Rededicate 250 Is the NAR's Crowning Achievement
A guide to the movement behind today's White House-sponsored Christian nationalist festival on the National Mall
As I write this, I’m watching the livestream of the Rededicate 250 event on the National Mall. I already wrote a previous post giving a basic orientation to this Christian nationalist Lollapalooza event and its backdrop. But there’s a crucial context I’ve found hard to convey in any media interview: the significance of Rededicate 250 for the ideological Christian movement that laid the foundation for it — the New Apostolic Reformation. So here’s a deeper dive on how the NAR set the stage (quite literally) for this landmark event and what it signifies in their Christian supremacist vision for America.
What is the New Apostolic Reformation?
If you really want to understand the movement behind this event, I’d recommend my podcast documentary series “Charismatic Revival Fury“ or my book The Violent Take It by Force. But here’s the brief version.
The New Apostolic Reformation is a theological movement and leadership network created in the 1990s by Fuller Theological Seminary professor C. Peter Wagner. Wagner had become convinced that the world was on the cusp of a great End Times Christian revival to be led by modern-day apostles and prophets. He gathered around himself a group of entrepreneurial mentees — Cindy Jacobs, Ché Ahn, Lance Wallnau, Chuck Pierce, Robert Henderson, Harry Jackson, Lou Engle, Dutch Sheets, and others — all of whom identified as apostles, prophets, or both. Hundreds of other charismatic (think: Pentecostal) pastors and leaders joined Wagner’s networks, embracing the NAR vision.
Wagner and his circle had a deep antipathy to denominations and conventional church structures, so they organized not through institutions but through relational mentoring networks with names like the “Eagles Vision Apostolic Team” or the “Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders.” There are no membership cards, no central organization — just a lateral web of relationships among their spiritual oligarchy.
The NAR has three core ideological markers:
The Leadership of Apostles and Prophets — They believe God is restoring the early church offices of apostle and prophet, whose authority supersedes that of conventional church leadership.
Strategic-level Spiritual Warfare — Wagner and his fellows believe a hierarchy of demons holds sway over the world, including high-level “territorial spirits” that control literal physical territory. NAR apostles and prophets see themselves as spiritual warfare generals who can discern demonic strategy and counter it by mobilizing Christians.
The Seven Mountain Mandate — A prophecy that envisions every society as having seven distinct spheres of authority: government, family, education, religion, arts and entertainment, media, and business. The “mandate” is for Christians to seize authority (“take dominion” in NAR lingo) over each of these mountains and restructure society accordingly.
Though influential in nondenominational charismatic circles, the NAR was relatively obscure for its first two decades. But, when Donald Trump entered presidential politics, they were among the first to embrace his candidacy, offering prophecies and biblical reframings that cast Trump as a secular messiah anointed by God to save put conservative Christians in power over America. Because of Paula White-Cain — Trump’s spiritual adviser, director of the White House Faith Office, self-described charismatic apostle, and one of the main organizers of Rededicate 250 — NAR leaders have populated his evangelical advisory circles and provided some of the most potent messaging used to sell Trump to evangelical voters.
Decades in the Making
One of the distinctive NAR manifestations, going back to the late 1990s, has been massive charismatic prayer-and-worship gatherings on the National Mall. The first was The Call DC in September 2000, led by NAR prophet Lou Engle (a featured speaker at Rededicate 250 today). Engle turned The Call into a roadshow, staging similar events around the country for years.
These gatherings have tended to coincide with national elections and share a recognizable formula: upbeat evangelical worship music, prayer and repentance sessions, expressions of charismatic fervor (including shofar-blowing, which NAR believers regard as a weapon of spiritual warfare), Christian nationalist exhortations, mythologized narrations of American history, and NAR apostles and prophets leading from the stage.
This lineage also runs through the Jericho March in December 2020 — a major event in the lead-up to January 6th, led in part by NAR prophets Cindy Jacobs and Lance Wallnau. From the NAR perspective, January 6th itself was part of this sequence of mass gatherings aimed at changing the spiritual destiny of the United States. The most recent major gathering was the Million Women March (also called the Esther March) in October 2024 — tens of thousands of people praying for Trump’s election victory and in support of Israel, even as the far-right government of Israel was then decimating Gaza.
So Rededicate 250 fits squarely within this genre. What’s new is not masses of Christians and politicians on the Mall promoting Christian nationalist narratives — what’s new is that this NAR-style event is organized and sponsored in part by the White House. That has long been their ambition: to have these narratives endorsed not just by churches and religious nonprofits, but by the federal government itself. Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth are all participating today in-person or by recorded video message.
The NAR’s Numerology and Old Testament Parallels
Reporters often ask me, “What is the NAR’s policy agenda?” and I try to answer, but that’s not quite how the NAR leaders think. These are apostles and prophets — charismatic personalities who see themselves as ushering in a global revival. They don’t write think-tank policy white papers.
What they do is invest enormous symbolic meaning in time and space and imagine themselves as divinely appointed actors to change history. They believe the National Mall is the spiritual center of the nation, a piece of geography that must be claimed through spiritual warfare. That is what these gatherings are: a planting of a flag, a territorial claim on the symbolic landscape of American power.
The NAR theological imagination centers on narratives and images from the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). They aim to bring the US into alignment as a theocratic covenant nation, dedicated to God the way that ancient Israel was. They have compared Trump to numerous Old Testament kings, and today’s ceremony has been replete with references to moments of dedication and rededication in the narratives of biblical Israel.
They’re also deeply into numerology. Rededicate 250 is labeled a “jubilee” — a reference to the Old Testament instruction for Israel to hold a national reset every 50 years. It’s no accident that this jubilee event falls on America’s 250th anniversary (i.e., its fifth jubilee). Nor is it accidental that today, May 17, 2026, is the exact 250th anniversary of a “Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer” declared by the Continental Congress on May 17, 1776. In the NAR’s symbolic reading of history, this date operates as a spiritual anchor — a covenant renewed through today’s rededication. The will almost certainly refer back to this day as a pivot point for decades to come.
What It All Means to Them
Today is a day NAR leaders have fantasized about since at least the turn of the millennium: a formal ceremony of reconsecration for the United States, with the White House’s stamp of approval. Several NAR leaders are on the program — Lou Engle, Dutch Sheets, Guillermo Maldonado, Alveda King — and many others are present for the festivities.
From their point of view, today is of incalculable spiritual significance. Speaking from the Rededicate stage today, Lou Engle called it a “hinge of history moment.” For nearly 30 years they have been trying to enshrine certain narratives of American history and prophecies of American destiny. Today, high-ranking U.S. government officials are speaking NAR talking points from the National Mall.
The NAR seeks Christian supremacy in America — the elevation of Christianity as the de facto national religion and the privileging of Christians as first-class citizens, implicitly demoting everyone else. They have the direct support of the President, prominent members of Congress (Mike Johnson is a featured speaker today and flies an NAR-appropriated flag outside his congressional office), and they believe God has opened every door to them. They are convinced it is their destiny to take dominion over the American nation and defeat the demons they believe hold sway over every sector of society.
Today is the culmination of the NAR’s self-fulfilling prophecies — and it will only embolden them to pursue Christian supremacy full speed ahead.
Matthew, thank you so much for this, and all your analyses. I have your book, have ordered the next one, and am fast accumulating a whole library on Christian nationalism and related topics . However, I am still at a loss as to what in the world captivates so many people -- what is the psychology, what causes the lack of self-awareness, the utter abandonment of critical thinking, and apparent ignorance of the Jesus who operates by invitation and not coercion, who washes feet, takes the form of a slave, requires us to love one another as he has loved us. Some call what we are witnessing "mass psychosis." Others point to grievance politics, and loss of privilege. But, wow. I read as much as I can from Exvangelicals and other trusted voices (Robby Jones, Kristin DuMez, Brian Kaylor) and still can't make sense of it. I have read Alice Miller, and her "poisonous pedagogy," and Donald Capps on The Endangered Child and wonder if James Dobson and a whole system of stern child-rearing bears some of the blame. So before I go on and on . . . here's a request. At some point, could you help out someone like me, who was raised in a loving community, by loving parents who instilled a bedrock care for self and others, and who cannot fathom how so many are going so wildly astray. At the very least -- thanks for reading my rant! I value your efforts to make sense of these fraught times (p.s., By coincidence, I'm an alum of the E.I. at St. Mary's, PTS, and was a member of ICJS back in the 90s.)
Thank you. This information needs to be widely known, including its roots and developmental history, which you have uncovered both here and in "The Violent Take it By Force". The fact that now, our tax dollars are being used at the highest levels of our government makes it all the more important that people know about this. I have friends in the mainline denominations who have never heard of any of the NAR prophets and can hardly believe they are so influential, but they are. Thank you for your work.