

Taylor draws a distinction between personal "spiritual warfare" — a fairly standard belief held by many Christians in America and around the world — and the kind of hyper-radicalized version of "strategic spiritual warfare" promoted by NAR that risks pushing its adherents into the kind of violence we saw on January 6.

Taylor also cautions that political figures on the right are playing with rhetoric that risks further radicalizing religious supporters, and that these remarks fall on a spectrum. On the most extreme, you have former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn literally calling former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a "demon."

But other Republicans are also toying with such ideas. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has quoted a passage from the Bible where he replaces "the devil" with "the left." And former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley this week said that debates over how to teach children in schools about gender "is absolutely spiritual warfare."

Taylor's research shows that talking about these topics requires a deftness and precision that avoids painting all conservative Christians with such a broad brush that it risks pushing them closer to extremist radicals, rather than bringing them into a broader conversation that can serve as a moderating force.

"We need to be able to see the diversity within these movements, not paint with such a broad brush that says anyone who holds some theological idea or participates in some theological meme is therefore an extremist," Taylor told Yahoo News. "I think we really need to focus on people who actually behave in extreme ways and say extreme things."

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