INC Christians are changing America
They focus on putting believers in positions of power, not on building congregations
Last Monday, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the “Awaken the Dawn” tent city was packed up after four days of worship music and prayer. Its purpose, according to organizer Lou Engle, was to “gather around Jesus” to pray for the nation and its government.
This wasn’t the first such event. On April 9, 2016, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, tens of thousands of people gathered to pray for the supernatural transformation of America.
Five years earlier, in August 2011, more than 30,000 people cheered wildly as then-presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry — now secretary of energy in the Trump administration — came to the stage at “The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis” in Houston.
These events and the leaders who organized them are central players in a movement we call “Independent Network Charismatic,” or INC Christianity, in our book, “The Rise of Network Christianity.” Based on our research, we believe that INC Christianity is significantly changing the religious and political landscape in America.
INC Christianity is led by a network of popular independent religious entrepreneurs, often referred to as “apostles.” They have close ties to conservative politicians, including Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and, more recently, President Donald Trump.
Charismatic Christians emphasize supernatural miracles and divine interventions. But INC Christianity is different from other charismatics — and other Christian denominations—in the following ways:
• It is not focused on building congregations but rather on spreading beliefs through media, conferences and ministry schools.
• It is not so much about proselytizing to unbelievers as it is about transforming society through placing Christian believers in powerful positions.
• It is organized as a network of independent leaders rather than a formal denomination.
INC Christianity is the fastestgrowing Christian group in America and possibly around the world. Over the 40 years from 1970 to 2010, the number of regular attenders of Protestant churches as a whole shrank by an average of .05 percent per year, which is a striking decline when one considers that the U.S. population grew an average of 1 percent per year during those years. At the same time, independent neo-charismatic congregations grew by an average of 3.24 percent per year.
INC Christianity’s impact, however, is much greater than can be measured in church attendance. Its influence can be seen in the millions of hits on its many web-based media sites, large turnouts at stadium rallies and conferences, and millions of dollars in media sales.
Bethel, an INC ministry based in Redding, Calif., for example, in 2013 had an income of $8.4 million from sales of music, books, DVDs and web-based content, as well as $7 million from tuition for its Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry.
For our book, we conducted indepth interviews with leaders, staff and participants in INC Christian ministries. We also interviewed Christian leaders and scholars with knowledge of the changing religious landscape. We attended conferences, church services, ministry school sessions, healing sessions and exorcisms.
Our primary conclusion is that the growth of these groups is largely the result of their network governance structure. When compared to the oversight and accountability of formal congregations and denominations, these structures allow for more experimentation— including “extreme” experiences of the supernatural, unorthodox beliefs and practices, and financing and marketing techniques that leverage the power of the internet.
We witnessed the appeal of INC Christianity, particularly among young people. We saw the thrill of holding impromptu supernatural healing sessions in the emergency room of a large public hospital, the intrigue of ministry-school class sessions devoted to techniques for casting out demonic spirits and the adventure of teams of young people going out into public places, seeking direct guidance from God as to whom to heal.
In addition to its growth, the importance of INC Christianity lies in the fact that its proponents have a fundamentally different view of the relationship between the Christian faith and society than most Christian groups throughout American history.
Most Christian groups have seen the role of the church as connecting individuals to God through the saving grace of Jesus and building congregations that provide communities of meaning and belonging through worship services. They also believe in serving and providing for the needs their local communities. Such traditional Christian groups believe that, although the world can be improved, itwill not be restored to God’s original plan until Jesus comes back again to rule the Earth.
INC beliefs are different. Its leaders are not content simply to connect individuals to God and grow congregations. Most INC groups seek to bring heaven or God’s perfect society to Earth by placing “kingdom-minded people” in powerful positions at the top of all sectors of society.
INC leaders label them the “seven mountains of culture.” These include business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion. In this form of “trickle-down Christianity,” they believe that, if Christians rise to the top of all seven “mountains,” society will be completely transformed.
One INC leader we interviewed summed it up this way:
“The goal of this new movement is transforming social units like cities, ethnic groups, nations rather than individuals … If Christians permeate each mountain and rise to the top of all seven mountains … society would have biblical morality, people would live in harmony, there would be peace and not war, therewould be no poverty.”
We encounterd these ideas repeatedly in our interviews, at eventsand in INC media.
Most significantly, since the 2016 presidential election, some INC leaders have released public statements claiming that the Trump presidency is part of fulfilling God’s plan to “bring heaven to Earth” by placing believers in top posts, including Rick Perry as secretary of energy, Betsy DeVos as secretary of education and Ben Carson as secretary of housing and urban-development.
INC Christianity is a movement to watch because we think it will continue to draw adherents in large numbers in the future. It will produce a growing number of Christians who see their goal not just as saving souls, but also as transforming society by taking control of its institutions.
The likelihood of INC Christians taking over the “seven mountains of culture” seems slim. But their movement will shake up the religious and political landscape for generations.
Brad Christerson is a sociology professor at Biola University, a private Christian university in La Mirada, Calif. Richard Flory is senior director of research and evaluation at the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. They wrote this for TheConversation.com.