The New Apostolic Reformation
Evangelicalism’s Call of the Owl
According to the traditions of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation in British Colombia, hearing an owl call your name is a portent of your death. This belief featured prominently in Margaret Craven’s 1967 novel I Heard the Owl Call My Name.
In the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), I hear an owl calling mainstream Evangelicalism by name — a dark owl like the offspring of a tryst with the devil calling to its mother. To be clear, the call is not just unto death, but unto extinction. For the NAR, incubated in Evangelicalism’s Pentecostal and charismatic traditions, is not out to kill its parent faith, but to breed with it.
And in breeding, conquer.
It’s no secret that Evangelical pews have been emptying for well over a decade. Home churches, Mainline churches, no churches, the Christian Left, and outright deconversion are draining the ranks of the Evangelical faithful at an ever-increasing pace. But while this exodus leans to the religious and political left, the NAR leans right.
In its defensive campaign to stop the bleed, mainstream Evangelicalism has now been forced into a two-front war.
A heaping helping of failure
What is pulling these bedrock members out of the mainstream Evangelical big tent? As a former “traditional” white evangelical who was later lured into the tent’s charismatic wing, I have a suspicion as to what the Devil is using as his lure.
Christian leaders tend to argue with their favorite weapon — Bible verses. I have never seen a theological argument that could not be made and undone with this weapon. But when it comes to why we in the pews join or leave a religion, theology is irrelevant. The truth is that most of us follow a religion for the emotional payoff:
- If I accept Jesus as my savior, my parents will be proud of me.
- I have made a total mess of my life. I need to be forgiven. I need a restart. if I accept Jesus as my savior, I will be forgiven, go to heaven, and start anew with a whole new community.
- If I accept Jesus as my savior, I will have the truth of the whole universe. I will be right and go to heaven, while the people I hate will be wrong and go to hell.
But Evangelical Christianity is a bait and switch game. It promises a “free” salvation then saddles you with this expensive bill and burden called “discipleship.” We soon learn what miserable failures we are as disciples, what a disappointment we are to Jesus, and how many good people will be tormented in hell because of our selfish reluctance to evangelize them. No matter what we do, our leaders can find a way to demonstrate that we have just found another way to fail in following Jesus.
This fine print in the salvation contract can exact so much negative emotional cost that people are driven out of the faith. Because there is more feeling bad than feeling good. I was one of these — but not before giving it one last try.
Moths to a dark flame
It was no wonder I couldn’t fulfill my sacred calling to discipleship — the charismatics in our little university Baptist Student Union told us — because you can’t do that without first being “baptized in the Holy Spirit.” It’s the Holy Spirit that infuses you with the power to overcome your secular and carnal motivations, freeing you to become a superstar disciple!
When the charismatic movement hit our group, it initially met with fierce opposition. We called it “demon inspired.” One-by-one, however, we fell prey to its lures. By the end of the academic year the charismatics outnumbered the traditional evangelicals.
And while traditional members would convert to the charismatics, no charismatics ever converted back to the traditional faith. Indeed, over the ensuing years, the charismatics won themselves a wing in Evangelicalism’s mainstream tent.
I understood that “the Holy Spirit” translated to magical powers. Maybe this was what I needed to overpower my secular instincts and finally be the disciple Jesus deserved.
So I bought it, tried it, but ultimately rejected it. For while others seemed to revel in their newfound “spiritual gifts” and “miraculous” healings, I had a nasty habit of self-honesty. I couldn’t suppress my suspicion that my “tongues” were just me faking it. Or noticing that the “laying on of hands” didn’t seem to heal me any faster than my immune system did. Or wondering why no hands were ever laid on the blind woman in our group.
I did not, however, return to traditional Evangelical faith, choosing instead a path to agnosticism.
Vampire blood
Perhaps if I had ignored that little voice pointing out fakery, I would have accepted the power of suggestion as “magic” and stayed in charismatic Evangelicalism. I remember the feeling of believing the “miracles” — the awe, the reassurance of being right, the raw power.
It was like a drug, an opioid high pulsing though my soul. But opium gradually numbs the brain to its presence, requiring increasing doses to produce the same high. I suspect that charismatic and Pentecostal Evangelicalism follows the same path, with the emotional high fading over time.
Enter the NAR.
Now, suddenly, you are no longer just baptized in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has taken you over from the inside and is working through you. It can speak directly to you. You can become an apostle, or a prophet. You are now a holy warrior in the spiritual battle for America. You are part of an army that God has deployed to overthrow the secular government of the United States and replace it with representatives of God’s Kingdom on Earth.
You can further the Kingdom just by voting and terrorizing the libs.
No longer are you just flailing around, trying to make yourself do the work of the Kingdom. The Holy Spirit is not only inside you, but outside you, doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
Bye bye failing disciple. Bye bye frustrated Christian who is “holding out on God.” Bye bye losing battle to “own the libs” and restore white Christian supremacy. Bye bye white Evangelical decline.
Welcome to the winning team.
From its mother faiths in the U.S. white evangelical tent, the new beast inherited white supremacy, a sense of entitlement to cultural and political dominance, and an expertly spun practice of fake magic. It’s new incarnation infused vampire blood into that mix.
Welcome to the undead and proud.
The NAR is a global movement that was born in the 20th century, and has been growing exponentially in recent years. It practices “magic” like its Charismatic and Pentecostal predecessors, and appears to have lost much of the negative emotional baggage inherent in mainstream white evangelicalism.
It offers a lot more feeling good, and a lot less feeling bad.
The mainstream tent now has attractive exits to the left, and an attractive exit to the right. And a long, low whooooo echoing through it.
