What is the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), and is it Heretical?
I had been working on what I like to call “the dominion mandate” since the mid-1990s.
This required a radical paradigm shift for me because previously I did not consider becoming involved with society as a God-given assignment for the church. But once I shifted, I began my usual modus operandi of researching and teaching the related issues and finally organizing my thoughts in a book. As I was writing the book, I was aware that not all of my friends, even those who joined me in the charismatically-inclined evangelical stream, would agree with all the conclusions I was reaching. I expected the book to stimulate some creative tensions and fruitful dialogs, which would help us all hear better what God was saying to the churches today.
Underestimating Opposition
I now see that I severely underestimated the degree of opposition that had already developed in certain circles against the dominion mandate. In fact, I am embarrassed to admit that a network of Christian apologists had been opposing what they called “dominionism” for some time, and when I wrote my book, Dominion!, I had not yet even heard the term nor read what they were writing. What were they saying?
Let me just cherry-pick from the Internet some of their descriptive phrases relating to dominionism: a “dangerous political movement,” “religious extremism,” “a betrayal of the political and social mores of our society,” “hate mongering,” “bizarre ideas of a handful of Christian Right players,” “aberration of true Christian theology,” “heresy,” “Christian imperialism,” just for starters.
The more I have read and analyzed this material, the more convinced I have become that fear is one of the principal driving elements underlying the sincere opposition by some to dominionism. While there are many other specific objects of fear pinpointed in the literature, most all of them can be summarized in the fear that dominionism will lead to a theocracy. Oddly enough, I am as apprehensive of a theocracy as they are, and I will explain this shortly.
The Resurrection of Interest
A flurry of public interest surfaced in mid-2011 when Governor Rick Perry announced as a candidate for the Republican nomination for President. Some of his opponents found ways of associating him with dominionism, and the Internet lit up with animated discussions of the matter for around three months. Time magazine ran a cover story on Governor Perry, accompanied by an article, “In God We Trust: Few in number, dominionists believe the Bible should govern society.” The article says:
What is new in the 2012 race is the emergence of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which was named by C. Peter Wagner, a Colorado Springs-based minister who writes books with titles like Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World and believes the world is in the grip of evil…The NAR’s mission: to achieve dominion over the darkness through Christian activism in politics and beyond.[1]
In essence, the article states our purpose quite accurately. Please allow me to say it in my own words:
A Foundation for Our Mandate
I have written Dominion! to provide a biblical, theological, and strategic foundation in order to help undergird the urgent mandate of God for the church to actively engage in transforming society. As I have said, this is a relatively new paradigm for most of us, both in the nuclear church and in the extended church of the workplace. In order to get the big picture, I will try to pull together many important conceptual threads such as the biblical government of the church (i.e., apostles and prophets), dominion or kingdom theology, an open view of God, the church in the workplace, the great transfer of wealth, and other related themes.
My basic premise is that God’s kingdom should come and that His will should be done here on earth as it is in heaven. This is clearly a Christian principle because these are the very words that Jesus taught His disciples to pray every day in the Lord’s Prayer. What would this look like? Every segment of the society in which we live would be permeated with the peace and justice and prosperity and health and righteousness and joy and harmony and love and freedom that characterize God’s original design for human life. All earthly societies, including our own U.S., would be happier and more fulfilled with these qualities of life fully realized than without them. With this, you can see why my book’s title is Dominion! While all committed Christians will embrace these values, Christians are not the only ones who do so. Many non-Christians also agree that the societies in which we live should move in the direction I have just described, and they also want to participate personally in such a transformation.
Obviously, right now we all find ourselves on earth—not yet in heaven. Consequently, we must follow certain earthly rules if we are going to change our society for the good. A starting point is to recognize what many of us have been calling the “Seven Mountains,” which are the supreme molders of culture: Religion, Family, Education, Media, Government, Arts & Entertainment, and Business. For a given society to change, each one of the Seven Mountains needs to be influenced or “dominated” by persons of goodwill, whether Christians or non-Christians. This is a positive way of looking at dominionism.
My hope is that those who agree with God’s ideal for human life will be those who find themselves, at the end of the day, in positions of influence over society, whether it be within cities or states or nations or other territories and people groups. The biblical ideology underlying this vision is called “dominion theology,” which I explain in some detail in my book.
Not A Theocracy!
As I mentioned earlier, the overriding fear on the part of those who oppose dominionism is that it might end up advocating a theocracy. For example, the Religious Freedom Coalition produced a paper with the apprehensive title, “Could There Be a Theocracy in America’s Future?”[2] Though well-researched, the paper draws the questionable conclusion that dominion theology threatens to open the door I have just described, leading to a much-dreaded theocracy in our country.
I would reject not only a theocracy, but even more so an imagined “ecclesiocracy” in which the church would rule. The church is instructed not to go in this direction by Romans 13:1-4. Referring to the government of the Roman Empire, Paul wrote: “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God” (Rom. 13:1). Returning for a moment to the “Seven Mountain Template,” the church, as an organized body, should recognize that its activities and influence operate in the Religion Mountain, not in any of the other six. Civil government should be seen as a function of the Government Mountain, and the two should not be confused.
None of this detracts from the central thesis of this book that God’s plan is for His kingdom to come to earth as it is in heaven right in the here and now. This means that kingdom-minded and kingdom-motivated individuals in all seven of the mountains must strive toward influencing and taking dominion of whatever sphere of society God has assigned them. When this is applied to the Government Mountain, it means that God’s people with high biblical standards should seek to occupy the highest possible government offices within whatever form of government they find themselves. This is biblical dominionism, but not theocracy.
Notes
Jon Mecham, “In God We Trust: Few in number, dominionists believe the Bible should govern society,” Time, September 26, 2011, 38.
See http://www.tylwythteg.com/enemies/reconstruct3.html.
