For people concerned about insurrectionist elements of the Republican Party in the Trump era, this story may help sort out some of the paradoxes. For starters, how can a religion be anti-religion?
Here are a few excerpts from a story I recently published about the meaning of the bloody tee. And then what happened...
It is more than paradoxical that an ostensibly Christian university leader would say, “We are here to put a knife to the throat of religion.” But that’s what Apostle Greg Hood, the founder of Kingdom University in Franklin, Tennessee believes so heartily he emblazoned it on a KU t-shirt.
This is not a hoax. In fact, the bloody tee epitomizes the paradoxes of the New Apostolic Reformation—a movement that says it means to bust out of the “demonic prison” of religion, knives out. Religion is, of course, one of the seven mountains of culture that NAR seeks to conquer to achieve Christian dominion (the other six being government, family, education, business, media, and arts & entertainment). The rhetoric they employ when discussing how to do it can be violent, if not always t-shirt worthy. But understanding the paradox of religion killing religion helps us understand this campaign for a paradigmatic change in the direction of American and world Christianity.
There’s a certain tension in the NAR, between the metaphorical and the physical; the hyperbolic and the actual. But most often, these are not mutually exclusive.
They are unambiguous about seeking to remove “demonic obstacles” to the re-emergence of what, in their view, is the church as intended by Jesus. They call this first century-style church “the Ekklesia”—which is Greek for church. The demonic infrastructure impeding God’s intentions for the Ekklesia includes religious institutions; church offices and leaders; denominations; and, not only denominational doctrines, but even traditional prayers. (And, of course, everyone who doesn’t share their religious and political views.)
The apostles of the New Apostolic Reformation, like any other movement in history, comprise a range of views but when they discuss the “sin of religion” and “killing religion” they
...aren’t merely talking about ossified institutions, feckless leaders, stale ideas, empty rituals, or guardians of the status quo in various Christian denominations. And while the theological details can be fluid to say the least, they all involve some version of the Ekklesia taking political power or leading an End Times army (or both) along with a heavenly host of angels.
There is much more about all this in the story, but the reason I am posting this today is to highlight one practical policy implication — in North Carolina the state school voucher program is underwriting a private school that instructs children in 7 mountains dominionism.
Even as top apostles prime the pump for possible real-world violence, and encourage the Ekklesia to envision themselves as an End Times army, they are, paradoxically, also planning for the future governance of society. While it’s not uncommon for churches to sponsor Christian schools, at least one apostolic center, Impact Church International in Concord, North Carolina, not only hosts a KU campus, but also the K4-12 Daniel Christian Academy, which is explicitly devoted to teaching about the seven mountains of dominion.
Apostle and Pastor Donna Wise of Impact Church International claims in a 2022 post that too often the church, broadly speaking, is “concerned more with numbers and dollars rather than a powerful ‘Ekklesia’ whose purpose is to bring the will and rule of God into our nation.” The result, she says, is a “culture of darkness filling our religious assemblies, governments and schools.”
Justin Parmenter of the education blog Notes from the Chalkboard reports that
The Daniel Christian Academy is a private school in Concord, NC. This school has received public dollars through school vouchers every year since Republicans launched the controversial Opportunity Scholarship voucher program in 2014-15 for a grand total of $585,776.
Daniel Academy’s mission is to “raise the next generation of leaders who will transform the heart of our nation” by equipping students “to enter the Seven Mountains of Influence.”
Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church & State writes regarding the NC vouchers underwriting the teaching 7 Mountain theology to children that
"religious freedom... shouldn’t require the government to fund institutions whose views are inimical to the very democracy we seek to preserve."
Write on.