It wasn’t that long ago that I was trying to get reporters to wake up to a whole new world of charismatic/Pentecostal churches that are networked into a movement led by modern-day apostles and prophets.

I chaired a panel at a 2017 gathering of religion reporters in Nashville that had two representatives of this movement plus a third person who opposed it. But very few writers caught on. One reason is because it’s so tough to define. Observers and participants can’t even agree on a name. Some call the movement the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and others call it the apostolic/prophetic movement.

Then Jan. 6 happened at the US Capitol. Now it seems as though reporters can’t get enough of asking: Who were these people? Every week now seems to be something new about this movement, like this piece in Christianity Today, which is a fairly decent overview of what’s happened since last fall. The reporter wrung some quotes out of reclusive former prophet Jeremiah Johnson, which is a first.

My one plaint is that the CT piece is several months late, as some of us were reporting on this in April. Plus, given the extra time the reporter had, I would have liked to have seen fresher material. And California evangelist Shawn Bolz should have been dinged for wrongly prophesying the end of the coronavirus back in April 2020. The up note the article ends on doesn’t reflect the reality that the majority of the false prophets out there have not repented nor apologized.

On the other side of the spectrum, the Washington Post has come out with two pieces, one including the “cowboy shaman” so visible in the attack on the Capitol and the other an account of a visit to Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth.

The first piece was an attempt to explain just what these Capitol invaders believe.

Many forces contributed to the attack on the Capitol, including Trump’s false claims of electoral victory and American anger with institutions. But part of the mix, say experts on American religion, is the fact that the country is in a period when institutional religion is breaking apart, becoming more individualized and more disconnected from denominations, theological credentials and oversight.

That has created room for what Yale University sociologist Phil Gorski calls a religious “melee, a free for all.”

I’d definitely agree that it’s everyone for him or herself out there. However, non-denominational churches have been on the scene since the late 1970s. It just took scholars several decades to start tracking them. And do you think the typical church member really cares what the theologians are saying?