Ché Ahn, a pastor and leader of the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, has announced that he’s running in the 2026 election to become governor of California. An email newsletter sent from his Harvest International Ministry on Monday promoted his campaign website.
The New Apostolic Reformation is a growing religious and political movement that emerged from the Pentecostal corner of American Christianity over the past few decades. President Donald Trump’s rise to power was assisted by NAR leaders who declared that Trump was anointed by God to lead America; in turn, Trump and his spiritual adviser Paula White have given dominionist leaders a level of access and influence they have never had before.
The movement’s leaders, like Ahn, believe that Christians who share their religious and political worldview are commanded to transform whole nations by taking “dominion” over every sphere of influence in society, including government, and "occupy" them until the return of Christ. Ahn’s campaign website says he is running “not out of ambition, but out of obedience.”
“His story is one of revival,” the website says. “His mission is one of reform.”
In the run-up to the 2020 election, Ahn appeared at a pro-Trump religious-right rally “The Return,” where he denounced legal abortion and marriage equality and thanked God that Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett would “be the judge that will help us to overturn Roe v. Wade.”
NAR leaders rallied around Trump as he was trying to stay in power illegally after losing the 2020 election. Ahn spoke at a rally near the White House on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, where speakers mingled conspiracy theories, Christian nationalism, and threats of violence. Right Wing Watch reported at the time:
California pastor Ché Ahn, a leader of the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, called this week the most important in U.S. history. “I believe that this week we’re going to throw Jezebel out and Jehu’s gonna rise up, and we’re gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.” (In the Bible, Jehu overthrew the wicked queen Jezebel and slaughtered her family; Pentecostal Christians often refer to the “Jezebel spirit” as a demonic influence in the world.) Ahn said the election was “stolen” from Trump in “the most egregious fraud” in U.S. history. He predicted that Trump would be president for four more years and the U.S. would become a “red” nation “in perpetuity.”
A few weeks before the 2024 election, Ahn appeared at a spiritual warfare rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where he issued an “apostolic decree” that Trump would defeat the spirit of Jezebell and win the election. As Trump was returning to power in January, Ahn declared that anyone who was fighting Trump and his administration was “really fighting God.”
Backing Trump has not been Ahn's only foray into electoral politics. In 2020, Ahn launched a political group to elect anti-abortion politicians. In March 2024, he bragged that seven congregants in his network of churches won primary elections and would be on the ballot in California in November "because we gave them money to win."
Ahn’s gubernatorial website describes the stakes in the election this way: “California stands at a crossroads. Will we be a state where biblical values and lawful order are respected—or a state where the rule of law collapses under political expediency? The leaders that we choose in 2026 will embody that choice.”
