by Doug Scott, LCSW
A Note on Vocabulary
Before the essay begins, a short glossary. Several acronyms and specialized terms appear throughout this piece. Rather than defining them in passing and losing the thread, I am gathering them here so readers can refer back.
MAGA — Make America Great Again. The political movement organized around Donald Trump since 2016.
MAHA — Make America Healthy Again. The wellness-populist movement organized around Robert F. Kennedy Jr., currently operating through the Department of Health and Human Services. A coalition of vaccine skeptics, wellness influencers, anti-processed-food activists, and alternative-medicine proponents.
NAR — New Apostolic Reformation. A loosely organized network of charismatic and Pentecostal churches that emerged in the 1990s, coined as a term by C. Peter Wagner of Fuller Theological Seminary in 1994. NAR teaches that God is raising up present-day apostles and prophets who hold spiritual authority, and that Christians are called to dominate seven spheres of cultural influence (see Seven Mountains Mandate below). Paula White-Cain and Lance Wallnau are its most prominent current figures.
Seven Mountains Mandate (7MM) — The core NAR political theology, articulated in Lance Wallnau and Bill Johnson’s 2013 book Invading Babylon. Teaches that Christians must “invade” and dominate seven cultural spheres: government, media, education, arts and entertainment, business, family, and religion.
CREC — Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. A denomination of Reformed (Calvinist) Protestant churches founded in 1998 by pastor Doug Wilson in Moscow, Idaho. Now over 160 congregations globally. Influenced heavily by Christian Reconstructionism (see below). Pete Hegseth is a CREC member.
Christian Reconstructionism — A twentieth-century Reformed theological movement founded by R.J. Rushdoony that teaches biblical law should govern civil society. Often associated with “theonomy” (the rule of God’s law) and “dominionism” (the call for Christians to exercise dominion over all spheres of society). Doug Wilson’s CREC is strongly influenced by this tradition.
Christian Nationalism — A political-theological movement holding that America was founded as a Christian nation and should be governed as one. Distinct from Christian influence in public life generally; specifically rejects the principle of church-state separation and religious pluralism.
Catholic Integralism / Postliberalism — A Catholic intellectual movement arguing that liberalism has failed and must be replaced by a political order that integrates Catholic teaching with civil authority. Patrick Deneen (Notre Dame) and Adrian Vermeule (Harvard) are its leading figures. JD Vance is its most prominent political adherent.
Traditionalism (capital T) — An anti-modern philosophical-spiritual movement traceable to René Guénon (1886–1951) and Julius Evola (1898–1974). Not traditional religious conservatism. Teaches that history moves in cycles (the Hindu concept of the Kali Yuga, the dark age), that modernity is civilizational collapse, and that the cycle must turn before renewal can come. Steve Bannon is its American political operator.
Dispensationalism / Premillennial Dispensationalism — A nineteenth-century Protestant theological system developed by John Nelson Darby. Teaches that history is divided into distinct “dispensations” or eras, that Jewish return to the land of Israel is a prerequisite for Christ’s Second Coming, and that a series of end-times events (Rapture, Tribulation, Armageddon) will unfold in a specific sequence. Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) and the Left Behind novels popularized this system.
Christian Zionism (apocalyptic form) — The specific teaching, derived from dispensationalism, that Jewish sovereignty over biblical Israel — including eventual reconstruction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem — is a prerequisite for Christ’s return. John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI) is its largest institutional expression. Distinct from general Christian support for Israel on civilizational, strategic, or cultural grounds.
CUFI — Christians United for Israel. Founded by Pastor John Hagee in 2006. Claims more members than the entire American Jewish population. The institutional face of American apocalyptic Christian Zionism.
Cyrus Anointing — An NAR framing, popularized by Lance Wallnau, that casts Donald Trump as a modern-day King Cyrus. In Isaiah 45, God calls Cyrus the Persian king “anointed” despite his being a pagan, because God uses him instrumentally to free Israel from Babylon. This framing allows evangelicals to support a morally compromised political leader by casting him as a divine instrument rather than a personal exemplar.
Lo tissa — The Hebrew phrasing of the Third Commandment (Exodus 20:7), typically translated “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Richard Rohr reads this not as a prohibition against profanity but as a prohibition against using God’s name to justify one’s own agenda. This reading is central to how I understand the Great BASH.
Egregore — A term drawn from Western esoteric tradition (and recurrent in mystical Judaism, Sufism, and the Ra Material) for a thoughtform generated and sustained by collective human attention and participation. Not a metaphor. An actual subtle-energetic entity that gains coherence from what humans feed it and loses coherence when participation is withdrawn. The Great BASH, in this series, is an egregore of planetary scale.
Symbolon / Diabolon — From the Greek. Symbolon means “to throw together” — what unites, what integrates, what heals fragmentation. Diabolon means “to throw apart” — what divides, what fragments, what tears coherence. The BASH operates as diabolon wearing the costume of symbolon — tearing communities apart while claiming to unite them under God.
How I Came to This Question
It started for me this week with a single image. A graphic shared widely across social media, showing Paula White-Cain — President Trump’s longtime spiritual advisor and current Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office — standing next to Donald Trump with American flags behind them. White and yellow text ran across the bottom: “TO SAY NO TO PRESIDENT TRUMP WOULD BE SAYING NO TO GOD.” Headline above it: “One of Trump’s top advisors is doubling down on comparing Trump to God after Trump posted an image of himself as Jesus.”
I wanted to verify the quote, so I looked. It is real. Paula White-Cain said it in November 2019 during a livestreamed book signing for her memoir Something Greater. CNN reported it at the time. It has never been retracted.1 What happened this week was not a new statement. What happened was that after Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ on Orthodox Easter — an image he later deleted, claiming he thought it depicted him “as a doctor” — the old 2019 quote resurfaced as explanatory backdrop.2 The Jesus-image itself echoed remarks White-Cain had already made to Trump’s face at the White House Easter lunch on April 1, 2026: “Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us.”3
I found myself asking the question that has organized this entire series. When a president posts an image of himself as Jesus on Orthodox Easter, when his faith advisor compares his legal troubles to the Passion of Christ, when a defense secretary opens a Pentagon briefing on the Iran war with Psalm 144, when a vice president publicly criticizes a pope who prays for peace — something is being said theologically that is larger than any one of these men. Who is whispering to them? What are they being taught? And how do these teachings fit together?
What follows is the map I assembled.
Four Streams, One Coalition
The first thing to notice is that the people shaping this administration do not share a theology. They share an enemy.
The coalition runs on at least four distinct and doctrinally incompatible streams. The first is the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) — the charismatic-Pentecostal network described in the glossary. NAR teaches that present-day apostles and prophets receive direct revelation from God, that ordinary believers must place themselves under the “covering” of these apostles, and that Christians are called to dominate the Seven Mountains of cultural influence — government, media, education, arts and entertainment, business, family, and religion. Lance Wallnau is the movement’s leading prophetic strategist. Paula White-Cain is its White House conduit. Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI) supplies the institutional mass and the apocalyptic Israel theology.4 This stream gave Trump his original political theology in 2016: the Cyrus Anointing, the frame in which God uses a pagan king to accomplish divine purposes. It is how evangelicals learned to vote for a thrice-married casino owner.
The second stream is Reformed Christian Reconstructionism, concentrated in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) and associated with Doug Wilson of Moscow, Idaho. This is a very different theology from NAR — Calvinist rather than charismatic, rigorously patriarchal, influenced by R.J. Rushdoony’s teaching that biblical law should govern civil society. Where NAR speaks in the language of direct prophecy and spiritual warfare, CREC speaks in the language of covenant theology and classical Christian education. Wilson rejects dispensationalism and has said plainly, “I am no kind of Zionist.”5 Pete Hegseth belongs to a CREC church in Tennessee and has publicly thanked Wilson for his “mentorship.” Wilson delivered a sermon at one of Hegseth’s monthly Pentagon worship services. Russell Vought (Director of the Office of Management and Budget and principal author of Project 2025’s executive-power sections) operates in Wilson’s orbit as well.6
The third stream is Catholic Integralism and Postliberalism — a Catholic intellectual movement that rejects the liberal political order. Patrick Deneen at Notre Dame supplies the diagnostic vocabulary in Why Liberalism Failed (2018) and Regime Change (2023). Adrian Vermeule at Harvard Law drafts the legal architecture through what he calls “common good constitutionalism.” Peter Thiel — who describes himself as a “hardcore unreconstructed Girardian” — routes the mimetic theory of his former Stanford teacher René Girard (the French philosopher of desire and scapegoating) through Silicon Valley money. Curtis Yarvin (also writing as “Mencius Moldbug”) supplies the political tactician’s blueprint for dismantling what he calls the “Cathedral” — his term for the alliance of universities, legacy media, and the permanent civil service that he believes manufactures liberal consent. Vice President JD Vance has publicly credited Thiel and Girard for his 2019 conversion to Catholicism and is the living convergence of all four men’s thinking.7 The Vatican has publicly rebuked this entire stream. Cardinal Christophe Pierre identified Deneen and Vermeule by name as exponents of a position that conflicts with Catholic Social Teaching, warning that postliberalism “risks replacing liberal individualism with authoritarian communitarianism.”8
The fourth stream is Traditionalism in the specific capital-T sense (not ordinary conservative traditionalism). This is the anti-modern philosophy of René Guénon, Julius Evola, and, in Russia, Alexander Dugin. Steve Bannon is its American operator. Traditionalism is not Christian in any ordinary sense. It holds that history moves in cycles, that we are currently in the Kali Yuga (the Hindu concept of the dark age preceding a new golden age), and that modernity must be broken so the cycle can turn. Bannon’s populist twist on the original elitist Traditionalism is to locate the new age’s heroes in the American working class rather than in a warrior-aristocratic caste.9
These streams would have anathematized each other in prior centuries. Reformed Protestants and Catholic integralists spent the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries killing each other’s communities. Traditionalism rejects the Christian claim to exclusive revelation. The Pentecostal spiritual warfare framework of NAR would strike a CREC elder as borderline heretical. Vermeule’s Catholic integralism is incompatible with Wilson’s Reformed theocracy. What holds the coalition together is not shared faith. It is a shared opponent: liberal pluralist modernity, called by different names in each stream — secularism (Wilson), the failed liberal order (Deneen), the Cathedral (Yarvin), the Antichrist system (Thiel), the Kali Yuga (Bannon), Babylon (Wallnau), the demonic network (White-Cain).
Add to these the MAHA stream — RFK Jr.’s residual Catholic-Jungian recovery spirituality fused with the wellness populism of Calley and Casey Means — and the Hindu cultural identity of FBI Director Kash Patel, and you have a coalition that is theologically unintelligible as a unity. It is intelligible only as a set of forces converging against a common adversary.
The Christian Zionist Fault Line
One line cuts unevenly across these streams: Christian Zionism in the apocalyptic sense. This is the specific teaching that the state of Israel’s territorial dominance — including the eventual reconstruction of a Third Temple on the site currently occupied by the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock — is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Christ. The teaching comes from premillennial dispensationalism (see glossary). Pastor John Hagee’s CUFI is its largest institutional expression. This is what distinguishes apocalyptic Christian Zionism from ordinary Christian support for Israel. Ordinary support can be based on civilizational solidarity, on remorse for Christian antisemitism, on democratic-ally sentiment, or on covenantal theology. The apocalyptic version is different. It requires Israeli territorial expansion and temple reconstruction because the end times cannot begin without them.10
In this theology, suffering is not a tragic byproduct of policy. Suffering is the prophetic mechanism. Two-thirds of Jews dying in the Tribulation is not a horror to prevent but a timeline to fulfill. This is the theological move Palestinian Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac, writing from Bethlehem, calls “a theology of war, of violence” — a theology that replaces the Sermon on the Mount’s “Blessed are the peacemakers” with an apocalyptic welcoming of catastrophe.
This eschatology is distributed in the coalition almost exactly where it can do the most operational damage. Pete Hegseth, speaking in Jerusalem in 2018, said: “There’s no reason why the miracle of the reestablishment of the temple on the Temple Mount is not possible.”11 This is calling for the removal of Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock and their replacement with a Jewish temple — the precise dispensationalist prerequisite for Armageddon. Mike Huckabee (now U.S. Ambassador to Israel) told Tucker Carlson in February 2026 that if Israel took “essentially the entire Middle East” it “would be fine.”12 Speaker Mike Johnson described his 2020 Temple Mount visit as “the fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy” and keynoted the February 2026 National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance, which opened with shofars (ram’s horns) being blown — traditional Jewish instruments that have been adapted by NAR as a Christian call to spiritual warfare.13 Paula White-Cain has said Trump “will play a critical role in Armageddon as the United States stands alongside Israel in the battle against Islam.”14
Meanwhile the Reformed and Catholic streams reject this eschatology. Doug Wilson rejects Christian Zionism outright. Deneen and Vermeule operate inside Catholic theological frameworks that have no dispensationalist content. Vance’s support for Israel is civilizational — he has said Americans care about Israel “because we are still the largest Christian-majority country in the world” and because Jesus lived and died in that narrow strip of territory. That is cultural attachment, not end-times mechanism. Traditionalism has no Christian Zionist component at all; Patel’s Hindu framework is outside the Christian system entirely.
The coalition’s structure is now visible. The streams that staff positions shaping Middle East policy directly — the Department of Defense (Hegseth), the House Speakership (Johnson), the U.S. Embassy to Israel (Huckabee), the White House Faith Office (White-Cain) — carry the apocalyptic version. The streams that staff domestic policy architecture — the Office of Management and Budget (Vought), the judiciary-shaping operations, the think tanks, the legal theory — do not. This is not accident. It is design. The coalition has divided its theological labor: apocalyptic dispensationalism drives the war; Reformed and Catholic postliberalism remake the state.
A Reference Map
Because the names and doctrinal homes multiply quickly, I have included a reference table at the end of this piece. It organizes the principal influencers by stream and records, for each, a brief biography, their primary theo-political beliefs, their Christian Zionism position, and what their agenda seems to be. The table repeats the acronyms and definitions where needed so readers can jump to any row without losing context.
How This Is the Great BASH
I have been describing the Great BASH across this series as an ontological reality. Not merely a political pathology or a rhetorical habit — a planetary-scale egregore (see glossary), a thoughtform humanity itself has generated and continues to feed through attention, rage, devotion, and fear. An egregore cannot impose itself from outside. It runs on participation. It must be fed from within.
What this map of influencers shows is the feeding mechanism. Each stream provides one element the BASH requires to hold together.
The NAR stream provides the Lo tissa violation in its most intimate form. The Third Commandment, as Richard Rohr reads it, prohibits using God’s name to justify one’s own agenda. “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God” is not a metaphor. It is a structural move that fuses servant and Source. Once that collapse is in place, every subsequent political act becomes theologically armored. To criticize the man is to criticize God. The grammar of accountability dissolves. This is what Paula White-Cain’s April 1 Easter lunch comparison accomplished — Trump’s trials become the crucifixion, his political survival becomes the resurrection, his governance becomes the ongoing work of the risen Christ. Trump stood stone-faced through her sermon on sacrifice; when she pivoted to “no one has paid the price like you have paid the price,” his expression melted into a wide smirk.15
The Reformed Reconstructionist stream provides the theocratic architecture. Wilson’s position is that the establishment clause of the First Amendment does not require church-state separation, and that only Christians are qualified to hold political office. This stream does the slow institutional work: classical Christian schooling of the next generation, church planting (CREC now has over 160 congregations globally), and placement of CREC-aligned men in positions of political and military authority across decades. What Hegseth does at the Pentagon — monthly worship services, public praise of Wilson, efforts to reshape the military chaplain corps — is CREC theology operationalized inside the Department of Defense.
The Catholic integralist and neoreactionary streams provide the operational plan for dismantling the pluralist state itself. Vermeule’s common good constitutionalism, Deneen’s regime change thesis, Curtis Yarvin’s “RAGE” proposal (Retire All Government Employees), Thiel’s long-stated goal of building technological exits from democratic politics through charter cities and seasteading — these are the blueprints. Russell Vought at the Office of Management and Budget translates them into federal budgets and personnel actions. The Schedule F executive order that allows mass firing of career civil servants and their replacement with loyalty-vetted appointees is Yarvin’s RAGE in implementation. The Palantir federal contracts (Palantir being Thiel’s surveillance-analytics company) are the data backbone. This is where Power most thoroughly disguises itself as Authority, because it arrives dressed in constitutional argument and Latin-mass vocabulary rather than in televised prayer.
Paolo Benanti — the Franciscan friar who teaches moral theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and who serves on the United Nations Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence — published an essay in March 2026 called “The American Heresy: Must We Burn Peter Thiel?” The word heresy, in its original Greek sense (hairesis), meant the isolation of a partial truth, detached from the relational whole and elevated to the rank of an absolute principle. Benanti names precisely what Thiel is doing with Girard’s theory. Girard’s mimetic theory diagnoses rivalrous desire and the scapegoat mechanism, then argues that the Gospels reveal this mechanism so humanity can be freed from it. Thiel takes the diagnostic and strips away the redemptive conclusion. Where Girard’s Gospel revelation frees people from the mechanism, Thiel’s technology maps the mechanism so it can be used to control society. Monopoly replaces conversion as the escape from mimetic violence. This is the most sophisticated form of what I have called kenosis inversion — the reversal of Christian self-emptying into grasping — that the coalition has produced.16
The Traditionalist stream provides the civilizational frame. What is happening is not political decline but cosmic transition, the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. Bannon’s formulation — “go through hell as fast as possible” — is Evola’s logic: hasten the bottom of the dark age so the new age can dawn. This framing allows suffering to be welcomed rather than prevented. Institutions do not need reform; they need destruction so something better can rise from the ashes. This is why Bannon can claim that MAHA plus MAGA equals “1932” — he is not making an electoral prediction. He is announcing a turning of the cosmic wheel.
And the apocalyptic Christian Zionist stream provides the catastrophic vector — the theological justification for welcoming war in the Middle East as prophetic fulfillment rather than preventing it as human tragedy. Munther Isaac names the theological move as “theological bankruptcy”: replacing the Gospel’s active peacemaking with apocalyptic anticipation.
Pope Leo XIV named this directly in his March 22 remarks, warning that some “even intend to involve the name of God in these choices of death” and that “God cannot be enlisted in darkness.” Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem (and the Pope’s senior representative in the Middle East), called invoking God’s name to sanctify war “the gravest sin we can commit.”17 This is why the April 12 Jesus-image and Pope-attack sequence happened when it did. Rome carries theological resources the administration cannot absorb or control — Benanti’s naming of Thiel as heretic, Cardinal Pierre’s naming of Vermeule as authoritarian communitarian, Leo’s refusal to bless the Iran war, Pizzaballa’s direct identification of war-sacralization as grave sin. Rome has the doctrinal memory to name the BASH accurately. That is the one thing the coalition cannot tolerate.
What This Means
The coalition holding this administration together is broader and more theologically fractured than a single label like “Christian nationalism” can capture. The people whispering to Trump, Hegseth, Vance, Johnson, Vought, Patel, and the others operate from mutually incompatible doctrinal homes. What they share is an operational commitment to breaking the pluralist settlement, and a willingness to suspend their own tradition’s deepest disagreements with their coalition partners long enough to accomplish that break.
Because the streams are incompatible, the coalition will fracture. The question is when, and along which seam. The April 12 backlash to the Jesus-image was the first visible tremor. Evangelical allies — Megan Basham (Daily Wire), Cam Higby, Riley Gaines, Marjorie Taylor Greene — broke ranks on explicit blasphemy. The NAR stream held the Cyrus framing and kept defending Trump. Vance defended the post as humor. Different streams have different thresholds. The Reformed will break on explicit blasphemy first because their tradition takes the Name of God with particular seriousness. The NAR stream will hold longest because the Cyrus framing can absorb almost any personal failure of the anointed instrument. The Catholic stream will break when the conflict with Rome becomes untenable for their own sacramental life — which is why Pope Leo’s stance matters more than political commentators usually recognize.
This map matters for how to write about these events and how to pray through them. The coalition is not a monolith to oppose as one thing. It is a set of theologically incompatible alliances, each with its own internal contradictions, each with its own lineage of legitimate longing distorted into something else. The NAR’s longing for God’s active presence has been twisted into territorial demonology. The Reformed longing for a coherent moral order has been twisted into patriarchal theocracy. The Catholic longing for the common good has been twisted into authoritarian integralism. The Traditionalist longing for sacred meaning has been twisted into apocalyptic nihilism. The MAHA longing for bodily wholeness has been twisted into wellness-influencer grift. Each stream carries a wound that is real. The BASH exploits the wound; the wound itself is not the BASH.
An egregore feeds on participation. That cuts both ways. What is generated by human attention can also be withheld. Contemplative discernment — the slow work of telling symbolon from diabolon, Authority from Power, the Name of God from its instrumentalization — is not a private spiritual luxury. It is the work that refuses to feed the thoughtform. In a moment when so many pulpits and podcasts and Pentagon prayer services are feeding it at full speed, the refusal matters. So does the witness of Pope Leo, Cardinal Pizzaballa, Paolo Benanti, Munther Isaac, and the evangelicals who finally said “I will not defend blasphemy.” The coalition is not as solid as it appears from inside it. It is already decomposing at the theological level even as it consolidates at the political level.
That decomposition is where grace enters — not through our cleverness, and not through political counter-strategy, but through the steady refusal to collapse servant into Source, Power into Authority, the political man into the crucified Christ.
Reference Table: The Influencers
The table below organizes the principal influencers of the current administration by theological or philosophical stream. For each figure the table records a brief biography, primary theo-political beliefs, Christian Zionism classification, and apparent agenda. The stream label in the first column uses the acronyms defined in the essay above; each row spells out technical terms on first use so the table can be read independently.
| Stream | Name | Brief Biography | Theo/Political Beliefs | Christian Zionist? | CZ Notes | Primary Agenda |
| NAR / Prosperity Gospel | Paula White-Cain | Born 1966, Tupelo MS. Pentecostal televangelist. Trump’s spiritual advisor since ~2002. Currently Senior Advisor, White House Faith Office (since Feb 2025). | Prosperity gospel; charismatic spiritual warfare; apostolic alignment under Ghanaian apostle Nicholas Duncan-Williams. Frames Trump as divinely anointed. 2019: “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.” | YES — apocalyptic | Has said Trump “will play a critical role in Armageddon.” Observes Jewish holidays, wears prayer shawl, studies Torah with Orthodox rabbis. | Keep Trump surrounded by theological affirmation framing every act as divinely mandated. Route federal faith-based funding through the Faith Office. |
| NAR / Prosperity Gospel | Lance Wallnau | Dallas-based. Co-author with Bill Johnson of Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate (2013). Runs Wallnau Learning Group. | Seven Mountains Mandate: Christian dominion over government, media, education, arts/entertainment, business, family, religion. First to frame Trump as modern King Cyrus. | YES — apocalyptic | Celebrated the Iran strikes as prophetically significant, aligned to biblical feast days and end-times timelines. | Mobilize charismatic Christians to capture institutional power in seven cultural spheres. Normalize apocalyptic interpretation of current events. |
| NAR / Prosperity Gospel | John Hagee | Pentecostal pastor, Cornerstone Church (San Antonio). Founded Christians United for Israel (CUFI) 2006 — the institutional face of American Christian Zionism. | Classical premillennial dispensationalism. Books including Jerusalem Countdown treat geopolitical events as prophetic timeline markers. | YES — archetypal apocalyptic | Frames 1917 (Balfour), 1948, 1967 (Jerusalem), and 2017 (embassy move) as miracles on the dispensationalist timeline. | Mobilize American evangelical political and financial support for maximalist Israeli territorial positions. Oppose Palestinian statehood. |
| Reformed / Reconstructionist (CREC) | Doug Wilson | Born 1953, Moscow ID. Navy submarine veteran. Co-founded Christ Church (Moscow) 1975 and CREC 1998. Runs Canon Press, Logos Schools, New Saint Andrews College, ACCS. | Reformed theology influenced by R.J. Rushdoony’s Christian Reconstructionism. Rejects church-state separation; only Christians qualified to hold office. Strict complementarianism. | NO | Explicitly: “I am no kind of Zionist.” Reformed fulfillment theology rejects dispensationalist eschatology as heretical. | Establish Christian theocratic order through church planting, classical schooling, and placement of CREC-aligned men in political/military authority. |
| Reformed / Reconstructionist (CREC) | Russell Vought | Born 1976, Connecticut. Wheaton 1998; GW Law 2004. Currently Director of OMB and acting CFPB director. Principal author of Project 2025’s executive-power sections. | Self-described “Christian nationist.” Aligned with Wilson’s CREC orbit. Non-Christians are “condemned.” Wants federal employees “traumatically affected.” | Political Zionist, not apocalyptic | Reformed-evangelical formation. Political Israel posture aligns with Christian Zionist right operationally. | Consolidate all executive branch power in the president personally. Dismantle independent agencies. Schedule F replacement of civil service with loyalists. |
| Reformed / Reconstructionist (CREC) | William Wolfe | Former mid-level State/DoD appointee (Trump I). Former Heritage Action staffer. Runs the Center for Baptist Leadership. | Openly Christian nationalist. Publicly promotes Wilson. 2022: “You can be a Christian nationalist, or a Rainbow Flag nationalist. Choose wisely.” | NO | Reformed fulfillment theology frame. | Push Southern Baptist Convention toward explicit Christian nationalism. Bridge CREC Reformed and Southern Baptist bases. Theological cover for Vought. |
| Dominionist / Pseudo-Historical | David Barton | Born 1954, North Texas. Oral Roberts University. Founded WallBuilders 1988. 2012 book The Jefferson Lies pulled by publisher after historians documented errors. | Central claim: America was founded as a Christian nation; church-state separation is a progressive myth. Has defended biblical slavery. | YES — dispensationalist framing | Operates inside broader dispensationalist-evangelical consensus on Israel with historical-mythological scaffolding. | Reshape American law and public life around fundamentalist biblical interpretation. Currently advises Speaker Johnson on staffing and legislation. |
| Dominionist / Pseudo-Historical | Mike Johnson (as influenced) | Speaker of the House since Oct 2023. Louisiana Republican. Formed by Barton’s WallBuilders (25+ years). Former Alliance Defending Freedom attorney. | “Biblically sanctioned government.” America as “Christian nation.” Dismisses “so-called separation of church and state.” Spearheaded 2020 election challenges. | YES — apocalyptic | Described 2020 Temple Mount visit as “the fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy.” Keynoted Feb 2026 NGPR (opened with NAR shofars). | Implement Barton-style Christian nationalism at legislative level. Currently second in presidential line of succession. |
| Catholic Integralism / Postliberal | Patrick Deneen | Political theorist, Notre Dame. Catholic. Author of Why Liberalism Failed (2018) and Regime Change (2023). | Liberalism has failed. Calls for “peaceful but vigorous overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class.” Praises Orbán’s Hungary. | NO | Catholic framework actively rejects dispensationalism. Largely silent on Israel specifically. | Intellectual legitimation of postliberal right. Vatican (Cardinal Pierre) has publicly rebuked his position as conflicting with Catholic Social Teaching. |
| Catholic Integralism / Postliberal | Adrian Vermeule | Harvard Law School. Converted to Catholicism 2016. Integralist. Author of Common Good Constitutionalism (2022). | Constitutional interpretation governed by classical natural law oriented to the common good. “Strong rule in the interest of attaining the common good.” Cites Schmitt. | NO | Catholic integralism rejects dispensationalism. | Legal-constitutional architecture for postliberal governance. Vatican has repudiated as authoritarian communitarianism incompatible with human dignity. |
| Catholic Integralism / Postliberal | Kevin Roberts | President of Heritage Foundation since 2021. PhD American History (UT Austin). Devout Catholic; receives weekly guidance from Opus Dei priests. | Chief architect of Project 2025. National conservative. Called for “a second American Revolution which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” | Political, not apocalyptic | Catholic framework. Heritage supports Israel politically but not on dispensationalist grounds. | Coordinate largest-scale conservative institutional takeover in modern American history. Heritage is the hub; Project 2025 the blueprint. |
| Girardian / Neoreactionary | Peter Thiel | Born 1967, Frankfurt. Stanford undergrad (studied under Girard). Co-founded PayPal, Palantir, Founders Fund. ~$27.5B. Funded Vance’s 2022 Senate race with $15M. | “Hardcore unreconstructed Girardian,” but operationalizes Girard stripped of redemptive Gospel conclusion. 2009: “I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.” | Political, not apocalyptic dispensationalist | End-times imagination runs through Palantir and sovereign-individual tech-libertarianism, NOT Third Temple eschatology. | Build technological and institutional exits from democratic politics. Monopoly replaces conversion as escape from mimetic violence (Benanti: “American heresy”). |
| Girardian / Neoreactionary | Curtis Yarvin | Born 1973. Computer programmer (Urbit founder). Blogged as “Mencius Moldbug.” Central figure in neoreactionary movement. | Democracy has failed; replace with monarchy or CEO-style executive sovereignty. The “Cathedral” (universities + media + civil service) cannot be reformed, only dismantled. “RAGE.” | NO | Indifferent to Israeli territorial expansion as prophetic fulfillment. | Operational plan for regime change: decapitate bureaucracy, capture executive power, replace civil service with loyalists. Vought’s Schedule F is RAGE in implementation. |
| Girardian / Neoreactionary | JD Vance (as influenced) | Vice President. Born 1984. Yale Law (met Thiel 2011). Hillbilly Elegy (2016). Converted to Catholicism 2019 — publicly credits Thiel and Girard. | Catholic postliberal. Influenced by Catholic social teaching through Thiel’s Girardian filter and Yarvin’s architecture. Republicans “need to be really ruthless” with power. | Political, not apocalyptic | Civilizational framing: America cares about Israel because largest Christian-majority country. | Succeed Trump as intellectually coherent postliberal president. Consolidate coalition between Catholic integralists, neoreactionaries, and MAGA base. |
| Traditionalism (capital-T) | Steve Bannon | Born 1953. Navy officer, Goldman Sachs, entertainment financier. Ran Breitbart. Chief Strategist to Trump 2017. Hosts War Room podcast. | Traditionalist (Guénon, Evola). We are in Kali Yuga. Identifies American working class with tradition, globalized elites with modernity. Politics as apocalyptic-civilizational conflict. | NO | Traditionalism has no Christian Zionist component. Support for Israel is strategic-civilizational. | Accelerate the Kali Yuga’s terminal crisis so the new cycle can emerge. Information warfare, tariffs, dismantling administrative state. |
| Traditionalism (capital-T) | Alexander Dugin | Born 1962, Moscow. Founded National Bolshevik Party (1993). Moscow State University. Foundations of Geopolitics (1997) standard at Russian General Staff Academy. | Traditionalism fused with Eurasianism. The Fourth Political Theory. Russia as katechon restraining the Antichrist (globalist liberal modernity). | NO | Distinct eschatology. Russian Orthodox-influenced. Often at odds with American Christian Zionism geopolitically. | Philosophical-metaphysical justification for Russian imperial revival. Direct influence on 2008 Georgia and Ukraine positions. |
| MAHA (Wellness Populism) | Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Born 1954. Son of Sen. RFK. Devout Catholic upbringing. Heroin addiction 1969–83. Environmental lawyer. HHS Secretary since January 2025. | Residual Catholic + Jungian + 12-Step recovery spirituality. Favorite saints: Francis, Augustine. Skeptical of conventional vaccine schedules. | NO | Catholic formation, not dispensationalist. Publicly critical of aspects of US Israel policy and US military interventionism. | Reroute HHS toward deregulation of alternative therapies, restrictions on ultra-processed foods, skepticism toward institutional medicine. |
| MAHA (Wellness Populism) | Casey / Calley Means | Siblings. Casey: Stanford MD, founded Levels, nominated Surgeon General. Calley: former food/pharma consultant; co-founder TrueMed; SGE advisor to RFK Jr. | Chronic disease driven by metabolic dysfunction from ultra-processed food, toxins, institutional capture. Calley: Trump has “spiritual mandate” to fix healthcare. | NO | No evidence of dispensationalism. MAHA oriented to metabolic-health cosmology. | Capture HHS and FDA. Implement regulatory changes favorable to supplement, CGM, and wellness-tech industries. |
| Hindu Cultural Identity | Kash Patel | Born 1980. Son of Indian immigrants from Gujarat (via Uganda/Tanzania). Pace Law School. FBI Director since February 2025. Took oath on the Bhagavad Gita. | Hindu upbringing. Invokes dharma, karma, seva in abstract cultural register. No evidence of specific Hindu mentors shaping political work. Operational commitments are standard MAGA loyalty politics. | NO (N/A by religion) | Politically pro-Israel within MAGA consensus. Indian-Hindu pro-Israel sentiment has its own genealogy (Modi-Netanyahu axis). | Restructure FBI along Trump-loyalist lines. Pursue investigations against perceived political enemies. Represents MAGA accommodation of non-white, non-Christian loyalists. |
| Dispensationalist (in operational power) | Pete Hegseth | Born 1980. Princeton; Harvard Kennedy School. Army National Guard. Fox News host. Secretary of Defense since January 2025. CREC member; ACCS-schooled children. Publicly thanked Wilson for “mentorship.” | COMPLICATED: CREC Reformed home church (not dispensationalist) + personal dispensationalist Israel eschatology. Pentagon worship services. March 25, 2026: “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness.” | YES — apocalyptic | Jerusalem 2018: “There’s no reason why the miracle of the reestablishment of the temple on the Temple Mount is not possible.” Tattoos: Jerusalem Cross, Deus Vult, kafir. | Infuse Christian worldview into military culture. Reshape chaplain corps. Operationalize Third Temple eschatology inside Pentagon policy via Iran war framing. |
| Dispensationalist (in operational power) | Mike Huckabee | Former Arkansas Governor. Baptist minister. 2008 and 2016 presidential candidate. US Ambassador to Israel since 2025. | Southern Baptist premillennial dispensationalist. Longtime CUFI-adjacent. Has denied that Israeli settlements constitute “occupation.” | YES — archetypal apocalyptic operator | Told Tucker Carlson in Feb 2026 that Israel “taking essentially the entire Middle East” “would be fine.” | Implement dispensationalist-aligned US diplomatic posture toward Israel. Support maximalist territorial positions. |
Endnotes
1. Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “Paula White: Trump’s Televangelist in the White House,” CNN Politics, November 7, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/07/politics/paula-white-televangelist-white-house.
2. Darragh Roche, “Trump Deletes Image of Himself as Jesus-like Saviour After Backlash,” Al Jazeera, April 13, 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/13/trump-draws-backlash-over-posting-image-depicting-him-as-jesus-like-saviour; Natalie Allison, “Trump Post Appearing to Depict Him as Jesus Removed Amid Backlash,” Washington Post, April 13, 2026.
3. Jon Jackson, “Paula White-Cain Likens Trump to Jesus During Easter Lunch, Stokes Firestorm of Backlash,” The Christian Post, April 2, 2026, https://www.christianpost.com/news/paula-white-caine-likens-trump-to-jesus-stokes-backlash.html.
4. Matthew D. Taylor, “What Pete Hegseth’s Spiritual Mentor Wants for America,” The Bulwark, March 2026, https://www.thebulwark.com/p/douglas-wilson-pete-hegseth-moscow-idaho-theocracy-dominionism-christian-reconstruction-theonomy; André Gagné, American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times (Routledge, 2024); Sandi Villarreal, “All the President’s Prophets,” Texas Monthly, May 2025.
5. Douglas Wilson, quoted in Marco d’Eramo, “End-Times for Christian Zionism,” Jacobin, November 25, 2025, https://jacobin.com/2025/11/evangelical-christian-zionism-nationalism-israel.
6. Jessica Eise, “What is CREC and how does it shape Pete Hegseth’s religious rhetoric?” Religion News Service, April 9, 2026, https://religionnews.com/2026/04/09/what-is-crec-and-how-does-it-shape-pete-hegseths-religious-rhetoric/; Jack Jenkins, “OMB’s Russell Vought, the Christian ‘nation-ist’ driving Project 2025 and DOGE,” Religion News Service, June 23, 2025, https://religionnews.com/2025/06/23/russ-vought/.
7. Kevin Vallier, All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 2023); Paul Leslie, “From Philosophy to Power,” Salmagundi Magazine, 2025, https://salmagundi.skidmore.edu/articles/1176-from-philosophy-to-power; on Vance’s credit to Thiel and Girard, see Dissent in Bloom, “One Blood Clot Away II: René Girard, Curtis Yarvin, and the Catholic Integralist Turn,” Substack, February 24, 2026.
8. Cardinal Christophe Pierre, quoted in Independent Institute, “God, Orbán, and JD Vance,” April 17, 2026, https://www.independent.org/article/2026/04/17/god-orban-and-jd-vance/.
9. Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, War for Eternity: Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers (Dey Street Books, 2020); Josh Lupo, “The Political Theology of Traditionalism: Steve Bannon, the Far Right, and the End of Days,” Contending Modernities, University of Notre Dame.
10. Timothy P. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Baker Academic, 2004); Richard Ostling, “What Is Christian Zionism And Why Is It So Complex?” Patheos, April 2026, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionqanda/2026/04/what-is-christian-zionism/.
11. Jason DeRose, “What Trump Team’s Christian Zionism Beliefs Mean for Gaza War, West Bank Settlements,” NPR, December 2, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/12/02/nx-s1-5193348/what-trump-teams-christian-zionism-beliefs-mean-for-gaza-war-west-bank-settlements.
12. Freedom From Religion Foundation, “‘End Times’ Ideology Driving Policy in Middle East,” Freethought Today, March 2026, https://www.freethoughttoday.com/sections/300-state-church-news/end-times-ideology-driving-policy-in-middle-east/.
13. Allison Kaplan Sommer, “New House Speaker Mike Johnson, an Evangelical Christian, Holds Ties to Israel’s Far Right,” Haaretz, October 25, 2023; Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, “The Rapture Lobby: Christian Zionism and America’s Holy War in Iran,” April 2026, https://globalextremism.org/post/christian-zionism-and-americas-holy-war-in-iran/.
14. Paul Rosenberg, “The ‘modern apostles’ who want to reshape America ahead of the end times,” The Outline, March 19, 2020, https://theoutline.com/post/8856/seven-mountain-mandate-trump-paula-white.
15. Kelsi Cleary, “White House Censors Toe-Curling Video of Trump Being Compared to Christ by Paula White,” The Daily Beast, April 2, 2026, https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-censors-toe-curling-video-of-trump-being-compared-to-christ-by-paula-white/.
16. Paolo Benanti, “L’hérésie américaine: faut-il brûler Peter Thiel?” Le Grand Continent, March 14, 2026; Gil Pignol, “The Philosopher of Despair: How Peter Thiel Removed the Gospel From René Girard,” Medium, March 2026.
17. Alain Stephens, “Far-Right Religious Leaders Advising Trump See Iran as an End Times Holy War,” The Intercept, April 4, 2026, https://theintercept.com/2026/04/04/paula-white-iran-war-christian-evangelicals/.
— Doug Scott, The Great BASH Project, cosmicchrist.net
Building 4th Cosmic Christ 