The Minnesota Shooting Suspect's Background Suggests Deep Ties to Christian Nationalism

The man who prosecutors have charged with assassinating Melissa Hortman, a Democratic Minnesota state representative, and her husband, Mark Hortman, once said in a sermon that his religious awakening came when he was 17 years old, working next to a man who “talked about God all of the time” at a vegetable canning factory.

Over the next four decades of alleged shooter Vance Boelter’s life, while working in the food industry, local government, and private security, his religious worldview appeared to incorporate fringe theological ideas that are often associated with so-called charismatic Christianity and Christian Nationalism, a movement that’s captured the American religious right, has been seen as a key driver behind the January 6 Capitol riot, and currently enjoys an outsize influence on current Trump administration personnel and policy.

Charismatic Christianity is a broad movement of evangelical Christians who are associated with belief in modern supernatural experiences, like speaking in tongues, divine healing, and prophesy. Independent Charismatic Christians seek to exert influence over all aspects of life, from culture to politics. Independent Charismatic Christianity, which encompasses the “NAR,” or New Apostolic Reformation, has been described as the bedrock of Christian nationalism. NAR is an extreme Christian supremacist network that aims to dismantle the secular state, which it sees as demonic, and transform its institutions in accordance with Christian law.

Experts tell WIRED that there are several links from the suspect’s religious background to Christian nationalism that could explain why he allegedly targeted lawmakers and abortion advocates. WIRED has also confirmed that the suspect attended a bible school in Dallas that was attended by several controversial figures from the world of Christian nationalism.

“Vance Boelter, from everything I have read and heard, would clearly be a Christian nationalist,” says Michael Emerson, the Baker Institute’s Chavanne Fellow in religion and public policy at Rice University. “He found the perspectives and policies of the liberal left egregious, viewing such people and their work as anti-Christian and anti-God. They were harming the vision of a truly Christian identity and nation.”

WIRED previously reported that the 57-year-old alleged shooter has been affiliated with at least one evangelical organization, serving for a time as the president of Revoformation Ministries. A version of the ministry’s website captured in 2011 carries a biography in which he is said to have been ordained in 1993. According to a tax filing reviewed by WIRED, he ran the ministry with his wife.

He moonlighted as a religious pastor with Pentecostal congregations and participated in missions preaching around the world, including in Gaza and the West Bank, according to an archived website for Revoformation. He also gave several sermons in the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent years.

“Many churches in America didn't listen to Jesus,” the alleged shooter said in a 2023 sermon in the Democratic Republic of Congo viewed by WIRED. “And the enemy, the devil, comes through and rips everything apart. The churches are so messed up, they don’t know abortion is wrong, many churches.” In other sermons, the alleged shooter talked about the LGBTQ community, saying, “There's people, especially in America, they don't know what sex they are. They don't know their sexual orientation. They're confused … The enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul.”

The alleged shooter also said in one of the sermons, “God is going to raise up apostles and prophets in America.” It’s that language in particular, experts tell WIRED, that connects him to the world of charismatic Christianity.

“Everything that I've seen indicates that he's charismatic,” says Matthew Taylor, senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore and author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy. “The supernatural, talking about the gifts of the holy spirit, while using a very pentecostal style of discourse in his preaching.”

Abortion in the independent charismatic Christian movement is often characterized as a demonic practice. Police say the car that the alleged shooter abandoned contained a lengthy hit list of Democratic lawmakers, abortion providers, and outspoken abortion advocates in the state. Charismatic Christians often talk about abortion in terms of “child sacrifice to demons,” says Taylor.

“I don’t think it's hard to see how someone could get radicalized around that language,” he alleges.

The alleged shooter’s now-deleted Facebook profile also showed that he had “liked” a page for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy organization known for its hardline stances against abortion and LGBTQ rights. “This signals at least a right-wing anti-abortion conviction,” says Taylor.

David Carlson, who has known the alleged shooter since fourth grade and described the 57-year-old as his best friend, told reporters that the alleged shooter was a Trump supporter, “very conservative,” and would be offended if anyone suggested otherwise. (In the aftermath of the shooting, however, far-right influencers, including people like Elon Musk, sought to blame leftists and the Deep State.)

It’s likely, according to Taylor, that the alleged shooter’s theological ideas were rooted in his time at the Christ for the Nations Institute, a charismatic Bible college in Dallas, Texas, he claimed to spend some time at, according to a biography on the archived Revoformation website. Taylor claims that a number of prominent figures in the independent charismatic Christian movement have deep ties to or attended the institute.

Dutch Sheets, an NAR pastor who popularized the “Appeal to Heaven” flag waved by Christian nationalists and rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, graduated from the institute in 1978 and worked as an adjunct professor there in the late 1980s and early 1990s; he later briefly returned as an instructor in 2012. Cindy Jacobs, an avid supporter of Trump who has been described as one of the most influential prophets in America, settled in Dallas in the 1980s, and according to Taylor, was regularly on the institute’s campus lecturing or guest-teaching. The suspected shooter was enrolled at the Institute from 1988 to 1990, which means he could have overlapped with some of those figures.

When WIRED contacted the Institute, they directed our query to a statement saying it “unequivocally rejects, denounces, and condemns any and all forms of violence and extremism, be it politically, racially, religiously or otherwise motivated.” The statement also said that they were “aghast and horrified” that an alumnus of an Institute was a suspect in the Minnesota shootings. “This is not who we are. This is not what we teach.” Jacobs and Sheets did not respond to requests for comment.

Journalist Jeff Sharlet, in an essay published to his Substack called “Scenes From a Slow Civil War” following the Minnesota shootings, recalls a recent visit to the institute where he saw a quote by the school’s founder printed in the lobby: “Everyone ought to pray at least one violent prayer each day.” (In its statement, the Institute said the slogan had been misinterpreted: “By “violent prayer,” they say, the founder “meant that a Christian’s prayer-life should be intense, fervent, and passionate, not passive and lukewarm.)

Although independent charismatic Christians don't directly call for adherents to take matters into their own hands, they do see themselves as soldiers in the primordial battle of “spiritual warfare,” where demonic forces can only be overcome by prayer and carrying out God’s will. “This binary good versus evil worldview transforms democratic politics into a deadly version of the board game Risk, where geographic territory, institutions, and leaders have come under the sway of Satan,” says Robert Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute. “They are not political opponents or neighbors with whom we disagree; they are literally the instruments of evil.”

“The logic is straightforward,” says Emerson. “If Christian nationalism is to be realized, those of different faiths or no faith do not belong. They either must be converted, silenced, or expelled.”

And Taylor notes that, for example, “the people who participated in J6 were overwhelmingly in [Christian] charismatics; they would say they were doing God's will” because “God had revealed that Donald Trump was anointed for another term.”

The alleged shooter, too, may have seen himself as one of those soldiers. According to a criminal complaint filed Monday, Boelter texted his family after the killings, writing “Dad went to war last night … I don’t wanna say more because I don’t wanna implicate anybody.”

The suspect was captured late Sunday. In an affidavit filed after the arrest, police say he disguised himself in a rubber mask, wore a police uniform complete with a badge and a taser, and drove a car that had been customized to look like a local police cruiser. In addition to allegedly shooting and killing Hortman and her husband early Saturday morning, he also allegedly shot state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. Hoffman and his wife survived despite being shot multiple times.

David Gilbert contributed reporting.