Doug Mastriano, Christian Nationalism, and the Cult of the AR-15

"Rev. Sean Moon derived his church’s unusual name from Revelation 2:27, “he shall rule them with a rod of iron.” He takes the rod to be the AR-15, a weapon he thinks Christians are bound by duty to wield to secure dominion and defend their homes—but his interpretation is not quite novel. As reported in 2013, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin similarly claimed that Christ will return wielding the AR-15 specifically. It is a weapon that appears to both mythologize and sacralize itself in Christian nationalist communities, where established religious doctrine and tradition are no longer determinative for the beliefs of adherents. One might ask Rev. Sean Moon if his golden AR-15 is made from the melted-down jewelry of his followers."

"Mastriano’s résumé hits all the main points of today’s bog-standard MAGA candidate template. He’s an insurrectionist who ginned up enthusiasm for the attempted coup as a featured speaker for Jericho March’s rally in December 2020 before participating—by his own admission—in the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021. (He bused Trump supporters to Washington and although he claimed that he and his wife did not cross police lines at the U.S. Capitol, they were caught on video doing just that.) The House Jan. 6th Committee subpoenaed him for being part of a plan to send pro-Trump electors to Congress, and he responded with loyal silence.

Mastriano also has an increasingly familiar religious profile. He has described the Gulf War, in which he served in 1991, as a “holy” war—a belief reflected in his bizarre 2002 graduate thesis, “Nebuchadnezzar’s Sphinx.” He has attended events of the Charismatic Christian dominionist movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. He shares anti-Muslim memes, hangs out with militia members to guard Confederate statues at Gettysburg, and constantly hits all the main themes of Christian nationalist discourse in his speeches and other activities. In one particularly tasteless moment, he announced his gubernatorial candidacy while wearing a tallit and blowing a shofar—symbols that Christian nationalists have appropriated from the Jewish tradition and use to declare apocalyptic spiritual war."

read article by Thomas Lecalque

Doug Mastriano, Christian Nationalism, and the Cult of the AR-15 - The Bulwark