Photo: Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images
Last week, New York Times religion writers Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham portrayed Christian conservative political activists as feeling a bit depressed and betrayed by Donald Trump and the Republican Party because they have downplayed or even abandoned traditional positions opposing all abortions and LGBTQ rights as unconditionally wicked. Yet Christian conservatives still plan to vote for their former heroes as the lesser of two evils:
The country is growing more secular and pluralistic by the year, with regular church attendance declining. Many leaders in the Republican Party, their political home for decades, have gone silent about their opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. And, Mr. Trump, the man once considered to be their strongest champion, is publicly distancing himself from their causes, even as he attacked Democrats in the presidential debate for their support of reproductive rights. …
Conservative Christians are frustrated. Mr. Trump seems “disinclined” to reach out to his Christian base, said Cole Muzio, the president of Frontline Policy Action, a group in Georgia that pushes for “Godly policies” with a network of conservative Christian organizations.
Even the mailers the Trump campaign and the Georgia Republican Party have sent to his house are vexing, Mr. Muzio said.
The fliers point out that “Donald Trump is against Project 2025, which I am for; and that Donald Trump is pro-I.V.F. mandate, which I am against; and that Donald Trump believes that some abortion access is good and should be ultimately decided by states, and that’s what we’ve always wanted, and I disagree with that premise,” he said.
Even legendary religio-political warrior Ralph Reed, whose Faith and Freedom Coalition long epitomized the marriage of the Christian right to the GOP, sounds downbeat: “That doesn’t mean that we won’t ultimately prevail, it just means that we’re in a different season in that struggle.”
This is all pretty interesting and relevant, but I’d observe that Trump and other Republicans haven’t completely stopped talking about abortion and LGBTQ rights but have instead switched to negative messages about the alleged radicalism of Democrats. There’s incessant talk about late-term (or even post-birth!) abortions (late-term abortions are rare and almost always medically necessary; post-birth abortions do not exist). The GOP is also intensely focused on niche fears about transgender folk ruining women’s sports and/or interfering with parental supervision of their kids. This may not have the same emotional power to old-school Christian right types as saving “all the babies” or turning sodomites into pillars of salt, but it could keep them in the harness and sure to vote.
But what the Times’ story does not get into is the growing prominence of a very different segment of Christian conservatives who are very bullish about America’s future and remain extremely excited about Trump and 2024. Drawn from the ranks of the roughly 33 million Americans usually referred to as “Independent Charismatics (or Pentecostals),” and following a radical set of teachings and leadership principles often going by the name of New Apostolic Reformation, they are usually nondenominational and typically practice such “spiritual gifts” as healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues. Under the leadership of largely self-appointed “apostles” and “prophets,” they spread their gospel through social media and music as much as through traditional worship. And although they share the traditional Christian right’s issue positions for the most part, they engage with Trump and the MAGA movement on a much broader, even cosmic, landscape, as the divinely appointed leader of right-thinking Christians engaged in “spiritual warfare” with literally demonic progressives who are working to destroy the church, the family, and the essential Christian nation of America. The leaders and followers of this movement had their real national coming-out party at the January 6 insurrection and have remained hyped up about completing the task of restoring Trump to power ever since.
Perhaps the best-known excursion of this prevalent strain of Christian nationalism is the ReAwaken America Tour, an ongoing enterprise during Trump’s exile from power, as NPR explained in 2022:
Since early last year, some of the most prolific spreaders of conspiracy theories have been barnstorming across the country alongside a stacked cast of pro-Trump speakers, preachers and self-proclaimed prophets.
Each stop of the ReAwaken America Tour is part conservative Christian revival, part QAnon expo and part political rally. It features big name stars in the MAGA galaxy, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Trump adviser Roger Stone and former President Donald Trump’s son, Eric. There are meet and greets, a buffet and, lately, baptisms and the casting out of demons.
The show was conceived in the months after former national security adviser Michael Flynn received a pardon from Trump. Flynn connected with Clay Clark, an Oklahoma man who had been hosting local, anti-lockdown gatherings during the pandemic. The two put on their first event in Tulsa in April 2021. The most recent stop in Pennsylvania Amish country was their 16th show together
But an even more pointed and alarming MAGA road show is the Courage Tour that is unsubtly being held right now in presidential battleground states, billing itself as “marking the dawn of our nation’s Third Great Awakening.” Speakers at the events include Christian right warhorse David Barton, who teaches that separation of church and state is a myth; anti-abortion activist and MLK niece Alveda King; fellow charismatic prophet Lou Engle; and ultra-MAGA politicians Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mark Finchem.
One of the conveners and headliners of the Courage Tour is Lance Wallnau, who is probably the most notorious nondenominational-charismatic “prophet” of them all. He is best known in the broader world as the preacher who came up with the idea that the heathenish Donald Trump was a divinely appointed nonbeliever on the order of King Cyrus (who made possible the return of the Jews from their exile in Babylon). But in religious circles, Wallnau is better known as the Johnny Appleseed of the Seven Mountain Mandate, the belief (the product of a prophetic vision experienced by one of Wallnau’s friends based on language from the Book of Revelation) that conservative Christians are obliged to take control of seven areas of society: education, entertainment, family, business, religion, media, and government. This scheme has become a veritable blueprint for Christian “dominionism” in the U.S. And without question, Wallnau and his friends see the MAGA movement as an essential vehicle for achieving their theocratic goals.
Wallnau was present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and hasn’t slowed down since. For one thing, he is a regular guest on the wildly popular and incendiary three-times-a-week TV show (on the Christian Victory Channel and various streaming services) FlashPoint. He was predictably sure that God saved Donald Trump from assassination. And he’s said Kamala Harris represents “something which is an amalgam of the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary (Clinton) because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.” He also accused her of exercising the evil power of witchcraft in her recent debate with Trump.
These folks weren’t much of a presence when the old-school Christian right was in its heyday, with a then-young Ralph Reed as one of its shock troops. For this new breed of “spiritual warrior,” Trump’s reelection is not so much a means of ticking off policy goals as a potentially climactic moment in human history. They’ll accept the help and fellowship of the people Dias and Graham are writing about, but there’s no question they believe God Almighty is in charge of Trump-Vance 2024.
Source link
