'Fits a profile': Suspect's Christian ties spur fears of more assassinations
Investigative Reporter
June 18, 2025
June 18, 2025
RAW ST0RY
Vance Boelter, 57, the suspected gunman in the Minnesota shootings. Photo: Hennepin County Sheriff's Office via REUTERS
Since the fatal shooting of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband in an act described by a federal prosecutor as a “political assassination,” scrutiny has turned to suspect Vance Boelter’s ties to independent charismatic Christianity, in particular a movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
Boelter is alleged to have posed as a police officer as he gunned down Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, in the early hours of June 14. In a separate shooting, he wounded state Sen. John A. Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. Investigators say Boelter visited two other lawmakers and had a list of 70 targets, including Democrats, civic leaders and abortion providers.
Boelter was described in a court filing supporting federal charges as embarking "on a planned campaign of stalking and violence, designed to inflict fear, injure, and kill members of the Minnesota state legislature and their families."
Vance Boelter, 57, the suspected gunman in the Minnesota shootings. Photo: Hennepin County Sheriff's Office via REUTERS
Since the fatal shooting of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband in an act described by a federal prosecutor as a “political assassination,” scrutiny has turned to suspect Vance Boelter’s ties to independent charismatic Christianity, in particular a movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
Boelter is alleged to have posed as a police officer as he gunned down Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, in the early hours of June 14. In a separate shooting, he wounded state Sen. John A. Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. Investigators say Boelter visited two other lawmakers and had a list of 70 targets, including Democrats, civic leaders and abortion providers.
Boelter was described in a court filing supporting federal charges as embarking "on a planned campaign of stalking and violence, designed to inflict fear, injure, and kill members of the Minnesota state legislature and their families."
Researchers who study the Christian right have homed in on Boelter’s attendance at a Bible college in Dallas in the late 1980s and missionary work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he delivered sermons critical of abortion and LGBTQ+ people.
Christ For the Nations Institute (CFNI) confirmed that Boelter attended the college from 1988 to 1990, graduating with a “diploma in practical theology in leadership and pastoral.”
Christ For the Nations Institute has been a “merging space” for trends in independent charismatic Christianity, Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic Christian Jewish Studies, told the “Straight White American Jesus” podcast.
Those trends include dominionism — the idea of Christians taking control over the world — and NAR, which emerged in the mid-1990s.
Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, described NAR to Raw Story as a movement whose adherents believe God speaks directly to modern-day apostles and prophets, and which seeks to “restore their vision of what they think 1st-century Christianity was.”
Both Taylor and Clarkson note that Apostle Dutch Sheets, one of the major proponents of New Apostolic Reformation, attended CFNI in the 1970s and taught at the college in the following decade, potentially overlapping with Boelter.
Sheets reportedly met Trump officials at the White House one week before the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Staff at Dutch Sheets Ministries declined Raw Story’s request for an interview.
In the early 2010s, Sheets was executive director at CFNI, where a sign in the lobby displays a quote attributed to founder Gordon Lindsay: “Every Christian ought to pray at least one violent prayer a day.”
Following the Minnesota shootings, the institute said its leadership was “absolutely aghast and horrified that a CFNI alumnus is the suspect,” and that it “unequivocally rejects, denounces, and condemns any and all forms of violence and extremism, be it politically, racially, religiously or otherwise motivated.”
The statement rejected any notion the college’s teachings were “a contributing factor” to Boelter’s “evil behavior.”
The statement also claimed Lindsay’s comment about “violent prayer” has been misrepresented.
“By ‘violent prayer’ he meant that a Christian’s prayer life should be intense, fervent, and passionate, not passive and lukewarm,” the statement said, “considering that spiritual forces of darkness are focused on attacking life, identity in God, purpose, peace, love, joy, truth, health, and other good things.”
‘Five soccer balls’
Researchers who track the Christian right have taken note of a sermon Boelter preached in Congo in 2023.
“They don’t know abortion is wrong, many churches,” Boelter said, in comments first reported by Wired. “They don’t have the gifts flowing. God gives the body gifts. To keep balance. Because when the body starts moving in the wrong direction, when they’re one, and accepting the gifts, God will raise an apostle or prophet to correct their course.”
Clarkson told Raw Story Boelter’s rhetoric had a familiar ring.
“Nobody but someone influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation movement would say something like that,” Clarkson said.
But Taylor saw a broader strain of charismatic Christianity in Boelter’s sermonizing, connected to the Latter Rain movement, a precursor to NAR that emerged after World War II.
“Many people today would say those are NAR ideas, but they were Latter Rain ideas before they were NAR ideas,” Taylor said. “I don’t know where he picked up these ideas. He’s very clearly charismatic in his theology and in his preaching as well.”
In a sermon in Congo in 2022, Boelter used an odd metaphor involving soccer balls to suggest he was burdened with regrets.
“Do you understand what God has given us?” Boelter asked. “He’s given us eternity — with Him. And what does he ask? He says, ‘Life didn’t go the way I wanted it for you. But it wasn’t my fault. Vance, you sidetracked. You messed up your life. You took your five soccer balls, and you wrecked ’em.’
“But He says he loves us so much he came and he died to pay for it all. And he says, ‘Vance, do you want to trade your five wrecked soccer balls for all of these? Do you want to live forever with me? Then get on your face, Vance, and repent of your sins.”
Clarkson told Raw Story he thinks both personal troubles and exposure to ideas in the realm of charismatic Christianity could have factored into Boelter’s turn to political violence.
“If he’s in NAR all the way, and his marriage and his finances are falling apart, he may lean into his faith to find purpose,” Clarkson said. “If he thinks his life as he knows it is over, he may be thinking about trying to go out in a meaningful way.”
Boelter reportedly texted his family after the shootings: “Dad went to war last night.”
“He’s been planning these things for a long time; he was armed for it,” Clarkson said. “It was literally war. He did seem to assume he would be killed … When people commit violence out of religious motive, that’s profound.”
Researchers who track the Christian right have taken note of a sermon Boelter preached in Congo in 2023.
“They don’t know abortion is wrong, many churches,” Boelter said, in comments first reported by Wired. “They don’t have the gifts flowing. God gives the body gifts. To keep balance. Because when the body starts moving in the wrong direction, when they’re one, and accepting the gifts, God will raise an apostle or prophet to correct their course.”
Clarkson told Raw Story Boelter’s rhetoric had a familiar ring.
“Nobody but someone influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation movement would say something like that,” Clarkson said.
But Taylor saw a broader strain of charismatic Christianity in Boelter’s sermonizing, connected to the Latter Rain movement, a precursor to NAR that emerged after World War II.
“Many people today would say those are NAR ideas, but they were Latter Rain ideas before they were NAR ideas,” Taylor said. “I don’t know where he picked up these ideas. He’s very clearly charismatic in his theology and in his preaching as well.”
In a sermon in Congo in 2022, Boelter used an odd metaphor involving soccer balls to suggest he was burdened with regrets.
“Do you understand what God has given us?” Boelter asked. “He’s given us eternity — with Him. And what does he ask? He says, ‘Life didn’t go the way I wanted it for you. But it wasn’t my fault. Vance, you sidetracked. You messed up your life. You took your five soccer balls, and you wrecked ’em.’
“But He says he loves us so much he came and he died to pay for it all. And he says, ‘Vance, do you want to trade your five wrecked soccer balls for all of these? Do you want to live forever with me? Then get on your face, Vance, and repent of your sins.”
Clarkson told Raw Story he thinks both personal troubles and exposure to ideas in the realm of charismatic Christianity could have factored into Boelter’s turn to political violence.
“If he’s in NAR all the way, and his marriage and his finances are falling apart, he may lean into his faith to find purpose,” Clarkson said. “If he thinks his life as he knows it is over, he may be thinking about trying to go out in a meaningful way.”
Boelter reportedly texted his family after the shootings: “Dad went to war last night.”
“He’s been planning these things for a long time; he was armed for it,” Clarkson said. “It was literally war. He did seem to assume he would be killed … When people commit violence out of religious motive, that’s profound.”
‘Priming the pump for violence’
Clarkson said that if it turns out Boelter is an NAR adherent, “this would be the first major example of the violent vision and rhetoric of the New Apostolic Reformation movement manifesting.”
On the other hand, Clarkson said, “if it turns out that he’s not NAR, it’s still the case that there are all these NAR leaders that have been teaching people that they are in an end-times war. They’re priming the pump for violence in their lifetime.”
Officers gather in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, after the shootings of two lawmakers and their spouses. REUTERS/Ellen Schmidt
Taylor suggested a different way of looking at Boelter’s attack.
Political discourse in the U.S. is “at a high boil,” Taylor said. While Boelter might have been influenced by hostility towards abortion and LGBTQ+ rights in right-wing media, Taylor noted that political violence is manifesting against an array of targets, with a firebombing attack against Jewish demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in Colorado this month only one example.
“There’s so much of this bile in the far-right and right-wing and independent media spaces about abortion, and about LGBTQ+ rights,” Taylor said. “And that’s something that Boelter touches on in his sermons as well — about trans people, about Muslims, about immigrants.
“I worry that this is the harbinger of what’s to come. And we could see more attacks like this in the coming time, because he fits a very common profile.”
Jordan Green is a North Carolina-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, covering domestic extremism, efforts to undermine U.S. elections and democracy, hate crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the staff of Raw Story in March 2021, Green spent 16 years covering housing, policing, nonprofits and music as a reporter and editor at Triad City Beat in North Carolina and Yes Weekly. He can be reached at jordan@rawstory.com. More about Jordan Green.
Clarkson said that if it turns out Boelter is an NAR adherent, “this would be the first major example of the violent vision and rhetoric of the New Apostolic Reformation movement manifesting.”
On the other hand, Clarkson said, “if it turns out that he’s not NAR, it’s still the case that there are all these NAR leaders that have been teaching people that they are in an end-times war. They’re priming the pump for violence in their lifetime.”
Officers gather in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, after the shootings of two lawmakers and their spouses. REUTERS/Ellen Schmidt
Taylor suggested a different way of looking at Boelter’s attack.
Political discourse in the U.S. is “at a high boil,” Taylor said. While Boelter might have been influenced by hostility towards abortion and LGBTQ+ rights in right-wing media, Taylor noted that political violence is manifesting against an array of targets, with a firebombing attack against Jewish demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in Colorado this month only one example.
“There’s so much of this bile in the far-right and right-wing and independent media spaces about abortion, and about LGBTQ+ rights,” Taylor said. “And that’s something that Boelter touches on in his sermons as well — about trans people, about Muslims, about immigrants.
“I worry that this is the harbinger of what’s to come. And we could see more attacks like this in the coming time, because he fits a very common profile.”
Jordan Green is a North Carolina-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, covering domestic extremism, efforts to undermine U.S. elections and democracy, hate crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the staff of Raw Story in March 2021, Green spent 16 years covering housing, policing, nonprofits and music as a reporter and editor at Triad City Beat in North Carolina and Yes Weekly. He can be reached at jordan@rawstory.com. More about Jordan Green.
'Dramatic spiritual warfare': Inside the alleged Minnesota killer's 'apocalyptic' ideology
Vance Luther Boelter, 57, the suspected gunman in the shooting deaths of a Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker and her husband, appears in this June 16, 2025 mugshot provided by Hennepin County Sheriff's Office via REUTERS
June 17, 2025 |
New York Magazine writer Sarah Jones says she’s familiar with the faction of modern Christianity that creates a hazy, hidden word of invisible demons and evil spirits.
Alleged political assassin Vance Boelter, for example, shares a religious “lineage” with Eric Rudolph, who bombed Centennial Olympic Park, a gay nightclub, and two abortion clinics before temporarily evading law enforcement.
“Adherents do have some core beliefs: namely that the people of God are caught up in dramatic spiritual warfare with the forces of Satan,” Jones writes. It is a world of hard-to-prove mystical forces that use people like tools.
“I don’t think spiritual warfare is an innocuous belief,” writes Jones. “It is apocalyptic in character and profoundly conspiratorial because it adds a demonic dimension to worldly tensions.”
Jones points out that long before QAnon and Pizzagate, Christian author Frank Peretti published a popular novel called This Present Darkness, with angels and demons battling over a small college town through “human proxies.”
“A liberal professor is working for Satan, and there’s a redheaded angel with a Scottish accent,” Jones recounts. “In a more serious turn, demons force women and children to make false accusations of sexual abuse.”
Jones points out that scholar Julie Ingersoll argued “we all inevitably play a part in the looming and raging cosmic battle.” That view extends further than the mind of the author, Ingersoll claims. Decades after This Present Darkness, Ingersoll warned of a rise in “violent rhetoric” and of “an increasing number of Americans willing to engage in violence against fellow citizens in the name of an apocalyptic ‘alternate reality.’”
A gun, said Jones, is more tangible than an angel, so “for authoritarians, spiritual warfare is a useful notion.”
“Their political opponents aren’t simply misguided; they’re agents of the devil, and their humanity is questionable. Boelter’s Christianity did not force him to kill, but it did give him permission to act,” Jones said. She then cited a CNN report of Boelter texting his family after his shooting spree. “Dad went to war last night,” he’d said.
For most adherents, the work stops at prayer, but sometimes Jones warns there’s a man like Boelter, “who decides that prayer is insufficient and that voting is no good as long as liberals can still do it.”
Read the full Intelligencer report at this link.
New York Magazine writer Sarah Jones says she’s familiar with the faction of modern Christianity that creates a hazy, hidden word of invisible demons and evil spirits.
Alleged political assassin Vance Boelter, for example, shares a religious “lineage” with Eric Rudolph, who bombed Centennial Olympic Park, a gay nightclub, and two abortion clinics before temporarily evading law enforcement.
“Adherents do have some core beliefs: namely that the people of God are caught up in dramatic spiritual warfare with the forces of Satan,” Jones writes. It is a world of hard-to-prove mystical forces that use people like tools.
“I don’t think spiritual warfare is an innocuous belief,” writes Jones. “It is apocalyptic in character and profoundly conspiratorial because it adds a demonic dimension to worldly tensions.”
Jones points out that long before QAnon and Pizzagate, Christian author Frank Peretti published a popular novel called This Present Darkness, with angels and demons battling over a small college town through “human proxies.”
“A liberal professor is working for Satan, and there’s a redheaded angel with a Scottish accent,” Jones recounts. “In a more serious turn, demons force women and children to make false accusations of sexual abuse.”
Jones points out that scholar Julie Ingersoll argued “we all inevitably play a part in the looming and raging cosmic battle.” That view extends further than the mind of the author, Ingersoll claims. Decades after This Present Darkness, Ingersoll warned of a rise in “violent rhetoric” and of “an increasing number of Americans willing to engage in violence against fellow citizens in the name of an apocalyptic ‘alternate reality.’”
A gun, said Jones, is more tangible than an angel, so “for authoritarians, spiritual warfare is a useful notion.”
“Their political opponents aren’t simply misguided; they’re agents of the devil, and their humanity is questionable. Boelter’s Christianity did not force him to kill, but it did give him permission to act,” Jones said. She then cited a CNN report of Boelter texting his family after his shooting spree. “Dad went to war last night,” he’d said.
For most adherents, the work stops at prayer, but sometimes Jones warns there’s a man like Boelter, “who decides that prayer is insufficient and that voting is no good as long as liberals can still do it.”
Read the full Intelligencer report at this link.
'Going to be rewarded': How religion played a part in the Minnesota political assassination
Vance Boelter, 57, was captured by law enforcement Sunday, June 15, 2025 in Sibley County. (Photo courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
June 16, 2025 |
Law enforcement officers on Sunday night arrested Vance Boelter, who is accused of assassinating Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband at their home in Brooklyn Park as part of a larger plot to kill Democratic elected officials and other advocates of abortion rights.
Boelter is also accused of shooting Democratic-Farmer-Labor state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home in Champlin. Both Hoffmans survived the shooting, but received surgeries for their injuries and remain hospitalized.
The arrest comes after a 43-hour manhunt — the largest in state history, according to Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley. Law enforcement officers had been searching all day after locating Boelter’s abandoned vehicle near Green Isle, where Boelter has a home.
At the time of his arrest, Boelter was armed, but ultimately surrendered. Officers did not use any force, said Lt. Col. Jeremy Geiger of the Minnesota State Patrol.
In the state’s new Emergency Operations Center in Blaine — which was paid for by legislation passed by Hortman’s DFL-controlled House in 2020 — Gov. Tim Walz thanked law enforcement and decried political violence and hateful rhetoric.
“This cannot be the norm. It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences,” Walz said. “Now is the time for us to recommit to the core values of this country, and each and every one of us can do it. Talk to a neighbor rather than argue, debate an issue, shake hands, find common ground.”
Boelter is a Christian who voted for President Donald Trump and opposes abortion and LGBTQ rights, according to interviews with his childhood friend and videos of his sermons posted online. A list of potential targets — including Hoffman and Hortman — included abortion providers and other Democratic elected officials from Minnesota and Wisconsin.
The attack, which has shocked Minnesotans and the nation, comes amid rising political violence since the emergence of President Donald Trump, who has made repeated threats of violence against his political enemies and praised his supporters who, for instance, attacked officers while storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He later pardoned all of them. He survived two assassination attempts in 2024.
Authorities say Boelter attacked the Hoffmans at their home in Champlin at approximately 2 a.m. on Saturday morning. An unsealed criminal complaint indicates that the Hoffmans’ daughter called the police to report the shooting of her parents, the Associated Press reports.
At around 3:30 a.m., Brooklyn Park police headed to the Hortmans’ home to proactively check on them following the attack on the Hoffmans, said Drew Evans, superintendent at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at a press conference Saturday morning.
When they arrived, the officers saw the attacker in a fake law enforcement uniform shoot Mark Hortman through the open front door, according to the complaint. Out front, emergency vehicle lights flashed from a Ford Explorer outfitted to look like a cop car. When the officers confronted the shooter, a gunfight ensued, and the killer escaped, abandoning the vehicle.
Inside, Hortman and her husband, Mark, were dead from gunshot wounds.
In the SUV, police found a document with a list of lawmakers and other officials on it. Hortman and Hoffman were on the list.
Evans said Sunday that the document is not a “traditional manifesto that’s a treatise on all kinds of ideology and writings.” Instead, it contains a list of names and “other thoughts” throughout.
On Saturday afternoon, police raided a home in north Minneapolis where Boelter lived part time. In an interview with the Star Tribune and other media outlets, Boelter’s roommate and childhood friend David Carlson shared a text message Boelter sent him at 6:03 a.m. saying that he would be “gone for a while” and “may be dead shortly.”
Federal and state warrants were out for Boelter’s arrest, and the FBI was offering a $50,000 award for information that led to Boelter’s capture.
On Sunday morning, law enforcement officers detained and questioned Boelter’s wife as she was driving through Mille Lacs County with other family members. Evans said Sunday none of Boelter’s family members are in custody.
Sunday afternoon, law enforcement officers located a car linked to Boelter in Sibley County within a few miles of his home address in Green Isle. From there, teams from dozens of law enforcement agencies fanned out in search of Boelter.
Boelter was spotted in the area, and officers converged around him, Evans said. He declined to provide some details of the tactics used by law enforcement to capture Boelter.
Law enforcement officials continue to investigate Boelter’s motives, Evans said, and urged the public not to jump to conclusions.
“We often want easy answers for complex problems, and this is a complex situation…those answers will come as we complete the full picture of our investigation,” he said.
Fragments of Boelter’s life available online, and interviews with those who know him, shed light on his religious and political beliefs.
Boelter’s LinkedIn page indicates that he spent many years working in food production before becoming the general manager of a 7-Eleven. More recently, he worked at funeral homes, the New York Times reported.
Boelter was facing financial stress after quitting his job to embark on business ventures in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Carlson, the Star Tribune reported.
The website for a private security firm lists Boelter as the “director of security patrols,” and his wife as the CEO. He purchased some cars and uniforms but “it was never a real company,” Carlson told the Strib.
Carlson said Boelter is a Christian who strongly opposes abortion, the New York Times reported.
In recordings of sermons Boelter delivered in Matadi, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he railed against abortion and LGBTQ people.
The reporting on Boelter’s religious life suggests that his beliefs were rooted in fundamentalism, though he doesn’t appear to have been ordained in any particular denomination, said Rev. Angela Denker, a Minnesota-based Lutheran minister, journalist and author of books on Christianity, right-wing politics and masculinity.
“What this kind of theology says is that if you commit violence in the name of whatever movement you’re a part of, then you’re going to be rewarded,” Denker said.
The gunman shot John Hoffman nine times, and Yvette Hoffman eight times, according to a statement from Yvette.
The Hoffmans’ nephew, Mat Ollig, wrote on Facebook that Yvette used her body to shield her daughter. John Hoffman is “enduring many surgeries right now and is closer every hour to being out of the woods,” Yvette Hoffman said in a statement.
On Sunday night as leaders spoke to the press, Boelter was being questioned by law enforcement, but officials declined to say where he was detained and which agency was questioning him.
On the steps of the State Capitol Sunday, mourners created an extemporaneous memorial for Hortman, who will be known as one of the most consequential progressive leaders in recent state history.
Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.
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