This Is Insanity
Episode Ten: "Charismatic Revival Fury" with Matthew D. Taylor
In the 1950 movie “Harvey,” an adult man has an imaginary friend who happens to be a 6 foot, three and a half inch rabbit. Harvey is, of course, the hallucination of a man who drinks too much, but we accept this vision in the spirit of whimsy. The trailer frames it as “a warm-hearted tale that proves there’s no power like the power of imagination.”
In the 1970s, a real-life man named David Berkowitz murdered six people in New York City, claiming that a demon-possessed dog instructed him to do so. He’s been incarcerated since 1978, but has since found God. In 1999 Spike Lee made a movie about him.
After our conversation with Dr. Matthew Taylor, religion scholar and host of the podcast “Charismatic Revival Fury,” I’ve been thinking a lot about where religious adherents, particularly of the New Apostolic Reformation which claims millions of followers around the world, fit into all this. What kind of movie are they playing out?
NAR is a loose network of independent congregations untethered by the dogmas of traditional denominations and many of their leaders, or self-anointed “apostles,” make claims so outlandish you wonder how anyone in their right mind would believe them. Not surprisingly, the movement has found especially fecund soil here in America, where it all began.
Never heard of the New Apostolic Reformation? You need to, because its membership and belief system – as crazy as it will sound to you – lives in the halls of Congress and local governments. And the acceptance of this religious movement, invented only a couple of decades ago, is metastasizing not just here but around the world.
As David says, “It sounds like these people have played way too many video games.” At one point in the conversation, Christina falls silent in utter exasperation.
This belief system would be comical if it weren’t so dangerous. It led directly to the J6 attack on the Capital that left at least seven dead and our republic shaken to his core.
As a society we’ve decided to accept a certain level of irrationality in the name of religious tolerance. A young girl gets pregnant, claims it was God’s doing? (Okay.) Absolute certainty that if one doesn’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior they’re going to an actual place called Hell. (Okay, but...) That there's a territorial spirit named the Queen of Heaven who lives in a castle atop Mount Everest and in order for Christian world dominance to be achieved she needs to be dethroned, and so a self-proclaimed apostle and his wife go to Mount Everest and return claiming to have prayed her to death. (WTF?!)
There’s a fine line between harmless, deeply held religious belief, and certifiable madness. At the top of this episode, you will hear an audio clip by a Florida pastor, Donald Lynch, who uses violent language from the Gospel to call for Joe Biden’s beheading. As Dr. Taylor points out, “they walk right up to that line. But they definitely know where the line is in order to be protected by the First Amendment.”
At what point do we, as a society, feel impelled to call out insanity? At what point do we recognize religious fervor to be no longer a harmless indulgence of the imagination but an actual threat to our bodies?
In real life, NAR’s worldview bears less resemblance to the whimsical “Harvey” and more like the horror of “Summer of Sam.” If you thought January 6th was nuts, brace yourself for the sequel, coming November 5, 2024. It’s going to be crazy.
The Follow-up
Listen to ”Charismatic Revival Fury”
Learn more about Matt Taylor’s work at Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies
Check out Matt’s latest book, “Scripture People”
”The New Apostolic Reformation drove the January 6 riots, so why was it overlooked by the House Select Committee?” Baptist News, Rick Pidcock, 1/10/23
Loren Cunningham describes the Seven Mountains Mandate
Who is Sean Feucht
Stops along the NAR media landscape:
This is Flashpoint. Don’t look directly at this webpage. You might go blind.
“Give Him 15”
God.tv
Charisma Magazine
”Prophet” Cindy Jacobs claims to have cured a woman’s insanity…remotely.
“New ‘prophet’ on the campaign trail with Doug Mastriano is a prayer-coin salesman who calls Biden the ‘antichrist’” by William Bender, Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/20/22
“Operation Ice Castle” Spiritual Warfare Documentary by Ana Mendez Ferrell
Texas abandons ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center) the multi-state bi-partisan voting list program.