Fake Pastors Are Instructing MAGA Morons To Be Ready To Shed Blood When Trump Loses Next Month

Churches Organized Around Politics Should Be Taxed

Ever since Maddow introduced them to her audience on Monday, Curtis Yarvin (an atheist) and John Goldman (a self-loathing Jew who goes by the distinctly non-Jewish name “Jack Murphy”) have become the face of Vance’s version of MAGA extremism. Vance, like Trump. Is also an atheist, but neither would ever think to admit that when they’re counting on votes from not especially bright evangelicals… and selling Bibles. But there’s another kind of fringe extremism driving the MAGA implosion: the extremists who imagine they have anything even remotely to do with Jesus Christ, part of a tradition of conservatism that has always vehemently rejected the Enlightenment. This week, Stephanie McCrummen warned about those particular fools.

Their followers— particularly in swing states— have been told (in unapologetic exercises in religious radicalization happening in plain sight) “that God had chosen them to save America from Kamala Harris and a demonic government trying to ‘silence the Church.’ They’d been told they had ‘authority’ to establish God’s Kingdom, and reminded of their reward in Heaven… The point was to transform a like-minded crowd of Donald Trump— supporting believers into ‘God-appointed warriors’ ready to do whatever the Almighty might require of them in November and beyond.” 

"Death of Socrates" by David

This is the “Courage Tour,” that we’ve been mentioning because one of the performers is J. D. Vance and because these gatherings are “part of a steady drumbeat of violent rhetoric, prayer rallies, and marches coming out of the rising Christian movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, whose ultimate goal is not just Trump’s reelection but Christian dominion— a Kingdom of God. When Trump speaks of ‘my beautiful Christians,’ he usually means these Christians and their leaders— networks of apostles and prophets with hundreds of thousands of followers, many of whom stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, a day preceded by events such as those happening now… The chief organizer is the influential prophet Lance Wallnau, who exhorted his followers to travel to Washington, D.C., on January 6, casting efforts to overturn the election as part of a new ‘Great Awakening.’ Kindred events in the coming weeks include a series of concert-style rallies called ‘Kingdom to the Capitol,’ aiming to draw crowds to state capitals in Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, with a final concert in D.C. just days before the election. A march called ‘A Million Women’ is planned for the National Mall in mid-October. Every day, internet prophets are describing dreams of churches under attack, Christians rising up, and the start of World War III, acclimating followers to the prospect of real-world violence.”

Why the Department of Justice or someone in the Biden Administration didn’t do anything about these insurrectionist faux Churches losing their tax exempt status speaks to how the Democrats have failed America in the face of the rise of MAGA fascism.

McCrummen wrote that what these Satanic agents turning Jesus’ message on its head are doling out to the flock is “an intentional effort to move them from passivity to action and into ‘God’s army.’ It involves loudspeakers. It involves drums and lights and a huge video screen roughly 20 feet wide and eight feet high. It is a deliberate process, one choreographed to the last line, and in Eau Claire, on the grass outside Oasis Church, the four days began with a kind of promise.

‘The first thing I’m going to say is you did not come to see me,’ [evangelical far-right huckster Mario] Murillo said. ‘You came to see Jesus Christ.’ … [The approach] left no doubt that the great spiritual battle they believed to be under way included politics, and that God had chosen sides. People could sign up to be ‘patriots’ with America First Works, which is linked to the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. They could sign up for something called the Lion of Judah, which aims to place Christians inside election offices, a strategy that the group’s founder would refer to on day two as ‘our Trojan horse.’… [Murillo:] ‘God has chosen to speak through men— men and women— who are anointed. My father and my God … you have orchestrated for them to hear the words I’m about to speak,’ he continued. Then, step by step, he framed the moment at hand. ‘Something evil is at work in America,’ Murillo said, describing a country of lost souls, decaying cities, and drug addiction, and a degenerate culture preying on children. ‘Any culture that surgically alters the gender of children is a sick, perverted society.’”

He was certainly right that “Something evil is at work in America,” but I doubt many— if any— in the carnival tent realized they were staring and it, listening to it, cheering it.

“We chose, in America, a philosophical approach,” Murillo said, proceeding to argue against 400 years of Enlightenment thought underpinning the concepts of individual rights, religious pluralism, Church-state separation, and American democracy itself. The problem, he said, was a wrong turn in the Garden of Eden, followed by a wrong turn in the 17th century, when people replaced God with their own reason. “The philosophical elephant in the room for America is very simple,” he said. “To the degree that we took God out, we brought misery in. If we want the misery to get out, we’ve got to bring God back into our schools, back into our government.”

People cheered, and soon, Murillo introduced Wallnau, a slightly disheveled man in jeans and a sweat-soaked shirt, a fast-talking former pastor whom some modern-religion scholars consider the most influential theologian of the 21st century [and a plan of Vance’s].

Trump with Wallnau

When mainstream evangelicals were rejecting Trump during the 2016 GOP primary, it was Wallnau who popularized the idea that God had anointed Trump for a “special purpose,” activating a fresh wave of so-called prophecy voters. By now, he was a Mar-a-Lago regular. He had about 2 million social-media followers. He had a podcast where he hosted MAGA-world figures such as the political operative Charlie Kirk, and frequently spoke of demonic forces in U.S. and global politics. He was a frequent guest on a streaming show called FlashPoint, a kind of PBS NewsHour for the prophecy crowd, where he’d implied that the left was to blame for the July assassination attempt against Trump. Lately, he’d been saying that Harris represented the “spirit of Jezebel.”

“America is too young to die. It has an unfinished assignment,” Wallnau told the crowd now.

“Tomorrow,” he went on, “I want to talk to you about your unfinished assignment.”

For the moment, though, he described a battle scene from the film Gladiator, one that takes place in an arena in ancient Rome, where a group of enslaved warriors comes under attack. The film’s hero, Maximus, rallies them to join forces, at which point they decapitate, bludgeon, and otherwise defeat their enemies in a bloody fashion. Wallnau wasn’t merely entertaining the crowd, but also suggesting how real-life events might play out.

“How many of you would like to be activated in your Maximus anointing?” Wallnau said. People in the crowd cheered. “Put your right hand up in the air!”

They did.

… “I daresay a lot of us are nobodies on Earth who are somebodies in the spirit,” Wallnau said, explaining how good Christians like them had allowed themselves to become something God never intended them to be: victims. He said that they had been naive. That they’d misplaced their faith in a government of “elites” and “oligarchs” who wanted world domination. He said the worst part was that Christians had allowed this to happen. “You either have God, or you’ve got government,” he said. “Only one person can be supreme.”

And this is when he explained the assignment he’d promised the day before. He set up a whiteboard. He drew seven mountains. Above them he drew a stick figure, representing Jesus Christ looking down on the world. He explained that each mountain was a sphere of society— education, business, government, and so on— and that believers’ job was to assert authority over each sphere. The point was not just individual salvation but societal reformation, the Kingdom. He said democracy would not work without the flourishing of Christian conscience. He said Christians are called to be “the head and not the tail.”

“I’m tired of people thinking Christianity is just some kind of a backwoods, redneck religion,” he continued. “It’s not. It’s the force that produced the Reformation in Europe. That formed the United States!”

After 30 minutes of this, Wallnau led the crowd in a declaration. “Father, I am ready,” came the sound of 2,000 voices repeating his words. “To be a part. Of a new move of God. In the United States. And I will occupy. The territory you give me. For the glory of God.”

Next came a man in a blue suit. This was Bill Federer, a former congressional candidate from Missouri and the author of a book called Socialism: The Real History From Plato to Present. He took out a laser pointer. “You are important people,” he said. “God has chosen you.”

Then he pointed his laser at the big screen, and began clicking through a slideshow illustrating human history as a bloody struggle between godly forces that want democracy and free-market capitalism, and demonic forces that want world domination and are currently working through Democrats. He clicked to a Bible verse. He clicked to a quote from the libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel. “The political slogan of the antichrist is ‘peace and safety,’” it read. [He didn’t mention that Thiel is openly gay, adopted children, probably had an ex-lover murdered and isn’t inviting any of them to his floating libertarian, government-free island for tech-billionaires…  but why confuse anyone with facts.]

“In other words,” Federer told them, “don’t be afraid of the world ending. Be afraid of the people that promise to save you from the world ending.” He clicked to the last slide, a cartoon of a golden-walled Kingdom in the clouds. “Someday, you’re going to be dead,” he said, telling people to imagine heaven. Gold streets. Mansions. Also, a hypothetical gathering in the living room of Moses, where all the great Christian heroes would tell their stories. Moses would tell about facing a government “trying to kill us.” David would tell about chopping off Goliath’s head. [Wow… sounds like Valhalla from the Vikings TV series!]

“Then everyone’s going to look at you,” Federer said. “Tell us your story … What did you do when the whole world was against you, when the government was trying to kill you?” He paused so they could imagine. “Guess what? We’re still on this Earth,” he said, smiling. “You can still do those courageous faith-filled things that you will be known for forever. This is your time.”

Wallnau returned to the stage. He told the crowd that 50,000 more people were watching online, a number that was not verifiable. Then he introduced a Polish Canadian preacher named Artur Pawlowski, who calls himself “The Lion” and “a convicted felon just like your rightful president of the United States.”

Pawlowski was known in Canada for protesting Pride Month, railing against Muslim immigrants, and leading anti-lockdown protests during the pandemic, including one involving tiki torches— activity that gained him notoriety in the U.S., where he turned up as a guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast. He was later convicted for “inciting mischief” for encouraging truckers who staged a blockade at the U.S.-Canadian border.

Now the audience watched the big screen as a video showed scenes of Pawlowski cast as a martyr, being arrested, on his knees, in jail, all set to a pounding rock song that included the lyric “Once they grab the pastors, they come for the common man.”

And this was the point. Pawlowski told people that the government would be coming for them next. He spoke of “the venom of lies and poison of falsehoods that have been spreading through the veins of our society,” and “sexual perversion,” and politicians working for “the globalists,” calling them the modern-day Philistines, the biblical enemies of God’s chosen people, who are “under attack.”

He told them that Christians had been too timid, too “gentle” and “loving.”

“Here is what God is saying,” he said. “It is time to go after the villains. It is time to chase the wicked. The time has come for justice, and justice demands restitution.” People cheered. “It’s time to move into offense,” he said.

Like Federer, Pawlowski left things vague. “You want to be promoted in the Kingdom of God?” he said. “How many of you would like to see Jesus face-to-face? Then you have to go into the fire, my friends. He always comes to the fire. He is the fire. He is in the fire. And in the fire, he sets you free.” Pawlowski never explained to the people under the tent what the fire was, or what going into it meant, only that a time would come when each of them would have to make some sort of sacrifice.

… In the hot afternoon, Wallnau introduced a young political operative named Joshua Standifer, who gave people one concrete idea of what they might do. He was the founder of the Lion of Judah, whose homepage includes the slogan “Fight the fraud.” Standifer flashed a QR code on the screen, explaining that it would connect people to their municipality, where they could apply to become an actual election worker— not a volunteer; a worker.

“Here’s the difference: At Election Night, what happens is, when polls start to close or chaos unfolds, they’re going to kick the volunteers out,” he said. “You’re actually going to be a paid election worker… I call this our Trojan horse in. They don’t see it coming, but we’re going to flood election poll stations across the country with spiritual believers.”

He flashed on the video screen the photo of Trump raising his fist after the July assassination attempt, blood streaking down his face. “Our enemy is actively taking ground and will do everything they can to win by any means necessary,” he said. “Our hour of action has arrived.” He added that he meant not only November but “what’s coming after that.” He did not elaborate on what that might be.

…“How many of you believe we need a miracle in America?” Murillo began on the final day. By now Wallnau was gone and the Canadian preacher had left; it was just Murillo and a crowd that was the largest of all four nights, filling the folding chairs and spilling outside the tent onto the grass, where people had brought their own lawn chairs.

Murillo said that he’d had a sermon planned, but that God had “overruled” him and given him another message to deliver. “I want you to listen like you’ve never listened to me before,” he began. If there was any confusion about what the past four days had been about, Murillo himself now clarified. It was about November. It was not just about defeating Kamala Harris, but about defeating the advance of Satan.

“I don’t want a devil in the White House,” Murillo said.

… “I am not on the Earth to be blessed; I’m on the Earth to be armed and dangerous.” He went on: “I am not on the Earth to feel good. I’m not on the Earth to do my own thing. I’m on this Earth as a God-appointed warrior in a dark time.”

That is what four days of carefully choreographed sermons and violent imagery had come to with only weeks to go before the presidential election. And just as the crowds had in Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia, people in Eau Claire cheered. They said amen, and then 2,000 Christian warriors headed into the Wisconsin evening, among them a young man named Josh Becker, a local who’d attended all four days. He said he felt inspired. He said he wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to do, only that “we have to do something— we have a role.”

“I believe the father is going to lead us through a dark time,” he said, referring to the election and whatever God might require of him. “The Kingdom of God is now.”

For me, this is the thing: hustlers like Wallnau, Yarvin, Trump and Vance represent a broader rejection of the Enlightenment’s core principles, advocating for a return to a pre-modern world where authority— whether divine or autocratic— trumps the ideals of individual rights, reason and democracy. The Enlightenment’s vision of a society driven by science, equality and secular governance laid the foundation for modern liberal democracy, but the reactionary ideology espoused by these charlatans seeks to undo that progress.

Wallnau’s Christian nationalism and Trump’s brand of authoritarian populism both embody a yearning for a hierarchical order where power is concentrated in the hands of a few, justified by either divine right or personal strength. This authoritarian streak is reinforced intellectually by thinkers like Yarvin, whose critique of democracy provides an elitist, autocratic framework, while Vance taps into populist anger to advocate for solutions that, paradoxically, would erode democratic institutions in the name of national strength. Trump, who has openly flirted with theocratic ideas while promising to “bring back” America’s greatness, finds natural allies in these voices who reject Enlightenment ideas as the root of modern decay.

The alignment of Trump, Vance and Wallnau with anti-democratic thinkers like Yarvin shows how dangerous this movement truly is. Wallnau’s theocratic ambitions blend seamlessly with Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, as both men rally against secular liberalism, while Vance plays the role of the intellectual populist, translating elite reactionary ideas into political action. Together, they form a powerful bloc determined to undermine the democratic norms that have defined America for centuries, seeking instead to impose an order justified either by religious authority or strongman rule. Yarvin literally says he wants a monarchy.

This synthesis of Christian nationalism, authoritarian populism, and intellectual autocracy not only challenges modern liberalism but threatens to dismantle the foundations of the American democratic experiment. History teaches us the dangers of such reactionary movements, where democracy is eroded by those who seek to replace it with a more “natural” order. Trump’s rise, fueled by figures like Wallnau and Vance, represents a rejection of the Enlightenment’s promise of individual rights and rational governance, and if left unchecked, their vision could unravel centuries of progress. The stakes in today’s political landscape couldn’t be higher.

The slow-witted suckers who pay attention to these characters are drawn to a worldview that rejects modern secular values in favor of a more authoritarian, hierarchical and theocratic society. Many of them feel alienated by what they feel as the excesses of the Enlightenment—individualism, liberal democracy, secularism… to much darned freedom! Some are searching for meaning in an era where institutions like the church or traditional community structures no longer hold the central place they once did. They share a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the modern world, its moral relativism and its challenges to traditional values, especially around gender, sexuality and family life. In embracing these extreme religionist or cultural ideologies, they feel they’re reclaiming a sense of moral certainty and community that they believe has been lost. The appeal of a figure like Trump— and now Vance— is that they offer a political form of this backlash, where grievances against modernity can be expressed and even enacted.

In supporting these leaders and ideas, many are willing to overlook— and even embrace— authoritarianism, nationalism, fascism and xenophobia because they believe it serves a higher purpose: restoring a perceived golden age of moral clarity. Trump and Vance, by cozying up to these forces, are tapping into this powerful current, blending the political with the religious in a dangerous synthesis that threatens democratic pluralism. These followers, driven by fear of cultural annihilation, are playing a pivotal role in reshaping the political landscape in ways that may be disastrous for those who value freedom, equality, and enlightenment ideals.