Chuck Darwin<p>On the thursday night after Donald Trump won the presidential election, <br>an obscure but telling celebration unfolded inside a converted barn off a highway <br>stretching through the cornfields of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. </p><p>The place was called "Gateway House of Prayer", <br>and it was not exactly a church, <br>and did not exactly fit into the paradigms of what American Christianity has typically been. </p><p>Inside, there were no hymnals, no images of Jesus Christ, no parables fixed in stained glass. </p><p>Strings of lights hung from the rafters. </p><p>A huge map of the world covered one wall. </p><p>On the others were seven framed bulletin boards, <br>each representing a theater of battle between the forces of God and Satan<br>—government, business, education, family, arts, media, and religion itself. </p><p>Gateway House of Prayer, it turned out, <br>was a kind of war room. </p><p>And if its patrons are to be believed, at least one person, and at peak times dozens, <br>had been praying every single minute of every single day for more than 15 years <br>for the victory that now seemed at hand. </p><p>God was winning. </p><p>The Kingdom was coming.</p><p>“Hallelujah!” said a woman arriving for the weekly 7 o’clock <br>“government watch,” <br>during which a group of 20 or so volunteers sits in a circle and prays for God’s dominion over the nation.</p><p>“Now the work begins!” a man said.</p><p>“We have to fight, fight, fight!” <br>a grandmother said as they began talking about how a crowd at Trump’s election watch party had launched into the hymn <br>“How Great Thou Art.”</p><p>“They were singing that!” another man said.</p><p>Yes, people replied; <br>they had seen a video of the moment. </p><p>As the mood in the barn became ever more jubilant, <br>the grandmother pulled from her purse a <a href="https://c.im/tags/shofar" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>shofar</span></a>, <br>a hollowed-out ram’s horn used during Jewish services. </p><p>She blew, understanding that the sound would break through the atmosphere, <br>penetrate the demonic realm, <br>and scatter the forces of Satan, <br>a supernatural strike for the Kingdom of God. </p><p>A woman fell to the floor.</p><p>“Heaven and Earth are coming into alignment!” a man declared. </p><p>“The will of heaven is being done on Earth.”</p><p>What was happening in the barn in Lancaster County did not represent some fringe of American Christianity, <br>but rather what much of the faith is becoming. </p><p>A shift is under way, one that scholars have been tracking for years <br>and that has become startlingly visible with the rise of Trumpism. </p><p>At this point, tens of millions of believers<br>—about 40 percent of American Christians, <br>including Catholics, according to a recent Denison University survey<br>—are embracing an alluring, charismatic movement <br>that has little use for religious pluralism, individual rights, or constitutional democracy. </p><p>It is mystical, emotional, and, in its way, wildly utopian. </p><p>It is transnational, multiracial, and unapologetically political. </p><p>Early leaders called it the 👉 "New Apostolic Reformation", or <a href="https://c.im/tags/NAR" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NAR</span></a>, <br>although some of those same leaders are now engaged in a rebranding effort <br>as the antidemocratic character of the movement has come to light. </p><p>And people who have never heard the name are nonetheless adopting the movement’s central ideas. </p><p>These include the belief that God speaks through modern-day apostles and prophets. </p><p>That demonic forces can control not only individuals, <br>but entire territories and institutions. </p><p>That the Church is not so much a place <br>as an active “army of God,” <br>one with a holy mission to claim the Earth for the Kingdom <br>as humanity barrels ever deeper into the End Times.<br><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/new-apostolic-reformation-christian-movement-trump/681092/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theatlantic.com/magazine/archi</span><span class="invisible">ve/2025/02/new-apostolic-reformation-christian-movement-trump/681092/</span></a></p>