Introduction

Who Are These People?



The prophets and apostles taking part in POTUS Shield are not, for the most part, household names to people outside their spheres of influence. Many of them are part of what religion scholars call the fastest-growing form of Christianity in the U.S. and maybe the world—a nondenominational, network-oriented Pentecostal Christianity, a strain of Protestantism that emphasizes direct supernatural experience through “the gifts of the spirit,” which are manifested in ways such as speaking in tongues, miraculous healing, and prophecy. Pentecostal Christians in the U.S. are more diverse racially and ethnically than evangelicals overall—reflected in POTUS Shield lobbying Trump for a more compassionate immigration policy—but their political profile is about the same, according to Dan Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute. The prophets and apostles taking part in POTUS Shield are not, for the most part, household names to people outside their spheres of influence. Many of them are part of what religion scholars call the fastest-growing form of Christianity in the U.S. and maybe the world—a nondenominational, network-oriented Pentecostal Christianity, a strain of Protestantism that emphasizes direct supernatural experience through “the gifts of the spirit,” which are manifested in ways such as speaking in tongues, miraculous healing, and prophecy. Pentecostal Christians in the U.S. are more diverse racially and ethnically than evangelicals overall—reflected in POTUS Shield lobbying Trump for a more compassionate immigration policy—but their political profile is about the same, according to Dan Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute. Many of the “prophets” associated with POTUS Shield are part of an “apostolic” movement within Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders (ACPE), meant “to build positive and ongoing personal relationships among nationally recognized prophetic voices,” was birthed at a January 1999 meeting in Colorado Springs called by C. Peter Wagner and attended by 18 people, including Rick Joyner, Cindy Jacobs, Dutch Sheets, Chuck Pierce and Mike Bickle, founder of the International House of Prayer. The ACPE, which functions as a leadership group within NAR, releases annually its “Word of the Lord,” a sort of consensus document of prophecies for the year ahead. Some NAR leaders are also part of a global network, the by-invitation-only International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders. Frank Amedia, Founder of POTUS Shield I believe [Trump] receives downloads that now he’s beginning to understand come from God. The movement’s theology is grounded in a verse from the biblical book of Ephesians, in which the apostle Paul describes five kinds of leadership callings that Christ granted to people in Christianity’s founding era in order to build up the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. NAR believes that for centuries the church had abandoned the first two. But, they believe, God has moved in our time to re-establish the ancient roles for apostles and prophets who will transform Christianity and bring about the kingdom of God on earth. Hector Torres, a participant in that founding ACPE meeting, wrote in his 2001 book “The Restoration of the Apostles and Prophets” that God had sent a fresh anointing of teaching to the church in the 1970s, raised up prophets in the 1980s, and restored the apostolic ministry in the 1990s. The ACPE and POTUS Shield are U.S.-focused, but the movement they are part of is global, as are some of the ministries carried out by individual members. NAR is meant to be disruptive to the rest of the Christian Church. It views “denominationalism” as a sin and views established denominations and leaders as resistant to the reestablishment of the offices of prophet and apostle. Wagner, who died last year, believed that today’s apostles and prophets would bring about the most radical changes to Christianity since the Reformation in the 16th century, changes that were meant to allow the church to fulfill its true mission. A triumphant, dominion-taking church, Wagner’s disciples believe, will establish the kingdom of God on earth and set the stage for the second coming of Jesus Christ. Ohio plays a key role in their understanding of the divine plan, as revealed in the “revival man” prophecy, the one featuring Gulliver laying across a map of the U.S.: Gulliver’s head is in Cleveland, his heart in Columbus and his loins in Cincinnati. Amedia relocated to Ohio from Florida several years ago, he says, in response to God’s call. In July, POTUS Shield promoted a two-day prayer gathering at the Q sports arena in Cleveland hosted by dominionist preacher Lou Engle. Engle believes it is the church’s vocation to “rule history with God.” Here’s an excerpt from his teaching guide, “Keys to Dominion”: The same authority that has been given to Christ Jesus for overwhelming conquering and dominion has been given to the saints of the most high. … We’re God’s rulers upon the earth. … We will govern over kings and judges will have to submit. … We’re called to rule! To change history! To be co-regents with God! Engle has made a name for himself with giant prayer rallies in stadiums and sports arenas under the banner of “The Call.” They are designed to mobilize nation-changing spiritual warfare, sometimes specifically targeting elections. A 2008 rally in California focused on the gay-marriage-banning Proposition 8. At the March POTUS Shield gathering, Engle prayed for God to “sweep away” Supreme Court justices and federal judges who uphold Roe v. Wade, clearing the way for Trump to nominate their replacements. Engle suggested that God could either kill or convert the judges in question, and he had some words for people who might be squeamish about praying for God to “remove” bad judges: I tell you, the church can’t be humanistic right now. I feel this in my spirit. We’re so concerned about these Hamans [Haman is the evil adviser to the king in the biblical book of Esther] that we’re not concerned about the millions of babies! I say that we believe that Donald Trump, President Trump, is a Jehu as well as a Cyrus. And I’ve been praying, ‘remove the house of Ahab.’ Who’s Jehu? In the Bible, God used Jehu to enact His judgment on the sinful house of Ahab, which Jehu accomplished by overseeing the slaughter of Ahab’s family, supporters and priests. “We need to begin to pray to sweep away the House of Ahab,” Engle said. Among the other leaders joining Amedia, Wallnau, Engle and Gonzales in POTUS Shield: Cindy Jacobs, a “prophet” who with her husband Mike runs a ministry called Generals International, is often the person who releases to the public messages from God received by a council of “prophetic elders”; Jacobs has said that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was responsible for a rash of bird deaths, and warned that marriage equality would lead to civil war;



Dutch Sheets, an author and speaker who declares that Christians are “God’s governing force on earth” and says he is trying to “raise up an army” of “kingdom warriors that are ready to do whatever it takes” to bring forth God’s “kingdom rule in the earth.”

Rick Joyner, a South-Carolina-based “prophet” who runs the Oak Initiative and MorningStar Ministries, where last November, he opened the Bob Jones Vision Center, “a place for prayer, praise, and prophecy,” named for the man who spoke the Gulliver, or revival man, prophecy in 2005;

Bishop Harry Jackson, an African-American pastor based in Maryland near Washington, D.C., a longtime anti-gay activist, and co-author with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins of “Personal Faith, Public Policy,” a book that calls the Supreme Court’s church-state rulings an “assault” on Christianity;

Jerry Boykin, a vice president at the Family Research Council who has called Islam a “totalitarian way of life” and said American Muslims are not protected by the First Amendment’s religious liberty guarantees;

Jennifer LeClaire, senior editor at Charisma, part of the Pentecostal media empire run by Steve Strang, wholives in a world of constant spiritual warfare against myriad demons and last summer posed the memorable question, “Is Hillary Clinton the Antichrist or an Illuminati Witch?”;

Alveda King, an anti-choice activist andthe niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., who once dismissed his late widow Coretta Scott King’s support for LGBT equality, saying, “I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t”;

Herman Martir, a Texas-based pastor who runs the Emerging Leaders Network International and the Asian Action Network.

Trump and the Prophets: Made For The Era of Social Media?



In March, Oxford University Press published “The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders are Changing the Religious Landscape,” by scholars Brad Christerson and Richard Flory. Christerson and Flory use the term Independent Network Charismatic Christianity (INC Christianity) to describe a network of charismatic leaders who are not simply focused on saving individual souls but on transforming whole societies. Many of the people associated with POTUS Shield fit into this category. In March, Oxford University Press published “The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders are Changing the Religious Landscape,” by scholars Brad Christerson and Richard Flory. Christerson and Flory use the term Independent Network Charismatic Christianity (INC Christianity) to describe a network of charismatic leaders who are not simply focused on saving individual souls but on transforming whole societies. Many of the people associated with POTUS Shield fit into this category. The product that INC Christianity is promoting, write Christerson and Flory, “is not primarily the ability to access supernatural power to gain converts and build congregations, but, more important, to participate in the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth in the here and now.” Christerson and Flory argue that the network model allows charismatic leaders to broaden their influence while remaining free of the bureaucracies and oversight that would come from trying to build a large organization. An individual places him or herself under the spiritual authority or “covering” of an established prophet—getting a spiritual imprimatur in return for showing up at their conferences and sending money up the chain. INC leaders have expanded their “market share” within American Christianity by offering powerful supernatural experiences and leveraging the power of digital media tools to promote their brands as well as their beliefs and practices. Chuck Pierce, whose Glory of Zion Ministries runs a Global Spheres Center in Texas, has about 60,000 people sending him money, more than even the biggest megachurch congregation. In some ways, Trump’s relationship to traditional political structures mimics these network leaders’ relationship to traditional church and Religious Right institutions: he relies on his charismatic personality; operates his own media; and believes old structures need to be swept away. Trump speaks to his followers “like a televangelist,” says University of Pennsylvania religion scholar Anthea Butler. And, if Amedia is right, Trump also sees his election victory as the result of divine intervention and his presidency as a mission from God. Butler notes that apostolic leaders defend Trump in the same way that religious leaders often defend themselves against their own critics, citing a scriptural admonition to “touch not God’s anointed.” Christerson and Flory postulate that while INC leaders have a broad ability to spread their beliefs with followers, their political impact could be limited by the fact that they focus more on spiritual warfare and intercessory prayer than on setting up structures to engage in the nitty-gritty work of political organizing. But POTUS Shield reflects the fact that during the past decade, the lines separating what we think of as the Religious Right—advocacy groups mobilizing conservative evangelical Christians into political action—and the apostolic crowd have been blurred significantly. Opposition to President Barack Obama “united them all,” says Butler.



Overlapping Networks



Both the traditional Religious Right and the apostolic Right are interested in bringing policy, politics and society in line with their “biblical worldview.” And despite what may be significant theological differences—many Religious Right activists may not see their political engagement as necessary to speed Christ’s return—they work together on political goals such as electing Donald Trump. INC leaders get their supporters fired up to see politics as spiritual warfare, and more established Religious Right groups give them a concrete way to get involved that goes beyond prayer and fasting. POTUS Shield is committed to doing all of the above. Both the traditional Religious Right and the apostolic Right are interested in bringing policy, politics and society in line with their “biblical worldview.” And despite what may be significant theological differences—many Religious Right activists may not see their political engagement as necessary to speed Christ’s return—they work together on political goals such as electing Donald Trump. INC leaders get their supporters fired up to see politics as spiritual warfare, and more established Religious Right groups give them a concrete way to get involved that goes beyond prayer and fasting. POTUS Shield is committed to doing all of the above. Christerson says he has seen evidence of this kind of “symbiotic” relationship: “The Religious Right gets followers, support and energy from INC, and INC gets visible examples of ‘kingdom-minded’ believers they can support and pray for in government.” He said he has seen “prophecies” that God is using Trump to transform society by appointing “kingdom-minded” people—like Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson—to top levels of government, even though they may be associated with different strains of Christianity. POTUS Shield councilmember and anti-Muslim activist Jerry Boykin is a vice president at the Family Research Council, one of the largest and most influential Religious Right political groups. At an event that FRC organized in 2009 to mobilize prayer against the passage of the Affordable Care Act, POTUS Shield Council member Lou Engle introduced then-Rep. Michele Bachmann. That same year, traditional Religious Right groups embraced Jacobs’ General International and Joyner’s Morningstar Ministries as well as the Koch brothers’ more material-minded Americans for Prosperity as part of an anti-Obama coalition called the Freedom Federation, whose declaration of principles was a social conservative wish list with an added call for an end to progressive taxation. In 2012, FRC worked with Cindy Jacobs and Dutch Sheets to rally conservative evangelicals in prayer against Obama’s reelection. At the partnership’s kick-off event in a Washington, D.C., church, Sheets described the church—the ekklesia—as a legislative body, God’s government on earth. He said he wasn’t looking for “little sheepies” who are focused on pastoral work; he was looking to “raise up an army” of “kingdom warriors that are ready to do whatever it takes” to bring forth God’s “kingdom rule in the earth.” At the same event, FRC’s chaplain and national prayer director Pierre Bynum spoke wistfully of a time when “you couldn’t hold public office in America unless you believed in Jesus Christ.” Anti-gay and anti-abortion activists Harry Jackson and Alveda King, both members of the POTUS Shield council, are regulars at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit and other stops on the Religious Right speaking circuit. Boykin, Jacobs and Wallnau are board members of Rick Joyner’s dominionist Oak Initiative, whose purpose is to “unite, mobilize, equip and activate Christians to be the salt and light they are called to be by engaging in the great issues of our time from a sound biblical worldview.” These organizational overlaps are also reflected in the broad adoption of NAR’s “Seven Mountains” rhetorical framework. The term “dominionist” is contested and disavowed by some people to whom it has been applied, but it means what it sounds like: Dominionists believe that the right kind of Christians are meant to take dominion over the earth. Many dominionists use the rhetoric of the Seven Mountains–religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, business and government. These spheres of societal influence have, they believe, been dominated by Satan, but when led instead by Christians with a biblical worldview, will transform society. Seven Mountains rhetoric has become a lingua franca among Christian conservatives who may or may not be Pentecostal or affiliated with the prophetic networks. Among the traditional Religious Right leaders who use Seven Mountains rhetoric are Republican Party operative and self-proclaimed historian David Barton and the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. Wallnau, who charges $7.77 per month for access to material on his “7mUnderground” site, told Pentecostal media magnate Steve Strang in the summer of 2016 that Trump would be a wrecking ball against political correctness and thereby help Christians take control of cultural institutions now occupied by Satan. In the fall, shortly before the election, Wallnau published the book “God’s Chaos Candidate,” in which he warned that the decline of America was being engineered by the “shadow Cabinet”—a cabal of billionaires, politicians, academics and activists—and that if this situation were allowed to continue for one more presidential cycle, “America as we know it will cease to exist.” But, Wallnau said, God had anointed Trump as a Churchillian figure who could lead America through troubled times. He quoted Trump saying at a church campaign stop, “Now, in these hard times for our country, let us turn again to our Christian heritage to lift up the soul of our nation.” Wallnau’s cheerleading has not slowed down since Trump took office. He declared recently that Trump is fulfilling a contemporary prophecy that one day there would be a burning bush in the White House, saying “I think the burning bush has got golden hair.”



God’s Own Party?



The connections that the spiritual-warfare-minded apostolic crowd have with the more traditionally political arms of the Religious Right make them more than a curiosity; they are a part of the coalition that generated overwhelming support for Trump from conservative white Christians and helped put him in the White House—a coalition that expected, and is getting, political payback from President Trump. The connections that the spiritual-warfare-minded apostolic crowd have with the more traditionally political arms of the Religious Right make them more than a curiosity; they are a part of the coalition that generated overwhelming support for Trump from conservative white Christians and helped put him in the White House—a coalition that expected, and is getting, political payback from President Trump. Amedia organized a May 2016 meeting between Trump and Hispanic evangelicals at which Trump convinced them that he had a genuine concern for undocumented immigrants, in spite of his anti-immigrant rhetoric and his pro-deportation policies. A few weeks later, Trump met with about 1,000 Religious Right leaders and promised that if he were elected he would push their agenda and make them more politically powerful. As the Republican nominee, Trump attended one of the “Pastors and Pews” events organized by Christian nationalist David Lane. Lane has worked with members of NAR to organize a series of political prayer rallies with Republican governors, branded as “The Response.” The first Response rally, modeled on Engle’s “The Call” events, served as the unofficial launch for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential bid. Subsequent rallies attended by then-Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Pat McCrory of North Carolina were emceed by NAR apostle Doug Stringer, who also hosted one of Lane’s Response rallies in Cleveland last summer on the Saturday before the Republican convention. As president and vice president, Trump and Mike Pence have continued to court conservative Christians from across the spectrum. Trump invited Religious Right leaders to the White House to celebrate the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. He gathered dozens for dinner in the White House and a Rose Garden signing ceremony—emceed by Paula White—for an executive order on religious liberty; among those in attendance was POTUS Shield member Cindy Jacobs. The Religious Right’s investment in Trump has already paid off handsomely: Gorsuch sits at the far right end of the Supreme Court, with hundreds of judicial vacancies ahead; Religious Right activists lead multiple Cabinet agencies; Trump has reinstated and dramatically expanded the “global gag rule,” sacrificing poor women’s health to anti-choice ideology; issued an executive order on “religious liberty” that has begun to undermine separation of church and state, with Trump promising more to come; declared via Twitter that transgender people will no longer be allowed to serve in the armed forces in any capacity; and publicly committed himself to working with congressional Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, a goal his Religious Right allies will continue to press in spite of the recent failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act.



POTUS Trump and the Prophetic Order of the United States