By Hannah Allam, The Washington Post (c) 2024
DESTREHAN, La. – An electric anticipation coursed through a church outside New Orleans where hundreds gathered on a recent night to pray for a victory they saw as just over the horizon, in a president who could bring them one step closer to their vision for a Christian homeland.
Covenant Church was already in celebration mode. A light show flashed stars on the ceiling, and the pews filled with people dressed in red, white and blue. In a nod to local tradition, some carried parasols as they paraded down the aisle to a live jazz band.
Part revival, part rally, the Louisiana stop of the Rescue America Tour reflected the mood inside a powerful MAGA voting bloc in the countdown to Election Day. The organizers, superstars in an ascendant Christian nationalist movement, assured the crowd they could “take back” the nation from “enemies” within weeks, if only faithful Republicans did their duty and voted for Donald Trump.
“We have every right there is to tell the Devil: ‘You take your hands off this nation!’” roared televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who put on a U.S. flag jacket and red MAGA hat when he took the stage.
The scene could have come from any of the hard-right Christian road shows now barnstorming the country, with a focus on swing states in a razor-close election. Extremism analysts say the tours serve as both a get-out-the-vote juggernaut and a power flex for a Christian supremacist movement that aims to transform the church the same way MAGA did the GOP: by forcing out moderates.
Ministers like Copeland preach that Christianity is the bedrock of American identity and should influence all aspects of society, ideas central to Christian nationalism. Speakers urged believers to remove college presidents, mayors, city managers, school boards and anyone else they viewed as an obstacle to Bible-based governance. Bit by bit, they are trying to dismantle the separation between church and state in what extremism monitors warn is a growing threat to pluralistic democracy.
Plans floated by Christian nationalist leaders include abolishing the Education Department, which they see as a threat to faith-based learning. Ditto for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a frequent target of vaccine-hesitant Christians, which one speaker nicknamed the “Center for Demented Confusion.” They want most LGBTQ+ literature, especially any referencing transgender people, classified as pornography, part of a book-banning campaign that already has led to the removal of hundreds of titles from school libraries. Some seek the death penalty for women who have abortions.
The overall message of the gathering outside New Orleans, which was organized by the popular Christian television show “FlashPoint,” was that an existential fight for America is unfolding at the grass roots, with the election offering a historic opportunity to remake the nation. But the schemes of the enemy were of such magnitude, speakers warned the audience, that only an overwhelming Christian turnout could guarantee Trump’s return.
“Go register and find out where you’re supposed to go, and go over there and do your God-granted, honorable thing to live in a democratic republic. Hallelujah!” Copeland said to applause. “That vote is a sacred honor, and that ballot is precious.”
Christian nationalism has been intertwined with conservative politics for decades, scholars say, picking up steam in the 1970s after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a ban on school-sponsored prayer in public education. The ideology gradually seeped into the mainstream through conservative campaigns such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition in the Reagan era, and later through tea party figures.
Scholars debate how fast Christian nationalism is growing in terms of followers – the ideology spans denominations and has no central leadership – but they agree that it has expanded in influence and visibility by rooting itself at the heart of Republican Party politics during the Trump era.
A Public Religion Research Institute report based on interviews last year with more than 22,000 adults in all 50 states found that roughly 3 in 10 Americans are “adherents or sympathizers” of Christian nationalism.
Extremism monitoring groups say Christian nationalists have played an outsize role in pro-Trump organizing, from recruiting poll workers to writing draft policies, such as those outlined in Project 2025, that they hope to see implemented should he return to office.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Tens of thousands of voters cycle through election season tours with names that telegraph urgency: Courage Tour, ReAwaken America, Kingdom to the Capitol. Much of the organizing comes from the nondenominational charismatic movement, which scholars describe as a diverse and growing segment of Christianity that believes in harnessing “gifts of the spirit,” such as prophecy, divine healing and speaking in tongues.
At each tour stop, guests hear election denialism folded into sermons portraying Trump as the biblical King Cyrus, an imperfect outsider chosen to implement God’s will. Installing him requires a battle against “demons” and vote stealers, the pastors say, often blurring the lines between spiritual and real-life warfare.
Trump, who doesn’t attend church and has said he hasn’t sought forgiveness from God, echoes Christian nationalist rhetoric on the campaign trail. He declared the Nov. 5 election “Christian Visibility Day,” and pledged last year that “no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration.”
This month, Trump warned a gathering of Christian leaders in North Carolina that a win by Vice President Kamala Harris, who is a Baptist, would be “very destructive to religion, very destructive to Christianity.” He pledged to protect policies pushed by conservative Christians, saying that faith had taken on new meaning since he survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July.
“I’d like to think God saved me for a purpose, and that’s to make our country greater than ever before,” Trump said to applause and cheers.
His running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), appeared this month at a tour stop in Pennsylvania organized by a Christian nationalist figure who has likened Harris, the Democratic nominee, to a Jezebel spirit, the symbol of womanly wickedness.
Trump’s son Donald Jr. and attorney Alina Habba spoke in Tulsa with an Oklahoma pastor who smears Democrats as “Luciferians.” Another son, Eric Trump, appeared on a recent podcast with a charismatic prophet, framing the stakes of the election as “a battle of good versus evil.”
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‘A heathen from Queens’
In charismatic circles, prophecies have swirled for years about Trump as an instrument of God. But researchers say some of the earliest came from Kim Clement, a South African who embraced Christianity as a heroin-addicted teen and turned his redemption story into a global ministry.
Speaking to worshipers in Scottsdale, Arizona, in February 2007, years before Trump got into politics, Clement shared his vision of a president who “may have hot blood,” but who would bring security and economic prosperity to the United States.
“God says, ‘I will put at your helm for two terms a president that will pray, but he will not be a praying president when he starts,” Clement said, according to archival video from his ministry.
A couple of months later, at an event in Redding, California, the presidential prophecy got more specific, and Clement declared, without specifying a first name: “Trump shall become a trumpet, says the Lord!”
Clement died of cancer in November 2016, days after his vision of a fiery, non-praying Trump being elected president came to pass. Four years later, Trump’s loss to Joe Biden – an interruption of the two-term prophecy from Clement and others – was rationalized as the work of “demons and cheating,” said Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood, a sociologist at Tulane University who studies Christian nationalism.
“It’s another reason you get such denial and pushback when he is gone in 2020,” she said. “Because it’s like, ‘Well, God can’t be wrong, and these prophets speak prophecy directly from God.’ So that presents a bit of a conundrum.”
Gaspard-Hogewood was at the Rescue America tour stop outside New Orleans to research Christian nationalist messaging around the election. A native of south Louisiana, she comes from the same Cajun country as Jesse Duplantis, the Covenant Church leader, growing up in a Southern Baptist community that displayed the flag and sang patriotic hymns on the Fourth of July.
Now married to a Methodist pastor, Gaspard-Hogewood said she was drawn to studying Christian nationalism in part through her exposure to Duplantis and other ministers who recognized the MAGA movement’s utility and went all-in on Trump, sticking with him even after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Christian nationalists played a visible, significant role in the melee, extremism monitors told a congressional panel.
“I could see how folks I grew up with could get from point A to B, but not from A to insurrection,” Gaspard-Hogewood said. “It’s one thing to believe that America was founded by Christians and should be a Christian country, and it’s a whole other to not believe in the validity of elections.”
She heard themes at Rescue America that supported that leap: an imagined persecution of Christians; ironclad opposition to abortion; hate speech against LGBTQ+ communities; and Democrats vilified as demons.
Gaspard-Hogewood also heard allusions to violence couched in Old Testament conquest narratives, or in the emphasis on “Lion Jesus” over “Lamb Jesus” to assert the rights of Christians – essentially, the idea that force might be necessary to defend the faith.
“That’s not spiritual warfare. That’s real warfare, with people’s lives,” Gaspard-Hogewood said. “With the repetition of it, I can only imagine it just conditions people to say, ‘We’re God’s army.’”
Speakers skimmed over Trump policies and focused mainly on his swagger as a leader and the role his Supreme Court picks played in overturning Roe v. Wade. They repeatedly acknowledged the former president’s failings as a Christian, returning to the Cyrus story to explain why they support a man who at first seemed, as celebrity pastor Lance Wallnau put it, like “a heathen from Queens.”
“Unless Jesus Christ is on the ballot, you’re going to vote for the lesser of two evils,” Rick Green, head of the right-wing Patriot Academy, told the crowd.
The figures onstage scorned clergy who abide by the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits some tax-exempt organizations like churches from supporting political candidates, as weak or insufficiently committed to a national Christian project. It was time, they said, to get over the “mean tweets” and close ranks behind Trump.
The separation between church and state was crumbling, they promised, but they needed brave souls to stand up and deal the final blows.
“We’re seeing their schemes fall apart right before our eyes,” Green said. “I’m just filled with hope tonight that this is not just going to be a one-election thing. This really is going to be the turning point.”
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Selling a ‘Christian utopia’
During breaks, guests ventured into the foyer, where Rescue America organizers handed out gift bags that included a Vote 2024 bumper sticker with the tour logo and a large magnet printed with the Watchman Decree: a “stand against wokeness, the occult, and every evil attempt against our nation.”
Visitors posed for photos with a mounted bear in the lobby, part of a promotional display for a book about liberal ills called “Killing America,” which boasts a foreword by Charlie Kirk, leader of the right-wing youth movement Turning Point USA.
Gaspard-Hogewood said the movement’s rhetoric is alarming, but she worries that sweeping caricatures of believers as violent extremists will harden divides and hurt efforts by moderate Christians “to solve this issue and push back on these narratives.” She said sideline chats with voters have helped her understand how “grievance entrepreneurs” target Americans who are searching for meaningful ways to connect faith with patriotism.
“They’re selling this Christian utopia,” she said, “and a lot of people are buying into it.”
Tables were laden with literature about the Bible and the Constitution, along with trinkets such as a figurine of Trump clutching an American flag. A woman in a shirt that presented TRUMP as an acronym for “Truth Really Upsets Most People” browsed titles about how Christians can take over centers of power.
The strident language from the stage evaporated in one-on-one interviews.
Jennifer Robin, who came from Tennessee, dismissed fears of violent extremism, saying she understood the movement as a peaceful stand for righteous Christian leaders who would in turn safeguard the liberties of all Americans, regardless of religion.
“In the Bible, it says we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood, but with power and principalities,” said Robin, wearing a Trump-Vance shirt and GOP elephant earrings. “It’s about taking down strongholds that are coming against the kingdom of light, and that just means standing strong for what you believe in and what God has put in your heart.”
Sitting outside on a lunch break, Gay Bourg, a retiree who traveled from Mississippi for the tour, said the Christian case for Trump was clear, though she conceded he “still needs a lot of prayer.” The MAGA agenda, she said, best aligns with her views on abortion, constitutional authority and U.S. involvement in overseas conflicts.
Bourg said she shared in the excitement over a potential second term for Trump, but added with a note of sadness that she feared the country was moving to a point where unrest is inevitable no matter who wins the election.
“I think there will be violence coming up either way, but I’m hoping and praying that he will win, to bring some kind of security back into our nation, some stability,” Bourg said. “If it doesn’t work out that way, we’ll just have to deal with it.”
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Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.