Details

Hits: 2937

Rolling Stone
Tim Dickinson

September 29, 2022·12 min read

Lance Wallnau, a self-styled “prophet” and one of America’s most strident Christian Nationalists, and Doug Mastriano, the GOP candidate who casts his bid for governor of Pennsylvania as a mission from God, are birds of a feather.

They each fired up the faithful at the Jericho March / ”Let the Church ROAR!” event in Washington, D.C., in December 2020, a Christian protest seeking divine intervention to keep Donald Trump in office. And both men were on the ground in Washington a few weeks later on Jan. 6 — each billed as speakers at Stop the Steal’s “Wild Protest” event in the shadow of the Capitol. (The speeches were preempted by the insurrection that overran the Halls of Congress.)

So it’s little surprise that the pair flocked together in mid-September, when Wallnau landed in Pennsylvania to stump for Mastriano at a rally in the candidate’s hometown near Gettysburg.

Wallnau believes that America should be a theocracy, declaring unequivocally in a 2021 online rant: “I am a Christian Nationalist.” But in his stump speech for Mastriano, Wallnau used more coded language. He turned to local history to hype up the GOP candidate, comparing him to the “Christian colonel” who led a desperate bayonet charge to victory down from Little Round Top.

Wallnau insisted that Mastriano, a former Army officer, is also poised to change history: “Now there’s another Christian colonel, who is in charge of the mountain.” Referring to Mastriano’s followers as “a remnant” — a biblical term favored by fundamentalists to recognize fellow hardcore believers — Wallnau exhorted them to hold the line against the enemy. “They may out-gather, they may outmaneuver; in my opinion they know how to out-cheat,” Wallnau said of Democrats. “But they cannot outflank us if we move as one.”

Casting the Republican’s mission as guided by the hand of God — “Colonel Mastriano is anointed to lead” — Wallnau then insisted, “the whole country will be affected by what happens in Pennsylvania.”

Wallnau has been dubbed “the father of American Dominionism,” a fundamentalist ideology that Christians are called upon to exert God’s will “on Earth as it is in heaven.” And the 66-year-old strives to empower a cabal of Christians to impose their moral code on the rest of us. Mastriano’s association with Wallnau, which is deeper than previously reported, adds troubling new evidence of the candidate’s own Christian Nationalist aims, and roots Mastriano even more plainly within an End Times religious movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation.

The 7 Mountains

Wallnau is a leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, whose followers believe that we are living in an age of new apostles and prophets, who receive direct revelations from God. NAR believers hold that the second coming of Jesus is fast approaching, and that it is the destiny of Christians is to
accelerate the End Times by exerting “dominion” over the world. Wallnau is best known for popularizing a quasi-biblical blueprint for theocracy called the Seven Mountains Mandate.

NAR followers like Wallnau believe that America is specially anointed by God to project Christianity across the globe. And the NAR movement’s followers view foes of their quest as satanic. This is not metaphorical. They hold that the physical world is enveloped by a supernatural dimension, featuring warring angels and demons, and are convinced that demons afflict their enemies on behalf of the devil.

The movement holds that these spiritual battles are reflected in earthly politics. As the late NAR founder C. Peter Wagner explained in a striking NPR interview in 2011: “I believe there’s a lot of demonic control over Congress… that needs to be dispersed.”

In the world according to Wallnau, the MAGA movement is guided by Jesus against devilish Democrats. Wallnau spent years insisting Trump was an instrument of the Lord, even declaring that, “Fighting with Trump is fighting with God.” By contrast, as documented by Right Wing Watch, Wallnau insists that “antichrist Biden” is an “illegal counterfeit” and an “evil ruler.” Environmentalists who seek to limit fossil-fuel extraction are “under control of demons.” Americans who defend the rights of the LGBTQ+ community are the “Trans Taliban.” In a recent speech, Wallnau denounced Black Lives Matter as “witchcraft” that is “laying siege to the American system of government.”

Wallnau did not respond to interview requests.

The “Seven Mountains” in the mandate Wallnau promotes represent the cultural domains of religion, family, education, media, entertainment, business, and government. Whoever controls the summits of these mountains, the theory goes,
commands society. In short, Wallnau is offering an intellectual framework for Christian Nationalism — a movement that seeks not just to preserve the religious liberties of Christians, but to impose biblical mores on America at large.

Andrew L. Whitehead is an academic and co-author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. He describes Christian Nationalism as a reactionary movement that twins religious fundamentalism with a desire to “preserve the social and cultural power of white Americans.”

Christian Nationalism, Whitehead insists, is an “existential threat to democracy” because it “sees no room for compromise” and literally demonizes its opponents as “forces of evil, trying to counter what God has called them to do.” Whitehead continues: “When one side begins to define the other side as illegitimate, the guardrails of democracy really start to crumble, and then we’re in dangerous territory.”

The Christian Nationalist movement already counts allies in Washington, including MAGA politician Rep. Lauren Boehbert, who insists that “the church is supposed to direct the government.” And both fans and detractors see in Mastriano — who pals around with prophets and pleaded with God to help MAGA forces “seize the power” on Jan 6. — a politician cut from the same Christian Nationalist cloth. Unlike Republicans who pander to this crowd for political benefit, Whitehead says, Mastriano appears to “truly embrace” their aims. “He’s different from Trump; this is a part of how he sees himself and his role in politics.” (Mastriano did not respond to an interview request.)

The Seven Mountains Mandate emerged out of Wallnau’s frustration with the insularity of church culture. As a younger man, Wallnau sought to establish a megachurch in Rhode Island. But he says he realized that his focus on revival wasn’t getting the job done. “If megachurches could change America, they would have done it,” he said in a 2018 presentation at a Values Voter summit, attended by the then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “They’re not even changing the cities where the megachurches are located.”

As Christians focused on their houses of worship, Wallnau argues, Satan ran rampant, seizing the tops of the other mountains. “While we pursued an awakening,” Wallnau said, “the devil literally taught America, and discipled it right out from under our Christian influence.”

For Wallnau, the key to achieving the biblical dominion over earth is for Christ believers to charge up the mountaintops and seize the pinnacles of power (sometimes referred to as “gates” — Wallnau is not religious about his metaphors), then use that authority to “disciple” the United States and the world, remaking society to please God. This is to be through both the soft power of cultural influence, and through the rule of law. He believes God commands Christians to impose His will through government. “Jesus was promised nations for His inheritance,” Wallnau declared in a recent broadcast, “not just churches!”

Wallnau’s close associate, the “apostle” Dutch Sheets, is committed to Christians storming the mountain of government. And Wallnau stood onstage with Sheets at a July event in Atlanta where NAR leaders prayed over MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, and where Sheets led the gathering in a Christian Nationalist pledge that begins, “As a patriot of faith, I attest my allegiance first and foremost to the Kingdom of God” and continues, “We, the Church, are God’s governing body on the Earth. We have been given legal power and authority from heaven.”

Wallnau seeks a world in which a Christian elite can mold the world on behalf of God. “What did Daniel do in Babylon? He had a small group at the top,” Wallnau said in his 2018 speech.

“From that proximity to the throne, they were able to shape history.”

For Wallnau, success looks the rule of Hungary under Viktor Orban. Wallnau praises the authoritarian for refusing to “bend our knee” to Muslim immgration or “LGBTQ assimilation,” touting the strongman in biblical terms as a “healthy dominionist.”

Holy Spirit, Meet Almighty Dollar

Wallnau is far from a penniless preacher; in fact, he appears enthusiastic to profit from his “prophetic” gifts.

Wallnau is savvy. He touts a masters from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a “Doctorate in Ministry with a specialization in Marketplace from Phoenix University of Theology.” In his public persona, Wallnau is part theologian, part motivational speaker, part infomercial pitchman, and part talk-show blowhard, delivering podcast rants with ticks and inflections of the late Rush Limbaugh.

Rather than a church, Wallnau operates the nonprofit Lance Wallnau Ministries Inc. — in addition to several business ventures including Killer Sheep Media Inc., his media imprint, and Lance Learning Group, a “strategic teaching and consulting company.”

But Wallnau’s business practices leave open the question: Is he a Christian or a charlatan? On his website, Wallnau sells Seven Mountains-themed books, CDs, and videos — including “Take all 7” (a two-DVD set for $24). Wallnau also markets a bevy of MAGA merch. This includes a golden “presidential prayer coin” ($45) as well as a talking figurine of Trump hugging the American flag ($29.95).

Wallnau makes money teaching others to do battle with the devil. He markets a three-CD set “Breaking Controlling Spirits” offering insights to fellow Charismatic Christians. “There is a war being fought in the unseen realm between forces of good and evil, and the battlefield is your mind,” the sales copy reads. “Demonic activity is increasing at an alarming rate as we draw closer to the last days…. Spiritual warfare is not optional.” Lucky for you: “Lance Wallnau has been given specific prophetic insight and strategy on how to cripple the forces trying to wreak havoc on your life and loved ones….” And he’ll share that wisdom for just $29.97.

The confluence of Christ and commerce appears to be making Wallnau a wealthy man. According to public property records, Wallnau lives in a gated community outside Dallas in a home valued at well over $1 million.

His for-profit enterprises are opaque. But Lance Wallnau Ministries Inc. files public IRS paperwork. The most recent filing, from 2019, shows that Wallnau and his wife earned more than $450,000 from the ministry — a sum that includes such unusual perks as first-class airfare, medical reimbursements, and a housing allowance.

Wallnau’s ministry, the records show, was minting money on its sales, generating $710,000 in revenue on a “cost of goods” of just $61,000. In addition to merchandizing, Wallnau solicits donations from the faithful, asking website visitors to “PRAYERFULLY CONSIDER SUPPORTING LANCE’S MISSION.” His ministry received $356,000 in gifts that year.

The watchdog Charity Navigator gives the Wallnau ministry a “failing score” — citing lax financial oversight and a lack of a conflict of interest policy.

“Take Over the Cockpit”

Wallnau has been all in for Trump since 2015. And when the 45th president was routed in 2020, Wallnau was quick to embrace the lie that nefarious forces, rather than the will of the people, had deprived Trump of a second term. Wallnau’s own role in the events of Jan 6. is murky. He was touted as a speaker at WildProtest.com, a project of Stop the Steal, which played off Trump’s infamous tweet: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

In the aftermath of the attack on Congress, Wallnau embraced conspiracy theories that Jan. 6 was a false flag. He appeared on a Christian news program called “Flashpoint” the next day, declaring, “I was there. This was not a pro-Trump mob storming the Capitol.” He insisted, instead: “This was organized Antifa radicals who led the break-in, while we have evidence of our people saying, ‘Stop them!’”

Wallnau claimed the storming of the Capitol was “a manipulated TV moment” and “Kabuki theater” designed to short-circuit the “inquiry into a ripped-off election.” On the same broadcast, fellow NAR leader Sheets insisted that Trump’s opponents were in the throes of “demonically inspired hatred,” adding: “This is an attempt to turn this nation away from God…. And the reason the enemy, the reason Satan, is so bent on doing this is because of the destiny hanging over this nation. We are a nation destined to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.”

In the months since the insurrection, Wallnau has continued to spread conspiracy theories and misinformation. In September 2021, Wallnau insisted that the pipe bombs placed near the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee on Jan 6. had been “planted there by the people who wanted the optics for an incident in the Capitol,” adding: “Maybe the FBI and maybe the Democratic party and maybe political operatives in D.C. were working together.”

This summer, Wallnau argued that the presence of the Proud Boys on Jan. 6 was misunderstood. “Everybody says the Proud Boys are bad…. They might not be bad,” he said, suggesting instead that “their orders were to clean up the garbage and get out of the Capitol. They were there to protect Trump people from Antifa.”

Lately, Wallnau seems more agitated than ever at the inability of fundamentalist Christians to exert dominion over society. In a recent speech before fellow believers at Charis Bible College in Colorado, Wallnau railed against the progressive organization Democracy Alliance, alleging, “they’ve got 16 different activist organizations that are working in an extraordinarily efficient way with the devil to dismantle America.”

Increasingly, Wallnau has embraced dark imagery when talking about Christians seizing control of America from nonbelievers, comparing Democrats to the plotters on 9/11. “It’s not enough to have a revival in the cabin crew,” Wallnau insisted during a Facebook video rant this July. “You’re gonna have to take over the cockpit — and get Al Qaeda out of the pilot seat.”

This same tortured 9/11 metaphor has been embraced by one Douglas Mastriano, who frequently shares Wallnau’s content on his own campaign Facebook page. Mastriano’s stump speeches are peppered with references to the uprising of Flight 93. And he has turned its battle cry into a central slogan for his campaign: “Let’s roll!”

He Has a 7-Point Plan for a Christian Takeover — and Wants Doug Mastriano to Lead the Charge (yahoo.com)

Details

Hits: 2826

USA Today
Wed, October 5, 2022 at 7:40 AM·6 min read

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a striking number of decisions in favor of religious claimants over the past several terms, leading many commentators to refer to the Roberts court as “pro-religion.”

In a country where most Americans identify as religious and some worry about rapid changes in culture, many have celebrated that perception of the nation's highest court. But that frame is overly simplistic. Worse, it confuses expectations about religion and religious liberty both at the Supreme Court and across America.

A “religious” winner doesn’t necessarily mean a win for all religions or for religious liberty itself. The American public that prizes its religious freedom deserves a better understanding.

Myth: America is a 'Christian nation'

A worrisome consequence of recent Supreme Court decisions and the perception that the court is pro-religion is that it feeds a common myth that our country is, or should be, a “Christian nation.” Unfortunately, this myth gains traction when the separation of religion and government is denigrated, as well as when religious liberty is misunderstood as privilege for public policies that align with certain religious beliefs.

Some justices have exacerbated the problem.

At a religious liberty conference this summer in Rome, Associate Justice Samuel Alito described his view this way: “The problem that looms is not just indifference to religion, it’s not just ignorance about religion. There’s also growing hostility to religion, or at least the traditional religious beliefs that are contrary to the new moral code that is ascendant in some sectors.”

To right this perceived wrong, the conservative supermajority on the court has been eliminating protections for religious liberty that have long kept the government out of essential religious matters. The court is abandoning long-standing religious liberty principles and redefining the relationship as it tears down the wall between church and state – a separation that protects the institutions of both.

Beginning of the end for avoiding government funding of religion

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer was the beginning of the end for avoiding government funding of religion. This seemingly limited case from 2017 about a Missouri church’s eligibility for a government grant to fund playground improvements started a troubling trend toward funding religion itself that is at odds with a long legal tradition of keeping government out of essential religious matters. The decision unnecessarily blurred the line that ensures religion flourishes on its own.

In 2020, the court continued in that direction in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, when it again disregarded a state’s interest in avoiding funding religious education through a scholarship program.

This past term in Carson v. Makin, the court went beyond ensuring that religious entities are not excluded from government programs based on an entity’s religious status, which is understandable and consistent with earlier cases. It held that states are required to fund private religious schools if they fund other private schools, at least where there is some element of parental choice involved.

In doing so, the court failed to acknowledge traditional limits on government sponsorship of specifically religious activities, such as those that are central to many private religious schools. In other words, the court obliterated the distinction between unconstitutional discrimination based on religious status or identity, which the free exercise clause prohibits, and different treatment of religious uses or activities that ensures the government itself does not sponsor religion and violate the establishment clause.

Faith flourishes best when it is free from government interference

It’s unclear exactly what remains of the First Amendment’s establishment clause or how far this court’s conservative supermajority will go. While consistently dismissing concerns about “no establishment," the court has expanded its understanding of what violates the free exercise of religion.

The 6-3 majority ruled last term in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that a football coach at a public high school has a right to pray on the 50-yard line while still on the clock. The court ignored important precedents that have protected the religious liberty rights of students.

This news media narrative ignores faith-based support for historic principles of religious liberty that require treating religion in a distinct matter. The organization we lead, Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, filed friend-of-the-court briefs in all of the cases mentioned, explaining and defending principles that have long protected religious liberty.

Why are we not on board with the Supreme Court’s so-called defense of religious rights?

We believe that faith flourishes best when it is free from government interference. We understand that the government support for religion in public programs – including forcing all taxpayers to fund religious groups – is seductive to many religious Americans in a time of declining religiosity, but that this path doesn’t lead to strong religious institutions. In fact, a new study found that religions around the world receiving government favoritism actually lose ground relative to those that do not.

We're Baptists and constitutional law experts

In the First Amendment, the framers protected religion in a distinct way, yet today the Supreme Court often views treating religion differently as religious discrimination. This change in religious liberty law is deeply troubling.

In addition to being constitutional law experts, we’re both Baptists and value our religious tradition’s long-standing support for faith freedom for all. We know the cases that come to the Supreme Court require thoughtful attention, beyond headlines that set up a false dichotomy of “religion” versus the nonreligious.

We set up a place to have these respectful conversations, giving them the time and consideration they deserve. We are about to launch Season 4 of the "Respecting Religion" podcast. Each week, we discuss what’s at stake for religious liberty in the world today, including cases at the Supreme Court and the ongoing rise of Christian nationalism in the United States. We can’t cede the discussion of religious liberty to those who are abandoning long-standing principles that protect religious liberty.

This term, the court will return to the issue of whether a business can refuse to provide wedding-related services to customers in protected classes based on the owner’s religious beliefs in 303 Creative v. Elenis. While the case will be heard on free speech grounds and not free exercise grounds, we expect to see the pro-religion framing pop up again.

We are also deeply concerned that there are four justices who were ready to intervene in another religious liberty dispute about Yeshiva University, even before the case could be properly considered in the lower courts.

If religious liberty is going to continue to be a defining characteristic of our country, we need more nuanced conversations about SCOTUS and religion and what is at stake for our country and our communities. That’s what we’re aiming to provide with our podcast. We hope you will join us.

Amanda Tyler and Holly Hollman lead the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and co-host the "Respecting Religion" podcast, where they discuss the latest developments on religion and the law each week. Season 4 of the podcast premieres Thursday.

'Pro-religion'? Conservative Supreme Court abandons long-standing religious liberty principles. (yahoo.com)

Details

Hits: 2904

The Week
Peter Weber, Senior editor
September 30, 2022·7 min read

Christianity is on its way to minority status in the U.S., according to a recent study from Pew Research. But what if Christianity is already losing its religion?

A new biennial survey of U.S. Christian beliefs from Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research found a lot of heretical beliefs — notably Arianism, a 4th-century belief that Jesus was the son of God but not divine like him — even among evangelical Christians who otherwise take the Bible quite literally.

For example, 43 percent of evangelicals said Jesus was "not God" and 65 percent seemed to disagree with the doctrine of original sin. On hot-button social issues like abortion and sex outside of heterosexual marriage, however, evangelicals were nearly unanimous that they are sins. White American evangelicals are overwhelmingly Republican and live largely in the South. Has this most American of religions become less a religion and more a political culture?

Yes, evangelicalism is becoming a political club

White U.S. evangelicals were more politically heterogeneous until the 1980s, when they started flocking to the Republican Party, but "evangelicals' beliefs are often molded by political and cultural allegiances, not just biblical texts," Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University, writes in The Washington Post. And "over the past half-century, conservative evangelicals have reoriented their views to champion strong masculine protectors who fight for faith, family, and nation."

That largely explains why white evangelicals are among the loyalist supporters of former President Donald Trump, who does not share their professed morality or fealty to scripture, Kobes Du Mez writes. "Increasingly, those who identify as evangelical are aligning not primarily with a theological system but with a cultural and political identity."

With this new Ligonier survey, "Kobes Du Mez's argument that evangelicalism is a culture rather than a set of beliefs has never looked stronger," writes Jacob Huneycutt, a student of Baptist history at Baylor University. "This problem could be remedied, friends, if we actually catechized our kids. How many of these evangelicals grew up doing 'True Love Waits' campaigns and watching pro-life films but have never heard of the word 'catechism,' even still?"

Extramarital abstinence and opposing abortion are important, Huneycutt adds. "Jesus' divinity and original sin are more important, though. They are the foundations of our belief."

Evangelicals are religious but too focused on sexual purity

The term evangelical "has become so laced with politics that millions of Christians identify themselves as 'evangelicals' simply because they're Republican and they're Christian," David French writes at The Atlantic. "The word has become such a tribal signifier that, in many households, evangelical Christianity is little more than a God-and-country lifestyle brand." But the Ligonier/LifeWays survey winnows those cultural evangelicals out, and it turns out even American "theological evangelicals" have "a Jesus problem."

"A traditional, orthodox evangelical sexual ethic" is good, but "the core of the faith is not its moral codes but rather faith in the person of Jesus Christ," French writes. "When the church leads with its moral code — and elevates that moral code over even the most basic understandings of Jesus Christ himself — the effect isn't humility and hope; it's pride and division. When the church chooses a particular sin as its defining apostasy (why sex more than racism, or greed, or gluttony, or cruelty?), it perversely lowers the standards of holy living by narrowing the Christian moral vision," leaving "a weaker religion" populated by millions of Christians who, "in the quest for morality" have "lost sight of Jesus."

American culture is corrupting evangelicalism

The State of Theology survey "reveals that the overwhelming majority of U.S. evangelicals have accepted a view of human identity that aligns more with American society than the teaching of the Bible," Ligonier Ministries argues. "While positive trends are present, including evangelicals' views on abortion and sex outside of marriage, an inconsistent biblical ethic is also evident, with more evangelicals embracing a secular worldview in the areas of homosexuality and gender identity."

What's wrong with cultural evangelicalism?

Growing up evangelical, "I was taught that a cultural Christian was one of the worst things a person could be," Jenell Williams Paris, a sociology professor at Messiah College, writes at CBE International. "They were nominal and lukewarm," using "church as a social club," while we "committed Christians" were "born again, pursued a personal relationship with God, attended church, and did good works in the world."

Now, "I remain evangelical for cultural reasons, which I suppose makes me a cultural evangelical," Williams Paris writes. I'm still a "committed Christian," but "my evangelicalism is embedded in American culture," and "I'm glad American culture socialized me for gender equality, educational success, and a life that includes service in the public sphere."

"Being a cultural evangelical in this sense is not a weak attachment to tradition or to God," Williams Paris goes on, "but a recognition of how deeply we are shaped by culture, and how successful evangelicalism can be in molding individuals into a Christian way of life."

What's wrong with political evangelicalism?

White evangelical Christianity is actually undergoing a sort of schismatic split between one camp that favors Trump-style messaging, politics, and conspiracy theorizing, and those who follow the traditional evangelical path of avoiding politics as antithetical to biblical, University of Illinois Chicago sociologist Michael Emerson tells The New York Times.

"There's a great separation taking place," agrees Wade Lentz, "patriot" pastor of Beryl Baptist Church in Vilonia, Arkansas. "A lot of people are getting tired of going to church and hearing this message: 'Hey, it's a great day, every day is a great day, the sun is always shining.' There's this big disconnect between what's going on behind the pulpit in those churches and what's going on in the real world."

"This mindset that Christianity and politics, and the preacher and politics, need to be separate, that's a lie," Lentz tells the Times. "You cannot separate the two."

Evangelicals can't serve both God and mammon

"There's this line I hear from evangelical pastors these days — 'I get them for one hour a week and Fox gets them for 10 hours,'" New York Times reporter Ruth Graham recounts on The Daily, in a look at how one conservative Arkansas pastor was driven from his church because his congregants wanted Trumpist affirmation more than Christian transformation. "Now people might be getting an extra hour of exactly what they're hearing the rest of the week, and now it's from their pastor. So the person who is at the center of their religious life now is feeding them more of the politics and reinforcing their political beliefs."

Ed Stetzer, the executive director of Wheaton College's Billy Graham Center, offered a similar assessment to The Atlantic but said this is a "cultural convulsion" that cycles through American evangelicalism every few decades.

Evangelicals certainly haven't cornered the market on making self-righteous, cherry-picked claims about the Bible, but their support for "neo-pagan warlords like Donald Trump" and other Christian nationalists "has less to do with Christianity in any recognizable form than with the sanctification of entirely secular cultural passions with the unshakable faith owed only to God given to politicians," Ed Kilgore writes at New York magazine. "You can choose to follow your culture wars into partisan politics or even authoritarianism and insurrectionary violence, like the not-so-spiritual warriors of Jan. 6. But please, please, be honest about your motives and leave your savior and mine out of it."

"From one perspective, the Christian embrace of populist politics is understandable," Michael Gerson writes in The Washington Post. "The disorienting flux of American ethical norms and the condescension of progressive elites have incited
a defensive reaction among many conservative religious people," and "anxious evangelicals have taken to voting for right-wing authoritarians who promise to fight their fights," including "the oddest of political messiahs — one whose deception, brutality, lawlessness, and bullying were rewarded with the presidency."

"In the present day, the frightening fervor of our politics makes it resemble, and sometimes supplant, the role of religion," Gerson adds. "Nowhere did Jesus demand political passivity from his followers," but "Christians seeking social influence should do so not by joining interest groups that fight for their narrow rights — and certainly not those animated by hatred, fear, phobias, vengeance, or violence. Rather, they should seek to be ambassadors of a kingdom of hope, mercy, justice, and grace. This is a high calling — and a test that most of us (myself included) are always finding new ways to fail."

Has U.S. evangelical Christianity become more a political culture than a religion? (yahoo.com)

Details

Hits: 3032

Ken Bensinger and Sheera Frenkel
Wed, October 5, 2022 at 6:57 AM·9 min read

Soon after the FBI searched Donald Trump’s home in Florida for classified documents, online researchers zeroed in on a worrying trend.

Posts on Twitter that mentioned “civil war” had soared nearly 3,000% in just a few hours as Trump’s supporters blasted the action as a provocation. Similar spikes followed, including on Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, Parler, Gab and Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform. Mentions of the phrase more than doubled on radio programs and podcasts, as measured by Critical Mention, a media-tracking firm.

Posts mentioning “civil war” jumped again a few weeks later, after President Joe Biden branded Trump and “MAGA Republicans” a threat to “the very foundations of our republic” in a speech on democracy in Philadelphia.

Now experts are bracing for renewed discussions of civil war, as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach and political talk grows more urgent and heated.

More than a century and a half after the actual Civil War, the deadliest war in U.S. history, “civil war” references have become increasingly commonplace on the right. While in many cases the term is used only loosely — shorthand for the nation’s intensifying partisan divisions — observers note that the phrase, for some, is far more than a metaphor.

Polling, social media studies and a rise in threats suggest that a growing number of Americans are anticipating, or even welcoming, the possibility of sustained political violence, researchers studying extremism say. What was once the subject of serious discussion only on the political periphery has migrated closer to the mainstream.

But while that trend is clear, there is far less agreement among experts about what it means.

Some elements of the far right view it literally: a call for an organized battle for control of the government. Others envision something akin to a drawn-out insurgency, punctuated with eruptions of political violence, such as the attack on the FBI’s Cincinnati field office in August. A third group describes the country as entering a “cold” civil war, manifested by intractable polarization and mistrust, rather than a “hot” war with conflict.

“The question is what does ‘civil war’ look like and what does it mean,” said Elizabeth Neumann, assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the Homeland Security Department under Trump. “I did not anticipate, nor did anyone else as far as I know, how rapidly the violence would escalate.”

Neumann now works for Moonshot, a private security company that tracks extremism online. Moonshot found a 51% increase in “civil war” references on the most active pages on 4Chan, the fringe online message board, in the week after Biden’s Sept. 1 speech.

But talk of political violence is not relegated to anonymous online forums.

At a Trump rally in Michigan on Saturday night, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said that “Democrats want Republicans dead,” adding that “Joe Biden has declared every freedom-loving American an enemy of the state.” At a recent fundraiser, Michael Flynn, who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser, said that governors had the power to declare war and that “we’re probably going to see that.”

On Monday, federal prosecutors showed a jury in Washington an encrypted message that Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers armed extremist group, had sent his lieutenants two days after the 2020 presidential election: “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war.”

Experts say the steady patter of bellicose talk has helped normalize the expectation of political violence.

In late August, a poll of 1,500 adults by YouGov and The Economist found that 54% of respondents who identified as “strong Republicans” believed a civil war was at least somewhat likely in the next decade. Only about a third of all respondents felt such an event was unlikely. A similar survey conducted by the same groups two years ago found nearly 3 in 5 people feeling that a “civil war-like fracture in the U.S.” was either somewhat or very unlikely.

“What you’re seeing is a narrative that was limited to the fringe going into the mainstream,” said Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

The institute’s researchers tracked tweets mentioning civil war before and after Trump announced the search on Mar-a-Lago. In the five preceding days, they logged an average of roughly 500 tweets an hour. That jumped to 6,000 in the first hour after Trump published a post on Truth Social on the afternoon of Aug. 8, saying “these are dark times for our Nation.” The pace peaked at 15,000 tweets an hour later that evening. A week later, it was still six times higher than the baseline, and the phrase was once again trending on Twitter at month’s end.

Extremist groups have been agitating for some sort of government overthrow for years and, Pape said, the most radical views — often driven by white supremacy or religious fundamentalism — remain marginal, advanced by no more than 50,000 people nationwide.

But a far larger group, he said, are the people who have been influenced by Trump’s complaints about the “Washington swamp” and “deep state” forces working against him and his allies.

Those notions, stirred in a smoldering crucible with QAnon conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine views and election denialism, have fueled a growing hostility toward the federal government and rising talk about states’ rights.

“Did you know that a governor can declare war?” Flynn said at the fundraiser on Sept. 18, for Mark Finchem, a Republican running for secretary of state in Arizona. “And we’re going to probably, we are probably going to see that.”

Neither Flynn nor Finchem responded to a request for comment about the inaccurate remarks. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war and, in fact, specifically bars states from engaging in war “unless actually invaded.”

However far-fetched, such ideas are often amplified by a proliferating set of social media channels such as the right-wing platform Gab and Trump’s Truth Social.

Social media platforms are rife with groups and boards dedicated to discussions of civil war. One, on Gab, describes itself as a place for “action reports,” “combat vids” and reports of people killed in action in “the civil war that is also looking to be a 2nd American Revolution.”

In August, a single tweet stating “I think civil war has just been declared” managed to reach over 17 million profiles despite coming from an account with under 14,000 followers, according to Cybara, an Israeli firm that monitors misinformation.

“Ideas go into echo chambers and it’s the only voice that’s heard; there are no voices of dissent,” said Kurt Braddock, an American University professor who studies how terrorist groups radicalize and recruit.

Braddock said he did not believe these posts indicated any planning for a war. But he worries about what academics call “stochastic terrorism” — seemingly random acts of violence that are, in fact, provoked by “coded language, dog whistles and other subtext” in statements by public figures.

Trump is adept at making such statements, said Braddock, citing Trump’s April 2020 tweet reading “Liberate Michigan!” Less than two weeks later, mobs of heavily armed protesters occupied the state Capitol in Lansing. He also pointed to Trump’s speech before the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when he encouraged thousands of supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol and, later in the same remarks told them, “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

“The statements Trump makes are not overt calls to action, but when you have a huge and devoted following, the chances that one or more people are activated by that are high,” Braddock said.

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump used the term “civil war” in 2019, when he declared in a tweet that “it will cause a Civil War-like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal” if he was removed from office. Last month, Trump said there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before” if he was indicted over his handling of the classified documents that were the target of the FBI search.

Other Republicans have used language suggesting the country is on the brink. Greene wrote in August that the Mar-a-Lago search reflected the “type of things that happen in countries during civil war,” in posts to her nearly 900,000 combined followers on Facebook and Telegram. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida likened the FBI to the Gestapo, the secret police in Nazi Germany, saying “this cannot be our country.”

Late last month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told The Texas Tribune he believed immigration legislation was unlikely in part because of a “political civil war.” He has made similar comments before, including a November 2021 call for Texas to secede if Democrats “destroy the country.”

Nick Dyer, a spokesman for Greene, said that she was “vehemently opposed to political violence” and that her civil war comments were about Democrats, who “are acting like a regime launching a war on their opposition.”

McKinley Lewis, communications director for Scott, said he had “ZERO tolerance for violence of any kind” but added that he “continues to demand answers” related to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search.

Republicans have often argued that their language is political rhetoric and blamed Democrats for twisting it to stoke divisions. It’s Democrats and the left, they said, who are courting violence by labeling Trump’s supporters adherents of what Biden has called “semi-fascism.”

In response to a query about Cruz’s comments, Maria Jeffrey Reynolds, a spokesperson for the senator, said Cruz placed
blame on Biden, claiming that he has “driven a wedge down the middle of our country.”

After Biden delivered his speech on democracy, Brian Gibby, a freelance data entry specialist in Charlotte, North Carolina, wrote in a Substack post that he believed “the Second Civil War began” with the president’s remarks.

“I have never seen a more divisive, hate-filled speech from an American president,” Gibby wrote.

Asked by The New York Times to explain his views, Gibby said he believed Biden was “escalating a hot conflict in America.” He worries something will happen around the November elections that will be “akin to Jan. 6, but much more violent,” where armed protest groups from both sides of the political spectrum come to blows.

“Plan ahead, stock up, stay safe, get out of cities if you can,” he wrote.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Talk of 'Civil War,' Ignited by Mar-a-Lago Search, Is Flaring Online (yahoo.com)

Details

Hits: 2980

Mary Papenfuss
September 29, 2022·3 min read

Donald Trump’s onetime national security adviser Michael Flynn warned at an Arizona campaign event that governors may soon “declare war.”

He also said that “90% of federal agencies” should be eliminated.

The far-right extremist pushed his theories in a speech earlier this week at a campaign event for Trump-endorsed, QAnon-supporting election denier Mark Finchem, who’s running for Arizona secretary of state.

“Just lock ’em up,” Flynn exclaimed, apparently referring to federal agencies he wants shuttered.

“States’ rights,” he added. “Did you know that a governor can declare war? A governor can declare war. And we’re going to probably see that,” Flynn warned.

It wasn’t clear what situations might convince governors to “declare war” in Flynn’s scenario — possibly if they’re unhappy with the result of presidential elections in a democracy. The last time governors tried that, it launched a civil war they didn’t win.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution states that it is Congress that has the power to “declare war,” to “raise and support armies.” For the U.S. to wage war, Congress has to pass a resolution in both chambers, then present it to the president, who shall then direct the military as “commander inchief of the Army and Navy of the United States,” according to Article II, Section 2.

Flynn left the Trump administration within weeks after he was named national security adviser because of his lies about connections to Russia amid the investigation into Kremlin interference into the 2016 presidential election.

He later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian ties during Trump’s campaign and transition into the White House. He was sentenced to prison, but Trump pardoned him in 2020.

Flynn, who earlier this month claimed “Israelis” are attempting to inject robotics into Americans to turn them into cyborgs, has been appointed a “poll watcher” for midterm elections by the Republican Party in Sarasota, Florida. He’ll be joined by a leader of the local Proud Boys militia, which aims to overthrow the U.S. government. (Flynn last week said he heard salad dressings were being laced with COVID vaccines.)

Critics are furious that Trump pardoned Flynn — and that he continues to collect a military pension while he appears to oppose everything the military is sworn to protect.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Michael Flynn Ominously Warns Governors May Soon 'Declare War' (yahoo.com)

Details

Hits: 2936

CP POLITICS | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 05, 2022
By Chris Carpenter

To say the last few years of American politics have been volatile and chaotic would be quite an understatement.

With midterm elections just around the corner, and the presidential election cycle looming just beyond that, it seems voters are determined to move beyond the machinations and maneuverings of the last few years.

But before that can happen, we must find answers to some tough questions.

For example: Was the relationship between Evangelical Christians and Donald Trump a match made in Heaven — or a marriage made in Hell? Did Christian conservatives trade their reputation for a seat at the political table? And how did Donald Trump go from unlikely presidential candidate to superhero and political savior in the eyes of his supporters?

Apologist and radio host Michael Brown believes that in the last election, millions of sincere Christians seemed to wrap the Gospel in the American flag so tightly that politics became a rallying point of their faith. In his latest book, The Political Seduction of the Church, he rejects the idea that the Church is called to take over society and lays out a strategy for healthy political and cultural engagement.

Brown joins us on the "Crossmap Podcast" to share his thoughts on whether Christians should even be involved in politics and why, as a body of believers, we must do better.

Listen as he shares why he thinks false prophecies were given during President Trump's re-election campaign in 2020 and how to recognize some surefire ways that you have been politically seduced.

Did Christians trade reputation for a seat at political table? | Politics News (christianpost.com)

Details

Hits: 2842

Leonard Pitts Jr.
September 30, 2022·3 min read

Tell us something we don’t know.

Maybe that’s an ungenerous way to respond to a study on an important social issue by a respected, non-partisan think tank. But, if you’ve been paying any attention at all, that may be your instinctive reaction to last week’s report from the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute quantifying that Republicans, as a corporate body, are the most racist folks there are.

In other news, water is necessary for life and Aretha Franklin was a pretty good singer.

Indeed, it’s amusing — or maybe “appalling” is the better word — to note that the report was issued only days after a white man appointed by Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis as a commissioner in the state’s only majority-Black county, abruptly resigned when pictures surfaced that seemed to show him wearing the white robe and pointy hood of the Ku Klux Klan. It also came just after Rolling Stone, citing “Confidence Man,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s new book about Donald Trump, reported an episode in which the 45th president, while hosting a reception for congressional leaders, “turned to a row of racially diverse Democratic staffers” and asked them to bring the hors d’oeuvres.

In other words, an ordinary week for the GOP.

The study used 11 questions to tease out respondents’ racial attitudes and construct what it called a “Structural Racism Index” scale. The median score on that scale, which runs from 0 to 1, was 0.45. For Democrats, it was 0.27, for independents, 0.45. But for Republicans, it leaped to 0.67. In fact, no matter how they diced up the respondents by party and race, no other group ranked nearly as high. “Republicans” and “white Republicans” — terms that are functionally redundant — tied for the lead. In second place at 0.58? “Republicans of other races.”

Again, this is hardly shocking. From the party’s scramble to keep Black people from voting, to its performative cruelty toward South American refugees, to its embrace of the most brazenly racist president since Woodrow Wilson, Republican bigotry has long been self-evident.

It is past time for the rest of us to face it, yet one still hears people, even at this late date, even in the face of multiple studies to the contrary, ascribe its descent into its current madness to economic stress. But that just ain’t so.

They have become what they are specifically because some of us are panicked at the thought of Black people, brown people, LGBTQ people, Muslim people and other historically disfavored people coming to visibility and power, and the GOP realized that catering to that resentment was a way to win votes. And also because there is no principle they will not abandon in doing so.

Muscular foreign policy? They make kissy faces at totalitarian regimes.

Support for law enforcement? Not when the laws are being enforced against Trump.

Street riots? They hate them — unless the street is Pennsylvania Ave. and the rioters are MAGA.

The one principle they will not compromise is the protection of straight, white hegemony. That’s why, in the words of a satirical old Randy Newman song, “keepin’ the n------- down” is pretty much the whole Republican platform. This is something the rest of us need to face promptly and squarely if we are to have any hope of understanding — much less fixing — what’s wrong with this country. What the PRRI report quantified is damning and sad, yes. But here’s one thing it isn’t.

It isn’t surprising in the least.

Racism is part of Republicans’ ideological DNA. It’s just that simple | Opinion (yahoo.com)

Details

Hits: 2948

MICHELLE R. SMITH and RICHARD LARDNER Fri, October 7, 2022 at 9:00 AM·12 min rea

BATAVIA, N.Y. (AP) — By the time the red, white and blue-colored microphone had been switched off, the crowd of 3,000 had listened to hours of invective and grievance.

“We’re under warfare,” one speaker told them. Another said she would “take a bullet for my nation,” while a third insisted, “They hate you because they hate Jesus." Attendees were told now is the time to “put on the whole armor of God.” Then retired three-star Army general Michael Flynn, the tour's biggest draw, invited people to be baptized.

Scores of people walked out of the speakers’ tent to three large metal tubs filled with water. While praise music played in the background, one conference-goer after another stepped in. Pastors then lowered them under the surface, welcoming them into their movement in the name of Jesus Christ. One woman wore a T-shirt that read “Army of God.”

Flynn warned the crowd that they were in the midst of a “spiritual war” and a “political war” and urged people to get involved.

ReAwaken America was launched by Flynn, a former White House national security adviser, and Oklahoma entrepreneur Clay Clark a few months after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol failed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Attendees and speakers still insist — against all evidence and dozens of court rulings — that Donald Trump rightfully won.

Since early last year, the ReAwaken America Tour has carried its message of a country under siege to tens of thousands of people in 15 cities and towns. The tour serves as a traveling roadshow and recruiting tool for an ascendant Christian nationalist movement that's wrapped itself in God, patriotism and politics and has grown in power and influence inside the Republican Party.

In the version of America laid out at the ReAwaken tour, Christianity should be at the center of American life and institutions. Instead, it's under attack, and attendees need to fight to restore the nation's Christian roots. It’s a message repeated over and over at ReAwaken — one that upends the constitutional ideal of a pluralist democracy. But it’s a message that is taking hold.

A poll by the University of Maryland conducted in May found that 61% of Republicans support declaring the U.S. to be a Christian nation.

“Christian nationalism really undermines and attacks foundational values in American democracy. And that is a promise of religious freedoms for all," said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee, which advocates for religious freedom.

She said the ReAwaken cause is "a partisan political cause, and the cause here is to spread misinformation, to perpetuate the big lie and to have a different result next time in the next election.” ___

This story is part of an ongoing investigation from The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” that includes the upcoming documentary “Michael Flynn’s Holy War,” premiering Oct. 18 on PBS and online.

Michael Flynn’s ReAwaken roadshow recruits ‘Army of God' (yahoo.com)

Details

Hits: 3006

BY JOHN STONESTREET/BREAKPOINT.ORG SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

Every two years, Ligonier Ministries works with LifeWay Research to evaluate the theological temperature of the American church. This year's State of Theology study's results show that not just Americans but evangelicals in particular are increasingly muddy on core truths such as the nature and character of God, the reality of human sin, the role of the Church in the world, and the exclusivity and divinity of Jesus Christ.

For context, the survey defines "evangelical" as a Christian believer who meets four criteria: that the Bible is the highest authority for what someone believes, that it is important for non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their savior, that Jesus' death on the cross is the only sacrifice that removes the penalty of humanity's sin, and that only those who trust in Him alone receive God's free gift of eternal salvation.

Though that definition is a promising theological start, the results go quickly downhill from there.

For example, nearly half of evangelicals agreed that God "learns and adapts" to different circumstances, in stark contrast to the biblical doctrine of unchanging nature, or immutability; 65% of evangelicals agreed that everyone is "born innocent in the eyes of God," denying the doctrine of original sin, and with it, the very reason that people need salvation in the first place.

Some 56% of evangelicals agreed with the idea that "God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam," in contrast to Jesus' words in Matthew that without Him, "no one knows the Father."

The most stunning result had to do with the topic of Jesus Christ's divinity. When asked whether they agreed that "Jesus was a great teacher ...but not God," 43% of American evangelicals answered yes. That number is up 13% from just two years ago.

Even if we generously allow for some confusion in the phrasing of the questions and what they implied, The State of Theology paints a bleak picture. People who claim the title of "evangelical," a title that long was defined, at least in part, by adherence to historic Christian belief, stand a good chance of believing humanity is basically good at birth, that God is not concerned with worship or doctrine being particularly "Christian," and that Jesus was a good teacher, but not God incarnate. It's worth noting that these failures are not because evangelicals have a low view of Scripture. Some 95%, after all, still agree with the statement that "the Bible is 100% accurate in all that it teaches." The implication, then, is that they simply don't know what it teaches, either because they haven't been taught or they haven't cared enough to learn.

In fact, in many corners of evangelicalism, it is assumed that doctrine doesn't matter. This can take at least two forms: hyper-emotionalism, the idea that God will settle for our sincerity and our affection, even over and above whether or not our beliefs are true; or a hyper-politicization, one that assumes it really matters whom you vote for and what group you belong to, not what you believe about the essential truth of the Gospel or the claims of Christ.

In reply to all this, Jesus was really clear. Here's what He said, "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth." It was for this reason that the divine Logos came into the world "to testify to the truth," and it's only the truth that sets us free. And it's interesting to me that in the Old Testament, idolatry is portrayed not only as worshipping a false God but worshipping a false idea of who God is, such as was the case with the Golden Calf incident.

We will never have a clear sense of who God is, His omnipotence and immutability, His character and work in the world, how He sees us and what He requires of us, without a biblical understanding of who Jesus is and the absolute authority He wields over all creation. If our thinking is rooted instead in only our political allegiances or some vague notion of God's "niceness," we will have simply obtained a "form of godliness, while denying its power."

Once in a meeting I attended, a Christian leader quipped, "If we could just get all the Christians saved, we'd be in good shape." The results of this study show it's time for many so-called Christians to repent, for many churches to renew their commitments to catechism, and for all of us who claim Christ to commit our hearts and minds to know who He is, who He has revealed Himself to be.

Originally published at Breakpoint - reposted with permission.
American Evangelicals Increasingly Confused On Core Biblical Truths (prophecynewswatch.com)