“We have reached a moment now to set a new course for the nation,” says “apostle” Chuck Pierce. According to his biography, “Chuck is known for his accurate, prophetic gifting which helps direct nations, cities, churches and individuals in understanding the times and seasons we live in.”
“The windows of access over Washington, D.C., are open!” he raises his voice. “Open!”
“Freedom!” everyone cries.
Another featured speaker, Rick Ridings, takes the stage to offer the details of one of his apparent conversations with God. “I said, ‘How will the nations learn to change?’ ” Ridings asks. “The Lord said, ‘It must play,’ ” he pauses for emphasis, “ ‘the Trump card.’ ”
As the audience reacts with a cheer, he continues, “It was amazing to see the realignment of Israel, Jerusalem, for America.”
This subsection of the Christian nationalist universe may appear to be well outside the mainstream of the movement, and many of its beliefs and practices—including an acceptance of female pastors—are no doubt heretical to hard-line evangelicals in the style of Ralph Drollinger. But the presence of a featured guest—Pastor Andrew Brunson, who appears onstage with his wife, Norine, to deliver a lengthy and impassioned speech of gratitude—shows that this cohort has more avenues of access to power than one might think. Brunson, who lived in Turkey for twenty years and pastored at a small evangelical Presbyterian congregation in Izmir, was arrested and imprisoned for two years on allegations of “support of a terrorist organization” and “political and military espionage.” Brunson received legal representation from the American Center for Law and Justice, which is led by Trump counsel Jay Sekulow, and his cause was trumpeted by nearly every major Christian nationalist organization in America, from the Family Research Council to the Alliance Defending Freedom. After Brunson’s release was secured and he returned to the United States, he was photographed praying in the Oval Office with President Trump.
Prior to Pastor Brunson’s speech, Hamill claims to have prayed, along with other faith leaders, for Brunson’s release in Sam Brownback’s office at the State Department. Brownback “brought us up privately to his office so we could just hear his heart,” Hamill says. “And he pulled out a picture of Pastor Andrew with a personal note that he had written and asked for the Gideon group, our community-within-a-community, and the Lamplighter families to pray for Pastor Andrew.”
Brunson is followed on stage by Pam Pryor, who led a “faith and Christian outreach” effort during Trump’s presidential campaign. Pryor, an ex-aide to Sarah Palin whose name appears on the leaked 2014 membership list for the Council for National Policy, has landed a job as senior advisor in the office of the undersecretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights at the State Department and is on hand to help celebrate Brunson’s release.52 “I just want to say if I’m ever in prison, I want Norine!” she says from the podium, and the crowd laughs along with her.
Praising Jon and Jolene Hamill as “royalty among intercessors,” Pryor tells us she, too, sets aside time for “intercessory prayer” every Tuesday at 10:00 A.M. “I will say there’s still a lot to pray for in the State Department, still a lot to pray for in this administration,” she says. “There are a lot of enemies still within the camp. And that’s bad, man, they are, yeah, they are still in the camp, so pray … but I have such confidence.”
As it happens, a Chanukah gathering for members of the Orthodox Jewish community is taking place in the Trump International Hotel on the very same night. For the Lamplighters, this can be no mere coincidence. “Tonight, Jewish leaders are hosted at the Trump hotel for a Chanukah celebration,” Ridings says. “We bless President Trump even as he sits with elders of the Jewish community. A righteous revolution has been released to bring America back, to turn America to God. Trump has brought us into alignment with Jerusalem.”
Throughout the event, there is only praise for the Museum of the Bible and the sudden relocation of the conference to the Trump International Hotel. I ask Johneen how she feels about the change, and she is effusive. “They’re really treating us like royalty,” she says, pointing out that the Museum of the Bible is paying for buffet meals in an attempt to compensate for the venue change. “That wasn’t included before,” she says appreciatively.
When another guest marvels, “Isn’t this hotel incredible?” Johneen responds, “Isn’t it incredible what God has done?”
Johneen exudes an admirable sense of optimism and wonder, and in some ways I find myself envying her ability to read in creaky floorboards and unsecured fire extinguishers a message sent from on high. No self-doubt stands in the way of her drive to place her own story at the center of the universe. No shimmering displays of political or financial corruption, no glaring examples of political manipulation, will cloud her happy vision.
As the first night of Revolution 2018 winds down, I head to the hotel bar. The men outnumber the women, and they do have a certain swagger. A tall bearded man, about forty, strolls through the lounge in leather chaps and a T-shirt reading, “Bikers for Trump.” His lady friend, in Minnie Mouse polka dots and six-inch platforms, giggles on his arm. A number of men in very expensive suits chat in the middle area of the lounge in languages I can’t identify. A group of Orthodox Jews are installed in an area near the front of the room. I recognize Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch in Washington; Shemtov is Jared and Ivanka’s rabbi.53 Four or five young men in slim-fitting suits and fashy haircuts, several wearing “Trump 2020” buttons, saunter up to the bar. One has what appears to be a tattoo of an Iron Cross discernible just above his collared shirt.
Over a glass of Trump champagne and some perfectly pickled radishes, I watch the chyrons flow across the overhead television tuned to Fox News. “ANTI-CHRISTMAS CRAZINESS … WHERE IS THE TOLERANCE ON THE LEFT? … LIBERALS: THE NEW CENSORS … DEMOCRATS: THE PARTY OF KILLJOYS … CLIMATE CHANGE ALARMISM IS GOING TOO FAR …”
CHAPTER 7
The Blitz: Turning the States into Laboratories of Theocracy
In the world of investigative journalism, most of the revelations come in pieces—a stray bit of testimony here, a video recording over there—that accumulate in slow motion. But once in a long while it all happens on one day with a discovery that suddenly makes sense of the past and casts the future in a new light. That more or less was the case when Frederick Clarkson, acting on a tip, went fishing in a conservative website and reeled in a 116-page manual for a campaign called Project Blitz.1
“It was like an archeological find or a scientific discovery,” said Clarkson, a senior research analyst at the Massachusetts think tank Political Research Associates, who reported on his findings for the online magazine Religion Dispatches. “You see it for what it is, and suddenly the world has changed.”
The discovery of Project Blitz was a game changer for understanding the movement’s legislative strategy. It is the playbook for a nationwide assault on state legislatures in all fifty states. It does indeed describe a “blitz,” for the basic strategy is to flood the zone with coordinated, simultaneous bills in the hopes that they will, eventually, become law.2 The stated aim of the project is to advance “religious freedom”—in a late 2019 conference call, organizers discussed rebranding the initiative Freedom for All—but this turns out to be the biggest of the many deceptions that characterize the enterprise. Along with the parallel, equally massive, coordinated assault by antiabortion activists on state legislatures, Project Blitz aims to inundate as many states as possible with its bills in order to jam the wheels of the state legislative process. On a 2017 conference call for like-minded state legislators, Project Blitz director Lea Carawan thanked the “coalition of government leaders, faith-based organizations, policy and legal groups, media outlets, and businesses who are united to blitz the nation with effective and enduring religious freedom legislation, and also reclaim the narrative in the public square.”
Although the initiative was started in 20
15, it is evolving rapidly, capitalizing on its previous successes and incorporating lessons learned from its losses. In 2016 the Project Blitz playbook was 40 pages long; in 2017 it had grown to 116 pages. By 2018–2019 it had swelled to 148 pages.
Perhaps the most illuminating aspect of the Project Blitz manual, however, has to do less with the specifics on the Christian nationalist strategy for state legislation than with what it reveals about the organization and effectiveness of the movement itself. There is no single institution behind Project Blitz, just as there is no single Christian nationalist headquarters, no permanent staff, no charismatic kingpin. There are simply a number of familiar faces, a variety of old and new hats, and a swarm of acronyms. And yet none of these absences seems to diminish the movement’s ability to act effectively and decisively. The unity of Christian nationalism, as ever, is to be found in its distinctive political vision.
At the time of Clarkson’s discovery, the steering committee of Project Blitz consisted of four individuals, each of whom opens a revealing window on the workings of Christian nationalist leadership. Lea Carawan, the director of the group, is representative of the governmental wing of the movement. Carawan, who obtained her master’s degree in Christian theology at Regent University, is cofounder (along with Virginia congressman J. Randy Forbes) and executive director of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, whose goal is to “protect religious freedom, preserve America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and promote prayer,” as well as “address and challenge current anti-faith trends” affecting the legal and legislative landscape. “What separation of church and state was designed to do, that Thomas Jefferson himself said, was to ensure that [government] did not interfere with our ability to live out our faith in the public square,” Carawan told a TV interviewer in 2018.3
“Our country was founded by Christians on Judeo-Christian principles, and they intended for this to be a Christian nation,” said the interviewer.
“That’s right,” Carawan replied. “It simply means that our laws and policies will reflect Judeo-Christian or biblical values and concepts.”
Joining Carawan on the steering committee of Project Blitz is Buddy Pilgrim, a businessman and founder of Integrity Leadership, a ministry focused on “equipping Christians with Biblical principles for the workplace.” According to Integrity Leadership’s website, “We will always exercise and teach dominion in business and politics.”4 Pilgrim is an avid proponent of the merger between the Christian far right and the economic far right. When Pilgrim writes, “Dominion in earthly realms of authority (business & politics) is a Biblical mandate,” one can hear the echoes of Rushdoony and his progenitors. “Business is God’s system of wealth creation,” according to Pilgrim. In an interview, he added, “If you turn it over to people who don’t know God you’ll only get ungodly results.” The “only way to make freedom work,” he says, is to have “Godly men and women assuming positions of power and authority in business (and politics).”5
For several years Pilgrim has been active in reaching evangelical clergy with the message of the importance of voting. “The evangelical Christian vote is the single most important bloc in any given election and it was in particular in 2016,” he told a radio interviewer in 2018. “So we’ve got this huge voting bloc out there, and we’re already organized. Most Christians already meet every week in a church.” Hitting the point home, he added, “There was no Republican candidate who can win in 2016 without the evangelical vote, and there was no Republican candidate who could lose if they had the evangelical vote … [I]t was essential to that election.”
In addition to his convictions and activism, what Pilgrim may also bring to the table is access to money and connections. Lindy M. “Buddy” Pilgrim is the former president of Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation and a nephew of Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim, who founded the chicken processing company in 1946 as a feed store in Pittsburg, Texas. Some sixty years later Pilgrim’s Pride was in the Fortune 500. At its peak, the company had operations in seventeen states and Mexico and more than 35,000 employees. Buddy Pilgrim later branched out to other endeavors. He worked as CEO of Simmons Foods and founded start-ups in residential housing, food distribution, and agribusiness. He also established businesses in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.
A Trump supporter from the start—voting against Hillary Clinton was “a simple choice of life over death”—Pilgrim served on President Trump’s “Evangelical Leadership Council,” as a 2018 radio interviewer called it. Pilgrim glowingly recalled a dinner he attended at the White House for evangelical leaders, including James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Kenneth Copeland, and Franklin Graham. “And here’s what was so special about it,” he said. “This was the first ever dinner like this, and the dinner was literally named, ‘A Celebration of Evangelical Leadership.’ Not ‘a celebration of faith leadership in general,’ with a mix of Buddhists and Hindus and Christians and all these other groups.”6
Project Blitz lists two other sponsoring organizations: WallBuilders ProFamily Legislative Network and the National Legal Foundation. David Barton, of course, is the founder and president of the first and sits on the board of the second. Not surprisingly, Barton is also on the steering committee of Project Blitz. In fact, to outward appearances, he is an ideas man and a prime mover behind the venture. In several conference calls aimed at coordinating Project Blitz with sympathetic legislators, it was Barton, along with Carawan, who took the lead in laying out the strategy and fielding questions. Barton also shares another connection with Buddy Pilgrim: both men worked on Ted Cruz’s unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2016, with Pilgrim as national director of the Faith and Religious Liberties Coalition directing faith outreach efforts on Cruz’s behalf.
Rounding out the fantastic four on the Project Blitz steering committee is Bill Dallas, a convicted embezzler who served time in the San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, California, before founding a data firm that aims to turn out the conservative Christian vote. Dallas has also become a behind-the-scenes power player; he took a lead role in organizing the June 21, 2016 closed-door gathering between then presidential hopeful Donald Trump and more than 1,000 evangelical leaders from around the country. That gathering, which took place at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, marked a turning point in Trump’s political fortunes. We’ll meet Bill Dallas in the next chapter.
In early 2018 the bills started to come in. The people who follow these types of legislation across the states—the lawyers at Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, for example—sensed that something strange was afoot. In all of 2017 there had been three bills proposing the use of “In God We Trust” in various official forums. Now there were more than that number rolling in every week.
By April 2018 state legislatures had been served with more than seventy bills based on Project Blitz models. Some of them involved the motto “In God We Trust” and other expressions of Christianity in public settings. Project Blitz had kicked into action. While many bills were defeated, bills in at least five states were signed into law. “It’s kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side; it’ll drive ’em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this,” David Barton explained on a conference call about Project Blitz with state legislators from around the country.7
Politicians tended to frame the bills in the language of heritage and civil rights rather than religion. That was by design. In one of Project Blitz’s conference calls for sympathetic state legislators, David Barton promised to share “very extensive national surveys on where people are with religious liberties. And the kind of words we can use that people respond to much better than other words. And so those are the talking points that we are happy to share with you guys.” Later in the call, Carawan added, “Maclellan [possibly a reference to the deep-pocketed Chattanooga, Tennessee–based Maclellan Foundation] funded reports of two years of hearts and minds strategies … best practice messaging on religious freedom.”
M
innesota was one of the states where the messaging worked and Blitz scored. In May 2018 an “In God We Trust” bill, whose chief sponsor was state senator Dan Hall, passed the Minnesota senate. The bill, describing the words “In God We Trust” as a “national motto,” would allow “volunteer groups” to install their “In God We Trust” signs in public buildings, including public schools, throughout the state. Far-right policy groups such as the American Family Association, whose founder Donald Wildmon notoriously accused the Harry Potter franchise of promoting witchcraft, stepped up with their own “In God We Trust” posters designed with the public schools in mind.
The bill immediately provoked controversy; indeed, it seemed crafted for precisely that purpose. “I don’t want far-right hate groups like the American Family Association plastering my kids’ school with their ‘In God We Trust’ signs,” said Nancy Jackson, a St. Paul mother who organized a letter-writing campaign to state representatives. The debate over the bill lit up the floor of the legislature. Supporters noted that “In God We Trust” was adopted as the national motto in 1956; opponents pointed out that it was a McCarthy-era phenomenon that had displaced E Pluribus Unum, or “Out of Many, One,” which had been the United States’ unofficial motto since the eighteenth century. “I’m wondering if Senator Hall would feel the same if students walked in and instead of the word ‘God,’ the word ‘Allah,’ which is the word for God in the Muslim religion, welcomed students to their schools,” asked Democratic state senator Scott Dibble. Senator John Marty weighed in, too, characterizing the bill as “offensive.”8
The last comment in particular was like gold for the right-wing media-sphere. The implication that God is “offensive,” or that Islam might claim equal rights before the law with Christianity, was more than worth its weight in conservative rage. Soon the clip showed up on Fox News, CNS News, Breitbart, and other right-wing platforms. The segment was tweeted out by the Family Research Council. “Our nation’s motto, ‘In God We Trust,’ igniting a debate on the Minnesota state senate floor, over a bill that simply allows schools to—get this—voluntarily display posters with the saying on it,” the Fox anchor announced. “But some lawmakers, Democrats, argue the motto doesn’t belong in schools and is offensive.”
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