The Apostles of Power – How the Faith Office in Washington Became a Gateway for Christian Extremism - Confront It Like the Ku Klux Klan

Some movements do not arrive with marching bands, but with prayer. Quiet, ghostly, organized. The so-called New Apostolic Reformation - or NAR - is such a movement. Not a church denomination, not a traditional sect, but a loose yet ideologically rigid network of ultra-conservative Christian nationalists who feel called to rule the country. Not in a figurative sense, but in a literal political one. Since January 6, 2021, it has been clear that this movement is not on the fringes. It stood at the edge of the Capitol. Dutch Sheets, one of its most prominent voices, publicly called for spiritual warfare, blessed Donald Trump, and declared him a leader sent by God. Just weeks earlier, he had access to the White House - not as a critic, but as an invited guest. Sheets is not an isolated case. He taught at Christ For the Nations Institute (CFNI) in Dallas, a theological training institution whose ranks have repeatedly produced figures with NAR ties - preachers, missionaries, political activists. The school stands ideologically for the dominionist “Seven Mountains Mandate,” according to which Christians are to reclaim all societal power structures - from the judiciary to the media to the government.

The gateway into politics is the so-called Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Office - or Faith Office - in Washington. Originally a space for religious diversity and civic engagement, it was transformed under Donald Trump into an ideological command center for evangelical power ambitions. Trump’s personal pastor, Paula White - herself closely tied to NAR - took over leadership in 2019. Since then, the agenda has no longer been pluralistic pastoral care, but power-political absolutism: prayer gatherings in government buildings, blessings of laws, direct influence on political decisions - all in the name of an exclusively Christian vision of America. By 2025, this transformation is complete. Under Trump’s second presidency, the Faith Office has not been reformed but radicalized. Networks such as Intercessors for America, The Call, One Voice, or Dutch Sheets Ministries are back at the levers of power - with access to cabinet members, draft legislation, and communications teams. The office now serves less to promote faith and more as the central coordination point for religious loyalty to the MAGA agenda.

The ideological overlap between NAR and Trumpism is now complete: both reject secular structures, both claim a pre-political sense of mission, both see dissenters - whether liberal, queer, secular, or Muslim - as threats to the supposedly divine national body. The readiness for violence that grows from this mindset became apparent in the case of Vance Boelter - a former CFNI graduate who, in June 2025, attacked two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, killing one of them and her husband. Boelter evidently saw himself as the moral executor of a divine mission, dressed in a police uniform and carried a list of additional targets. What may seem like madness to outsiders forms a coherent system in the context of this theology: Christians are called to “reclaim” lost societies - if necessary, through violent prayer, as Boelter’s own words put it. That his sermons contained terms like “enemy,” “impurity,” and “divine order” is no coincidence - but an expression of a worldview in which democracy is secondary and dissent is sin.

This development is not limited to the United States. In Europe, too, ties between right-wing parties and charismatic groups that view political rule as a spiritual mandate are growing. The idea that a country must be “taken back” - culturally, religiously, demographically - connects Christian nationalists in the United States with far-right radicals in Germany, Poland, and Hungary. In this logic, the sovereign is no longer the people, but God - and his supposed messengers on Earth claim to speak in his name. We remember the images from April 22, 2025, when dozens of evangelical leaders laid hands on Trump in the Faith Office - not kneeling, but standing, confident, determined. This scene defied every norm of political culture. It was no longer prayer - it was coronation. It was not the president asking for guidance, but religious leaders declaring him the incarnation of their vision. Anyone who mocks these images fails to grasp their message: democracy has found a rival. Not from the outside, but from within - through a religiously cloaked sense of mission that needs no violence to be dangerous. What the United States is currently experiencing is not a mere culture war. It is a creeping constitutional rupture in the name of God. And the Faith Office, once intended as a bridge between faith and society, has become the command deck of a new order - devout, authoritarian, unholy.

How do you fight such a system? Not through silence, not through adaptation. But through exposure, public scrutiny, and fearless analysis. It must be named like other extremist networks - as an organized subversion of democratic principles. As if they were the Ku Klux Klan or Scientology, only with Bibles and government badges. Those who stand against it need backbone, patience - and no fear. Because bridges like this do not collapse on their own. They must be exposed. And the risk must be taken to cross them - not for faith, but for democracy.