“You do not attack the enemy — you attack the enemy’s strategy,” and the strategy of the Christian right “has always been to master the tools of electoral democracy in order to erode and to end it.” That advice, quoting Sun Tzu, came from Frederick Clarkson, a senior researcher at Political Research Associates (and Salon contributor), in a recent webinar, "The New Apostolic Reformation and the Threat to Democracy In Pennsylvania."
Unlike earlier incarnations of the Christian right, the explicit goal of the widely-discussed but little-understood NAR is to install theocracy with a democratic facade, approximately on the Iranian model. They call it “theonomy.” The movement is led by mutually recognized “apostles” and “prophets” who purport to receive direct guidance from God and see themselves engaged in spiritual warfare — literally, as in fighting actual demons — to gain dominion over the “seven mountains of culture”: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business and government. As in Iran, they wouldn’t just control government but every aspect of society, but would still call it democracy and claim, in the face of America’s "Godless Constitution," that this was what the founders wanted all along. It’s gaslighting in the name of God.
