Less than a week after the 2020 presidential election, Dutch Sheets, a leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, a rapidly growing far-right charismatic Christian movement led by self-described prophetic apostles, wrote in his daily prayer and decree that God would not allow the election to be stolen from former president Donald Trump.   

“We ask You to give very wise strategy to the legal teams of our President, we ask You to get the cases to the appropriate judges, and we ask You that when the Supreme Court becomes involved, they will rule righteously,” he wrote in his daily Give Him 15 prayer, a campaign asking followers to devote 15 minutes of daily prayer as a “continual appeal to heaven.” 

A week later, Sheets led a national prayer gathering near the headwaters of the Allegheny River in Potter County, in north-central Pennsylvania, calling for the election to be overturned. 

In the lead up to the event, which was inspired by a series of dreams Sheets had involving Trump, Asian carp and a football with the word “triumph” written on it, Sheets asked “that thousands of intercessors and concerned believers” participate and pray for a “national breakthrough” in Pennsylvania, then at the center of multiple unfounded claims related to voter fraud that cost Trump the presidency.

“All we want is a fair election,” Sheets, who has been described as “a one-man Trump propaganda machine,” said at the three-hour event. “If he didn’t win, so be it, but we demand legal votes to be counted and illegal votes not to be counted in the name of Jesus.” Earlier that day, Sheets asked his followers to pray to God that he “overthrow those today who have considered themselves wiser than You, rejecting and covering up all the fraud.”

Related: What is the New Apostolic Reformation? How a Religio-Political Movement is Affecting U.S. and Appalachian Politics

Since then, NAR ideology promoted by Sheets and other apostles and charismatic prophets, has been linked to far right politics and anti-government action, including the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. In June, the Southern Poverty Legal Center, in its annual report on hate and extremism, wrote that NAR may be the most successful effort to deliver Christian supremacy to mainstream society while “wreaking havoc on local communities and our democracy.” 

Though NAR leaders helped stoke a failed election denial campaign with Appalachia as a spiritual center, the same rhetoric — steeped in a call to arms for followers to engage in “spiritual warfare” — is fueling increased action and mobilization in the region this year. Once again, there are “prophetic summits,” revivals and prayer gatherings asking God to intervene in the 2024 election. As its ideas are increasingly embraced by far-right political and extremist groups, some fear the movement could spark even more political violence than it did four years ago. 

‘The Tip of the Tip of the Spear’

The NAR, along with associated prophets and apostles, is “the tip of the tip of the spear of Christian Trumpism,” according to Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, Maryland, and the author of the forthcoming book The Violent Take it By Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy.

“They were the most forward-leaning Christian leaders making a positive case for Donald Trump,” Taylor said. “What that did was it unlocked the door for the rest of their cohort of independent charismatic celebrities and pastors to jump into right-wing politics full force.”

These charismatic faith leaders vary in reach. Charlie Shamp, a prophet based in rural northwestern North Carolina has more than 250,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram. 

Prior to the 2020 election, Shamp predicted Trump would win. 

“The door of abundance stands before us and God will shut out the past for good,” Shamp posted on Facebook. “Our access code to greatness will not be hacked by the enemy.”

After the election, Shamp stood by his prophecy, pushing election denial claims, even a year later on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

“Today on 9/11 I would like to remind everyone that President Trump won the Election in 2020,” Shamp wrote. “And when he serves his second term everyone will know who the real prophets are in America.”

Shamp’s posts and prophecies are widely shared online by followers like Tami Barthen, a Pennsylvania woman. Last year, The Atlantic profiled Barthen, reporting on her effort to transform the 350-acre property where she and her husband live in western Pennsylvania, 90 miles north of Pittsburgh, into a training center devoted to the Seven Mountains Mandate, a Dominionist movement closely related to NAR that aims to take control of all seven spheres or pillars of society and culture — government, media, arts and entertainment, business, education, religion and family. Dominionism is based on a passage from the Old Testament book of Genesis, which some Christians believe gives them a divine mandate to impose their vision, or “dominion,” on the world.

Barthen also frequently posts videos of herself on Facebook reciting Sheets’s daily prayers and decrees.

In Barthen’s videos, which are filmed in the morning on her deck overlooking the Allegheny River in Franklin, Barthen wears a red Trump cap and reads Sheets’s prayers and decrees aloud from her smartphone. She stands alongside an American flag and cross planted in a pink flower pot. An “Appeal to Heaven” flag, made popular by Sheets and considered a symbol of white Christian nationalism carried by protestors on January 6, is pinned to her deck’s railing. Sometimes her two large dogs, Grace and Revelation, Revi for short, wander into the frame. 

In one recent video Barthen called for the “government to be cleansed of corruption,” the country to be “cleansed of demonic influence” and children to be saved from teachers “who want to mutilate them and steal their future.” In another, she asked that God’s will be released upon America and that God assign angels to protect “our leaders,” specifically Trump, who had recently been wounded by a gunman in a failed assassination attempt at a rally in nearby Butler.

“We pray especially for Trump and leading conservative voices, whom we know Satan would love to destroy,” she read. “Foil every plan. And send true revival to them. We ask that the coming shaking will end with revival in Washington.”

In response to a request for comment regarding the political influence the prophetic and apostolic movement is having in Appalachia, Barthen said in an email she dislikes politics and religion. Instead, she puts her faith in government and the Bible. 

“I do believe the prophetic and apostolic movement is God speaking,” Barthen said. “When God speaks, people hear and respond accordingly…things on earth change, the Bible is full of stories and examples of this.”

The message and rhetoric of NAR prophets and apostles like Sheets and Shamp are similar: demonic forces are at play in government, and spiritual warfare, a “ground-level” strategy often involving regional prayer gatherings and revivals, is necessary to stamp those out.

Since Trump’s defeat in 2020, NAR theology has not only fueled election denial campaigns and the January 6 insurrection: its influence can be seen in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced in state legislatures across Appalachia and the rest of the country. 

According to the ACLU’s legislation tracking map, 33 bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community were introduced in West Virginia this legislative session. Other bills related to the display of “In God We Trust” and the Ten Commandments in classrooms, and the teaching of alternative theories to evolution were also introduced this year in the state. In Kentucky, lawmakers introduced 14 bills identified as anti-LGBTQ+ by the ACLU. In Tennessee, 40 bills were introduced, one of the highest totals in the U.S.

Last summer, Sheets celebrated the more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in states across the nation.

Many of the bills were defeated, but this year, 13 were signed into law in Tennessee where religious and elected leaders with ties to NAR and Christian nationalism have led protests against drag performances and pushed for book bans in the state’s Appalachian counties. 

An Appeal to Heaven

In the lead up to January 6, a series of “Jericho Marches” organized by one NAR apostle to challenge the results of the election were held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital. 

Attendees chanted “stop the steal” and prayed as they marched around state government offices. Doug Mastriano, a state senator and former gubernatorial candidate who’s considered one of NAR’s most well-known political allies, attended two of the rallies in 2020 and later paid for six buses for his supporters to travel to Washington D.C. on January 6, the New Yorker reported. 

Jericho Marches were also held in Washington D.C. before January 6 and featured speakers like retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, who served as National Security Adviser for less than a month during the Trump Administration and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. During Flynn’s Jericho March speech in December 2020, where Flynn talked about how evil and corruption pervaded the “deep state” and recited the Lord’s prayer, Trump flew over the crowd in Marine One. Trump’s spiritual adviser during his administration, Paula White-Cain, is closely connected with NAR. 

Following the insurrection, Flynn launched his nationwide ReAwaken America tour, which has been described as a “pep rally on spiritual steroids” where NAR prophets, QAnon supporters and outspoken Trump supporters come together to promote conspiracies about the 2020 election, the COVID pandemic and other anti-government ideology. And they’re still at it: the next stop on the tour is scheduled for October in North Carolina.

“It’s the smorgasbord of far-right conspiracy theory cultures,” Taylor said. 

Late last year, Flynn backed the election effort of former West Virginia delegate Derrick Evans who pleaded guilty to charges related to his actions during the insurrection, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported. Evans was seeking to represent West Virginia’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lost in the May Republican primary.   

In November, MOVCAC an Ohio-based advocacy organization that raises money for people incarcerated as a result of the insurrection and calls for the restoration of election integrity through the use of paper ballots, blue ball point pens and hand tabulation, advertised an event with Evans at Freedom Gate Church, a church in Marietta, Ohio with ties to NAR prophets like Sheets. 

Militias and other extremist groups like the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys, who espouse “western chauvinism,” are also embracing NAR theology.

“They’re adding this dimension, or this layer, of spiritual warfare ideology to their existing far right ideology,” Taylor said. “So suddenly, it becomes not just about western chauvinism, it becomes about spiritual warfare and casting out the demons that have filled the government or the Democratic party.”

The ideology behind the unfounded claims that fueled the election denial campaigns of 2020 — those pushed by Mastriano, Sheets, Shamp, Flynn and others affiliated with NAR — have only grown stronger, posing an even greater threat to democratic processes in 2024.

Earlier this year, Shamp asked his followers on Facebook to, “Embrace your identity as a warrior for Christ, ready to engage in spiritual warfare with courage, wisdom, and unwavering faith. Heed this prophetic warning and prepare yourself for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.”

Other religious leaders and organizations in Appalachia appear to be heeding Shamp’s call. 

Freedom Gate promoted a “prophetic summit” in Ohio, where Sheets spoke. Another church in East Tennessee held a “prophetic summit” earlier this year with Lance Wallnau, another prominent NAR leader and promoter of the Seven Mountains Mandate. This fall, the church, which is led by Perry Stone, will also host Wallnau at an “Awaken America” rally. This month, Wallnau will be in western Pennsylvania for a stop on The Courage Tour, a seven-state swing “marking the dawn of our nation’s Third Great Awakening.”

Another church in western Pennsylvania, Church at the Heights, is scheduled to host a stop on TPUSA Faith’s “Clear Truth Conference” tour. Turning Point USA, an Arizona-based conservative student organization founded by Charlie Kirk with ties to the Trump campaign, has also teamed up with Wallnau to recruit swing-state pastors to boost voter turnout in support of conservative candidates. 

A few months ago, the church started organizing followers to pray for God to intervene in this year’s election. This summer they’ve been meeting once a month, but as the election draws closer, they’ll begin meeting weekly. 

The church did not respond to a request for comment. 

“The fact that a third of the country believes the 2020 election was stolen, that is the seedbed for civil war, for revolution, for an insurgency campaign, for another January 6, because all those people feel like they are mainstream,” Taylor said. “They feel like their vision and their understanding of that history is grounded in something, even though factually, it’s not. And that’s a very, very potent and dangerous mix.”

Barthen said she has “compassion for people living in fear,” when asked how she would respond to critics concerned that the apostolic and prophetic movement threatened democracy. She shared personal photographs she said were taken near the Capitol on January 6, 2021 around the time protestors stormed the building.

“My pictures show nothing to be afraid of,” she said. “Everyone should research and validate what they believe.”

In December 2020, at another rally Sheets organized in Pittsburgh, one NAR prophet said “the minuteman of the Kingdom of God” were rising up and called for them to unveil the “the fraud, the corruption, the infiltration of evil” in “battleground states” like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.

And while what happened on January 6, 2021 proved to be “a bumbling, uncoordinated attempt at a coup orchestrated at a distance by Donald Trump,” according to Taylor, it’s no longer uncoordinated and incompetent, he said. “In fact, they’re quite well integrated into each other and into the infrastructure of the far right and of right wing politics of today.”    

An example of this is the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, promoted by Sheets and flown by protestors during the insurrection, has been embraced by powerful figures. It’s displayed outside the office of U.S. Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and has been flown outside a vacation home owned by U.S. State Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The flag has also been flown by North Carolina State Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby.

Taylor fears this “asymmetric polarization” could result in political violence if left unchecked. He said, “The sentiment in these groups is very much, ‘They stole the last election from us and we’re not gonna let them do it again’.”