Voting in the Kingdom - Prophecy Voters, the New Apostolic Reformation, and Christian Support for Trump Damon Berry - University of ...
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Voting in the Kingdom
Prophecy Voters, the New Apostolic
Reformation, and Christian Support for Trump
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Damon Berry
ABSTRACT: Evangelical Christian support for Donald Trump quickly
became a focus for journalistic and scholarly efforts to understand the
results of the 2016 presidential election. Most studies have focused on
Trump’s position on social issues or voters’ racialized nostalgia for an
idealized American past. In this article, however, I draw attention to
motives not analyzed by these studies. Among the leaders of the New
Apostolic Reformation, a new charismatically inclined Christian move-
ment, alleged prophecies explaining that God had chosen Trump to
become president compelled their support for his candidacy, presidency,
and attempt at reelection in 2020. I argue that Trump’s support among
what I call prophecy voters resulted from their obedience to these prophecies
and the accompanying mandate to combat alleged demonic conspiracies
aligned against President Trump that seek to prevent the eventual estab-
lishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth.
KEYWORDS: prophecy voters, New Apostolic Reformation,
conspiracism, millennialism, Trump, 2016 presidential election
D
onald Trump, a twice-divorced former casino owner, real estate
mogul, and reality show host, did not seem the obvious choice
for conservative Christians in the 2016 presidential election in
the United States. When he spoke in January 2016 at Liberty University,
one of the largest Christian universities in the world and a major
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Volume 23, Issue 4, pages
69–93. ISSN 1092-6690 (print), 1541-8480. (electronic). © 2020 by The Regents of the
University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to
photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s
Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-
permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2020.23.4.69.
69Nova Religio
institution for the American religious right, Trump failed to signal that
he was familiar with even the language of the community when he ref-
erenced a passage from “two Corinthians” instead of “Second
Corinthians” in the New Testament.1 Some Christian leaders did indeed
feel that Trump was a poor choice for more substantive reasons. Russell
D. Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and
Religious Liberty Commission, famously criticized Trump for his lax
morals and clearly unrepentant attitude and encouraged evangelical
Christians to withhold their support on those grounds.2 Nevertheless,
Trump’s conservative Christian support did not seem to suffer. He easily
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won over white evangelical Protestant vote by an even greater percentage
than did George W. Bush in 2000. As Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign
began, support among that demographic slipped little. A Pew Research
Center report released in March 2019 stated that President Trump still
enjoyed a 69 percent overall approval rating among evangelical
Protestants, more than any other religious and unaffiliated category of
Americans in that survey.3
Trump did much during the 2016 campaign to attract the support of
conservative Christians, signaling often that he supported them and their
vision of America even if his credentials as an evangelical were question-
able. He vehemently opposed abortion and promised, if elected, to
appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn
Roe v. Wade.4 He further promised expansive federal protection for
those who object to providing certain kinds of services to LGBTQ+ per-
sons in the private and public sectors on religious grounds.5 Now, after
two conservative appointments to the Supreme Court and the adminis-
tration’s argument before the Court that the rule known as Title VII of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in the work-
place, does not apply to transgender persons, the president seems
focused on preserving this base of support going into the 2020 presiden-
tial election.6
Trump’s appeals to issues that traditionally motivated the religious
right seemed nonetheless inadequate to explain such support from the
group referred to as “values voters” in times past. Robert P. Jones, found-
ing CEO of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), and his team of
researchers are primarily responsible for the much-referenced datum
that 81 percent of white evangelical Protestants voted for Trump in the
2016 presidential election, reporting just weeks before that “No religious
group is more strongly backing Trump’s candidacy than white evangel-
ical Protestants.”7 In his book The End of White Christian America, Jones
charts the developments that led to such strong support for this unlikely
champion of Christian virtues to just before the 2016 election, explain-
ing how, in the words of his article in The Atlantic, values voters had
become “nostalgia voters.”8 Jones’ key point is that the blending of
nostalgia for a bygone America controlled by white Christians and their
70Berry: Voting in the Kingdom
fear of losing influence in the future drove white evangelical Protestants
to vote for Trump. I agree with Jones that one might explain much of
Trump’s support from white conservative Protestants by the melding of
a politics of nostalgia and racial resentment, but the story of broader
evangelical Christian support for Trump is more complex.
In a 2018 article for Christianity Today, Ed Stetzer, Dean of the School
of Mission, Ministry, and Leadership at Wheaton College in Wheaton,
Illinois, and Executive Director of the Billy Graham Center, and Andrew
MacDonald, Associate Director of the Billy Graham Center Institute,
referenced data from the Pew Research Center to argue that Jones’
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explanation was incomplete. They contend that it failed to account for
a significant percentage of Christians who were actually motivated to vote
against Hillary Clinton rather than convinced to vote for Donald Trump.
They go on to write that in a two-party system, conservative Protestants
confronted a difficult choice that compelled them to vote for the
Republican nominee and thereby stay consistent with their voting his-
tory.9 The story the Pew data told for Stetzer and MacDonald is one of the
pragmatic choices made by conservative Christians in the context of
a narrow electoral field in which neither candidate was viewed as ideal.
Stetzer and MacDonald seem motivated to refute the perception
that, in their words, “all evangelical Trump voters were ‘all in’ for every-
thing that encompasses Trumpism.”10 They aim to demonstrate that
Christian support for Trump was not merely about race, but to some
degree based upon pragmatic decisions concerning the policies of the
two candidates. I, however, want to make a different point. For some
Christians associated with the New Apostolic Reformation, support for
Trump was not forthcoming simply because they believed he would
deliver on social issues, though to be sure they did believe that.
Support for Trump coming from the network of self-described prophets
and apostles within this new Christian movement rested on prophetic
visions and a certain millennialist perspective, which they mediated to
their audiences on independent radio and internet sites, Christian tele-
vision networks, and in books. These Christians were motivated to sup-
port Trump because of alleged prophetic revelations that he was God’s
anointed candidate chosen to lead America at that particular moment in
God’s unfolding plan for the world.
Lance Wallnau, one of the foremost articulators of the dominionist
theology expressed in the New Apostolic Reformation, and Pastor Frank
Amedia, founder of the intercessory prayer group POTUS Shield and
former liaison for Christian policy for Trump’s 2016 campaign, among
others in the movement, described Trump in these prophetic terms.
They also indulged in conspiratorial narratives, alleging his opponents
were involved in “Marxist” cell networks working for the “Deep State,”
supported by the “Fake News” media. Moreover, they claimed that
Trump’s political adversaries were inspired by demonic spirits under
71Nova Religio
the guidance of the Devil to destroy Trump and the United States, and
thereby prevent the full realization of the Kingdom of God on Earth. In
the conspiratorial cosmology propagated by those affiliated with this
movement, Christians must engage in spiritual warfare and political
activism to combat the spiritually malevolent, unpatriotic forces oppos-
ing Trump. They supported Trump, not because of the president’s
character, or even his policies, but so they would be obedient to what
they perceived as God’s plan to preserve America’s destiny through
Trump’s leadership and, in time, establish God’s dominion over every
aspect of social life and His Kingdom among the nations.
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Utilizing primary source materials, I argue that the conspiratorial
and millennialist narratives propagated by those associated with the
New Apostolic Reformation will continue to hold influence among the
Christian Right in the United States through the 2020 presidential elec-
tion. This is, in part, because their dualistic and conspiratorial vision of
politics is not confined to the margins of charismatic Christianity, but is
common among Trump’s most vocal Christian supporters. These par-
ticular Christian Trump supporters, then, are not values voters who
choose candidates on the grounds of personal character. Neither are
they necessarily nostalgia voters looking for a return to an imagined
golden age. Rather, they are prophecy voters looking forward to the cre-
ation of the Kingdom of God on Earth by citizens acting on divine
instructions delivered through the leaders of the New Apostolic
Reformation.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE NEW APOSTOLIC
REFORMATION
Before exploring the ideology of the New Apostolic Reformation,
a brief summary is offered here of how it emerged in the 1990s from
earlier charismatic and Pentecostal movements in the United States.
Literature and rhetoric scholar John Weaver deftly traces the move-
ment’s development to early Pentecostals like William J. Seymour
(1870–1922), leader of the 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles,
and the teachings of Charles F. Parham (1873–1929), both of whom
were instrumental in the creation and popularization of charismatic
Christianity and Pentecostalism. Weaver calls attention to the impor-
tance of the Latter Rain Revival movement (1948–1952) that helped
spur the growth of independent charismatic and Pentecostal churches
where gifts of the Holy Spirit, like speaking in tongues, healing, and
prophecy, were emphasized.11 Significantly, participants in these early
charismatic and Pentecostal movements, operating through indepen-
dent churches and revival networks, saw what they were doing as means
to restore the full power of Christianity.
72Berry: Voting in the Kingdom
Encouraged by a “flourishing network of leaders” that guided the
broader “Charismatic Renewal” and offered prophetic visions of the
coming Kingdom of God and spiritual gifts restored, such efforts at
renewal continued through the twentieth century.12 Some of these
movements were controversial even among some Pentecostals, however,
these practices continued to grow in popularity and fashioned in time
what came to be called the Third Wave of charismatic renewal. In the
1980s, the Kansas City Prophets movement, rooted in the ministries of
charismatic Christian leaders like Mike Bickle, founder of the
International House of Prayer based in Kansas City, Missouri, influenced
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both the prosperity gospel movement and New Apostolic Reformation.
The 1994 Toronto Blessing, named after the city in which participants
associated with the Vineyard churches exhibited particularly powerful
responses to prayer, including weeping and uncontrollable laughing,
also became a significant factor in the birth of the New Apostolic
Reformation.13 This new charismatic movement is therefore firmly
rooted in popular, though often controversial, charismatic practices in
twentieth-century America.
The New Apostolic Reformation expresses not only a particular view
of spiritual gifts and Christian renewal, but also a particular form of
ecclesiastical organization. Sociologists Brad Christerson and Richard
Flory describe this new form of Christian organizing as focusing on a loose
network of independent churches existing outside denominational hier-
archies. They call this “Independent Network Christianity,” or “INC
Christianity,” and explain that this kind of Christian organization is com-
prised of “networks of dynamic individual leaders rather than of congre-
gations and denominations,” and represents “a new form of Christianity
that could reshape the global religious landscape for years to come.”14
The New Apostolic Reformation, as a particularly prominent example of
this new form of ecclesiastical organization, is a reformation in church
activity that may affect the future of religious organizing in America. It
aims to establish authority in the hands of independent leadership rather
than denominational hierarchy, in part by affirming the importance of
prophetic insight and guidance by gifted leaders, who may be leaders of
megachurches or may not be directly associated with any brick and mor-
tar church. We should, therefore, view the New Apostolic Reformation as
a change in Christianity that is, according to one important proponent of
the movement, C. Peter Wagner (1930–2016), potentially “at least as
radical as those of the Protestant Reformation.”15
C. Peter Wagner, a former professor at Fuller Theological Seminary
in Pasadena, California, is credited as the creator of the term New
Apostolic Reformation and has done more than anyone else to define
it. In his 1999 book Churchquake! How The New Apostolic Reformation Is
Shaking Up the Church as We Know It, Wagner described the movement in
similar terms as Christerson and Flory, stating that the New Apostolic
73Nova Religio
Reformation’s focus is on developing what he called “extra-
denominational networks.”16 Wagner wrote that in 1994 he noticed that
these informally affiliated independent churches began to overtake the
denominations in the number of members, which led him to the con-
clusion that God was doing something to usher in a new age of
Christianity.17 Wagner described these churches as apostolic because
of how he understood their leadership. He defined an apostle as one
whom God has called for the work of “planting and overseeing new
churches,” who demonstrates a prophetic anointing confirmed by
“a word from the Lord,” approved by the congregation for the position,
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and who exhibits godly character and spiritual maturity.18 In defining
this movement, therefore, he emphasized the growth of independent
churches, operating in networks, that were led by charismatic leaders
who were recognized as being gifted by the Holy Spirit for the office,
who were focused on evangelism, and were characterized by theological
soundness and eschatological optimism.19 All of this, Wagner wrote,
pointed to the recognition that “the New Testament office of apostle
is alive and well in churches today”; a fact that he thought separated this
new movement from “traditional Protestant churches.”20 In short, the
New Apostolic Reformation is, in Wagner’s understanding, a reforma-
tion in ecclesiastical organization, but also a theological reformation
that emphasizes evangelism and a revaluation of eschatology.
Christerson and Flory’s study demonstrates that organizational
method as it is found in the New Apostolic Reformation allows for spe-
cific transformations in expressions of Christianity that challenge eccle-
siastical control, and thereby opens the field of Christian political activity
and affiliation for broader cooperation with existing political organiza-
tions. They argue that the sustained growth and popularity of “INC
Christianity,” like that of the New Apostolic Reformation, “will continue
to gain market share compared with traditionally organized groups,
exerting an increasingly strong influence on the way Christianity, as well
as other religious traditions, are experienced and practiced.”21 The New
Apostolic Reformation is therefore not only important because of its
expression of increasingly popular, charismatic, Spirit-filled, prophecy-
driven Christianity, but also because it represents the kind of cell-
network structure that will be more common in Christian communities
in the United States in the future.
CONSPIRACISM AND MILLENNIALISM
To contextualize my reading of primary sources in the following
sections, it is necessary for me to explain what I mean when I describe
narratives in the New Apostolic Reformation as conspiratorial, and also
to define the kind of millennialism expressed in this movement. The
74Berry: Voting in the Kingdom
conversation among academics concerning conspiracy theories goes at
least as far back as historian Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay, “The
Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Hofstadter argues that the
conspiracy-minded person only sees “the consequences of power”
through a “distorting lens,” and can therefore never really “observe its
actual machinery.”22 That is to say that the quality that defines the
conspiratorial “paranoid style” is a misconception of historical causality
and a misunderstanding of the operation of political alliances and
events. There is a certain flaw in conspiracist thinking in that it aims
to explain the world in terms of linear, non-complicated causality.
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Political scientist Michael Barkun has done much to further the sub-
sequent academic discussion of conspiracy theories. He argues that
“belief in conspiracies is central to millennialism in the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries.”23 Reflecting some of what Hofstadter
noticed, Barkun says that conspiracism “is, first and foremost, an expla-
nation of politics,” and describes what he calls “conspiracy belief” as “the
belief that an organization made up of individuals or groups was or is
acting covertly to achieve some malevolent end.”24 Barkun elaborates on
this basic point and argues further that the “conspiracist worldview im-
plies a universe governed by design [rather] than by randomness,” and
identifies three general principles for conspiracy belief: “Nothing hap-
pens by accident”; “Nothing is as it seems”; “Everything is connected.”25
Conspiracy belief can then be said to be a false, yet effective, cosmo-
logical framework that is at once reassuring and frightening—
“frightening because it magnifies the power of evil,” and reassuring
because it is assumed that events are “nonrandom,” thereby assuring
the believing subject of an order of meaning.26 The world of conspira-
cism may indeed be a world in which the starkly dualistic struggle for the
future of all humankind is at stake, but it is also one that imbues indivi-
duals’ actions with lasting significance and consequence, and shapes
their cosmos to be one in which misfortune personified by a malevolent
cabal of adversaries can be overcome. One could say that in the conspir-
atorial millennialist discourse of the New Apostolic Reformation, the
Kingdom of God is believably possible precisely because the evil that
opposes it seems so undeniably real.
For those associated with the New Apostolic Reformation, narratives
of satanic conspiracies to corrupt humanity and frustrate God’s pro-
phetic plan are ubiquitous. They are also set within a broader framework
of millennial expectations. Historian of religions Catherine Wessinger
defines millennialism as “belief in an imminent transition to a collective
salvation, in which the faithful will experience well-being, and the
unpleasant limitations of the human condition will be eliminated.”27
Her definition stipulates that this salvation may be realized either on
Earth or in heavenly realms, or both, and can be accomplished either by
a divine or superhuman agent alone or with the cooperation of human
75Nova Religio
actors. Millennialism that incorporates the cooperative and earthly sal-
vation elements with belief in progress guided by a divine or superhu-
man agent is what she calls “progressive millennialism.”
Wessinger juxtaposes what she calls “catastrophic millennialism,” or
a form of millennialism that expects humanity and society to grow
increasingly worse until the time of a dramatic and destructive interven-
tion by a divine agent, with what she describes as an optimistic form of
millennialism that “entails a belief in progress.”28 Historian of religion in
America W. Michael Ashcraft develops this concept further in a historical
overview. He writes, “Progressive millennialism is an outlook that expects
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society on Earth to become increasingly purified or perfected.”29 He goes
on to argue from Wessinger’s work that progressive millennialists are
prepared to view setbacks in creating the perfected society as obstacles
that can be overcome in time due to their conviction that the world will
eventually, with the cooperation of human and divine agencies, become
that ideal place.
Folklorist and scholar of millennialism Daniel Wojcik advances
a related category of millennialism, “avertive millennialism,” which will
help us further think through our topic of the New Apostolic
Reformation. He argues that avertive millennialism “shares features with
progressive millennialism in the assertion that collective salvation and
a golden age will be brought about . . . by human beings acting in coop-
eration with a divine authority or superhuman plan that will transform
the world.”30 As is true with other categories of millennialism, expres-
sions can vary, but Wojcik argues that avertive millennialism emphasizes
a “nonfatalistic view of an apocalypse that can be avoided through
human action.”31 Like the progressive millennialist outlook, the avertive
millennialist view describes the world “not as irredeemably evil or abso-
lutely doomed,” but “characterized by a conditional attitude,” in that the
Kingdom of God may come if the apocalyptic destruction is averted and
the requirements for the collective salvation are met.32
The millennialism expressed in the New Apostolic Reformation
movement blends each of the elements of progressive and avertive mil-
lennialism into what C. Peter Wagner described as an “optimistic” escha-
tology.33 The prophecies associated with support for President Trump,
in particular, promise deliverance for God’s people from repressive
political correctness and a future in which the United States plays a sig-
nificant role in spreading the Gospel to the whole world. In this way, the
Kingdom of God will be realized on Earth as Christians, led by prophet-
ically chosen leaders, act to bring it into being. However, there is a caveat.
If they had not supported Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign, if
they had allowed “Fake News,” the “Deep State,” or any of the schemes of
the Devil to prevail, the plans for the kingdom would have been sub-
verted and America would have fallen into ruin, and with it, America’s
prophetic role in establishing the Kingdom of God would have been lost.
76Berry: Voting in the Kingdom
CONSPIRATORIAL MILLENNIALISM IN THE NEW
APOSTOLIC REFORMATION
Conspiratorial narratives that follow the premillennial Christian dis-
pensationalist view of John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), which Wessinger
describes as an expression of catastrophic millennialism, are perhaps
better known because of the success of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great
Planet Earth (1970) and the Left Behind books and movies.34 This escha-
tology describes God’s plan for the Endtime as initiated by the rapture of
all true Christians living on Earth followed by seven years of tribulation,
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then followed by Christ’s return to fight and kill his enemies at, in the
phraseology of the community, the “valley of Megiddo,” to establish his
Kingdom on Earth. For Tim LaHaye, the theological mind behind the
Left Behind series, and Lindsey, these events follow the organization of
a One-World government led by the Antichrist, who will also lead a great
apostasy away from the worship of the one true God. This view is still
common among many evangelical Christians, but not with leaders of the
New Apostolic Reformation.
Regarding eschatology, Wagner specifically stated that the view of
those associated with the New Apostolic Reformation does not look
forward to a great catastrophe at the end of the age. Instead they view
the future as progressively getting better. “Satan is being defeated,” he
argued, and that they “strongly believe that more souls than ever are
being saved, that churches will continue to multiply, that demonic
strongholds will be torn down, that the powers of darkness will crack
open and that the advance of God’s kingdom is inexorable.”35
Elaborating on his progressive eschatology in an interview with Terry
Gross on the Fresh Air radio program on National Public Radio in 2011,
Wagner explained that his perspective distinguished him and others in
the movement from even other conservative Christians. When asked by
Gross to explain his view of the Endtime, Wagner stated, “Now, what
I think will happen is that the gospel of the kingdom will be preached
to all nations, that we will begin, as Jesus said to his disciples, begin
making disciples of nations. . . . I think the world is going to get better
and better, not worse and worse.”36 When asked about whether he
believed in the rapture and the tribulation, Wagner stated, “I used to.”
He then explained:
[W]e believe that Jesus is at the right hand of God, the Father—whom
heaven must receive until the times of the restoration of all things. And so
what we believe is that God has sent us out to restore things to see his
kingdom come, his will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. And then
when that happens enough, Jesus will return, and he will return to a very
strong world, reflecting the kingdom of God, and not to a miserable
world like much of our world is today.
77Nova Religio
This progressive, kingdom-building eschatology is elaborated in a col-
lection of essays titled The Reformer’s Pledge (2010), compiled by Ché Ahn,
pastor and founder of Ché Ahn Ministries and a disciple of Wagner,
whom he described as being his “spiritual father, pastor, and apostle.”37
Both C. Peter Wagner and Lance Wallnau contributed essays to this
volume. Wagner’s essay focused on the idea of “dominion,” or the estab-
lishment of God’s Kingdom on Earth, about which he wrote,
“charismatically inclined evangelicals” had embraced this idea in the
1990s and later came to emphasize this “Dominion Mandate” at the turn
of the millennium.38 He went on to argue that since that realization of
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the Dominion Mandate, followed by prayer activity, positive social change
had occurred as a result. Wagner claimed that crime rates dropped,
public officials were converted, and Proposition 8, the law that defined
marriage as a one-man, one-woman union, successfully passed in the
2008 general election in California.39 For Wagner and others associated
with the New Apostolic Reformation, political and social issues are sub-
ject to the spiritual realities that are at once cause and remedy. To change
the world for the better means one must fight the demonic spirits that
aim to frustrate the inauguration of God’s Kingdom.
Wallnau described this mandate for dominion in an essay titled, “The
Seven Mountain Mandate.” According to Wallnau, “The business of
shifting culture or transforming nations does not require a majority of
conversions,” but rather taking control of the levers of power in what he
called the “Seven Mountains.”40 This refers to seven spheres of social life
that are currently under demonic control: religion, families, education,
government, media and arts, science and technology, and business.41
Quoting from Ephesians 6:12, Wallnau claimed, “we ‘do not wrestle against
flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,” and that he and his
fellow believers carried a “combat anointing” that empowered them to
take control of the Mountains.42 Attacking these demonic strongholds
was not a suggestion for better Christian living, but rather a prophetic,
divine mandate. To act spiritually, therefore, meant acting politically in
the effort to create God’s Kingdom on Earth in a cooperative effort
between God and his people. Wallnau’s apostolic instruction in “The
Seven Mountains Mandate” is nothing short of directions for imple-
menting Christian dominion over America’s political and social life.
In Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate (2013), edited by Lance
Wallnau and Bill Johnson, the controversial leader of Bethel Church in
Redding, California, we can see the concept of dominionism developed
further. “If we are to have any hope of reaching this world with the
Gospel, we must understand that there is a spiritual component to influ-
encing our world,” the introduction states. “We must first recognize
demonic spiritual powers and displace them through prayer and fas-
ting.”43 The introduction also specifies that the “Seven Mountain reve-
lation helps us strategically identify aspects of society so that cultural
78Berry: Voting in the Kingdom
transformation can become a manageable task.”44 Social transformation
through dominion advocated by Wagner, Ahn, Wallnau, and Johnson
blends spiritual warfare into the practicalities of financial, political, and
metapolitical strategies in the effort to “bring the Kingdom of God into
every aspect of society.”45 The dominionist perspective that informs the
Seven Mountains Mandate establishes the world as a battleground for
the forces of good and evil where God’s people strive to bring the
Kingdom via control of every aspect of social and political life. In deliv-
ering this mandate, these New Apostolic leaders jettison the dispensa-
tionalist catastrophic millennial expectation of an imminent rapture
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followed by the tribulation period, then the return of Jesus Christ to
participate in the battle of Armageddon and then establish God’s king-
dom on Earth, and instead work to establish God’s rule progressively
over the world on the condition that God’s people overcome obtrusive
demonic conspiracies. They will be successful in the end, but only if they
do as Wagner advised and “listen to the prophets.”46
GOD’S CHAOS CANDIDATE
Candidate Donald Trump faced an uncertain prospect in the 2016
presidential campaign after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood
tape. In this recording, Trump described in rather shocking terms how
he had routinely forced himself on women, and how they would not
rebuff his advances because of his celebrity status. In a tweet on 6
October 2016, Russell D. Moore stated, “Some ‘evangelicals’ defending
or waving this away. Some are putting the ‘silent’ in ‘silent majority.’
Morally repugnant.”47 He faced significant backlash for this criticism.
Southern Baptist pastor and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee
stated, “I am utterly stunned that Russell Moore is being paid by
Southern Baptists to insult them.”48 Trump himself attacked Moore
on Twitter, stating, “@drmoore Russell Moore is truly a terrible repre-
sentative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy
with no heart!”49 Other evangelical Christians, however, regarded
Moore’s criticism of Trump as demonstrating a lack of spiritual insight.
For Lance Wallnau and other prophets of the New Apostolic
Reformation, criticism that targeted Moore’s statements about
Trump’s character missed the prophetic point that God was, in fact,
using Trump’s brashness for His glory. The very qualities that repulsed
Moore were the qualities that Wallnau and Amedia regarded as neces-
sary for Trump to be the confrontational leader God had raised him up
to be. In an interview on the Charisma Podcast Network on 6 May 2016,
Wallnau described Trump as a “kamikaze candidate” and claimed that
God told him that Trump was a “wrecking ball to the spirit of political
correctness.” He exclaimed that amidst the acceptance of gay rights,
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“Caitlyn Jenner,” and “safe spaces,” Christians had been on the losing
end of a broad spectrum of cultural debates. Trump had now come,
Wallnau added, to “change the discourse.” He exclaimed triumphantly,
referencing Trump’s announcement that he would run for president,
“We have not had the same political sensitivity since then, because
Trump has been the wrecking ball.”50
A moment later in the interview, Wallnau claimed to have received
a “second hearing from God.” He said that the Lord told him to turn to
Isaiah 45:1 to “find out who this man is.” The passage in the King James
Version of the Bible, Wallnau’s chosen translation, states: “Thus saith the
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LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to
subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open
before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.” For
Wallnau this passage was significant for a couple of reasons. First, Isaiah
45 fit with Wallnau’s realization that Trump could be the 45th President
of the United States. The chapter number itself held prophetic meaning
for him. Second, Wallnau regarded this Bible verse as a precedent con-
firming that God could “anoint” an unbeliever for His prophetic pur-
poses. Wallnau and Amedia both explained away the fact that Trump’s
Christian bona fides were questionable as being irrelevant in light of what
God was doing through him. God had chosen Trump to prepare America
for “the chaos that is coming” that Wallnau saw as part of the imminent
“unraveling” of America. Trump was the perfect candidate for Wallnau to
confront the (Hillary) Clinton “machine,” which he described as “taking
America socially, spiritually, and economically” into catastrophe. In other
words, God’s prophetic plan for Trump and America vindicated
Christians’ support for Trump in 2016. To avert disaster, Wallnau argued,
Christians needed to support Trump as he waged God’s war against the
demonically controlled forces of the political opposition.
Wallnau published a book on the topic of Trump’s candidacy in
September 2016 titled God’s Chaos Candidate, a phrase he took from
Jeb Bush’s comment about Trump being a “chaos candidate” during
a Republican debate in 2015. Wallnau wrote that Bush had tapped into
“something more prophetic than he was aware.”51 Discussing the book
and what he called the “Cyrus connection” for a special report on the
Christian Broadcasting Network, Wallnau said Trump had “a Cyrus an-
ointing.” America was facing an uncertain and chaotic future, but with
Trump “we have a Cyrus to navigate through the storm.”52 The book is
a restatement of that basic point. Wallnau explained that he wrote the
book because he believed that Trump had “the Isaiah 45 Cyrus an-
ointing,” and his conviction that there was “unprecedented warfare over
this election because of what is at stake.”53 Wallnau framed God’s Chaos
Candidate around the conviction that the United States had a particular
role in God’s prophetic plan for the world and that the 2016 presidential
election was a pivotal point in that plan. That election was a clear
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opportunity for God’s people to strike a blow for the Kingdom of God
against the satanic forces aligned against Trump and America. Wallnau
was clear on this point when he wrote, “We are up against a malevolent
and demonic agenda aimed to destroy the global force for kingdom
expansion that is America.”54
Conspiracism is central in Wallnau’s political cosmology, set within
his progressive and avertive millennialist view. There is an enemy with
malevolent purpose attempting organized subversion of all that is good
and right in America and by extension God’s plan and purpose. Wallnau
asserted that there is a “shadow cabinet . . . behind the scenes coordinat-
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ing uprisings and media coverage.” Behind that is a “spirit” he defined as
a “powerful resurgence of a lawless spirit that is rooted in the radicals of
the 1960s.”55 As he described this enemy, it is clear he meant to identify
not simply politically left organizations, but the “doctrines of demons”
coming from “the myriad of well-funded single-issue activists on the
Left.” The alleged falsifications of truth pushed by university professors
and the “counterfeit evangelism” of the Left were to him the fulfillment
of Jesus’ prophecy that there would be “tares” among the wheat, “people
the devil plants . . . to thwart the harvest of God.”56 According to
Wallnau, God has a divine plan for America to usher in the future
Kingdom of God, but this plan could be frustrated if Trump was de-
feated in the election. “Imagine,” he wrote, “the impact on religious
liberty and free speech when courts with a liberal majority hear cases
by the ‘Human Rights Campaign’—America’s largest civil rights organi-
zation advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.”57
“God still has an unfinished assignment for America,” and Wallnau ex-
horted the reader to take up their calling in God’s plan and conduct
prayer to “have [a] strategic intercessory impact in the unseen realm and
impact the course of world history.”58
Wallnau was not alone in asserting that he had received a prophecy
that Trump would be president. The Trump Prophecy, a movie produced
in 2018 based on the 2017 book by firefighter Mark Taylor, claimed that
the Spirit of God revealed to Taylor that Trump was chosen to lead the
nation “at such a time as this.”59 Pastor Amedia also claimed to receive
such prophecies. Trump’s victory was, according to these prophets, an
opportunity to right the ship of state. However, the possibility of disaster
remained. How would the new King Cyrus fulfill God’s plan to destroy
the demonic forces of the “Deep State”? He would do so with the aid of
God’s people guided by the prophetic vision of their apostolic leaders.
CYRUS VERSUS THE “DEEP STATE”
President Trump’s connection to the controversial prosperity gospel
preacher Paula White, who serves as his personal spiritual advisor and as
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an advisor to Trump’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, is perhaps well
known. What is certainly less well known is Trump’s connection to Frank
Amedia, the senior pastor of Touch of Heaven Ministries in Canfield,
Ohio, and the founder of the intercessory prayer group POTUS Shield.
As Pastor Amedia described it in 2017, POTUS Shield emerged from the
“Kingdom shift” that resulted from Trump’s 2016 electoral victory. He
further explained that God had gifted Trump with a “breaker an-
ointing,” signifying something quite close to Wallnau’s description of
Trump as a chaos candidate. Amedia, also like Wallnau, claimed to have
prophesied before the election that Trump would win and that “Haman
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would hang on his own gallows,” a reference to the story of Esther in the
Hebrew Bible in which an enemy of God’s people, Haman, was hung on
the gallows he prepared for the Jewish people.60
Amedia explained that POTUS Shield was the result of a prophecy
given to him from God. He claimed that at 3:30 A.M. on 9 November
2016, the night of the election, God showed him “a new assignment.” He
and the prayer warriors he would gather in this mission to protect the
president would become a “spiritual strikeforce” to establish “spiritual
protection” for Trump and his administration. Like Wallnau’s prophe-
cies concerning America prior to Trump’s election, this would then lead
to bringing the nations of the world into God’s Kingdom. The support
that POTUS Shield offers Trump is particularly important in the context
of the way in which the secular is absent from the prayer warriors’
understanding of the political. The spiritual realities of God’s work and
will supersede earthly appearances or practical concerns. Christians owe
Trump, God’s chosen candidate and president, allegiance and protec-
tion in accordance with the divine mandate to obey God’s word deliv-
ered through a prophet, as they labor to establish God’s Kingdom by
their spiritual warfare activities as well as their votes.
Before Amedia received his revelation to found POTUS Shield, he
was appointed by then-candidate Trump to be his “liaison for Christian
policy,” a volunteer position in the campaign.61 In that capacity in an
interview with Religion & Ethics Newsweekly during the 2016 campaign,
Amedia explained that “when you look at the issues there’s no doubt
that the contrast is clear . . . that Trump stacks up more on the line of
what are Christian fundamental doctrines and concerns than Hillary or
Obama do or they have.” However, as he has often said in his messages
to POTUS Shield’s online audience, there was another level to the
revelation regarding sensitive information about what God was doing
beyond the issues. Amedia referenced Trump’s positions on religious
freedom, mainly regarding churches’ ability to maintain tax-exempt
status, his conservative political views, and, of course, his opposition
to abortion. However, these points seemed to be ancillary to the reve-
lation that Amedia claimed to have received from God explaining
Trump’s divine appointment to the office of the President of the
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United States. God was going use Trump’s presidency to establish
a Supreme Court that would rule in favor of these issues. God would
also use Trump to smash the “Deep State.”62
POTUS Shield’s internet broadcasts present conspiratorial narratives
informed by the millennial expectations that continue to shape the polit-
ical ideology of the New Apostolic Reformation. This particular outlet is
important for the broader base of evangelical Christian support for
Trump, especially for charismatically inclined Christians. POTUS
Shield is important also because it is staffed by some prominent, if con-
troversial, figures. Participants include Lance Wallnau but also figures
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like retired General William G. “Jerry” Boykin, who sits as a council mem-
ber for POTUS Shield. Boykin also serves as executive vice-president for
the Family Research Council, a Christian lobbying group that has led
evangelical Christians’ opposition to same-sex marriage and other issues
regarded in the organization as being threats to the traditional family. In
2004, Boykin was roundly criticized in news media for statements he
made during a filmed speaking engagement at a church in which he
referred to his combat experiences in Somalia. Referencing the conflict
as a spiritual contest between Islam and Christianity, he said of a Somali
warlord, “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was
a real God and his was an idol.”63 Notably, too, Boykin is a staunch Trump
supporter. While on The Jim Bakker Show in March 2018, he described
opposition to Trump as “diabolical” and a “spiritual attack.” Restating the
claim that often comes from Christian Trump supporters like Amedia
and Wallnau, Boykin claimed that the president’s critics did not under-
stand that “God’s imprint” was on his election.64
Another member of the council for POTUS Shield is Lou Engle.
Engle was for twenty years the leader of the ministry called The Call, one
of the organizations that organized former Texas governor Rick Perry’s
prayer meeting in 2011 during his bid to become the Republican pres-
idential nominee. Engle is also known for his controversial involvement
in the infamous anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda, which included the
possibility for the death penalty for “aggravated” cases; efforts that
affected anti-gay legislation in other countries on the continent.65 Like
General Boykin and Pastor Amedia, Engle, too, saw Trump’s election as
the fulfillment of God’s plan for the United States and the world. He saw
opposition to Trump’s presidency as diabolical. All of this is to say that
Wallnau and Amedia’s view of the Trump presidency as a fulfillment of
God’s divine plan in furtherance of the Kingdom was not exclusive to
them, but was rather common in certain circles.
Engle also demonstrated this view of Trump’s election in an open
letter in 2017 in which he called for fasting and prayer, comparing
Trump’s inauguration to the story of Esther in the Bible. “Esther is
a prototype of history’s hinge: a courageous woman who humbly and
artfully spoke truth to power,” confronting the empire’s “witchcraft,”
83Nova Religio
and that by this “a nation was spared annihilation.”66 He went on in the
letter to write of the street protest against Trump’s inauguration, “The
Women’s March was the first shot across the bow, heralding a revolution-
ary rise against the president of the United States, ‘We the people’ and
in reality, the foundational biblical truths upon which our nation was
founded.” The biblical drama of Esther’s confrontation with demoni-
cally inspired conspiracies to destroy God’s people was manifested once
again in the stand that God’s people must take in opposing the
“witchcraft” wielded by Trump’s opposition. This was “a spiritual battle
that cannot be won on the playing field of protests and political
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arguments.” Political divides and activism were not expressions of civic
disagreement, but rather part of the dualistic cosmic battle played out in
the context of the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath.
Conspiratorial narratives that color opposition to President Trump as
a satanic assault on God’s prophetic plan permeate POTUS Shield’s
responses to any pushback to the administration’s policies. In these nar-
ratives, however, the progressive millennialist optimism remains.
Concerning the then-impending release of the Mueller Report on the
investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,
Amedia stated in an interview in January 2018 that an attempt at
impeachment was inevitable but that “God is going to prevail.” Because
of the “anointing” on Trump’s life, whatever “they intended for bad, God
will make good.”67 This optimism held in the context of obstacles con-
fronting Trump’s administration. In that same conversation, in reference
to the then longest-running government shutdown in history, Amedia
said that this political obstacle was not, in fact, a prelude to misfortune,
but God’s way of breaking a “spiritual stronghold.” Nevertheless, in accor-
dance with the conditional nature of avertive millennialism, Amedia ex-
horted his audience to pray for Trump so that God’s people might yet
overcome the plans of the political and spiritual adversary. Indeed, the
whole point of POTUS Shield is to hold intercessory prayer for the pres-
ident to raise about him a “spiritual shield” to ensure God’s victory.68
POTUS Shield’s activities manifest both the optimism of progressive
millennialism and the conditional terms in avertive millennialism
blended with a conspiratorial framing of politics that constructs the
world as the battleground in a contest between God and Satan carried
out through their earthly proxies. Such discourse is ubiquitous in
POTUS Shield, however, there are two examples of POTUS Shield’s
intercessory activity that I think illustrates this point further. When
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, spoke in a public congressional
hearing in February 2019, it caught the attention of Trump supporters
and opponents alike. Amedia was no exception. Because of his involve-
ment with the campaign, Amedia knew Cohen personally and even
claimed to have offered him pastoral advice. Cohen said in his testi-
mony, “I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr.
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Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience. I am
ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist, he is a con-
man and he is a cheat.”69 Amedia did not see Cohen as a broken man
who regretted his decision to work for and protect an unethical boss, or
even as a liar trying to save his own skin as many of Trump’s defenders
stated, but rather he saw Cohen as a man victimized by a vast conspiracy
to destroy Trump’s presidency.70
This narrative of a vast conspiracy to take down the president is not
exclusive to POTUS Shield, but Amedia’s specific description of the
alleged conspiracy reveals something about how he describes political
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events to his POTUS Shield internet audience. Though he had been
resolute that Trump’s character and disposition of faith were irrelevant
to God’s anointing on his presidency, Amedia nevertheless offered
a staunch defense of the president against Cohen’s allegations. Trump
was not a racist, a conman, or a cheat, he argued. There was no evidence,
in his view, that Trump ever did any of the things Cohen alleged. So why
did Cohen turn on Trump? Amedia explained that there was a plan to
destroy the president formulated by a secret cabal of Leftists, and exe-
cuted by Lanny Davis, Cohen’s lawyer, who formerly served as special
counsel to President Bill Clinton and whom Amedia described as
a “Washington spin maestro” and “Clinton warrior.” Amedia was certain
that Cohen had been the victim of an organized campaign at work
behind the scenes to set up conditions for President Trump’s impeach-
ment at the behest of top Democrats in Congress and the Clintons. He
claimed that these forces saw their moment to manipulate Cohen into
making defamatory claims against Trump in an effort to create the
pretext for removing Trump from office. Amedia offered more conjec-
ture about the conditions for Cohen’s testimony. He claimed that the
deal made with Cohen was not the deal that an informant would make
when caught in the context of a criminal investigation, but a deal that
was “no different than what would happen in a Deep State or CIA trying
to get somebody to turn spy.”71
In the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in September 2018
on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh as Supreme Court Justice,
Amedia saw a clear spiritual battle for the destiny of the United
States. In an “Urgent Prayer Alert” posted on YouTube on 20
September 2018, Amedia called for the POTUS Shield warriors to
engage in intercessory prayer for the confirmation of Kavanaugh just
after Senator Dianne Feinstein made public a letter from Christine
Blasey Ford detailing her accusation of sexual assault allegedly
committed by Kavanaugh when they were in high school.72 Amedia
regarded this as a political maneuver to derail the confirmation pro-
cess, but more than that, it was “a conspiracy and plot” and a “thwart of
the enemy.” “We look at it spiritually,” Amedia stated, “We go into the
spiritual realm that God has given us authority and dominion over.”
85Nova Religio
Amedia saw this legal and political contest as a battle within a larger
spiritual war in which the goal for POTUS Shield’s prayer warriors
was the removal of “the curse that is upon our land”—a curse that he
said resulted from abortion and removing prayer from schools. “The
enemy,” he argued, had set up a trap in the form of the Me Too
movement, here echoing some of what we heard from Engle’s response
to the Women’s March. If Kavanaugh had been denied the appoint-
ment to the Supreme Court by the Senate, it would have been a setback
to the political interests shared by Amedia and the members of POTUS
Shield. More importantly, however, according to Amedia, it would have
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been an opportunity missed to avert the worst fallout from the alleged
curse on the land.
By this Urgent Prayer Alert, Amedia meant to mobilize the members
of POTUS Shield to “bind those forces” that “come from the depths of
Hell.”73 His view was, “the Jezebel spirit and the Ahab spirit” that lost the
election, referring to Hillary and Bill Clinton as much as actual demons,
have come back “in a conspiracy to steal the results of what God has
done.”74 This call to prayer blended the conditional proposition of
God’s blessing and God’s prophetic plan and the cooperative, optimis-
tic eschatology inherent in the New Apostolic Reformation in calling
for God to release his angels to aid POTUS Shield in their spiritual
warfare by sending “confusion and chaos into the enemy’s camp.”75
For Amedia, participants in POTUS Shield, and indeed for others
involved in the New Apostolic Reformation, politics is not the ground
of compromise and contest in which shifting and sometimes interlock-
ing interests debate and maneuver for position. The forces that
opposed Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court were actually nefar-
ious, demonic, and organized.
The perspectives described above are not exclusive to the leadership
of POTUS Shield, or even those directly associated with it. On the blog
for the POTUS Shield website in May 2019, blogger “appalachianlive”
posted a 2017 story from Christian Broadcasting Network’s website
titled, “‘He’s Not Going Anywhere!’ Why ‘Fireman Prophet’ Calls
Trump Impeachment Attempts ‘Futile.’”76 The article focuses on what
Mark Taylor, the firefighter whose prophecy that Trump would be pres-
ident inspired the film The Trump Prophecy, had to say about possible
attempts to remove Trump from office. According to this report,
Taylor said, “Rest assured, they may try these things but none of that’s
going to succeed because this man has been anointed and appointed by
God. . . . What I want to encourage people to do is to stay engaged in the
fight. This is not a time to lay down the weapons of your warfare.” We can
see here not only an example of the conspiratorial, millennialist dis-
course common to the New Apostolic Reformation, but also the diffu-
sion of this discourse as it circulated through various publics, online, and
through other forms of media.
86You can also read
