Shadow Christianity and the interplay of politics
The New Apostolic Reformation and the ‘Cyrus Defense’
Christianity began as a cell network. Small pockets of believers gathered to worship and spread the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. A few centuries later, Emperor Constantine brought Christianity into the light, giving it the stamp of government approval.
Since then, the ways that Christianity and politics have worked on each other, across time and cultures, could fill volumes. In our current milieu, many writers have discussed how, over the past several decades, evangelical Christianity has sought to claim all American life for its own.
I must hand it to hard-right Republican evangelicals: They know how to play the long game. Part of that long game, however, seems to include reshaping Christianity and doing so underground. In other words, some politicians and rich business folk are creating a quasi-Christian cell network. Make no mistake, this is not a return to Christianity’s earliest roots.
This movement is called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), and Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, along with many of his ilk belong to this network. It isn’t a denomination and doesn’t have a physical location; rather, it is a loose coalition of hard-right-leaning Christians who are intent on establishing a Christian government in their own image.
It is not a reclamation of Christian orthodoxy no matter how they try to spin it. Perhaps you’ve heard people declare that “this is a Christian nation,” but that statement claims psychic real estate that has no legitimate purchase.
Many of the Founding Fathers belonged to established Christian denominations, but some of them (even among the churchgoers) were clearly Deists. They respected a Creator and referred to “Nature’s god,” but they were in no way evangelicals of the stripe who are trying to run the government today.
The Deists subscribed to Enlightenment ideals. They believed that man was given reason for a purpose and that the enlightened mind was sufficient for working out the affairs of life. In other words, once the Creator had put the world in motion, Man then took the reins. Divine intervention was no longer needed.
Just look at these words from the Declaration of Independence: “. . .they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. . .” Evangelicals will point to that phrase as proof of God’s providence, and Deists would likely agree, but Evangelicals miss the nuance. The Creator gives the rights, but it is Man, a rational being, who declares the rights and codifies them. For the Deist, Man fulfills the work, not God.
According to Brittanica.com, “The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness,” and we see this reflected in the “pursuit of happiness” of the Declaration.
Contrast this with what Evangelicals would say. You only need to look at Iowa Senator Joni Ernst’s recent statement to see the difference. As she issued a snide, non-apology apology following a heartless public comment, she ended by saying: “. . .those who would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”
So, how does evangelicalism line up with the unholiness of the re-president? If you listen to 45/47, you will hear a litany of darkness: The world is in terrible shape, and only he can fix it. According to him, murderers and rapists are flooding the border. It’s like every disaster movie mashed up with “The Walking Dead,” a relentless onslaught in need of a superhero.
This bleakness of life also happens to be one of the tenets of the NAR, only they would describe it in terms of spiritual warfare. Its causes are legion, but immigration and feminism head the list. They assert that we’ve misinterpreted the Founding Fathers, and it is their job to overcome 250-plus years of misunderstanding.
They don’t ultimately care if 45/47’s behavior comports with their notions of godliness. Even if he believes nothing that the NAR stands for, he is their water boy. They say that God is using this far-less-than-perfect man for God’s ultimate purpose.
To manage these theological gymnastics, they compare him to King Cyrus, a Persian king who overtook Babylon in the Sixth Century BCE. At the time, the Jews were captives in Babylon, and although Cyrus was not a Jew, he freed them and allowed them to return to Israel and build the temple in Jerusalem.
If 45/47 with his moral and legal corruption is said to be used by God, why couldn’t that claim be made of some other leader? For the hard Right who saw church-going Biden as a terrible president, why couldn’t he have been an instrument of God’s plan?
Does the Cyrus Defense only work when the NAR says it does?