Liberty University's Standing for Freedom Center—until recently known as the Falkirk Center—announced its new class of fellows Thursday, making it clear that the organization may have a new name but it has not abandoned its purpose of promoting the religious right's "biblical worldview" in culture and public policy. The new fellows are former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Arkansas Governor and failed presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, anti-abortion rights activist Abby Johnson, and brother anti-LGBTQ culture warrior duo David and Jason Benham.
Earlier this year, the university ditched the Falkirk name, presumably to distance the center from its disgraced co-founder and former president, Jerry Falwell, Jr. It has also said goodbye to its earlier crop of fellows, which included Falkirk Center co-founder Charlie Kirk, president of right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA; Jenna Ellis, a Trump attorney who now hosts her own TV show, unironically called "Just the Truth"; pundit, conspiracy theorist, and so-called Stop the Steal activist Eric Metaxas; and Steve Bannon acolyte and former White House aide Sebastian Gorka.
Executive Director Ryan Helfenbein remains in place. As Right Wing Watch noted in December, when the center celebrated its first anniversary, Helfenbein touted the organization's aggressive posture, saying, "We don't just want to be an organization that barks; we want to be an organization that bites." The center bragged that it had "consistently encouraged churches and pastors to defy" pandemic-related "lockdown orders." Among the center's first-year accomplishments was "Get Louder," a "faith summit" held last September, which included Christian Reconstructionist Gary DeMar on a panel moderated by Metaxas.
The Standing for Freedom Center's new fellows have the credentials one would expect for a religious-right center that aims to bite:
Mike Pompeo used his position as secretary of state to promote the religious right's agenda at home and abroad. He created the Commission on Unalienable Rights—which has been repudiated by the Biden administration—to create justification for a narrow view of human rights in U.S. foreign policy. As secretary of state, Pompeo opened doors in other countries for a Bible study ministry that teaches public officials that the Bible requires them to back right-wing social, economic, environmental, and criminal justice policies. Pompeo and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar worked to create a new global "pro-family" coalition of anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice regimes and to celebrate governmental enforcement of "traditional" religious values on gender, sexuality, and family. Pompeo is a longtime religious-right favorite who, as a member of Congress, promoted Christian nationalism and associated with anti-Muslim activists. Axios reported this week that Pompeo is "pouring money" into a new PAC called Champion American Values in apparent preparation for a 2024 presidential run. Update: "Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo violated federal ethics rules governing the use of taxpayer-funded resources when he and his wife, Susan, asked State Department employees to carry out tasks for their personal benefit more than 100 times, a government watchdog has determined," Politico reported Friday.
Mike Huckabee, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2016, has remained active in religious-right politics since turning to punditry after his failed 2016 campaign. The former Arkansas governor is the honorary chairman of the religious-right get-out-the-vote operation My Faith Votes, which was active in the 2020 elections, including the Georgia Senate runoffs. Huckabee spoke at the Falkirk "Get Louder" summit last year and appeared on an Intercessors for America call in September, where he warned that if conservative Christians didn't turn out to vote, the government would force churches to shut down. He also appeared in "Trump 2024: The World After Trump," a religious-right "documentary" that promoted Trump's reelection. Last year, Huckabee said, "Redefining gender and sexual identity is the 'greatest threat' to the moral fiber of America," and blamed the existence of transgender people on Christian churches' failure to teach a "biblical standard of maleness and femaleness." Huckabee has railed against the Supreme Court's marriage equality ruling and has claimed that the president could criminalize abortion without a Supreme Court decision or constitutional amendment. Huckabee's daughter, former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is running to follow in her father's footsteps and become the next governor of Arkansas.
Abby Johnson is an anti-abortion rights activist who spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention and participated in the so-called Stop the Steal campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Johnson has become a religious-right superstar with her disputedstory—dramatized in the movie "Unplanned"—about having worked for Planned Parenthood before having an epiphany about abortion. The day before the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Johnson spoke at the D.C. rally at which Stop the Steal's Ali Alexander led cheers of "Victory or Death!" Johnson told the crowd she was there "to defend the most pro-life president we have ever had in the history of the United States." She said that she is tired of "compromise," which she said "has led to our houses of worship being unconstitutionally closed for months and months." In her speech at the Jan. 5 rally, she shamed American Christians for not doing more to shut down clinics that perform abortions, saying, "It is time, patriots, to stop worrying about offending your neighbor and start worrying offending the heart of God." She also targeted COVID-19 vaccine research, saying, "Shame on us for accepting and peddling vaccines that were produced on the back of aborted babies." And she exhorted, "It's time to rise up. It is time to fight back. It is time to be bold. Enough! Enough of these cowardly leaders!" Johnson once said it would be "smart" for police to racially profile her adopted biracial son because "statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons."
David and Jason Benham. The Benham brothers became religious-right folk heroes and martyrs to "political correctness" in 2014 when HGTV canceled plans for a television show starring the duo after Right Wing Watch and others reported on their anti-LGBTQ activities. The brothers, who have repeatedly portrayed the "homosexual agenda" as aligned with Satan, were actively involved in pushinganti-LGBTQ legislation in North Carolina in 2016; they had earlier called for the Charlotte city government to deny permits for LGBTQ pride events and organized an anti-gay prayer rally when the Democratic National Convention was held there. The brothers are also active opponents of reproductive choice. In 2017, a month before they appeared at the Values Voter Summit—not for the first time—they said that hurricanes striking the U.S. were a warning for the country to repent for "breaching the boundaries of God" on gender, sexuality, and marriage. That summer, they declared, "Discrimination against gay people simply does not exist." Earlier that year, the pair said they would skip the Super Bowl halftime show featuring Lady Gaga, warning, "The vine of Sodom has pierced and penetrated our nation at one of the biggest sporting events of the year." The Benhams initially backed Sen. Ted Cruz for president in 2016 and joined a campaign advisory council that recommended that a President Cruz roll back federal job protections for LGBTQ people. In 2015, David Benham spoke at the supposedly "nonpolitical" prayer rally organized by Christian nationalist political operative David Lane and railed against the LGBTQ movement and the church for not doing enough to stop it.
In other news, on Thursday, Liberty sued Falwell for $10 million, alleging that he "withheld scandalous and potentially damaging information from Liberty's board of trustees while negotiating a generous new contract for himself in 2019 under false pretenses," the New York Times reported. The lawsuit also alleges that Falwell failed to disclose his "personal impairment by alcohol."
Ralph Drollinger, a Bible study teacher who uses his extraordinary access to top government officials in the United States and abroad to push right-wing policies as biblically mandated, distributed a Bible study Monday telling readers that “it is imperative that committed Christians be praying for an outcome that glorifies our Lord, and that believers will win office.”
“Don’t misinterpret the elections: they are first and foremost a spiritual battle requiring mature, spiritual weaponry,” Drollinger wrote in a Bible study distributed Monday. He also repeated his assertion that the only prayers that God hears and acts on are those of Christians.
In previous writings, Drollinger has demonstrated little respect for Christians who interpret the Bible differently than he does. He has called the “social Gospel” that motivates millions of liberal American Christians “a perversion of scripture” and “not Christianity whatsoever!” He has called Catholicism “one of the primary false religions of the world.” He urges public officials not to take part in “syncretistic” events like the National Prayer Breakfast, arguing that by participating in events that combine different forms of belief, attendees invite God’s wrath rather than his blessing.
Drollinger holds Bible study sessions for members of the House and Senate as well as Trump’s Cabinet while his written Bible studies are distributed widely and used by Capitol Ministries leaders active in state and local governments and foreign governments. Drollinger writes in this week’s Bible study that only people who are “mature in Christ” can be “ideal candidates for public office.”
Drollinger, whose Capitol Ministries is committed to evangelizing public officials and “discipling” them to his biblical worldview, writes that elections are “a critical time” for a public official who is “a soldier for Christ.” Drollinger writes that “when the believer wields the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and Satan reacts through his minions, there will exist critical times or seasons for necessary petitioning—that is, if you are a soldier for Christ.”
In “Oaks in Office,” his handbook for public officials, Drollinger wrote that “the critical and preeminent duty of the Church in an institutionally separated society” is “to evangelize and disciple—to Christianize—the leaders of the State and its citizenry.” Nevertheless, Drollinger insists that he is not a Christian nationalist because he does not believe in changing the structure of government to give the church an official role. He says he supports institutional but not influential separation of church and state.
Among Drollinger’s many fans within the Trump administration is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has used his position to open doors for Drollinger to bring his proselytizing and right-wing-policy-promoting ministry into the inner circles of government in foreign capitals.
This article was originally published at Right Wing Watch and is republished here by permission.
"You are a holy, righteous God who reigns, and all the evil darts that the secularist journalists, etc., would like to use to poke at us would be thwarted."
Dave Kubal, who runs the pro-Trump prayer warrior group Intercessors for America, hosted congressional and Cabinet Bible study teacher Ralph Drollinger on a special prayer call Wednesday afternoon. During call, which took place amid congressional wrangling over legislation to mitigate the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, Drollinger denounced efforts by members of Congress with an “evil secular mindset” to include what he called “evil pork” in the legislation.
Drollinger teaches members of Congress and President Donald Trump’s cabinet, and public officials around the country and the world, that the Bible instructs them to embrace right-wing policies that align with his very conservative interpretation of scripture. He teaches that legislators who do not share his particular conservative Christian worldview cannot be counted on to do the right thing because, he has written, “the longer a person rejects Christ, the greater his depravity becomes.”
Drollinger expressed hope that God would use the virus in a way that would cause people to turn to God and bring about a revival. But he was concerned that economic relief provisions in the legislation might include such generous unemployment benefits that it would be an “impetus to slothfulness.” That would be “antithetical to free-market capitalism,” he said, which he teaches is the economic system favored by God.
Drollinger and Kubal took turns reflecting and praying. Drollinger urged that the final legislation would not include provisions that would erase “internal mechanisms” for “every man in America to get up and provide for himself and his household.” Kubal led prayer against “the increase of government” and for the protection of free-market capitalism.
They both prayed that during the final hours of legislative debate on a stimulus package, God would empower and lift up members of Congress who shared their biblical worldview and shame the promoters of “evil pork.”
Drollinger is not one to shy away from criticizing other religious leaders, even conservative Christians, who don’t interpret the Bible exactly as he does. On the IFA call, he dismissed evangelical churches that avoid teaching about God’s wrath in favor of “cotton candy” messages. But he also derided preachers talking about the virus as God’s judgment on America for dispensing “cliché evangelicalism.”
On the IFA call, Drollinger suggested that what public officials are dealing with now is how to tamp down the “consequential wrath” that he described as the result of the Chinese government’s irresponsibility. He said Christian lawmakers understand their job, and that he has “all the confidence in the world” in Trump.
Drollinger prayed that the pandemic would drive more elected leaders to see their need for biblical wisdom and into the kind of Bible studies that his Capitol Ministries provides, and that there would be “a groundswell of believers coming to office, converted in office, and growing in office.”
Drollinger also prayed that “the secularists, even those secularists that are on this call peeping in right now, would be confounded by the fact that you are a holy, righteous God who reigns, and all the evil darts that the secularist journalists, etc., would like to use to poke at us would be thwarted.”
This article was originally published at Right Wing Watch and is republished by permission.
Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, spent time this week in North Carolina campaigning for Mark Harris, a right-wing pastor who upset incumbent Rep. Robert Pittinger in the GOP primary in May.
Karen Pence was seemingly brought in to help Harris deal with fallout from recent controversy over comments Harris had made about women, such as emphasizing Bible verses requiring women to submit to their husbands and questioning whether women having careers is “healthy” for society. WFAE reported that “Pence came to Charlotte as the guest of the Women for Mark Harris Bus Tour,” which kicked off at the University of North Carolina’s Charlotte campus on Monday morning.
“I’m here because this race is so important,” Pence said at the rally, emphasizing Harris’s support for President Trump’s agenda. “The road to the majority leads right through North Carolina. This seat, this race, it is critical to keeping the majority in Congress.”
Harris is a member of the Family Research Council’s “Watchmen on the Wall” network who wants to push his extreme opposition to abortion rights and LGBT equality into law. One of his “staunchest supporters,” according to the Christian Broadcasting Network, is Christian nationalistDavid Lane, who has made it a priority to recruit conservative evangelical pastors to run for office.
In August, Media Matters unearthed video of Harris bemoaning, “We have watched in one generation where homosexuality was once criminalized to now we see the criminalization of Christianity.”
Media Matters has also reported on Harris’s Islamophobia, including his signing of a statement that falsely claimed that “all terror groups … have 100% Muslim membership” and asserted that “terrorist entities are not aberrations of Islam, they are the very essence of it.”
“We need good men like Mark Harris in Congress to keep the country moving ahead,” said Pence.
Just before she spoke at the rally, Pence did a brief interview with anti-LGBTQ personality Elizabeth Johnston—aka Activist Mommy. Johnston asked if “the pro-life issue” was a motivating factor for Pence to campaign for Harris. “Absolutely,” said Pence, saying that she and her husband told their children the first time he ran for Congress the told their children, “We’re running to save the babies.”
Johnston followed up with her own declaration to the camera, saying, “I am here today because Mark Harris looked me in the eye, and he assured me that he wanted to see an end to the bloodshed, an end to the murder of babies through abortion, and he said, ‘No exceptions.’ And I said, ‘That is a man I can get behind.’
Among the other rally speakers was academic-turned-Religious Right activistCarol Swain, who said she believed Harris would fight for “the values and principles that made our nation great.” Swain said that Christians “have an obligation to Christ,” adding, “And I believe that God is doing a new thing in this nation, and that He’s raising up godly men and women to serve in office, men and women, and Mark has answered the call.”
“It is a God mission that we are on,” said Christian TV host Donica Hudson. “Mark Harris operates through the only worldview that I personally will ever vote for,” she declared, saying that worldview is based on love and unity, “the sanctity of human life,” and “the value of biblical traditional marriage,” and “parental rights.” She also praised Harris for being a “constitutionalist.”
Tami Fitzgerald of the North Carolina Values Coalition announced the group’s endorsement for Harris. “Mark Harris supports raising children in families with a mom and a dad,” she said, declaring that there are “no family values” in the Democratic Party platform.
Debbie Meadows, wife of Rep. Mark Meadows, chair of the right-wing Freedom Caucus, said Harris has a “spine of steel” and won’t be like one of the people who “fold like a cheap suit” when they get to Washington. Said Meadows, “Mark Harris will be the same man in Washington that he has been for decades here in the Charlotte area.”
In the early morning hours of November 9, 2016, God told Frank Amedia that with Donald Trump having been elected president, Amedia and his fellow Trump-supporting “apostles” and “prophets” had a new mission. Thus was born POTUS Shield, a network of Pentecostal leaders devoted to helping Trump bring about the reign of God in America and the world.Amedia described the divine origins of POTUS Shield during a gathering that spread over three days in March 2017 at the northeastern Ohio church he pastors. Interspersed with Pentecostal worship, liturgical dancing, speaking in tongues, shofar blowing, and Israeli flag waving, Amedia and other POTUS Shield leaders put forth their vision for a Christian America and their plans to bring it to fruition through prayer, political engagement and organizing in all 50 states. Among the many decrees made at the event was that Islam must be “completely broken down.”
POTUS Shield’s leaders view politics as spiritual warfare, part of a great struggle between good and evil that is taking place continuously in “the heavenlies” and here on earth, where the righteous contend with demonic spirits that control people, institutions and geographic regions. They believe that Trump’s election has given the church in America an opportunity to spark a spiritual Great Awakening that will engulf the nation and world. And they believe that a triumphant church establishing the kingdom of God on earth will set the stage for Christ’s return. Amedia says that the “POTUS” in the group’s name does not refer only to the president of the United States, but also to a new “prophetic order of the United States” that God is establishing.
Conservative Christian leaders are nursing a more-than-half-century grudge against the federal courts for rulings on school desegregation, separation of church and state, abortion, equality for LGBT people and more. Amedia has spoken repeatedly about a vision God gave him of a giant broom sweeping up and down the Supreme Court building. God, he said, is going to sweep the entire federal court system of unrighteous judges and “change the laws of the land.”
POTUS Shield members are, like other Religious Right figures, ecstatic about the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and they are sure—because God has told them—that Trump will have at least one more Supreme Court vacancy to fill in the near future. Amedia also insists that Justice Sonia Sotomayor is going to have “an encounter with the living God” that will transform her outlook on the law.
In an appearance on Jim Bakker’s television show the week of July 4, Amedia said that he is telling activists to bring cases into the lower courts now, because by the time they get to the Supreme Court, its membership will have changed and it will be more favorable to their causes. “We are going to re-establish the Judeo-Christian doctrines of this country,” he declared. “It’s coming and can’t be stopped.”
Amedia, along with fellow prophet Lance Wallnau, had declared Trump’s divine anointing in 2015. Amedia served the Trump campaign as a volunteer “liaison for Christian policy,” making him part of the early “amen corner” of prosperity gospel preachers—like Trump’s “spiritual adviser” Paula White—and Christian dominionists who rallied around Trump at a time when most institutional Religious Right figures were still trying to make Ted Cruz the Republican nominee. Amedia, Wallnau and others talked about Trump as a modern-day version of King Cyrus, an ancient Persian king who was not a believer but was used by God to help the Jewish people. While many conservative hearts sank when Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape was revealed, Amedia and Wallnau rejoiced that God was humbling Trump to prepare him for the greatness ahead.
You’re gathering us here, in this place, as your leaders, God, to declare your words and to release your power, even more so, God, upon this nation. We’re declaring that America belongs to you. We’re turning it back to you. … God, we’re refusing to allow Satan have his way with this nation. … God, we’re here to shift the nation. God we’re here to put it back on track by your spirit and by your power. … America belongs to you. America belongs to you. America belongs to you. … God, you founded us on a Judeo-Christian ethos, and we’re declaring that yes, America is and will be a Christian nation, like never before.
Mark Gonzales at a POTUS Shield meeting in Ohio.
POTUS Shield has planned an ambitious schedule of gatherings between now and the 2018 midterm elections, with some of the host cities chosen to correspond to a prophecy in which a Gulliver-like figure stretched out on a map of the United States indicates places that will play a role in bringing about the Third Great Awakening that every Religious Right gathering hopes to spark.
Who Are These People?
The prophets and apostles taking part in POTUS Shield are not, for the most part, household names to people outside their spheres of influence. Many of them are part of what religion scholars call the fastest-growing form of Christianity in the U.S. and maybe the world—a nondenominational, network-oriented Pentecostal Christianity, a strain of Protestantism that emphasizes direct supernatural experience through “the gifts of the spirit,” which are manifested in ways such as speaking in tongues, miraculous healing, and prophecy. Pentecostal Christians in the U.S. are more diverse racially and ethnically than evangelicals overall—reflected in POTUS Shield lobbying Trump for a more compassionate immigration policy—but their political profile is about the same, according to Dan Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute.Many of the “prophets” associated with POTUS Shield are part of an “apostolic” movement within Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders (ACPE), meant “to build positive and ongoing personal relationships among nationally recognized prophetic voices,” was birthed at a January 1999 meeting in Colorado Springs called by C. Peter Wagner and attended by 18 people, including Rick Joyner, Cindy Jacobs, Dutch Sheets, Chuck Pierce and Mike Bickle, founder of the International House of Prayer. The ACPE, which functions as a leadership group within NAR, releases annually its “Word of the Lord,” a sort of consensus document of prophecies for the year ahead. Some NAR leaders are also part of a global network, the by-invitation-only International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders.
I believe [Trump] receives downloads that now he’s beginning to understand come from God.
FRANK AMEDIA, FOUNDER OF POTUS SHIELD
The movement’s theology is grounded in a verse from the biblical book of Ephesians, in which the apostle Paul describes five kinds of leadership callings that Christ granted to people in Christianity’s founding era in order to build up the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. NAR believes that for centuries the church had abandoned the first two. But, they believe, God has moved in our time to re-establish the ancient roles for apostles and prophets who will transform Christianity and bring about the kingdom of God on earth.
Hector Torres, a participant in that founding ACPE meeting, wrote in his 2001 book “The Restoration of the Apostles and Prophets” that God had sent a fresh anointing of teaching to the church in the 1970s, raised up prophets in the 1980s, and restored the apostolic ministry in the 1990s. The ACPE and POTUS Shield are U.S.-focused, but the movement they are part of is global, as are some of the ministries carried out by individual members.
NAR is meant to be disruptive to the rest of the Christian Church. It views “denominationalism” as a sin and views established denominations and leaders as resistant to the reestablishment of the offices of prophet and apostle. Wagner, who died last year, believed that today’s apostles and prophets would bring about the most radical changes to Christianity since the Reformation in the 16th century, changes that were meant to allow the church to fulfill its true mission. A triumphant, dominion-taking church, Wagner’s disciples believe, will establish the kingdom of God on earth and set the stage for the second coming of Jesus Christ.
In July, POTUS Shield promoted a two-day prayer gathering at the Q sports arena in Cleveland hosted by dominionist preacher Lou Engle. Engle believes it is the church’s vocation to “rule history with God.” Here’s an excerpt from his teaching guide, “Keys to Dominion”:
The same authority that has been given to Christ Jesus for overwhelming conquering and dominion has been given to the saints of the most high. … We’re God’s rulers upon the earth. … We will govern over kings and judges will have to submit. … We’re called to rule! To change history! To be co-regents with God!
Engle has made a name for himself with giant prayer rallies in stadiums and sports arenas under the banner of “The Call.” They are designed to mobilize nation-changing spiritual warfare, sometimes specifically targeting elections. A 2008 rally in California focused on the gay-marriage-banning Proposition 8.
At the March POTUS Shield gathering, Engle prayed for God to “sweep away” Supreme Court justices and federal judges who uphold Roe v. Wade, clearing the way for Trump to nominate their replacements. Engle suggested that God could either kill or convert the judges in question, and he had some words for people who might be squeamish about praying for God to “remove” bad judges:
I tell you, the church can’t be humanistic right now. I feel this in my spirit. We’re so concerned about these Hamans [Haman is the evil adviser to the king in the biblical book of Esther] that we’re not concerned about the millions of babies! I say that we believe that Donald Trump, President Trump, is a Jehu as well as a Cyrus. And I’ve been praying, ‘remove the house of Ahab.’
Who’s Jehu? In the Bible, God used Jehu to enact His judgment on the sinful house of Ahab, which Jehu accomplished by overseeing the slaughter of Ahab’s family, supporters and priests. “We need to begin to pray to sweep away the House of Ahab,” Engle said.
Among the other leaders joining Amedia, Wallnau, Engle and Gonzales in POTUS Shield:
Cindy Jacobs, a “prophet” who with her husband Mike runs a ministry called Generals International, is often the person who releases to the public messages from God received by a council of “prophetic elders”; Jacobs has said that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was responsible for a rash of bird deaths, and warned that marriage equality would lead to civil war;
Dutch Sheets, an author and speaker who declares that Christians are “God’s governing force on earth” and says he is trying to “raise up an army” of “kingdom warriors that are ready to do whatever it takes” to bring forth God’s “kingdom rule in the earth.”
Rick Joyner, a South-Carolina-based “prophet” who runs the Oak Initiative and MorningStar Ministries, where last November, he opened the Bob Jones Vision Center, “a place for prayer, praise, and prophecy,” named for the man who spoke the Gulliver, or revival man, prophecy in 2005;
Bishop Harry Jackson, an African-American pastor based in Maryland near Washington, D.C., a longtime anti-gay activist, and co-author with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins of “Personal Faith, Public Policy,” a book that calls the Supreme Court’s church-state rulings an “assault” on Christianity;
Jerry Boykin, a vice president at the Family Research Council who has called Islam a “totalitarian way of life” and said American Muslims are not protected by the First Amendment’s religious liberty guarantees;
Jennifer LeClaire, senior editor at Charisma, part of the Pentecostal media empire run by Steve Strang, wholives in a world of constant spiritual warfare against myriad demons and last summer posed the memorable question, “Is Hillary Clinton the Antichrist or an Illuminati Witch?”;
Alveda King, an anti-choice activist andthe niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., who once dismissed his late widow Coretta Scott King’s support for LGBT equality, saying, “I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t”;
Herman Martir, a Texas-based pastor who runs the Emerging Leaders Network International and the Asian Action Network.
Trump and the Prophets: Made For The Era of Social Media?
In March, Oxford University Press published “The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders are Changing the Religious Landscape,” by scholars Brad Christerson and Richard Flory. Christerson and Flory use the term Independent Network Charismatic Christianity (INC Christianity) to describe a network of charismatic leaders who are not simply focused on saving individual souls but on transforming whole societies. Many of the people associated with POTUS Shield fit into this category.The product that INC Christianity is promoting, write Christerson and Flory, “is not primarily the ability to access supernatural power to gain converts and build congregations, but, more important, to participate in the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth in the here and now.”Christerson and Flory argue that the network model allows charismatic leaders to broaden their influence while remaining free of the bureaucracies and oversight that would come from trying to build a large organization. An individual places him or herself under the spiritual authority or “covering” of an established prophet—getting a spiritual imprimatur in return for showing up at their conferences and sending money up the chain. INC leaders have expanded their “market share” within American Christianity by offering powerful supernatural experiences and leveraging the power of digital media tools to promote their brands as well as their beliefs and practices. Chuck Pierce, whose Glory of Zion Ministries runs a Global Spheres Center in Texas, has about 60,000 people sending him money, more than even the biggest megachurch congregation.
In some ways, Trump’s relationship to traditional political structures mimics these network leaders’ relationship to traditional church and Religious Right institutions: he relies on his charismatic personality; operates his own media; and believes old structures need to be swept away. Trump speaks to his followers “like a televangelist,” says University of Pennsylvania religion scholar Anthea Butler. And, if Amedia is right, Trump also sees his election victory as the result of divine intervention and his presidency as a mission from God. Butler notes that apostolic leaders defend Trump in the same way that religious leaders often defend themselves against their own critics, citing a scriptural admonition to “touch not God’s anointed.”
Christerson and Flory postulate that while INC leaders have a broad ability to spread their beliefs with followers, their political impact could be limited by the fact that they focus more on spiritual warfare and intercessory prayer than on setting up structures to engage in the nitty-gritty work of political organizing.
But POTUS Shield reflects the fact that during the past decade, the lines separating what we think of as the Religious Right—advocacy groups mobilizing conservative evangelical Christians into political action—and the apostolic crowd have been blurredsignificantly. Opposition to President Barack Obama “united them all,” says Butler.
Overlapping Networks
Both the traditional Religious Right and the apostolic Right are interested in bringing policy, politics and society in line with their “biblical worldview.” And despite what may be significant theological differences—many Religious Right activists may not see their political engagement as necessary to speed Christ’s return—they work together on political goals such as electing Donald Trump. INC leaders get their supporters fired up to see politics as spiritual warfare, and more established Religious Right groups give them a concrete way to get involved that goes beyond prayer and fasting. POTUS Shield is committed to doing all of the above.Christerson says he has seen evidence of this kind of “symbiotic” relationship: “The Religious Right gets followers, support and energy from INC, and INC gets visible examples of ‘kingdom-minded’ believers they can support and pray for in government.” He said he has seen “prophecies” that God is using Trump to transform society by appointing “kingdom-minded” people—like Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson—to top levels of government, even though they may be associated with different strains of Christianity.POTUS Shield councilmember and anti-Muslim activist Jerry Boykin is a vice president at the Family Research Council, one of the largest and most influential Religious Right political groups. At an event that FRC organized in 2009 to mobilize prayer against the passage of the Affordable Care Act, POTUS Shield Council member Lou Engle introduced then-Rep. Michele Bachmann. That same year, traditional Religious Right groups embraced Jacobs’ General International and Joyner’s Morningstar Ministries as well as the Koch brothers’ more material-minded Americans for Prosperity as part of an anti-Obama coalition called the Freedom Federation, whose declaration of principles was a social conservative wish list with an added call for an end to progressive taxation.
In 2012, FRC worked with Cindy Jacobs and Dutch Sheets to rally conservative evangelicals in prayer against Obama’s reelection. At the partnership’s kick-off event in a Washington, D.C., church, Sheets described the church—the ekklesia—as a legislative body, God’s government on earth. He said he wasn’t looking for “little sheepies” who are focused on pastoral work; he was looking to “raise up an army” of “kingdom warriors that are ready to do whatever it takes” to bring forth God’s “kingdom rule in the earth.” At the same event, FRC’s chaplain and national prayer director Pierre Bynum spokewistfully of a time when “you couldn’t hold public office in America unless you believed in Jesus Christ.”
Anti-gay and anti-abortion activists Harry Jackson and Alveda King, both members of the POTUS Shield council, are regulars at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit and other stops on the Religious Right speaking circuit. Boykin, Jacobs and Wallnau are board members of Rick Joyner’s dominionist Oak Initiative, whose purpose is to “unite, mobilize, equip and activate Christians to be the salt and light they are called to be by engaging in the great issues of our time from a sound biblical worldview.”
Alveda King (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
These organizational overlaps are also reflected in the broad adoption of NAR’s “Seven Mountains” rhetorical framework. The term “dominionist” is contested and disavowed by some people to whom it has been applied, but it means what it sounds like: Dominionists believe that the right kind of Christians are meant to take dominion over the earth. Many dominionists use the rhetoric of the Seven Mountains–religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, business and government. These spheres of societal influence have, they believe, been dominated by Satan, but when led instead by Christians with a biblical worldview, will transform society.
Seven Mountains rhetoric has become a lingua franca among Christian conservatives who may or may not be Pentecostal or affiliated with the prophetic networks. Among the traditional Religious Right leaders who use Seven Mountains rhetoric are Republican Party operative and self-proclaimed historian David Barton and the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins.
Wallnau, who charges $7.77 per month for access to material on his “7mUnderground” site, told Pentecostal media magnate Steve Strang in the summer of 2016 that Trump would be a wrecking ball against political correctness and thereby help Christians take control of cultural institutions now occupied by Satan.
In the fall, shortly before the election, Wallnau published the book “God’s Chaos Candidate,” in which he warned that the decline of America was being engineered by the “shadow Cabinet”—a cabal of billionaires, politicians, academics and activists—and that if this situation were allowed to continue for one more presidential cycle, “America as we know it will cease to exist.” But, Wallnau said, God had anointed Trump as a Churchillian figure who could lead America through troubled times. He quoted Trump saying at a church campaign stop, “Now, in these hard times for our country, let us turn again to our Christian heritage to lift up the soul of our nation.”
Wallnau’s cheerleading has not slowed down since Trump took office. He declared recently that Trump is fulfilling a contemporary prophecy that one day there would be a burning bush in the White House, saying “I think the burning bush has got golden hair.”
God’s Own Party?
The connections that the spiritual-warfare-minded apostolic crowd have with the more traditionally political arms of the Religious Right make them more than a curiosity; they are a part of the coalition that generated overwhelming support for Trump from conservative white Christians and helped put him in the White House—a coalition that expected, and is getting, political payback from President Trump.Amedia organized a May 2016 meeting between Trump and Hispanic evangelicals at which Trump convinced them that he had a genuine concern for undocumented immigrants, in spite of his anti-immigrant rhetoric and his pro-deportation policies. A few weeks later, Trump met with about 1,000 Religious Right leaders and promised that if he were elected he would push their agenda and make them more politically powerful.As the Republican nominee, Trump attended one of the “Pastors and Pews” events organized by Christian nationalist David Lane. Lane has worked with members of NAR to organize a series of political prayer rallies with Republican governors, branded as “The Response.” The first Response rally, modeled on Engle’s “The Call” events, served as the unofficial launch for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential bid. Subsequent rallies attended by then-Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Pat McCrory of North Carolina were emceed by NAR apostle Doug Stringer, who also hosted one of Lane’s Response rallies in Cleveland last summer on the Saturday before the Republican convention.
As president and vice president, Trump and Mike Pence have continued to court conservative Christians from across the spectrum. Trump invited Religious Right leaders to the White House to celebrate the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. He gathered dozens for dinner in the White House and a Rose Garden signing ceremony—emceed by Paula White—for an executive order on religious liberty; among those in attendance was POTUS Shield member Cindy Jacobs.
The Religious Right’s investment in Trump has already paid off handsomely: Gorsuch sits at the far right end of the Supreme Court, with hundreds of judicial vacancies ahead; Religious Right activists lead multiple Cabinet agencies; Trump has reinstated and dramatically expanded the “global gag rule,” sacrificing poor women’s health to anti-choice ideology; issued an executive order on “religious liberty” that has begun to undermine separation of church and state, with Trump promising more to come; declared via Twitter that transgender people will no longer be allowed to serve in the armed forces in any capacity; and publicly committed himself to working with congressional Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, a goal his Religious Right allies will continue to press in spite of the recent failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
POTUS Trump and the Prophetic Order of the United States
It may seem somewhat counterintuitive that religious leaders would remain unfazed by a stream of obvious lies and evidence of potential law-breaking from Trump and his associates, but that doesn’t particularly bother them because they have already accepted that Trump is, as Sen. David Perdue of Georgia told activists at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, “nobody’s choir boy.” King David had his flaws too, they say, but he, like Trump, was a man of action, the kind of leader God can use to break down the strongholds of the enemy.Religious Right activists, including POTUS Shield’s leaders, continue to vouch for Trump. Religious Right activist and Texas GOP operative David Barton, appearing on an Intercessors for America broadcast over the Fourth of July weekend, praised the “spiritual atmosphere” in the White House and said that people close to the president assure him that Trump “has a hunger for the word of God.” That same week, Amedia appeared a few days in a row on televangelist Jim Bakker’s broadcast, where he told viewers that God had given Trump “a breaker anointing” that had been “designed from the beginning of time.”At POTUS Shield’s Ohio gathering in March, Amedia twice had the cameras turned off so he could talk off-the-record about what he said were sensitive issues involving the group’s influence in the White House and actions on behalf of the Trump family and administration. Amedia also said that POTUS Shield’s “war prayers” had brought down former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who he said had been giving Trump bad advice on Israel. (POTUS Shield leaders believe the idea of a two-state solution is contrary to the word of God.) POTUS Shield continues to pray about the White House staff, asking God to remove any “Benedict Arnolds” who are standing in the way of Trump carrying out the will of God.
The promotion of Trump to conservative Christians proceeds apace. A new “spiritual biography” of Trump is being written by Christian Broadcasting Network personality David Brody. Brody’s boss, televangelist Pat Robertson, recently conducted his own fawning interview with Trump. Over the years, Brody has acted as a virtual press agent for Christian nationalist David Lane, promoting his activities in return for “exclusive” access to and speaking slots at Lane’s events. Brody’s co-author is Scott Lamb, who in 2015 launched a “Jesus in the Public Square” section for the right-wing Washington Times newspaper, a project that Brody reported at the time was the result of a “seed” that Lane planted with the Washington Times’ management.
David Brody (Screenshot via Christian Broadcasting Network)
Brody and Lamb’s book, “The Faith of Donald J. Trump: A Spiritual Biography” is scheduled for publication in January 2018, but it won’t be the first. It will face competition from “God and Trump” by Stephen Strang, who heads the Pentecostal media empire Charisma. During the campaign, Strang gave a media megaphone to Trump-boosting prophets like Wallnau. Strang’s book, which promises to explore “what is God doing, now not only in Donald Trump’s life, but also in the life of the nation,” is scheduled for release in November.
Meanwhile, POTUS Shield leaders continue to personally assure Trump that God Himself put Trump in power, something Amedia told attendees at the March POTUS Shield gathering that Trump understands:
I said to the man’s own face, ‘If you didn’t see God got you elected, with all the mistakes you made, and how you should have lost this election 50 times, then you will never see God.’ And he said, ‘I know it was God.’
Amedia, who like other “prophets” seems to get “prophetic words” from God all the time, says Trump is also beginning to receive divine downloads: “I believe he receives downloads that now he’s beginning to understand come from God.”
For many Religious Right leaders, support for Trump is transactional: Trump promised them the Supreme Court, attacks on legal abortion and Planned Parenthood, and legal changes to make conservative Christians more politically powerful. But POTUS Shield members believe that something even greater than the Supreme Court is at stake: the future of the church and the reign of God on earth. They give Trump assurance that he’s on a divine path, and they give their followers a sense of playing an important role on the world stage, warring with the devil to take political and culture power away from liberals and secularists and establish the kingdom of God in the United States and around the world.
The World Congress of Families -- an organization that hosts an annual global gathering of “pro-family” advocates -- brought together more than 3,300 people in Salt Lake City last week. The summit included authors and counselors focused on strengthening marriages as well as academics talking about the social and economic consequences of later marriages, declining birthrates and widespread divorce. It also includedanti-reproductive-choice activists from around the globe, as well as hundreds of “emerging leaders” expected to lead the movement into the future.
We’ve reported on individual speakers and will continue to do so as we dig through a week’s worth of notes and recordings — and a shopping bag full of books and other swag. But what’s the big picture? What does the WCF tell us about the state of the global Religious Right?
There were differences in priorities and approaches among the participants, but among the themes that emerged:
They See Themselves at War with the Enemies of God
Warfare imagery was common at WCF and the preceding gay-focused Stand4Truth event organized by people who needed just a little more anti-gay intensity than the WCF schedule promised. The “natural family” and “complementary” male-female gender roles were ordained by God, and therefore proponents of feminist or gender ideologies or notions of LGBT equality are not only political opponents but spiritual ones, out to destroy both the natural family and religious freedom.
Francisco Tatad, a former senate majority leader in the Philippines, said the threat to the family and human society is not simply those who deny God, but those who actually hate God:
The global attack on human dignity, on the integrity of the human person, and the family, is ultimately an attack on God. The war of religions is over, but the war on religion has hardly begun. And the target is no longer any individual religion in particular, but God himself. He has become the arch-enemy.
So I can share with you the fact that there is a spiritual battle, a spiritual battle, to annihilate the idea, the construct, God’s ordained institution of la familia. It is a battle. It even, before it’s a political battle or a legislative battle, it is, above all things, a spiritual battle.
And, engaging biblical allusions, it’s the spirit of Pharaoh, once again attempting to force and prompt families to make bricks without straw and to maintain families in the Egypt of bondage and fear. It is the spirit of Goliath, of intimidation. It is the spirit of Jezebel, an attempt to destroy the family via the conduit of sexual perversion and manipulation. It is the spirit of Herod, killing families through abortion, killing families through sex trafficking and violence against our children, disconnecting the child from mom and dad. These spirits are alive and well today, not only in America but across the world.
Rafael Cruz, father of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, declared, “What we see in America right now is an outright attack on Christianity.” Paige Patterson, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and former head of the Southern Baptist Convention, decreed that “a few rogue lawyers claiming to be the Supreme Court of the United States of America has no right to act in such a way as to restrict our freedom of religion.” Patterson told the story of a missionary doctor killed by Chinese communists in the 1950s, and declared about religious freedom, “Today the blood of thousands of martyrs calls out to all of us, ‘Do not squander the greatest and most costly gift bequeathed to you by the founders of this nation.’”
They’re Intensely Committed to Enforcing Traditional Gender Roles
The catch-all term used by the global Religious Right for just about everything it doesn’t like is “gender ideology” — something that can encompass opposition to sex education, contraception, abortion, cohabitation, marriage equality and legal recognition for LGBT people.
At WCF, speaker after speaker talked about the “complementarity” between men and women as something that was divinely ordained — grounded biblically in the Genesis creation story in which God made humankind male and female. God’s creation of two genders was cited as a sacred rationale for opposing gay couples being allowed to marry or be parents — and for denying the very existence of transgender people, who were portrayed as sick and pathetic. One of the most reliable ways to try to get a laugh at WCF was to make a joke about Caitlyn Jenner. Rafael Cruz even pulled out the old chestnut that God had created “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”
Glenn Stanton, director of Global Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family, said new findings on gender differences support his basic premise: “that men and women are different, and that men and women need each other in those differences.” As a scientist, he said, he believes there is evidence across cultures of a universal male and female nature. And as a Christian, he said, the issue is a theological one, grounded in the creation story declares humans male and female, who together “uniquely, mysteriously image the nature of God in the world.” He displayed a William Blake painting, “Satan Gazing Upon the Caresses of Adam and Eve” and said:
Satan came to attack humanity, not just by approaching Eve or Adam but what William Blake is telling us here is to attack a couple. He sees that man, he sees that woman, he sees them loving one another, and he says, ‘I know who loved one another, the Trinity, God, and I hate them, so I must break this up.’ The original attack was not on two human beings, it was on a man and a woman. And that attack continues today, because Satan knows what male and female represent.
Theresa Okafor, a WCF representative from Nigeria who was honored at the conference, said the complementarity of the sexes “comes from God.” She complained that Western feminist ideas threaten the family by demonizing patriarchy, blurring lines of gender and making women feel that they are autonomous from men. (In contrast, she cited as one positive example of strong cultural support for the family in Africa the fact that a woman who went to the police to report being beaten by her husband would be told to go home and settle with him.)
Every WCF participant received a copy of the Mormon Church’s 1995 Proclamation of the Family, which portrays men’s roles as providers and women’s as nurturers to be essential to God’s plan. It declares, “Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.”
Miriam Grossman is a psychiatrist whose blog identifies her as “One Hundred Percent MD. Zero Percent PC.” She insisted, “A man cannot be transformed into a woman, or a woman into a man. It is simply impossible” and decried that popular culture’s focus on transgender issues was perpetuating a “lie” and a “delusion.”
They Don’t Want To Be Called Anti-Gay While Being Anti-Gay
Well, at least some of them, anyway. Before the conference started, WCF responded to its critics by claiming that being pro-family was not the same as being anti-gay, and declared that it would never support policies that harm individual people. But in fact the program was full of people who have a record of demonizing LGBT people, including those who have actively supported laws that not only criminalize gay sexual activity but even make it a crime for gays to meet with each other or advocate for their rights.
Portraying LGBT people as a threat to children has a decades-long pedigree, including the activism of Anita Bryant, California’s Prop 8 and succeeding state constitutional amendment campaigns, and this week’s vote in Houston, where an anti-discrimination ordinance was rejected after an ugly, dishonest campaign portraying it as an open door to child molesters. Gwen Landolt, a Canadian who has been active in WCF, called it intolerable that innocent children are being “used as tools of social engineering” by being fostered or adopted by gay couples. And she said that children’s character is being deformed because schools are teaching that homosexual relationships are the equal of heterosexual ones.
As BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder pointed out, there’s division within the movement about the usefulness of strident rhetoric that, for example, equates gays with pedophilia. That division was clear at WCF. The opening keynote address was given by Russell Ballard, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Ballard explained that Mormon theology of the family is integral to the church’s defense of “traditional marriage,” but he also touted the church’s willingness to back the Utah compromise, an agreement reached earlier this year in which the church supported legal protections against housing and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in return for the inclusion of broad religious exemptions. Said Ballard,
We demonstrate our best humanity when we show love and kindness to all of God’s children. We demonstrate our discipleship when we refuse strident tones, when we refuse derisive labels, and when we enter the public square seeking fair outcomes through understanding and mutual respect.
Ballard’s standard was violated frequently at WCF, including during its closing keynote from Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma University, whose address was an angry rant against liberal “ideological fascism.” Piper angrily asserted that “the rainbow banner of tolerance has become the dark flag of tyranny almost overnight.” Some conference participants objected to the Utah compromise; Austin Ruse of C-Fam has called it “lunacy” for the Mormon Church to engage in a nonaggression pact with the LGBT movement.
Another voice heard on the opening day of the conference was that of Gov. Gary Herbert, who welcomed participants to Utah, declaring “We are a great state with wonderful people and wonderful families of different varieties in this state.” That was a nod toward the kind of inclusive definition of family that is being ferociously fought by WCF partner groups at the United Nations and other international bodies. Activists like C-Fam’s Ruse and Family Watch International’s Sharon Slater bragged at WCF about their work to eliminate references to “various forms of the family” from international human rights documents.
They’re Not Going Anywhere: They’re Organized and Organizing and God is on their Side
There was some difference of opinion among WCF speakers, based on where they are from and whether they are more focused on abortion or LGBT issues, about the extent to which they are currently losing or winning the global culture war. But there was virtual unanimity that with God on their side and a commitment to collaborative organizing, they will ultimately be victorious in defeating the LGBT movement, resisting the advance of “gender ideology,” and resurrecting as a cultural norm, protected and promoted in law, the “natural family” — a mom and a dad and a whole lot of children.
Allan Carlson, retiring after years at the head of WCF’s sponsoring organization, the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, talked about his forthcoming book, which portrays the weakening and strengthening of family systems in America since 1630 as following 50 year swings. According to Carlson, we could be “on the cusp of a great wave of new family morality,” poised for a generational upswing— a return to early marriage, appreciation for the complementarity between men and women, and higher fertility. Carlson said the sexual revolution “regime” is “crumbling even at the point where it seems to be winning.”
Warren Cole Smith, a vice president of the Colson Center and co-author of “Restoring All Things,” recounted the story of a friend who received a call from someone nearly in despair after the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, saying “it’s over.” Smith recalled his response:
What is over? What exactly is over? Has God left his throne? He has not. Is He not still sovereign? He is. When the Obergefell decision came down from the Supreme Court, did God say, ‘Wow, I sure didn’t see that coming.’? Friends, He did not say that….
The story of the universe God is still writing, the arc of history is still unfolding. Unlike what our friend said, it is not over. And I’ve read the last chapter of the book, and guess what? God wins.
That’s not to say that between now and then we won’t have lots of battles to fight and lots of problems so solve. But I want to be clear, I think we should be happy warriors in this process, knowing that God is indeed building the house. God is indeed on our side. And we have the great joy of participating in what God is doing in the world, if only we will.
The World Congress of Families, with its dozens of partner organizations and more than 3,300 participants from 65 countries, is a dramatic demonstration of the institutional cultural, legal, and political infrastructure that has been built by conservative religious organizations not only in the U.S. but around the globe, with financial and strategic support flowing in all directions.
Seasoned activists and the hundreds of “emerging leaders” had the opportunity to get training in starting a new organization and raising money online from Ignacio Arsuaga, whose HazteOir and CitizenGo platforms have put social-media organizing techniques developed in the U.S. into the hands of conservatives in Europe and elsewhere with campaigns in an expanding number of languages. Conference attendees could take a workshop on messaging from Frank Schubert, the mastermind of fearmongering strategies used by campaigns against marriage equality in the U.S. They could study networking and coalition building with Alexey Komov, the Russian activist who says that Russia and Eastern Europe, having been helped by Western countries to throw off communism, can now return the favor by helping the West defeat the new totalitarianism of the sexual revolution.
