Donald Trump managed to pull off his hostile takeover of the Republican Party in the face of outright hostility from most of the religious right. It’s not often that we in Liberal America agree with fundies. However, if you heard a number of fundies wring their hands about Trump’s misogyny and hateful rhetoric, you’d think you were listening to one of us–until you saw that most of them supported Ted Cruz. But the folks at People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch noticed that the Donald has picked up the full-throated support from a leading member of the most extreme element of the religious right.
If you’ve read my work over the years on Daily Kos–where I’m known as Christian Dem in NC–you’ll know that I had a very close, very personal, and very unnerving experience with the religious right in my college days. In my freshman year at Carolina, I was tricked into joining a campus ministry aligned with a church that was part and parcel of the New Apostolic Reformation, an overtly fascist offshoot of the religious right that believes it can bring about the Second Coming until Christians take over the world. Indeed, until Trump came along, these guys were the closest things to outright fascism I’d ever seen first-hand.
The NAR’s main strategy is the “Seven Mountains strategy.” Supposedly, Christians must take over the seven forces, or mountains, that influence our society–business, education, family, religion, media, entertainment, and especially government–so they can hand the world to Jesus on a platter when he returns. The main architect of that strategy is Lance Wallnau. He explains how it works here.
And here:
Wallnau went further in a 2011 speech at MorningStar Fellowship Church in Charlotte, pastored by his old friend Rick Joyner. He’s a member of the board of Joyner’s Oak Initiative, a “grassroots” outfit that seeks to mobilize “effective leaders” in the “Seven Mountains.” Wallnau thinks that these mountains are currently held by people controlled by the devil, and that Christians must “seize those high places” in order to bring Jesus back.
Well, it turns out that Wallnau thinks Trump may be the guy to help them take the “high places.” Back in November, he dropped by MorningStar and convinced the crowd to join him in offering a “prophetic prayer” for a Trump victory. He later said that the crowd was made up mostly of Ben Carson supporters at first, but he managed to convince them that Trump had “an anointing for the mantle of government.” Wallnau has already made some overtures to the Trump campaign; he is a member of the “National Diversity Coalition,” a group put together by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to bring together prominent minorities who back the Donald.
Wallnau went further in a lengthy Vimeo video. He believed that Cruz wasn’t electable, even though he “totally gets Seven Mountains.” While Trump isn’t one of them, Wallnau thinks Trump is unconventional enough that he can push back against “an increasingly hostile anti-Christian culture.”
In an accompanying blog post, Wallnau told us not to believed the conventional wisdom suggesting Trump will get destroyed by Hillary in the general election, Wallnau thinks “chaos will hit America between now and the election”–and it will be strong enough to push the Donald over the top. He recalled seeing a picture of Trump, which prompted him to read Isaiah 45–which foretold the reign of Cyrus. Like Trump, Cyrus wasn’t a believer–but God used him as a “wrecking ball” to fulfill his purposes.
Earlier, Wallnau told Christian publisher Stephen Strang that God was raising up Trump for this time to “deliver us from Hillary.” As he sees it, Hillary isn’t a person, but “a machine” bent on destroying Christian civilization. Uh huh. So their great white hope is a guy who plasters private cell phone numbers on social media, mocks the disabled, and condones anti-Semitic bile from his supporters. Sounds like this is more of a case of an outright fascist courting an embryonic fascist.
This is actually the third straight cycle that the NAR has tried to elbow its way into a Republican campaign. In 2008, Sarah Palin was revealed to be a longtime member of a prayer group led by an NAR apostle. In 2012, Rick Perry organized a series of prayer rallies with the help of several NAR figures. I seem to recall that the first two didn’t turn out so well for the NAR. When Trump gets destroyed in November, hopefully it will be strike three for Wallnau and friends.
