On March 24, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Senator Markwayne Mullin as President Trump’s next Secretary of Homeland Security, following the disastrous tenure of Kristi Noem. Republican Senators were joined by Democratic Senators John Fetterman (D-PA) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) in a 54-45 vote. But there is more to this news than may meet the eye.
At a contentious hearing before the Senate Committee, Mullin faced questions about his temperament; past statements endorsing physical violence against Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-KY) and the murder of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis; and policy positions amid the Trump administration’s focus on mass deportations, border security, and ongoing DHS funding challenges (including a partial government shutdown).
But one thing did not come up during the discussion of concerns about Mullin’s nomination: his involvement with City Elders, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based political organization enmeshed with the theocratic New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement. City Elders is meant to be a model for governance at all levels that parallels the NAR’s model for the church. They aim to be prepared to assume authority after current institutions fail, and the success of officials they support, like Mullin, indicates that they will already have some established leaders should that happen. NAR-connected candidates have also run for major offices in key states, most notably the (unsuccessful) GOP candidates for governor of California and Pennsylvania in 2022.
Meanwhile, the NAR is revisioning, reforming, and reorganizing charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity. It plays a dynamic political role, primarily in the Short for Make America Great Again, the slogan of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Learn more movement, and has been critical to Donald Trump’s election campaigns. The term New Apostolic Reformation was coined by apostolic leaders and scholars in the 1990s to describe the trend of Pentecostal and charismatic churches that operate outside of denominational structures—the fastest growing sector of Christianity in the United States and worldwide. They saw in this trend an emerging new paradigm that they eventually sought to shape, organize and lead.
Their vision of NAR features more than just networks of independent or nondenominational churches. It introduced historic changes to church governance featuring the restoration of modern-day apostles and prophets and what’s called the Five-Fold Ministry. Believing that historic Christianity has gotten it mostly wrong, they seek to restore the offices of the church—apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, as outlined in the New Testament’s Letter to the Ephesians (4:11-13). Their goal is to take Christianity back to the First Century and essentially start over—with a strong vision of religious and political dominion.
“[The NAR’s] goal is to take Christianity back to the First Century and essentially start over—with a strong vision of religious and political dominion.”
When City Elders founder Jesse Leon Rodgers introduced Mullin to a gathering of the group on October 6, 2023, he said that Mullin had served 10 years as a Member of Congress before being elected to the Senate in 2022. “We’ve been in friendship for many years and he’s been to City Elders almost from our inception,” he added. “He has been here many times, as a congressman and now as a senator.”
Mullin thanked Rodgers and said, “The first time you and I met, you came to my office and started sharing with me the vision of City Elders. I got it and started talking about going into our small towns, going into our cities, working on the school boards, working on the city councils, and getting godly people elected.”
Their chummy relationship epitomizes the theocratic creep in the Republican Party. Rodgers’ role in politics seems to have originated with his role as the state representative of Watchmen on the Wall which organizes clergy to pray for the nation. It’s a project of the Washington, DC headquartered Family Research Council, a leading A movement that emerged in the 1970s encompassing a wide swath of conservative Catholicism and Protestant evangelicalism. Learn more political organization since the mid-1980s. Its 40 state political affiliates play important political and policy roles in their respective state capitals. Mullin rightly views City Elders as a critical component of his Christian Right electoral base.
The name City Elders is both a biblical reference and a description of the group’s focus on county seats as the planned locus of theocratic action. The group seeks to develop permanent political infrastructures to select and elect candidates for local bodies such as school boards and county commissions, to exert ongoing influence. There are statewide City Elders groups in at least Oklahoma, Kansas, and Virginia, and a local group in Arkansas. (The Missouri City Elders group, founded in 2021, appears to be defunct, although their website says it is “under construction.”)
“[City Elders] seeks to develop permanent political infrastructures to select and elect candidates for local bodies such as school boards and county commissions, to exert ongoing influence.”
The group does not seem to have expanded much since I first wrote about them in 2023, and it would be wrong to overstate their political significance outside of Oklahoma, and perhaps Virginia. But they do stage regular banquets and conferences in Oklahoma that draw prominent candidates and government officials. (Mullin is now among the highest ranking government officials to have addressed the group.) In addition to Senator Mullin, speakers at their events in recent years (videos preserved on Rumble and YouTube) include Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, former State Senator and State GOP Party Chairman Nathan Dahm, and U.S. Rep. Kevin Hern, who is Trump’s candidate to replace Mullin in the Senate.
City Elders events have featured leading NAR apostles, including Dutch Sheets, Cindy Jacobs, and Jim Garlow. They have also featured appearances by such NAR figures as Rafael Cruz (father of Ted), podcaster Andrew Wommack, and prophets Lou Engle and Mario Murillo.
City Elders seems to be a hybrid experiment in religious and political organizing. While the most active elements appear to be charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, the group has been cultivating close political relationships with other conservative evangelicals, especially Baptists and conservative business leaders. Their goal is effective conservative Christian political control.
On the group’s website, former convening The leading office of the modern apostolic prayer networks that compose the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Learn more of the U.S. Coalition of Apostolic Leaders Joseph Mattera says, “City Elders is perhaps the greatest model in the nation combining church place [sic] and workplace leaders as gatekeepers to influence society in each county in the United States.” The City Elders political vision also overlaps with the broader county movement, operating in other sectors of the far Christian and political Right.
A Whiff of Revolution
I wrote one of the first two major stories on City Elders from outside of the state for Salon, along with the Daily News Record in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in November 2023, when there were local City Elders groups in formation in Virginia. These stories were followed by the Baptist Global News in 2024.
With the Mullin nomination, City Elders is back in the news. People magazine, among others, highlighted his remarks to the group about corporal punishment of children, and Baptist News Global emphasized the effort of the liberal group Faithful America that opposes Mullin. In a letter, they wrote of Mullin’s election denialism,
“Election denial is a hallmark of The contemporary idea that America was founded as—and was intended by God to be—a Christian nation. Learn more . It prioritizes a distorted religious-political aim over democratic processes, while perpetuating a specific narrative elevating ‘the anointed’ over the will of the people.
Mullin knows this well. For years, he’s built a relationship with City Elders, a Tulsa-based Christian nationalist group whose leaders seek to take control of government at every level in the name of ‘Establishing the Kingdom of God.”’”
During his March 18, 2026, confirmation hearing, Mullin seemed to want to avoid sparks going into election season. He took a non-confrontational tone when asked whether he would place uniformed DHS officers at polling places during the 2026 midterm elections in November. Without confirming or ruling it out completely, he said, if “it’s about a specific threat.” Yet he also promised agency reforms on such unpopular matters as slow disaster aid and the lack of judicial warrants before invading people’s homes.
How Mullin will carry out his responsibilities remains to be seen. He did not serve on the Homeland Security committees in the House or the Senate; has no experience running a large organization of any kind; and has no experience in law enforcement, or any of the other functions of the federal government’s third largest department. He seems to have been picked primarily because he is a Trump loyalist and has good relationships with other members of Congress. He is, however, a former mixed martial arts fighter who notoriously once challenged a witness at a Senate hearing—Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters—to a fight.
Mullin is also the first member of the Cherokee Nation to serve in the cabinet. Some tribal leaders believe—based on his lived experience and his record on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs—that he will bring greater sensitivity and respect for tribal sovereignty to immigration enforcement and border security than his predecessor, even while maintaining the administration’s policies in this area. Mullin is not unique among Indigenous people in having a relationship with the NAR. The movement has recognized and sought apologies for past violence against Indigenous people, and has a following among some Native nations.
NAR leaders see those who are not the right kind of Christian as demonic threats, or at the very least, obstacles to advancing of the Kingdom of God as they see it. These “spiritual warriors” have long targeted Indigenous communities for conversion via the language and ceremonial practice of reconciliation. This may seem contradictory, given conversion’s role in the violence of historic and ongoing colonization. But the NAR has recruited Indigenous followers by appealing to this desire for acknowledgment and healing.
“NAR leaders see those who are not the right kind of Christian as demonic threats, or at the very least, obstacles to advancing of the Kingdom of God as they see it.”
There may not be major changes to the Trump administration’s policies or their enforcement under the new secretary. But Mullin is now in a position to reward his supporters with jobs. It would be surprising if there were not members of the Christian Right, including NAR devotees, quietly hired for DHS positions, great and small, which has longer-term implications for democratic governance.
Beyond City Elders’ theocratic political vision, there is a whiff of revolution in the air. At the group’s September 7, 2023 event, Apostle Jim Garlow spoke at length about his view that the United States federal government is on the verge of “collapse,” and religious civil war may be on the horizon. But he is looking ahead to the post-collapse period. He said, “What you’re going to do as City Elders, under Jesse’s leadership—the vision he’s given—you’re going to start watching your valley.”
Garlow held aloft the City Elders strategy manual, stating, “I’ve gone through major parts of this [and] this is a strategy that is executable!” He envisions using it to take power across the country, “county by county by county.” (The City Elders website says, “Join us as Governing Councils are built in every county seat of America.”) One key point in the manual, Garlow said, is making the transition to “dominion.”
“Now the ‘dominion’ word, boy, the Left gets nervous about that one!” he exclaimed. “Oh, ‘Christian nationalists’ … ‘Dominionism,’ they have a whole string of words. They’re just terribly nervous. It just simply means that we are going to fast and pray and declare the word and let God be God! It’s that simple.”
Garlow also emphasized that theological differences in his audience are not as significant as they may sometimes seem, and the overriding fact is that they are in a war. “Some people believe in a five-fold ministry,” he said. “Some don’t. But I must tell you that all of you—whether you like it or not—are prophetic and you are apostolic!”
He emphasized that leaders need to be talent scouting and recruiting. What was important, he said, was not how many people attend Sunday services but “how many are deployed into action, who are actually threats to the enemy of God.”
“[Garlow] emphasized that leaders need to be talent scouting and recruiting. What was important, he said, was not how many people attend Sunday services but ‘how many are deployed into action, who are actually threats to the enemy of God.’”
Mullin relies more on metaphor than Garlow, but in his talk to City Elders, he said he likes to talk about David, a biblical king and military leader. He said, “I look forward to riding back in that battle. I want to be on the horse beside him. I want to be carrying the sword and I want to see the field. I want to see it. I want to be that warrior. I want to be that fighter.” He goes on to talk about the need to raise kids to be Davids.
In fairness, it is not clear from his association with City Elders that the new Secretary of Homeland Security shares all of their views or those of the prominent speakers at their gatherings. However, it is also fair to note that he was not asked about it by reporters or by the Senators responsible for vetting him.
City Elders will no doubt continue to seek to organize groups in as many counties as they can and influence politicians and government officials. This is concerning, given how their materials, conference speeches, and videos do not indicate any respect for democratic institutions, the religious and civil rights of others, or the bedrock value of equal rights under the law. For City Elders and their NAR sponsors, elections are primarily about using the tools of electoral democracy to erode and end it. Politicians who seek out City Elders for support understand this, and those who claim they did not know should not be given a pass.
This ignoring of the unambiguous views of the likes of City Elders—and importantly, the politicians who run with them—explains much about the creeping theocratization of the Republican Party and the ongoing destabilization of U.S. constitutional democracy.
