Well, today is Jan. 20 and, contrary to the assertions of many Pentecostal prophets, President Donald Trump is on his way out of the White House and did not win the 2020 election.
Last week’s post on the “civil war” between Pentecostals and charismatics over failed prophecies by leaders in their movement created lots of buzz, with good cause. We’re not just talking about the failed “Trump prophecies,” as they are now termed, but also the fact that none of these prophets predicted the historic January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol.
For those of you who’ve been unplugged from the news in recent days, here’s a bit of a review: There are still millions of these folks who believed that God was somehow going to replace Biden with Trump before the inauguration — or sometime in the coming months — simply because a coterie of prophets said so. See Kat Kerr’s Jan. 19 video saying this.
Now that this prophetic Hail Mary pass has failed, the recriminations are going to start. One leader in the movement, Michael Brown of 1990s Brownsville revival fame, has been calling out his fellow prophets to stand down for several weeks now and has established a ministry for disappointed charismatics. More on that in a moment. That’s a news story.
The prophets (and I won’t put that word in quotes like some say I should) range from Kat Kerr of Jacksonville, Fla. — who’s known for her flaming pink hair and tales of multiple trips to heaven –- to oldsters like Texas prosperity preacher Kenneth Copeland.
There’s also the Rev. Paula White, hailed as Trump’s pastor, who was holding out for a last-minute supernatural reprieve during December, but who’s been pretty silent of late. (News flash: See this video of her Jan. 17 Sunday sermon blaming other Christians for attacking her). Others, like Nebraska pastor Hank Kunneman, say that January 20th thing isn’t a factor now; when God wants to replace Biden with Trump, it will happen.
While researching a follow-up feature that ran the next day in ReligionUnplugged, I got to talk with a few scholars who follow this phenomenon –- and there aren’t many. One was Gordon Melton, now 78, who has helped religion reporters for decades with his encyclopedic knowledge of American religious history.
Now at Baylor University, he was telling me of how many –- of the top 40 people in the apostolic/prophetic movement that he’s tracking — are based close by. Not sure why the Lone Star state brings in all these folks, but Texas has always been an outlier, right?
“The new movements are based here in Texas,” he said. “We have a whole set of prominent national leaders here, way out of proportion to the population.”
Melton calls this movement the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), an umbrella term for a movement that elevates modern-day apostles and prophets as the leaders of the church. (I had a long discussion with Brown as to why Pentecostals hate the NAR term, which he explains here. An alternative is “Independent Network Charismatic,” a title coined by Biola University professor Brad Christerson.)
Melton noted that of all the churches Trump has visited in the past four years, the bulk belong to this movement. I haven’t been following this, but if that’s accurate, that’s a fascinating hook for news coverage. And which of his faith advisors steered Trump to those churches?
Yes, there’s a flock of these prophets out there who are having to dream up excuses for why Biden’s inauguration doesn’t mean they are false prophets. I’ve been casing the Facebook pages of several. One, Dallas evangelist Lance Wallnau, talked about having two presidents, one spiritual and one physical.
He was most disgusted with Christians who disagree.
“Those nut jobs that have not understood the times, and understood what (Trump) represents, and understood where we are and understood what we’re up against, they’re responsible for not showing up in the spiritual battle of their lifetime, being AWOL and worse yet, trying to hinder, harass and persecute those that do show up,” he said on a YouTube broadcast.
So, post-election, “He’s going to continue to do what’s he’s doing,” he said of Trump. “We’ll continue to see what happens.”
A few news outlets did follow my lead on this topic. Veteran religion-beat pro Michelle Boorstein’s recent story in the Washington Post got a lot of attention, as I believe it’s the first time the Post has covered these folks as a group separate from evangelicals (which they are). Even The Drudge Report picked it up. One quibble with her otherwise informative piece: “Raising people from the dead” isn’t happening at Christian conferences. See the Olive Heiligenthal fiasco a year ago at Bethel Church for details. If the dead were being raised, we’d be hearing about it, believe me.
That was followed by a very good Post story out Monday about givesendgo.com, a Christian fundraising site that was used by a lot of demonstrators to pay for their January 6th pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. Finally, a piece that shows inside knowledge of this unusual counterculture!
A review by The Washington Post shows that the self-described Christian website has become a refuge of sorts for outcasts and extremists, including fringe groups such as the Proud Boys as well as conspiracy theorists who seek to undercut the results of the presidential election by promoting debunked claims of fraud. Some of the users claim to have been booted from other crowdfunding websites for violating terms-of-service agreements.
Why write ‘self-described?’ Would the writers have said that about a support site for #BlackLivesMatter or any other activist group on the cultural left or the right?
Postings on GiveSendGo show that at least $247,000 has been raised for 24 people — including at least eight members of the Proud Boys — who claimed online that the money was intended for travel, medical or legal expenses connected to “Stop the Steal” events, including the Jan. 6 rally.
A quarter of a million dollars isn’t bad. Now how do you think these people heard of the site? Through their church and other Christian contacts.
The attackers on the Capitol were overwhelmingly Christian, of some kind. Don’t think so? Listen to this amazing prayer by one of the men standing at the speaker’s desk after a crowd broke into the U.S. Senate chambers. Listeners were lifting their arms, charismatic-style in agreement. Of course, many had also been shouting F-bombs with abandon. The question is whether these believers are independents or have links to institutions or churches with clout (see GetReligion posts here and then here).
As I’ve been looking at others trying to cover this phenomenon, I’ve noticed some are interviewing the wrong folks. CNN chose Doug Pagitt, who is from the religious left. Doesn’t CNN — whose main religion editor, Daniel Burke, just left — understand the difference? Not only that, but he said that evangelicals were “rethinking” their views on religious liberty and abortion. Wishful thinking there..
NPR did a bit better by interviewing Ed Stetzer, who is closer to the center. Yet, Stetzer is a Southern Baptist and I’m willing to bet most of the folks in the Capitol were from independent, non-denominational and charismatic churches. That’s a radically different flock.
Melton told me something interesting last week: He said of the 1 million folks the SBC has lost in recent years, he believes that most have gone to charismatic churches. Amazing thought and an angle I’ve never seen explored anywhere. The assumption has been that these were young people who became “nones.”
By the way, these folks have tons of followers; Wallnau has 614,729 followers on Facebook. The broadcast I was referring to got 15,000 comments. The rest of us could only pray for such numbers.
Meanwhile, Michael Brown has 42,000+ followers on Twitter alone, so when he posted my ReligionUnplugged story on Facebook and Twitter, it exploded. For that reason alone (huge readerships among the deplorables crowd), a reporter should be able to convince editors that this story has legs.
Other than Melton, other helpful sources include James Beverley, a research professor at Tyndale University in Toronto, and Erica Ramirez, director of applied research at Auburn Seminary in New York.
The person to watch is Brown, who is straddling an impossible space between the prophets who refuse to admit they’re wrong and their disenchanted followers.
“They are going to be holding out after the 20th,” Brown told me. “The deception is so deep that others, after the 20th, will say (Trump) did win, there’s an inauguration in heaven and watch what God will do in April.”
It’s getting crazier by the moment, folks, and for religion reporters, the story is just getting started.