“It has the potential to be the largest gathering of Christian women in history,” said Virginia Garrard, Professor Emerita of History at the University of Texas, in an interview with Frederick Clarkson for Religion Dispatches.

“I think they may very well exceed a million participants,” she added, noting that unlike many Americans, “Brazilian Pentecostals are very accustomed to attending large rallies.”

In addition to São Paulo’s large Pentecostal population, Garrard pointed out that “people of greater means who can afford to travel to São Paulo and stay in hotels or with friends and family will also travel from around the country to be a part of something so historic.”

So what is the New Apostolic Reformation — and how powerful is it?

This is a media-savvy movement, filling the airwaves with claims that those opposed to them are cultural Marxists, communists and demons that have to be removed from the high places of culture and society. —Rachel Tabachnick

At its core, NAR followers believe that they are waging a spiritual battle for control of the United States. And many see Donald Trump as the vehicle — the perfect leader — to battle demonic forces within the United States.

Writing for Salon, Paul Rosenberg pointed out:

Unlike earlier incarnations of the Christian right, the explicit goal of the widely-discussed but little-understood NAR is to install theocracy with a democratic facade, approximately on the Iranian model. They call it ‘theonomy.’ The movement is led by mutually recognized ‘apostles’ and ‘prophets’ who purport to receive direct guidance from God and see themselves engaged in spiritual warfare — literally, as in fighting actual demons — to gain dominion over the ‘seven mountains of culture’: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business and government. As in Iran, they wouldn’t just control government but every aspect of society, but would still call it democracy and claim, in the face of America’s ‘Godless Constitution,’ that this was what the founders wanted all along. It’s gaslighting in the name of God.

Last year, journalist Frederick Clarkson, a veteran observer of conservative religious movements, described it this way:

The story of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) lives at the epicenter of the intersection of politics and religion in the US—and reporting about it is as essential as it is challenging.

“The story of NAR is happening in the context of tectonic changes in global Christianity. It’s seldom reported that Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity is the second largest sector of global and American Christianity, after Roman Catholicism. It’s also the only major growth sector. … [T]he New Apostolic Reformation comes out of these traditions but doesn’t comprise the whole of the global movement. Rather, it’s a significant organizing element that has also become the edge of the Christian Right in the US and in other countries.

In short, NAR is not a denomination, but a loosely connected network of Christian leaders, churches, and organizations who share a set of theological ideas — particularly around spiritual warfare, prophecy, and the belief that modern-day “apostles” and “prophets” are being raised up to take authority over society and usher in God’s kingdom on earth.

Its reach is difficult to quantify but undeniably global. While it has no formal membership or centralized leadership, its influence can be seen in political movements, culture wars, and massive revival-style rallies — not only in the U.S., but increasingly across Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia.

Late last year, at a webinar titled “The New Apostolic Reformation and the Threat to Democracy in Pennsylvania,” former Political Research Associates researcher Rachel Tabachnick pointed out that The NAR “predates Trump and it will outlast him.” It is  a movement dedicated to “tearing down the establishment, not just in D.C., not just in Harrisburg, but also, and perhaps most importantly … tearing down the traditional religious establishment…. This is not just a religious versus secular movement,” Tabachnick noted, and it should not be framed that way. “This is a movement about reorganizing Christendom under their dominance.”