bakker
wow no notes 1/17, see televangelist
pension plan? DEAD 10 26
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RWW
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Jim Bakker, the godfather of scamvangelism, is dead at 86
The convicted fraudster spent decades exploiting Christians with bogus promises, survival buckets, partisan paranoia, and a fake COVID cure.
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AN 525
'They'll take my house': Far-right pastor begs for $1M before he ends up 'on the street'
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James Orsen Bakker (/ˈbeɪkər/;[1] born January 2, 1940) is an American televangelist and convicted felon. Between 1974 and 1987, Bakker hosted the television program The PTL Club and its cable television platform, the PTL Satellite Network, with his then wife, Tammy Faye. He also developed Heritage USA, a now-defunct Christian theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
In the late 1980s, Bakker resigned from the PTL ministry over a cover-up of hush money to church secretary Jessica Hahn for an alleged rape. Subsequent revelations of accounting fraud brought about felony charges, conviction, imprisonment, and divorce.
Bakker later remarried and returned to televangelism, founding Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri, and reestablishing the PTL ministry. He currently hosts The Jim Bakker Show, which focuses on the end times and the Second Coming of Christ while promoting emergency survival products. Bakker has written several books, including I Was Wrong and Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead.
Personal life
James Orsen Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan, the son of Raleigh Bakker and Furnia Lynette "Furn" Irwin.[2] Bakker attended North Central University, a Minneapolis Bible college affiliated with the Assemblies of God, where he met fellow student Tammy Faye LaValley in 1960.[3] Bakker worked at a restaurant in the Young-Quinlan department store in Minneapolis; Tammy Faye worked at the Three Sisters, a nearby boutique.[4]^
The Bakkers married on April 1, 1961, and left college to become itinerant evangelists. They had two children, Tammy Sue "Sissy" Bakker Chapman (born March 2, 1970) and Jamie Charles "Jay" Bakker (born December 18, 1975). The couple divorced on March 13, 1992.[5] On September 4, 1998, Bakker married Lori Beth Graham, a former televangelist, fifty days after they met.[6] In 2002, they adopted five children.[7][8][9]^
Career
Early career
In 1966, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker began working at Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in Portsmouth, Virginia, which had an audience in the low thousands at the time.[10] The Bakkers contributed to the network's growth, hosting a children's variety show called Come On Over that employed comic routines with puppets.[11] Due to the success of Come On Over, Robertson made Bakker the host of a new prime-time talk show, The 700 Club, which gradually became CBN's flagship program.[12] The Bakkers left CBN in 1973 and, soon after, joined with Paul and Jan Crouch to help co-found the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) in California. However, this partnership lasted only eight months until a falling-out between Jim Bakker and Paul Crouch caused the Bakkers to eventually leave the new network.
PTL
Heritage USA sign in 2007. The site is now mostly demolished.[13]^
While under TBN, the Bakkers moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where in May of 1973 they launched an east coast version of Praise The Lord under TBN's umbrella. Less than a year later the Bakkers formed their own non profit organization, registered the PTL trademark, left the umbrella of TBN and the Crouches, and continued their show on 36 WRET Charlotte, 16 WGGS Greenville, South Carolina, and a few other stations. In 1975, they nationally debuted their own late night-style talk show, known as The PTL Club.[14] Bakker founded the PTL Satellite Network in 1974, which aired The PTL Club and other religious television programs through local affiliates across the U.S.[15]^
Throughout the 1970s, Bakker built a headquarters for PTL in the Carolinas called Heritage Village.[15] Over time, the Bakkers expanded the ministry to include the Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina, which became the third most successful theme park in the U.S. at the time. Viewer contributions were estimated to exceed $1 million a week, with proceeds to expand the theme park and The PTL Club's mission.[1][16] Bakker responded to inquiries about his use of mass media by saying: "I believe that if Jesus were alive today, he would be on TV".[17]^
Two scandals brought down PTL in 1987: Bakker was accused of sexual misconduct by church secretary Jessica Hahn, which led to his resignation, and his illegal misuse of ministry funds eventually led to his imprisonment.[15] Bakker was dismissed as an Assemblies of God minister on May 6, 1987.[18] In 1990, the biographic television movie Fall from Grace, starring Kevin Spacey as Bakker, depicted his rise and fall.[19] On January 18, 2019, ABC's 20/20 aired a two-hour special, entitled Unfaithfully Yours, about the PTL scandal.[20]^
Early investigations
In 1979, Bakker and PTL came under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for allegedly misusing funds raised on the air. The FCC report was finalized in 1982 and found that Bakker had raised $350,000 that he told viewers would go towards funding overseas missions but that was actually used to pay for part of Heritage USA. The report also found that the Bakkers used PTL funds for personal expenses.[21] FCC commissioners voted four to three to drop the investigation, after which they allowed Bakker to sell the only TV station that he owned, therefore bypassing future FCC oversight.[22] The FCC forwarded its report to the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to press charges, citing insufficient evidence.[21] Bakker used the controversy to raise more funds from his audience, branding the investigation a "witch-hunt" and asking viewers to "give the Devil a black eye".[22]^
A confidential 1985 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) report found that $1.3 million in ministry funds was used for the Bakkers' personal benefit from 1980 to 1983. The report recommended that PTL be stripped of its tax-exempt status, but no action was taken until after the Jessica Hahn scandal broke in 1987. Art Harris and Michael Isikoff wrote in The Washington Post that politics may have played a role in the three government agencies taking no action against PTL despite the evidence against them, as members of the Reagan administration were not eager to go after television ministers whose evangelical followers made up their base.[23]^
Sexual misconduct and resignation
A $279,000 payoff for the silence of Jessica Hahn, who alleged that Bakker and former PTL Club co-host John Wesley Fletcher drugged and raped her, was paid with PTL funds through Bakker's associate Roe Messner.[24][25] Bakker, who made PTL's financial decisions, allegedly kept two sets of books to conceal accounting irregularities. Reporters for The Charlotte Observer, led by Charles Shepard, investigated PTL's finances and published a series of articles.[26]^
On March 19, 1987, after the disclosure of a payoff to Hahn, Bakker resigned from PTL.[24] Although he acknowledged that he had a sexual encounter with Hahn at a hotel room in Clearwater, Florida, he denied raping her.[27] Bakker was also the subject of homosexual and bisexual allegations made by Fletcher and PTL director Jay Babcock, which Bakker denied under oath.[28][29] Rival televangelist John Ankerberg appeared on Larry King Live and made several allegations of moral impropriety against Bakker, which both Bakkers denied.[30]^
Bakker was succeeded as PTL head by the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.[27] Bakker chose Falwell as his successor because he feared that fellow televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who had initiated an Assemblies of God investigation into Bakker's sexual misconduct, was attempting to take over his ministry.[31]^
Bakker believed that Falwell would temporarily lead the ministry until the scandal died down,[32] but on April 28, 1987, Falwell barred Bakker from returning to PTL upon hearing of allegations of illicit behavior which went beyond the Hahn allegations.[33] Later that summer, as donations declined sharply in the wake of Bakker's resignation and the end of The PTL Club, Falwell raised $20 million to keep Heritage USA solvent and took a promised water slide ride at the park.[34] Falwell and the remaining members of the PTL board resigned in October 1987, stating that a ruling from a bankruptcy court judge made rebuilding the ministry impossible.[35]^
In response to the scandal, Falwell called Bakker a liar, an embezzler, a sexual deviant, and "the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history".[36] On CNN, Swaggart stated that Bakker was a "cancer in the body of Christ".[32] In February 1988, Swaggart became involved in a sex scandal of his own after being caught visiting prostitutes in New Orleans.[37] The Bakker and Swaggart scandals had a profound effect on the world of televangelism, causing greater media scrutiny of TV ministers and their finances.[38] Falwell said that the scandals had "strengthened broadcast evangelism and made Christianity stronger, more mature and more committed."[39][40]^
Fraud conviction and imprisonment
The PTL Club's fundraising activities between 1984 and 1987 were reported by The Charlotte Observer, eventually leading to criminal charges against Bakker.[41] Bakker and his PTL associates sold $1,000 "lifetime memberships", entitling buyers to an annual three-night stay at a luxury hotel at Heritage USA during that period.[42] According to the prosecution at Bakker's fraud trial, tens of thousands of memberships were sold but only one 500-room hotel was ever finished.[43] Bakker sold "exclusive partnerships" which exceeded capacity, raising more than twice the money needed to build the hotel. Much of the money paid Heritage USA's operating expenses, and Bakker kept $3.4 million.[44]^
After a 16-month federal grand jury probe, Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy.[24] In 1989, after a five-week trial which began on August 28 in Charlotte, North Carolina, a jury found him guilty on all 24 counts. Judge Robert Daniel Potter sentenced Bakker to 45 years in federal prison and imposed a $500,000 fine.[45][46][47] At the Federal Medical Center, Rochester in Rochester, Minnesota, he shared a cell with activist Lyndon LaRouche and skydiver Roger Nelson.[48]^
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld Bakker's conviction on the fraud and conspiracy charges, voided Bakker's 45-year sentence and $500,000 fine and ordered a new sentencing hearing in February 1991.[49] The court ruled that Potter's sentencing statement about Bakker, that "those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests",[50] was evidence that the judge had injected his religious beliefs into Bakker's sentence.[49]^
A sentence-reduction hearing was held on November 16, 1992, and Bakker's sentence was reduced to eight years. In August 1993, he was transferred to a minimum-security federal prison in Jesup, Georgia. Bakker was paroled in July 1994, after serving almost five years of his sentence.[51] His son, Jay, spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to the parole board advocating leniency.[52]
Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz acted as Bakker's parole attorney, having said that he "would guarantee that Mr. Bakker would never again engage in the blend of religion and commerce that led to his conviction."[53] Bakker was released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody on December 1, 1994,[54] owing $6 million to the IRS.[55]^
Return to televangelism
The set of The Jim Bakker Show in Blue Eye, Missouri
In 2003, Bakker began broadcasting The Jim Bakker Show daily at Studio City Café in Branson, Missouri, with his second wife Lori;[56] it has been carried on CTN, Daystar, Folk TV, Grace Network (Canada), Daystar Television Canada, GEB America, Hope TV (Canada), Impact Network, WGN, WHT, TCT Network, The Word Network, UpliftTV, and ZLiving networks.[57][58][59] Most of Bakker's audience receives his program on DirecTV and Dish Network.[60]^
Bakker condemned the prosperity theology in which he took part earlier in his career, and has embraced apocalypticism.[15] His show has a millennial, survivalist focus and sells buckets of freeze-dried food, such as beans on toast,[61] to his audience in preparation for the end of days.[62] Elspeth Reeve wrote in The Atlantic that Bakker's "doomsday survival gear" is overpriced.[63] A man named Jerry Crawford, who credits Bakker with saving his marriage, invested $25 million in a new ministry for Bakker in Blue Eye, Missouri, named Morningside USA. Production for The Jim Bakker Show moved to Morningside in 2008.[15]^
Prophecies and statements
In 2013, Bakker wrote Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead about end-time events.[64] Bakker has changed his views on prosperity theology.[65] In his 1980 book Eight Keys to Success, he stated, "God wants you to be happy, God wants you to be rich, God wants you to prosper."[66][67] In his 1996 book, I Was Wrong, he admitted that the first time he actually read the Bible all the way through was in prison. Bakker also wrote that he realized that he had taken passages out of context and used them as prooftexts to support his prosperity theology.[68]^
Bakker's revived show features a number of ministers who bill themselves as "prophets". He now says that "PTL" stands for "Prophets Talking Loud".[69]^
In an October 2017 video, Bakker said that "God will punish those" who ridicule him;[70] he has said that Hurricane Harvey was a judgment of God, and he blamed Hurricane Matthew on then-President Barack Obama.[71][72] Bakker predicted that if then-President Donald Trump was impeached, Christians would begin a Second American Civil War.[73] He compared the 2017 Washington train derailment to the sinking of the RMS *Titanic* and stated the Amtrak train derailment was a warning from God.[74]
He also claimed that he predicted the September 11 attacks of 2001, stating that he "saw 9/11 in 1999 before New Year's Eve" and that there would "be terrorism" and bombings in New York City and Washington, D.C."[75] A few days after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, he stated that "God came to [him] in a dream... and he was wearing camouflage, a hunting vest and had an AR-15 strapped to his back" and that God supported Trump's plan to arm teachers.[76]
Following the death of Billy Graham on February 21, 2018, Bakker attended Graham's funeral and paid his respects, stating that Graham was the greatest preacher since Jesus,[77] and also remarking that Graham had visited him in prison.[78]^
On the Stand in the Gap Today radio program, Pennsylvania Pastors Network president Sam Rohrer criticized Bakker's civil-war prediction.[79] Christian Today criticized Bakker's show for preying on "the most vulnerable kinds of people" and claimed that it had "no place on our TV screens."[80]^
COVID-19 misinformation
See also: Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic
Bakker sold colloidal silver supplements that he advertised as a panacea. In March 2020, the office of the Attorney General of New York ordered Bakker to cease making false medicinal claims about his supplements' alleged ability to cure the 2019–2020 strains of coronavirus, and the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration also sent a warning letter to Bakker about his claims regarding the supplements and coronavirus.[81][82]^
Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt and Arkansas attorney general Leslie Rutledge filed lawsuits against Bakker for allegedly pushing the supplements as a treatment for the virus.[83][84] In the State lawsuit against him, Bakker is represented by former Missouri governor Jay Nixon, who has argued for the suit to be dismissed. Nixon says that the allegations made in the lawsuit are false, stating: "Bakker is being unfairly targeted by those who want to crush his ministry and force his Christian television program off the air."[85]^
In April 2020, prohibited from receiving credit card transactions, Bakker disclosed to his viewers that his ministry was on the brink of filing for bankruptcy and urgently petitioned them for donations.[86]^
The following month, GEB America and World Harvest Television dropped Bakker's program from their networks after DirecTV owner AT&T asked channels to reconsider airing the show. AT&T made the request of its channels in response to a deplatforming campaign from the liberal Christian group Faithful America.[87][88]^
On May 8, 2020, Lori Bakker announced that Jim Bakker had suffered a stroke that his son Jay described as “minor”. Lori stated that he would be taking a sabbatical from the program until he recovers. She blamed the stroke on Bakker's hard work on his show and wrote that he had described the criticism against him as “the most vicious attack that he has ever experienced”.[88] Bakker returned to his program for the first time following his stroke on July 8, 2020.[89]^
On June 23, 2021, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced the settlement of the state's lawsuit against Bakker. Bakker and Morningside Church would be prohibited from saying silver solution could "diagnose, prevent, mitigate, treat, or cure any disease or illness". Restitution of about $157,000 would also be paid to those who bought silver solution between February 12, 2020, and March 10, 2020.[90]
Works
- Move That Mountain (1976), ISBN 978-0-88270-164-6
- Eight Keys to Success (1980), ISBN 978-0-89221-071-8
- I Was Wrong (1996), ISBN 978-0-7852-7425-4
- Prosperity and the Coming Apocalypse (1998), ISBN 978-1-4185-5422-4
- The Refuge: The Joy of Christian Community in a Torn-Apart World (2000), ISBN 978-1-4185-5423-1
- Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead (2014), ISBN 978-1-61795-134-3
- You Can Make It: God's Faithfulness in Dark Times-Past, Present and Future (2021) ISBN 978-1-63641-047-0
References...
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GGL 9 24
[### Jim Bakker says liking Trump is test of whether you're saved
Charlotte Observer
https://www.charlotteobserver.com › article239027493](https://www.charlotteobserver.com/entertainment/celebrities/article239027493.html)
Jan 7, 2020 — Televangelist Jim Bakker, whose PTL empire collapsed amid sex and financial scandals in the late 80s, has startled critics with his declaration that supporting ...
[### "The Jim Bakker Show" President Trump's Prophetic Role ...
IMDb
https://www.imdb.com › title](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12950912/)
President Trump's Prophetic Role: With Jim Bakker, Lori Bakker, William Koenig.
[### Televangelist Jim Bakker sells $45 Trump coin, calls it ' ...
Reddit · r/Christianity
130+ comments · 5 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/bpe1zn/televangelist_jim_bakker_sells_45_trump_coin/)
Televangelist Jim Bakker sells $45 Trump coin, calls it 'point of contact' with God ... There's a weird disconnect happening in evangelical ...
[### ‘Christian’ Fraudster Jim Bakker Gives Trump Seal Of Approval
YouTube · HuffPost
14.5K+ views · 4 years ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yk5qxVyxoQ)
[
1:16](https://www.google.com/search?q=jim+bakker+trump&sca_esv=2fcb7b144273d9a6&sca_upv=1&source=hp&ei=fzHbZs2PLey9kPIPwaGymA8&iflsig=AL9hbdgAAAAAZts_jwnvj6NpltWVwLICu27dj675mgZh&ved=0ahUKEwiNy62A4q6IAxXsHkQIHcGQDPMQ4dUDCBk&uact=5&oq=jim+bakker+trump&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6IhBqaW0gYmFra2VyIHRydW1wSJlMUABY4EBwAHgAkAEAmAFcoAHvCKoBAjE2uAEDyAEA-AEBmAINoAKvB8ICDhAuGIAEGLEDGIMBGIoFwgIFEC4YgATCAgsQLhiABBixAxiDAcICCxAAGIAEGLEDGIMBwgIIEC4YgAQYsQPCAgUQABiABMICCxAuGIAEGNEDGMcBwgIQEAAYgAQYsQMYgwEYigUYCsICDhAAGIAEGLEDGIMBGIoFwgIOEC4YgAQYsQMY0QMYxwHCAg4QLhiABBixAxiDARjUAsICCBAAGIAEGLEDwgILEC4YgAQYxwEYrwHCAggQLhiABBjUAsICBhAAGBYYHsICCxAAGIAEGIYDGIoFwgIIEAAYgAQYogSYAwCSBwIxM6AHgMYB&sclient=gws-wiz#)
Disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker told Christians they must love Trump in order to be “saved.” Subscribe to HuffPost today: ...
[### God Sent Donald Trump to Prepare the Church for the End ...
95.9 The Fish
https://thefishoc.com › blogs › religion-today-blog › en...](https://thefishoc.com/articles/blogs/religion-today-blog/end-time-prepper-jim-bakker-proclaims-god-sent-donald-trump-to-prepare-the-church-for-the-rapture)
Christian End Times prepper Jim Bakker said that God told him He put Donald Trump on this earth to give the church time to prepare for the impending end.
[### Christian TV evangelicals fire up Trump support with ...
Reuters
https://www.reuters.com › world › god-gave-us-trump-...](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/god-gave-us-trump-christian-media-evangelicals-preach-messianic-message-2024-03-22/)
Mar 22, 2024 — "This is really a battle between good and evil," evangelical TV preacher Hank Kunneman says of the slew of criminal charges facing Donald ...
[### Jim Bakker says 'Trump is a test whether you're even saved ...
U.S. Pastor Council
https://www.uspastorcouncil.org › article › 2020/01/10](https://www.uspastorcouncil.org/pastor-resources/pastors-corner.html/article/2020/01/10/jim-bakker-says-trump-is-a-test-whether-you-re-even-saved-my-response)
Jan 10, 2020 — In 1976, after three years on the White House staff, I wrote a book, The White House Mystique (published by Fleming H. Revell) in which I ...
[### Richard Marx
X · richardmarx
230+ likes · 5 years ago](https://twitter.com/richardmarx/status/1129077349234794496)
Jim Bakker and Donald Trump have much in common. The ridiculousness here isn't the idea of televangelists selling this shit.
[### Christian 'Prophet' who Backed Trump Now Says God ...
Rolling Stone
https://www.rollingstone.com › politics › politics-news](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/evangelicals-trump-desantis-2024-prophecy-1234680986/)
Feb 16, 2023 — Charlie Shamp — a bearded Christian “prophet” — says God gave him a vision of Florida's governor in the White House.
[### President Donald Trump... - The Jim Bakker Show
Facebook · The Jim Bakker Show
220+ reactions · 1 month ago](https://www.facebook.com/jimbakkershow/posts/president-donald-trump-assassination-attempt-forewarned-pastor-jim-bakker-is-a-w/886159076864204/)
President Donald Trump assassination attempt forewarned Pastor Jim Bakker is a watchman, for such a time as this.
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September 4, 2024 rww
- Christian nationalist state Sen. Dusty Deevers and several other elected officials have launched the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus, with the backing of U.S. Rep. Josh Brecheen.
- Jim Bakker warns that if Kamala Harris is elected, “all the Christians will be taken off the air.”
- Operation Rescue defends Donald Trump’s flip-flopping on the issue of reproductive rights: “With Trump being a product of both the polls and culture, he knows he cannot win with the same agenda on abortion that propelled him to victory in 2016 – and win he must, if America is to be preserved as a Constitutional Republic.”
- MAGA troll Brenden Dilley explains the humor behind his efforts on behalf of the Trump campaign: “I don’t recognize anything off limits. … The darker, more fucked up the topic that you really shouldn’t be laughing at, the more glorious it is when I make you laugh at it.”
- Finally, Nick Fuentes fumes that the Trump campaign has been taken over by the likes of Sen. Tim Scott, “the gay nig.”
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/how-the-plot-to-kidnap-whitmer-fits-into-right-wing-extremists-violent-rhetoric-around-the-2020-election/
analysis
Adam Fox was worried about a rat. In the:{dark and cluttered basement}:, Fox gathered the men’s phones in a bin and took them upstairs to the main floor of the nondescript vacuum store in Grand Rapids, Michigan—a measure meant to avoid surveillance. After he returned through the trap door normally hidden by a rug, the group of men began discussing how they would storm the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan, counter law enforcement who arrived on the scene, and throw Molotov cocktails at their vehicles. It was June 20. Six days earlier, Fox had explained in a call that they’d need “200 men” to storm the capitol and take hostages, including the governor. They would try her for “treason,” he said—and they would carry out their plan before the November presidential election.
The FBI arrested six men on Oct. 8—including Fox—for conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and overtake the state government. Through FBI informants and FBI agents, we know how those meetings went, spelled out in detail in an:{FBI affidavit}:. The men, in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, belonged to Wolverine Watchmen, an anti-government, anti-law enforcement militia group. Prior to the arrests, the group had surveilled Whitmer’s summer home, discussed bombing a bridge to block law enforcement response, and at another point, considered simply shooting Whitmer. On Tuesday, the FBI revealed the group had also considered kidnapping Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia.
Whitmer has been the:{target of extremists}:since she implemented a series of public health measures, including a stay-at-home order, in March, acting swiftly to slow the spread of the coronavirus in Michigan. In May, protesters and anti-government groups, some heavily armed, protested the restrictions at the state capitol, where they demanded to be let in and compared Whitmer to Hitler. Among the protesters were members of the Wolverine Watchmen.
In addressing the conspiracy to kidnap her, Whitmer was quick to:{point out}: President Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric at the first presidential debate: how he tried to skirt condemning white supremacists and then told the Proud Boys hate group to “stand back and stand by.”
“Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry, as a call to action. When our leaders speak, their words matter. They carry weight,” Whitmer said.
Right Wing Watch has seen an increase of violent rhetoric across different right-wing subgroups—from conspiracy theorists and religious-right activists to white nationalists and anti-government groups. In some instances, extremists call for civil war, the use of force against Black Lives Matter protesters, and for government leaders to be tried for treason and executed.
Trump has no doubt ushered in more radical proclamations from extremists—this is the man, after all, who:{won’t commit:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}: to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election. But the right-wing media ecosystem is a two-way street, where fringe figures influence the president, and the president influences the boldness of fringe figures and their prominence in the conservative mainstream.
Conspiracy Theorists and Radical Right-Wing Commentators: Fear-Mongering, Violent Language, and Anti-Government Sentiment
[pix Radical right-wing conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles blamed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for the plot to kidnap and potentially murder her.]
On the day the arrests of the Wolverine Watchmen members were announced, Rick Wiles, a conspiracy theorist whose TruNews conspiracy outlet claims to offer news and analysis from a conservative, Christian worldview,:{took to his program}: to put the blame on Whitmer for the plot to kidnap and potentially murder her.
“Did you at all stop and think, what are you doing that drives middle class, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens to think about kidnapping you?” Wiles said. “What are you doing? Are your policies so extreme, so radical that you’re pushing people over the line to say we have to get that woman out of the governor’s office?”
While the claim is shocking, especially for an outlet that has been granted White House press credentials as recently as:{January}:, it’s in keeping with Wiles:{fear-mongering}: about government overreach—much of it anti-Semitic—which includes claiming that liberals:{intend}: to:{use the power}: of government to:{round up}::{conservative Christians}:, place them in:{concentration camps,}: and:{kill them}:.
And it’s not surprising for the ranks of conspiracy theorists and radical right-wing commentators who distrust news reports and the government—save for Trump—and imagine a “deep state” or globalist “New World Order” that wants to take away constitutional rights, get Trump out of office, and impose their will on the people.
Wiles’ penchant for violent rhetoric is well documented by Right Wing Watch: In the past year alone, Wiles has:{rejoiced}: in Trump’s use of the military to forcefully clear protesters from a church to take a photo op with a Bible, vocalized his hope that Trump will round up liberal activists and:{torture them}:, and gleefully claimed that special op forces were going to:{hunt down and shoot commies}:—which to Wiles apparently includes Black Lives Matter, antifa, and Right Wing Watch. During the impeachment of Trump in December 2019, he claimed to have been stockpiling ammunition to prepare for a “violent civil war” between the “pagan left” and “religious right.”
While the enemies in the minds of right-wing conspiracy theorists are many, the hate directed at government officials who oppose Trump, particularly those who are women or people of color, in right-wing networks is particularly noteworthy.
Josh Bernstein, a radical right-wing commentator with a penchant for calling for people to be executed, took to his YouTube channel earlier this month to call for Rep. Ilhan Omar to be charged with treason and executed. Omar has faced racist, xenophobic attacks from right-wing activists and the president himself as recently as:{September}:. Bernstein, who has:{said}: that Omar has earned every death threat she’s received, followed up on Trump’s attacks just days later.
“I believe that the FBI and the Department of Justice should charge Ilhan [Omar] with sedition, treason, marriage fraud, voter fraud, illegal campaign contributions, immigration fraud, and aiding and abetting our enemies,” Bernstein said,:{adding}:, “this bitch should be executed.”
Last year, Bernstein:{urged}: Trump to become a “dictator for patriotism” and:{claimed}: that members of the Trump administration watch his broadcasts.
He’s not the only one talking about killing opponents to his extreme right-wing world view or calling for civil war. Claiming his warnings about a globalist “New World Order” takeover were coming true, radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones told his listeners of his “Infowars” conspiracy show in August to wage war against academics and “the establishment perverts and pedophiles that run it,” adding that “the best thing to do in a defensive way is kill as many of them as quickly as possible.” In February, radical right-wing conspiracy theorist Chris McDonald:{declared}: that government officials who testified in the impeachment hearing against President Donald Trump are traitors and are “lucky they’re not hanging from nooses,” and in June during the protests against racism, McDonald andfellow QAnon conspiracy theorist Mark Taylor**:{claimed}:**Black men were hanging themselves to start a civil war. “They’re trying to start a civil war in this country, a race war,” Taylor said.
Among those fear-mongering and calling for violence against Black Lives Matter and antifa—shorthand for anti-fascist activists—is John Guandolo, a:{disgraced}: former FBI agent turned right-wing:{conspiracy theorist.}: In June, Guandolo, who has made a new career out of:{peddling}: anti-Muslim law enforcement trainings,:{said}:, “we should round up the leaders and execute them for trying to revolt and overthrow the government. And if this doesn’t happen soon, we will lose this.”
Religious Right Calls for Civil War
[ pix Robert Jeffress speaking at Values Voters Summit in 2017. In 2019, he claimed on Fox News that “removing the president” would “cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.”]
Like right-wing conspiracy theorists, some religious-right activists and pastors:{see the 2020 election as a civil war}: coming to America and warn that Christians need to wake up. They paint the current political climate as a spiritual battle, and Trump’s opponents are frequently depicted as “demonic.” Such messages have been promoted through “The Jim Bakker Show,” influential pro-Trump Pentecostal-oriented media outfit Charisma, and:{networks}: of prominent:{dominionist}: “apostles” and “prophets.”
Rick Joyner has been:{warning}::{for years}: that civil war is coming to the:{United States}: and that the country is headed toward:{martial law}:. In September, the right-wing pastor spoke to televangelist Jim Bakker on “The Jim Bakker Show,” where he:{told}: viewers that God had seeded the country with military veterans experienced in urban warfare, citing a “prophetic” dream.
“We’re in time for war. We need to recognize that. We need to mobilize. We need to get ready. I’m talking to law enforcement, talking to people. One of the things I saw in a dream I had related to our civil war was that militias would pop up like mushrooms. And it was God. These were good militias.”Joyner, who heads up Morningstar Ministries, said. “If God’s people don’t become a part of the militia movements, the good militias, the bad people will take them over.”
Who are “the bad people”? In September, Joyner pointed to Black Lives Matter,:{declaring}: that Christians must take a stand against the organization because it’s “the KKK of this time.” And during the impeachment inquiry, Bakker and Joyner:{agreed}: that efforts to impeach Trump were satanic and treasonous.
Bakker, himself,:{warned}: in August that if Trump is not reelected, “we’re gonna have a revolution” with right-wing Christians taking to the streets.
At the 2019 American Priority Festival and Conference, an annual pro-Trump conference held at Trump National Doral Miami resort held in October,:{calls for civil war}:were loud and clear. “I need you to know that 2020 is a civil war that will change the face of America forever,”Joshua Feuerstein, a former pastor turned evangelical internet personality, said on the same stage Don Trump Jr. would later speak on. “And it’s God, ladies and gentlemen, it’s God that calls the qualified, that qualifies those that are called, that are willing to step up in the moment that matters, that has greatness thrust upon them. And tonight, together here in this place to say that we are willing to fight, we may think ourselves insignificant, but that we will stand together in 2020, and we will win the war that will change the face of America.”
Earlier in the evening at the conference (known colloquially as AMPfest), televangelist:{Mark Burns called for war}:. “We’ve come to declare war!” he yelled, with attendees in the back of the ballroom echoing his call, shouting “War! War!” in response.
This summer,:{F**rank Pavone**}:, a Catholic priestwho runs an advocacy group committed to abolishing access to abortion in the U.S.,:{declared}: that the 2020 election “is a spiritual battle and no less than a civil war.” Pavone held advisory positions in Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, only resigning in July at the:{direction of Roman Catholic Church authorities}:.
These messages from Trump’s religious-right boosters have reached the president. Days after Congress launched its formal impeachment inquiry last September, megachurch pastor and ardent Trump supporter Robert Jeffress claimed on Fox News that “removing the president” would “cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.” Apparently viewing the segment was Trump, who:{tweeted}: Jeffress’ quote.
Far-Right Militant Groups: ‘Awaiting the Green Light’
[pix]
when the militant group the Oath Keepers saw Trump’s tweet of Jeffress’ comments on Fox, they responded in turn. “This is the truth,” read a:{post from the group’s Twitter account:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}:. “We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859.”
The Oath Keepers, conceived as a group of “patriots,” law enforcement officers, and former military members who would defy orders they didn’t like in opposition to a deep state members saw as conspiring to declare martial law, have now sided with Trump and see their role as ensuring law and order.
Other militia groups have done the same. Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this sentiment; by forgoing a federal response, Trump has continued to receive the support of anti-government groups, while state and local governments have been left to issue piecemeal restrictions and face the ire of such groups.
It’s amid this violent rhetoric, fear-mongering about government overreach, and calls for civil war that militia groups and white supremacist organizations are feeling emboldened—and Trump’s language has given these groups tacit, if not explicit, approval.
In April, Trump sent off a series of tweets calling for states led by three Democratic governors, including Whitmer and Northam, to be liberated from supposedly draconian public health measures. “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” he:{tweeted:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}:, followed by “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
Michael German, a former FBI agent who infiltrated neo-Nazis in the 1990s, is not surprised the Michigan governor was targeted by these groups following Trump’s message.
“These are groups that are used to listening for dog whistle affirmation among the powerful, and so when they get that affirmation spoken out loud, indirectly, it takes on a completely different meaning,” said German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program. “You know, something like ‘liberate Virginia‘ and ‘liberate Michigan‘ would be taken as ‘OK, this is a green light from the highest levels of our government. We should start planning.’”
In August, German published a:{report}: with the Brennan Center detailing the militia groups that have law enforcement and former military members, though “only a tiny percentage of law enforcement officials are likely to be active members of white supremacist groups.” An investigation in:{The Atlantic}: details these connections in the Oath Keepers, which recruited thousands of police, soldiers, and veterans.
As protests erupted in the days following George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, members of extreme right-wing movements followed Trump’s lead in identifying common enemies among police and far-right militants, demonizing Black Lives Matter, anarchists, and antifa.
“We’ve been through a lot of these protests, and [police] seem to have a less antagonistic and violent response when it’s far-right militants who are engaging in protest violence,” German said. “And I think that’s because the messaging that they’re receiving about who is the enemy of state, as the president is identifying these groups as the enemy of state and suggesting that there are friendlies among the far-right, white supremacist groups. That sends a pretty clear message both to the groups and to the police about who should be the target of their violence.”
“So when these groups feel like they have the authority granted by the state to engage in this kind of behavior, they’re more likely to do it,” German said. “These groups operate on margin where their violence is reinforcing state action and state violence often, right—that the groups that the far-right militant and white supremacist groups target are the same groups that law enforcement targets disproportionately.”
In August, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who considers himself a militia member, fatally shot two demonstrators and injured a third at a protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Much has been said about how, minutes prior to the shooting,:{police thanked the group}: for their presence and offered Rittenhouse water.
Creating the Justification for Right-Wing Violence
After Trump’s Proud Boy comments at the presidential debate, the hate group took to the social media platform Telegram where they took the president’s words:{as a command}:. “Standing by sir,” Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio wrote.
Two days later, Tarrio:{told:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}: conspiracy theorist and failed congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine—who in June had urged conservatives to form militias:{while awaiting the “green light”:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}: to take back the streets—that his group had gained 2,000 to 3,000 new followers.
Violent rhetoric and civil war chatter among extremists is nothing new. But as we’ve approached the 2020 elections, the confluence of violent rhetoric among the extremists Right Wing Watch covers seems to have taken a frenzied pace, with different subgroups of the right-wing acting as an echo chamber, radicalizing each other and the president and vice versa. Trump, himself, has cultivated that echo chamber, creating a megaphone for his messaging.
Trump has refused to say whether he will step down peacefully should he lose the election. And since 2016, Trump and his team has pushed the narrative that Democrats and the deep state worked tirelessly to prevent him from becoming president in 2016 and, when they failed, conspired against him to prevent his reelection. By fear-mongering about voter fraud through mail-in voting and engaging with far-right conspiracy theories, Trump has insisted that any election he loses will have been fraudulent—creating justification for right-wing violence should he lose.
Tags: Chris McDonald Donald Trump Frank Pavone Jim Bakker John Guandolo Josh Bernstein Joshua Feuerstein Mark Burns Mark Taylor Rick Joyner Rick Wiles Robert Jeffress Antifa Civil War conspiracy theories Oath Keepers Trunews Wolverine Watchmen
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schmucks // losers? cohen
https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-detests-christians-and-he-deceived-pastors-and-mocked-them-after-they-left-trump-tower-michael-cohens-disloyal/
Michael Cohen’s book about his years as Donald Trump’s fixer is a clarion call to Christians to wake up and recognize that the man many of them revere as a heavenly agent is a religious fraud who loathes them and mocks their faith.
In Disloyal, published today, Cohen shows how Trump is a master deceiver. He quotes Trump calling Christianity and its religious practices “bullshit,” soon after he masterfully posed as a fervent believer. In truth, Cohen writes, Trump’s religion is unbridled lust for money and power at any cost to others.
“Can you believe that people believe that bullshit,” Trump said after pastors prayed over him.
Cohen’s insider stories add significant depth to my own documenting of Trump’s repeated and public denouncements of Christians as “fools,” “idiots,” and “schmucks."
in extensive writing and speeches, Trump has declared that his life philosophy is “revenge.” That stance is aggressively anti-Christian. So are Trump’s often publicly expressed desires to violently attack others, mostly women, and his many remarks that he derives pleasure from ruining the lives of people over such minor matters as declining to do him a favor.
Cohen reinforces these facts with new anecdotes about Trump’s utter disregard for other people and his contempt for religious belief. Cohen’s words should shock the believers who were critical to his becoming president, provided they ever read them. By denouncing the book Trump has ensured that many of those he has tricked into believing he is a deeply religious man will never fulfill their Christian duty to be on the lookout for deceivers.
None of the evangelicals I have interviewed in the past five years knew that in writing Trump has denounced their beliefs and written of the communion host as “my little cracker.”
Trump Detests Christianity
Despite the irrefutable evidence that Trump detests Christianity and ridicules such core beliefs as the Golden Rule and turning the other cheek, America is filled with pastors who praise him to their flocks as a man of god.
outside the White House to imply he was chosen by god.
Pastors who support Trump were scolded two years ago by Christianity Today, a magazine founded by Billy Graham, for not denouncing Trump as “profoundly immoral.” Many evangelical pastors then attacked the magazine rather than following the Biblical incantation to examine their own souls.
Cohen writes that as a young man who grew up encountering Mafioso and other crooks at a country club he fell into the “trace like spell” of Trump, whom he describes as an utterly immoral, patriarchal mob boss and con man. Cohen says he was “an active oparticipant” in everything from Trump getting “golden showers” in Las Vegas to corruopt deals with Russian officials.
Trump is “consumed by the worldly lust for wealth and rewards,” Cohen writes, which puts him at odds with the teaching of Jesus Christ about what constitutes a good life.
“Places of religious worship held absolutely no interest to him, and he possessed precisely zero personal piety in his life,” Cohen writes.
Prosperity Gospel Embraced
Cohen explains that the only version of Christianity that could possibly interest Trump is the “prosperity gospel.” That is a perverse belief that financial wealth is a sign of heavenly approval rooted in 19^th Century occult beliefs that is anathema to Christian scripture.
Many actual Christians regard the prosperity gospel as evil. The evangelical magazine founded by Billy Graham, Christianity Today, calls it “an aberrant theology” promoted by such disgraced televangelists including Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Baker.
Early in Trump’s aborted 2012 presidential campaign, Cohen writes, he was ordered to reach out to faith communities. Soon Paula White, now the White House adviser on faith, proposed a meeting at Trump Tower with evangelical leaders. Cohen writes that Trump liked White because she was blonde and beautiful.
Cohen said that among those attending were Jerry Falwell Jr., who recently resigned in disgrace as head of Liberty University, and Creflo Dollar, who
corporate jet and who was criminally charged that year with choking his daughter. Dollar said those charges were the work of the devil.
Once the evangelical leaders took their seats, Cohen writes, Trump quickly and slickly portrayed himself as a man of deep faith. Cohen writes that this was nonsense.
Laying on Hands
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superspreaders who beleive in small gov't take covis bailout $?!
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trumps-religious-right-backers-get-millions-in-covid%e2%80%8b-19-relief/
Conservative evangelical churches and advocacy groups led by vocal boosters of President Donald Trump have received millions of dollars in coronavirus relief funds, marking a new milestone in the religious right’s long campaign to take a wrecking ball to the wall separating church and state.
The Paycheck Protection Program included in coronavirus relief legislation was designed to help small businesses and other organizations stay afloat and keep people working during the pandemic. Religious-right leaders worked with their allies in Congress and the Trump administration to make sure that churches would be able to receive direct government funding to support clergy salaries and other operational expenses. The program is administered by the Small Business Administration, which waived normal requirements that participants in its loan program abide by nondiscrimination standards.
On June 22, the SBA hosted a “Recovery & Resilience for Faith Based Communities tele-townhall” for leaders of churches and religious nonprofits to urge them to participate in the program by applying before the June 30 deadline—and to lavish praise on Trump for supporting the program. The call was promoted by the White House and religious-right figures like Gary Bauer.
Paula White, who oversees the Trump administration’s faith-based outreach from her perch at the White House, began the call by praying for the president. “Put a hedge and wall of fire around him that no weapon formed against him would be able to prosper,” White prayed.
White praised Trump and his administration’s extensively, saying, “it has always been his heart to make sure that houses of worship and people of faith have been protected.” She continued:
You heard that from way back, he was saying, ‘We’re going to put Merry back in Christmas,’ or talking about the Johnson Amendment. But he’s done so much to accomplish that. Things with religious freedom, like removing restrictions on grants. The PPP is one way that we begin to see this. There are so many others, but there are departments everywhere that have grants, and for years and decades, they’ve had restrictions that people of faith have had very, very difficult time. Well, our president made sure to remove those restrictions on grants, ensuring faith-based has equal access to capital, equal access to grant money.
White’s own City of Destiny church got between $150,000 and $350,000 in PPP funds, according to SBA records.
To overcome the skepticism some conservative Christian leaders might have about getting directly involved with the federal government, officials invited several prominent religious-right leaders to praise the program. While PPP funds could be a lifeline to smaller congregations and nonprofits, it turns out that staying afloat has not been a problem for some megachurches that had online worship and fundraising abilities. Instead, some of those megachurches have used money freed up by paycheck protection to expand their influence in their local communities.
Jentezen Franklin, a member of Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board, is pastor of the multi-campus Free Chapel megachurch, based in Gainesville, Georgia. Franklin was effusive on the SBA call, marveling that his church received a “tremendous amount of money” within three weeks of applying for it. Data released by the SBA Monday make it clearer how “tremendous” that amount was—in the $1 million to $2 million range. With payroll covered by government funds and the ability to “catch up online,” Franklin said his church distributed $340,000 to small churches in his community.
Franklin has urged evangelicals to help reelect Trump or be prepared to face tragic consequences. Trump publicly announced that he was watching Franklin’s worship service on March 15, which Trump had declared a national day of prayer.
Samuel Rodriguez, a pastor who prayed at Trump’s inauguration and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said PPP money was “like manna in the desert of this pandemic.” Rodiguez said the church was “made for this hour,” adding that “for this administration to recognize the church and the faith community as essential is a game changer.”
Rodriguez’s New Season Church in Sacramento, California, received between $150,000 and $350,000. He said the money has helped his own church not just survive but help other churches and expand community outreach. Rodriguez, who recently denounced the Democratic Party as “hostile to our Christian worldview,” called the program a “powerful resource” and a “blessing.”
“This is Uncle Sam helping us do the will of our heavenly father,” Rodriguez said. “So the PPP enabled us to cover payroll for our staff that is right now praying for interceding for the needs of our community, not just physical, spiritual, but in mental and emotional needs, literally saving lives.”
Also on the SBA call was another member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and longtime opponent of reproductive choice and LGBTQ equality. Dobson said that his organization, the James Dobson Family Institute, “has literally been kept solvent this spring and summer by the Paycheck Protection Plan.” Dobson said that thanks to the money his organization had received, adding, “We have not asked for a cent from anybody in six months.”
Other Trump-supporting leaders and organizations have done quite well. Here’s a sampling, drawn from our own research and other reporting on the SBA records:
- First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, led by Trump cheerleaderRobert Jeffress, was among the megachurches listed as having received between $2 million and $5 million. Another was Guillermo Maldonado’s King Jesus International Ministry, which hosted an Evangelicals for Trump campaign launch last year.
- The American Center for Law and Justice, part of the lucrative legal empire of Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow and his family, got between $1 million and $2 million.
- The anti-LGBTQ advocates at Liberty Counsel received between $350,000 and $1 million.
- End Times pastor Jim Bakker’s Morningside Church got between $350,000 and $1 million.
- Televangelist Rick Joyner’s Morningstar Church got between $350,000 and $1 million.
Initially, the idea of tax dollars directly supporting clergy and church operations was defended as an extraordinary response to the unique situation caused by the pandemic. But on a phone call organized by Paula White’s One Voice Prayer Movement in May,former Rep. Randy Forbes of Virginia, founder of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, celebrated that “precedents for religious freedom” that are being set during the pandemic—specifically the unprecedented use of federal tax dollars to directly fund clergy and churches—“are going to endure long after this coronavirus has gone.”
Marcus Harris, director of faith and community initiatives in the office of Entrepreneurial Development at the SBA, told people in the call, “One thing I’m able to say in my role as the faith-based leader here at SBA is that I know for many of you this is your first interaction with SBA, but we do not want this to be your last,” a sentiment that was repeated by SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza.
Tags: Donald TrumpJames DobsonJentezen FranklinJim BakkerPaula WhiteRick JoynerRobert JeffressSamuel RodriguezChurch-StateCoronavirusElection 2020Trump AdministrationAmerican Center for Law and JusticeFirst Baptist Church DallasLiberty CounselTrump Administration
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**Bakker Begs Viewers: ‘Don’t Let Me Have to File for Bankruptcy’**
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1219 schism on djt?
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/white-evangelicals-still-view-support-for-trump-as-spiritual-warfare-against-the-demonic-forces-pushing-for-his-impeachment
no lnx
White evangelicals still view support for Trump as ‘spiritual warfare’ against the ‘demonic forces’ pushing for his impeachment
Written by Alex Henderson December 23, 2019
Although President Donald Trump has plenty of critics in Christianity — some Catholics, some Mainline Protestants — he is still quite popular among far-right white evangelical fundamentalists. So when Mark Galli, the retiring editor-in-chief of the evangelical Christianity Today, wrote a scathing anti-Trump op-ed last week, many of Trump’s white evangelical supporters were furious — including Franklin Graham, son of the late Christianity Today founder Billy Graham.And journalist Ed Kilgore, in a December 23 article for New York Magazine, stresses that Trump’s critics shouldn’t think white evangelical support for him is softening — they still view Trump as their champion.
White evangelical support for Trump, Kilgore observes, goes beyond Trump putting so many far-right judges on the federal judiciary: as they see it, fighting Trump’s impeachment and getting him reelected in 2020 is a form of spiritual warfare.
“Many Christian Right leaders and members of their flocks view political battles involving Trump as spiritual warfare between holy and demonic forces, with the crude, self-idolizing and heathenish POTUS treated as unquestionably the champion of the Prince of Peace,” Kilgore explains.
Kilgore points to a December 19 article by Sarah Posner for Type Investigations as having some of the best reporting in recent days on the amount of unwavering support Trump still enjoys among far-right white evangelicals.
Posner reported, “Trump’s evangelical base is a sprawling, interconnected network of political advocacy groups, megachurches, White House advisers, televangelists and prayer warriors. It also includes a formidable, data-driven get-out-the-vote operation.”
Posner’s article cites some of the well-known Christian Right extremists who remain committed to helping Trump win a second term in 2020, and they range from the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Ralph Reed to the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. Another is Jim Bakker.
According to Posner, “Inside this ecosystem, impeachment is, at best, a partisan sideshow concocted by Democrats to distract the public from Trump’s many important accomplishments. At worst, it is a satanic scheme to upend God’s plan for America — which was to install Trump in office in order to ensure the nation is governed by Christians who espouse ‘biblical’ values.”
One of Trump’s top allies in his Christian Right outreach, Kilgore observes, isFlorida-based evangelist Paula White — who preaches an ideology called the Prosperity Gospel. In contrast to all the Catholics and Mainline Protestants who equate greed, materialism and avarice with sinfulness, the Prosperity Gospel associates a fat bank account with being a good Christian and poverty with moral failings.So when Republicans go out of their way to hurt the poor, proponents of the Prosperity Gospel see that as righteous Christian behavior.
Kilgore warns, “No, these people are not going to abandon Donald Trump. They are now so complicit in his presidency that to question him is to condemn themselves to a judgement too terrible to contemplate.”
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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jim-bakker-the-left-is-under-massive-demon-possession/
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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/lori-bakker-liberals-want-to-lock-christians-away-in-mental-illness-centers/
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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jim-bakker-trumps-critics-look-demon-possessed/
Today, televangelist Jim Bakker once again declared that Donald Trump’s election as president was a victory for God and the church, even going so far as to tell his guest, End Times radio host Rick Wiles, that the new president’s many critics appear to be possessed by demons.
“Have you ever looked into the eyes of some of these people?” he asked, criticizing Trump’s “mean” detractors from both sides of the aisle. “I’m telling you, there are some people that I’m concerned are demon-possessed. They’re just going crazy. Their eyes look like demons [are] coming out of them. I’m scared.”
Wiles said Trump victory blocked Satan’s attempt to drive the U.S. into another world war, while Bakker said that “there’s a warfare in the heavenlies” and “the great battle of the Antichrist” has already arrived.
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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/bakker-forces-of-hell-oppose-donald-trump-because-he-stands-for-righteousness
Televangelist Jim Bakker revealed on his program today that God called on him to help get Donald Trump elected president because Trump “stands for Bible reading” in public schools and says the words “Merry Christmas.”
But because “the family of God” elected Trump, Bakker said, the forces of “evil” are now fighting back.
“All hell is against this presidency,” Bakker said, because Trump stands for “righteousness.”
“Christianity cramps the style of this generation,” he added. “This generation wants to sin, mock God, kill babies, a million of them a year, and just do anything we want. They’ve decided to change marriage, the whole definition of marriage. I’ve got news for you: It still takes a man and a woman to make a baby.”
Bakker went on to falsely claim that the United Kingdom has legalized “three-person marriage” and “so they’re going to take parts, stuff from three people; so three people now can get married, pretty soon you’ll be able to marry a baboon.” (Bakker cited a report that the leader of Britain’s Green Party said she was open to supporting civil unions for three people).
Later, Bakker expressed confidence that Trump will give people “the chance to put Christ back in the United States of America” and begin “reinstating ‘Merry Christmas,’” despite the fact that “about half of America are God-haters.”
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