Timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs, paraphrased in English as “I fear the Greeks even when bearing gifts”, is a Latin phrase from Aeneid, a Latin epic poem written by Virgil. The phrase is spoken by Trojan priest Laocoön referring to the Trojan Horse used by the Greeks during the Trojan War. (Wikipedia)
“How all of this came to be is a story with many starting points, the most immediate of which is Trump himself. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, establishment leaders on the Christian right were backing candidates with more pious pedigrees than Trump’s. He needed a way to rally evangelicals, so he turned to some of the most influential apostles and prophets of the NAR [New Apostolic Reformation], a wilder world where he was cast as God’s ‘wrecking ball’ and embraced by a fresh pool of so-called prophecy voters, people long regarded as the embarrassing riffraff of evangelical Christianity. But the DNA of that moment goes back further, to the Cold War, Latin America, and an iconoclastic seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner.”
Stephanie McCrummen, “The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows: Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which seeks to destroy the secular state,” The Atlantic, January 9, 2025.
From here you can quote, Dr Neville Buch ABN: 86703686642:
The New Apostolic Reformation is nothing new, as old as the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, this modern version has been in Australia, and the United States, for more than half a century, much more. From my doctorate of 1995:
Revivalist preachers argued that the theological liberalization amongst the Anglican clergy had quenched the spiritual zeal of the English Reformation and the Puritan Revolution. These preachers, in an age of rationalism, were looking back, seeking to revive the former experience of religious life. (1995: 45)
Classic Fundamentalism seeks to revive what fundamentalists perceive to be the orthodox doctrines of the Reformation, and Neo-evangelicalism seeks to revive what evangelicals perceive to be the waves of conversions in the Great Evangelical Awakenings. In all three forms of the American Revivalist tradition, historical revisionism is involved, where a previous golden age of Christian faith is called upon, either the New Testament period, the Reformation, or some period of evangelical awakening. They, therefore, formulate a solution to all worldly problems in three steps:
- The present age is evil and depraved compared with a previous golden age of Christian faith.
- What is needed, therefore, is a restoration of the spiritual life of this golden age. Some may even add a hope for a restoration of the social, political, and economic life of the golden age.
- To revive this past spiritual life, certain techniques need to be employed. The constant application of these techniques will automatically bring about the revival of the past spiritual life.
All three forms are similar [Classic Fundamentalism, Neo-Evangelicalism, Neo-Pentecostalism], but they have, nevertheless, given Queensland Protestantism varying American inputs. (1995: 61)
Neo-calvinism is a re-affirmation of Reformational theology as outlined by Luther and Calvin.[1] It claims to reject all theological innovations that have developed since the Reformation, but it tends to impose the nineteenth century Princeton theology upon Luther’s and Calvin’s view of scripture.[2] Princeton theology, the doctrinaire defence of the fundamentalist view of scripture, was passed on from Princeton Theological Seminary to Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia during the 1930s. Another important Neo-Calvinist centre has been the Christian Reformed Church, the successor of churches established by Dutch Calvinist immigrants in the Holland-Grand Rapids area of Michigan, with its theological seminary, Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids. (1995: 70-1)
In Queensland, American Restorationalism centred on Geoffrey J. Paxton, Principal of Queensland Bible Institute. Paxton was involved in promoting the American-Australian Restorationalist dual-organisations, New Reformation Fellowship and The Australian Forum. Their main publication was the periodical Present Truth, produced in Fallbrook, California, with an Australian office in Tweed Heads, New South Wales. The periodical began in 1972 under the chairman of The Australian Forum, John A. Slade, and editorship of Robert D. Brinsmead. Contributions to Present Truth were heavily American with contributions from Benjamin B. Warfield, the late Princeton theologian, Louis Berkhof, late President of Calvin Theological Seminary, John Warwick Montgomery, a former Professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, George Eldon Ladd, Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Dr. William C. Robinson, Professor Emeritus from Columbia Theological Seminary.[3] Queensland contributions came from Paxton, Bruce Winter, youth pastor at St. Stephen’s Church of England in Coorparoo, and Samuel McCafferty, minister of Ann Street Presbyterian Church.[4] There were significant contributions from other sources, particularly from the late Bishop J.C. Ryle and the Banner of Truth Trust which shared theological views of the American Restorationalists, but it was, in the main, an American product.[5] Most of the contributors to Present Truth were directly influenced by leading American Neo-Calvinist theologians, such as Gordon H. Clark from Wheaton College, George Eldon Ladd and Edward John Carnell from Fuller Theological Seminary, and Dr. John Bright from Union Theological Seminary in Virginia.[6]
Paxton with The Australian Forum toured the United States in 1970s.[7] In 1978, Paxton’s book The Shaking of Adventism was published by Baker Book House in Grand Rapids, Michigan.[8] The book argues the central thesis of the American Restorationalists, that Neo-Evangelicalism and Charismatic Christianity have shifted from the fundamental doctrines of the Reformation, and were, therefore, in error. The Queensland Bible Institute had been founded in the ethos of the Australian Keswick movement which, as the heir of the Holiness movement, was in opposition to Paxton’s Reformational views.[9] Paxton was dismissed from his position as principal of Queensland Bible Institute, and the Anglican clergyman became a minister in the Reformed Churches of Australia. (1995:71-3)
The Franky Schaeffer V Production film series How Should We Then Live ?, presented the American Neo-Calvinist Francis Schaeffer’s view of history, where the Reformation is the highest point in human achievement, and modernity is the decline from this standard.[10] (1995: 188)
A few films viewed by Queensland Protestants have gone beyond direct theological concerns to examining theological implications of American culture, such as the business ethic (or Protestant Work Ethic) as an important American social value. Two films that have done this are a Ken Anderson film called God Owns My Business and a film about the American founder of Amway (Rich de Vos), called Believe. Beliefs in the threat of a demonic underworld, the glory of the Protestant Reformation, the horrors of Catholicism, and the Protestant Work Ethic are the substance of Puritan America. Puritan America has continued into the twentieth century through the American Revivalist tradition, and has been exported to Queensland in celluloid images. (1995: 188-9)
George Marsden, in both Fundamentalism and American Culture and Reforming Fundamentalism, has suggested that Protestant fundamentalism (and its reformation into Neo-Evangelicalism) is a product of American culture.[11] The sum of these works has contributed to a historical view where the characteristics of American religion have been developed from its surrounding culture, while at the same time, American religion has contributed to the characteristics of an American culture. These characteristics are often identified as a tendency towards the high regard for the pragmatic and the extroverted, and the devaluing of the abstract and self-reflective. Australian culture has been characterised as pragmatic and less tolerant of the abstract, but Australians have generally found American extroversion rather abrasive. Yet Australian Protestantism has allowed itself to be directed by an American extroversion when it imported American methodologies, such as mass evangelistic rallies, and Church Growth strategies. The worst consequence is that it works against Australian theological (being abstract not pragmatic) self-reflection. (1995: 460)
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:
Buch, Neville (1987). Protestant Churches and their Attitude to Public Issues in Queensland 1919-1939, Honours Thesis, Department of History, University of Queensland, November 1987
Buch, Neville (1995). American Influence on Protestantism in Queensland since 1945, Ph.D. thesis, Department of History, University of Queensland, August 1994, Awarded April 1995
Buch, Neville (2021). The Intellectual Ethos of Charles Strong in Queensland 1855-1917, in Marion Maddox, Charles Strong’s Australian Church: Christian Social Activism, 1885–1917, University of Melbourne Press, 2021.
Buch, Neville (2021). Book Review of Blin, Arnaud, War and Religion: Europe and the Mediterranean from the First through the Twenty-first Centuries, University of California Press, 2019, pp. 335, ISBN 9780520961753, Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, Volume 34, No 2
Buch, Neville (2021). Politics in the Age of Uncertainty: Anti-intellectualism, Expertise, and the Technological Agenda in Queensland Politics, 1911-2011, a paper of local-regional relevance, 2021 Australian Political Studies Association Annual Conference, 21 September 2021.
Buch, Neville (2023). Research Note: Anglo-American Major Belief-Doubt Systems. https://www.academia.edu/104984588/Research_Note_Anglo_American_Major_Belief_Doubt_Systems , 27 July 2023.
Buch, Neville (2023). A Critical Review of 2022 Theos Annual Lecture by Tom Holland, published by Humanist Australia Inc. on the Medium platform. https://medium.com/australian-humanist/a-critical-review-of-2022-theos-annual-lecture-by-tom-holland-d4268e11e7c0
Buch, Neville (2024). Damien B. Schlarb, Melville’s Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 37(1), Special Issue: New Perspectives on Religions and Traditions, 135-7, ISBN 978-0-197-58556-6 (hbk).
Buch, Neville (2024). Queensland History, Religious Education, and Belief, in Socio-Anthropological Approaches to Religion: Environmental Hope, Edited by David W. Kim and Duncan Wright, London: Lexington Books.
Buch, Neville (2024). John Carroll’s The Saviour Syndrome Thesis and the Thesis of the Level Playing Field, Australian Association for the Study of Religion, Canberra, 28-30 November 2024.
McCrummen, Stephanie (2025) “The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows: Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which seeks to destroy the secular state,” The Atlantic, January 9, 2025. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/new-apostolic-reformation-christian-movement-trump/681092/?gift=dpNmmIb8s6tgeaq0wQsEo0OCJg6TOK7x-37WRQUp9cM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
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ENDNOTES
[1] Woodbridge. The Gospel in America. It is Neo-Calvinist, rather than Neo-Lutheran, because its followers rise out of the tradition of the Synod of Dort, Scot Confession, and the Westminster Confession. The Lutheran tradition has had a greater latitude, and therefore, most Lutherans have been able to compromise with theological liberalism. One group which has not embraced any liberalization of their traditional Lutheranism, is the Missouri Lutheran Synod. They, like the Neo-Calvinists, fossilize theology into a form of fundamentalism.
[2] Princeton theology was developed by Archibald Alexander, the first professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. Alexander was influenced by the scholastic Neo-calvinism of Frances Turretin, a seventeenth century Genevan theologian. Alexander’s successors in Princeton theology were Charles Hodge, B.B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen. Marsden. Fundamentalism and American Culture; Szasz. The Divided Mind of Protestant America; Woodbridge. The Gospel in America.
[3] John Warwick Montgomery. “The Third Use of Law”. Present Truth. Vol. 2. No. 2. March 1973. pp. 14-16; Louis Berkhof. “Law and Gospel”. Present Truth. Vol. 2. No. 5. October 1973. pp. 22-23; Benjamin B. Warfield. “Justification by Faith – Out of Date ?”. Present Truth. Vol. 4. No. 4. August 1975. p. 9; William C. Robertson. “Justification: The Article of the Reformation”. Present Truth. Vol. 5. No. 4. July 1976. pp. 7-15; George Eldon Ladd. “The Greek Versus the Hebrew View of Man”. Present Truth. Vol. 6. No. 1. February 1977. pp. 6-18; George Eldon Ladd. “The Kingdom of God”. Present Truth. Vol. 7. No. 3. June 1978. pp. 5-12.
[4] Geoffrey J. Paxton. “Law and the Christian”. Present Truth. Vol. 2. No. 2. March 1973. pp. 19-23; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “Fugitive from Law”. Present Truth. Vol. 2. No. 5. October 1973. pp. 13-15; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “The Current Religious Scene and The Bible”. Present Truth. Vol. 3. No. 1. May 1974. pp. 18-30; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “Lectures on Justification”. Present Truth. Vol. 3. No. 2. May 1974. pp. 12-16; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “The Nature of Christian Existence”. Present Truth. Vol. 3. No. 3. July 1974. pp. 9-19; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “Lectures on Justification”. Present Truth. Vol. 3. No. 3. July 1974. pp. 35-38; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “The Evangelical’s Substitute”. Present Truth. Vol. 3. No. 5. November 1974. pp. 6-12; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “Exposed Naked to Satan”. Present Truth. Vol. 4. No. 6. December 1975. pp. 6-9; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “What is the Gospel ?”. Present Truth. Vol.5. No. 3. May 1976. pp. 6-15; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “The Gospel As the Power of God”. Present Truth. Vol. 5. No. 5. August 1976. pp. 6-11; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “The Justification of the Body”. Present Truth. Vol. 6. No. 1. February 1977. pp. 19-23; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “Justification in the Lutheran Confessions and John Calvin”. Present Truth. Vol. 7. No. 2. March 1978. pp. 15-22; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “The Gospel and a Controversial Text”. Present Truth. Vol. 7. No. 2. March 1978. pp. 23-26; Geoffrey J. Paxton. “The false Gospel of the New Birth”. Present Truth. Vol. 7. No. 3. June 1978. pp. 17-22; Bruce Winters. “A Youth Pastor Speaks Out on the Playboy Theology”. Present Truth. Vol. 2. No. 2. March 1973. pp. 25-26; Samuel McCafferty. “Amazing Grace”. Present Truth. Vol. 2. No. 5. October 1973. pp. 17-21.
[5] J.C. Ryle. “Scriptural Holiness”. Present Truth. Vol. 2. No. 5. October 1973. pp. 39-49; J.C. Ryle. “The Fallibility of Ministers”. Present Truth. Vol. 4. No. 2. April 1975. pp. 21-32; James Buchanan. “The Law and Justice of God”. Present Truth. Vol. 2. No. 5. October 1973. pp. 54-62; James Buchanan. “On the Second Use of the Law”. Present Truth. Vol. 3. No. 3. July 1974. pp. 39-40; Samuel Bolton. “On the Third Use of the Law”. Present Truth. Vol. 3. No. 3. July 1974. pp. 41-46.
[6] “Introduction to This Issue of Present Truth”. Present Truth. Vol. 5. No. 1. February 1976. p. 5; Inside Cover. Present Truth. Vol. 5. No. 2. April 1976. p. 2; Editorial Introduction. Present Truth. Vol. 6. No. 5. September 1977. p. 5; Editorial. Present Truth. Vol. 2. No. 5. October 1973. p. 11.
[7] Editor’s Note. Present Truth. Vol. 3. No 1. February 1974. p. 2; Editorial Introduction. Present Truth. Vol. 4. No. 5. October 1975. p. 3; Advertisement. “Announcing The 1977 Present Truth Summer Seminar”. Present Truth. Vol. 6. No. 1. February 1977. p. 38; Advertisement. “Present Truth Fall Seminars 1978”. Present Truth. Vol. 6. No. 5. September 1977. p. 4.
[8] Editorial Introduction. Present Truth. Vol. 7. No. 2. March 1976. p. 4.
[9] David Parker. Fundamentalism and Conservative Protestantism in Australia. pp. 499-501.
[10] Another Franky Schaeffer V Production, Whatever Happened to the Human Race ?, was also a popular film series of films seen by Queensland Protestants. This was a five film series that presented well-known American evangelical-fundamentalists, Francis A. Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop, and their critique of western medical ethics regarding abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.
[11] George M. Marsden. Fundamentalism and American Culture. The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism. 1870-1925. New York. Oxford University Press. 1980; George M. Marsden. Reforming Fundamentalism. Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 1987.
Neville Buch
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