Heading toward his October 1 debate with his Democratic counterpart Tim Walz, the rap on Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance is that he represents some of the more disturbing elements of the MAGA movement: nativist conspiracy theorists, angry man-o-sphere bros, anti-abortion ultras, fans of authoritarian Viktor Orbán, shadowy right-wing Catholic power-mongers — the whole panoply of contemporary Trump-adjacent extremism. You’d think he might want to give a wide berth to some of his more exotic supporters.
But no:
Lance Wallnau is a scary dude. A self-styled charismatic Pentecostal “prophet,” social-media wizard, and political activist, he’s the principal popularizer of the Seven Mountain Mandate, a doctrine that conservative Christians are literally called by God to impose their views in all seven spheres of influence in society (education, religion, family, business, government and military, arts and entertainment, and media). He was also the first religious figure to rationalize Donald Trump’s nasty conduct and knuckle-dragger views through the analogy of the biblical King Cyrus, the pagan ruler led by God to facilitate the escape of the children of Israel from exile in Babylon. Wallnau has been very loyal to the 45th president, particularly during Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results; he was one of a host of “prophets” and “apostles” leading events in the run-up to January 6 that gave the Capitol riot its peculiarly religious and apocalyptic aura.
Wallnau’s distinctive contribution to Trump’s comeback effort has been the
“Courage Tour,” a series of religio-political rallies–slash–revival events in presidential battleground states (e.g. Pennsylvania, where Vance will appear). Slate’s Molly Olmstead took in a recent Courage Tour stop in Michigan and found it to be a bacchanalia of faith healing, speaking in tongues, practical lessons in mobilizing voters and ensuring “election integrity” on enemy turf, and most of all, declarations of “spiritual warfare” against the (literal) demons trying to keep Trump from a triumphant return to power. A sample:
Over the next few days, I would certainly see signs of Wallnau’s extremism, as when he reiterated that in the End Times, Jesus would be coming back “not as a therapist” but “in flames to wreak vengeance on his enemies.” Or when he warned that the predatory left was going to make children suicidal by “evangelizing” them into thinking they’re the wrong gender, at one point telling the crowd, “You’re authorized to take the Philistines out of position …”
Watching Wallnau lead these Michiganders through a kind of spiritual oath to “protect” the election, I felt a deep sense of dread. This seemed far more dangerous than any hype man screaming about the evils of the secular world. Wallnau’s vision for his great revival hinged on another Trump administration. The stakes meant that there was no room for a divergent outcome — or for anyone, really, who might disagree.
As another headlining charismatic prophet at the event, Mario Murillo, put it, “It’s no longer about conservatives vs. liberals. It’s not Republicans vs. Democrats. Now it’s good vs. evil.”
Vance’s decision to join this traveling circus of prophesy and conspiracy-mongering shows how deeply the Trump campaign is committed to tending its MAGA base as the key to winning battleground states. It’s as though Tim Walz had suddenly agreed to appear with a prominent Antifa leader. It’s one thing for Trump and Vance to distort Kamala Harris’s record in order to accuse her of being a Marxist or even a communist. But Lance Wallnau has deployed a different kind of abuse toward Trump’s opponent. Harris is a devil woman straight out of a biblical nightmare, as Olmstead observes:
“She represents an amalgam of the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component, and she’s younger,” Wallnau said in a video about Harris. In another, he said that she appeared presidential only because of “witchcraft.” Murillo appeared on Wallnau’s podcast to discuss the “demonic power” at work in the new Democratic nomination. “That’s why God spared Trump’s life, for such a time as this,” Murillo said …
“They believe if God is not in control of something, automatically the devil is; it’s an either/or,” said Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood, a sociologist at Tulane University who studies neo-charismatic Christianity. “There’s no compromise with the devil.”
And when millions of Americans believe that Harris is literally possessed by a demon, or that her party is acting on behalf of the devil, that could have repercussions for how they expect their elected representatives to govern — and how they might treat a Trump loss. “God can’t be wrong; the prophet can’t be wrong,” Gaspard-Hogewood said. “It must be human error or some kind of nefarious act.”
These some are intense voters and organizers, to be sure. But you have to wonder what will be going through the mind of Vance, a recent convert to a rigorous form of pre-modern Catholicism, in the company of these spiritual warriors from the far frontiers of the Protestant Reformation (as Charlie Pierce points out, from a Catholic point of view, Lance Wallnau is “a balls-out heretic”). It’s clear the MAGA coalition is broad enough to include different varieties of Christian nationalists even if they consider each other doomed to eternal torment in hell. And that should alarm the rest of us.
