There are many ways we can come to define what compromises a Cult. There are a couple of podcasts on the concept of Cults and they fairly do a broad sweep of the subject which can include Bravo’s Housewives franchises to certain types of diets. My personal favorite: The Cult of Dolly Parton. I have to admit that while I respect fandom there is this point where you cross lines, but I am not sure I have heard of anyone altering their body physically and dressing like Dolly daily, relocating to Tennessee and taking up residence near Dollywood to be closer to their icon where her songs are on permanent playlist. The Cult of Kardashians however…..
But the point is that when you become obsessive to the point where all rational thought and all spare time and energy is devoted to a singular subject that you are willing to change your lifestyle, your appearance, donate your money or turn over your finances and independence in which to pursue and remain in the society in which you are a member, you are in a cult. There is the Sarah Lawrence Cult that was in the news of late and a subject of a Documentary and now a play. That is a cult.
There are cults around business, NXVIM is one that stands out as perhaps the most bizarre of those, but I would include Scientology as that is a publishing industry as well as a Real Estate Firm despite having the designation of a “Religion” enabling them tax breaks and exemptions. Nice work if you can get it.
And that is the biggest cult of all – Organized Religion. The idea that you can have a “house” as it is called for worship, draw people in to listen to someone read a version of a book, take that an interpret its meaning, then demand fealty, in turn submission of one’s soul to that and demand money in which to enable you to do it all again and then not pay taxes on earnings, that is to say a hell of a cult.
And like all Cults sex is the big tool, pencil in which to draw and of course the weapon to further the submission of now both body and soul. The Catholic Church really mastered that craft and with that there are more Revelations than in the Bible (pun intended) about other organized Churches that have similar problem, the Southern Baptists are one such example. With that the promises of investigations and repentance, the big tool of Churches that one there, in which to ostracize those who harmed others. In other words, like Police who get busted for shooting/killing/harming someone they are just moved to a new place on the Chess Board. They then spend their days hoping to not get caught again for doing the same or just at least not outed for something they did in the past and promise, pinky swear, to never do again.
When one thinks of Cults almost always you think of Religion. There are many and the cross the globe. The fill a Wiki page and include largely those centered on the concept of faith. But they are more than that. You really have to examine what a cult is, and despite the idea that they are some sort of thrown together crazies who are nuts is actually kind of right and wrong. Charlie Manson was an example of that but when you look at the Cult of Nike Shoes, aka Heaven’s Gate, they were not. They were highly organized, had a dogma, a Hierarchy and in turn financial records, established income and were to all their members it was a “religion.” If they had the appropriate tax documentation and legal registration filed that I cannot answer but I suspect they did. And yes there is a podcast about them too.
And with that the idea of Mass Suicide aka Homicide features in many cults. There was Jim Jones, the above mentioned Heaven’s Gate and this cult in Kenya that had members starve themselves while the founder managed to survive. This is not unlike the one in Tennessee, subject of another documentary The Way Down, about the Remnant Fellowship and their founding Minister, Gwen Shamblin, who died in a plane crash. Guess weight was not a problem in why that plane crashed.
And there is a debate that groups like Heaven’s Gate and many other established groups, almost all of them subjects of movies, documentaries, podcasts and books, such Wild Wild Country. And are they in fact organized religions that simply like Scientology have a different angle on historical canons or are they are a cult? Again, I think ALL and any of it are cults but again I will say that you are free to go in and out of a Church at any time and not feel compelled to shave your head, wear a costume, donate all your money and go live in social isolation dedicated to the faith. Oh wait? Never mind. Still love Audrey Hepburn in a Nun’s Story though.
I have found some similarities to cults, they are all started by Men and then they get Women involved to be the recruiters, the beards, the front faces to show the legitimacy of the organization. Even Jeffrey Epstein had Jizzehlda/Ghislaine or Beard, to pose as his companion in which to enable him to move among the movers and shakers of leadership and finance in which to gain trust, gain money and fuck young girls. The revelations of that family/cult/business is still coming to light. I love the denial by all those whose interests coalesced with Epstein in pursuit of more money (sure but really isn’t sex part of that?) I love that they never saw a “young” girl in his company or on his properties and planes. Really you didn’t? They seem to remember you.
Yes folks Money is a type of cult, where the Billionaires and Millionaires meet, greet, fuck and do it all again in pursuit of money and fame. And all of that comes or do I mean cum, in the forms of buying, planes, boats, art or homes in which to prove how your bank account and dick are the biggest. Look at Newport or Beverly Hills, the Hamptons, Manhattan where they have erect ones lining the sky. Islands or Ranches are another way to hide one’s crimes right in the open and with that they are telling us to fuck off as this is an exclusive cult where membership is closed.
There would be no NXIVM or many cults without the Multi Level Marketing one sees in other business oriented “cults” such as Amway and Herbalife. That is how that nut, Raniere, in NXIVM made a living prior to his founding of that cult. MLMs have been called many names, including network marketing, social marketing, pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes, product-based sales, referral marketing, and direct sales. MLMs are pyramid schemes that focus on recruiting people to recruit others, presumably giving a cut of the income up the chain. Bernie Madoff anyone?
When you dedicate yourself to preserving a belief, a lifestyle, a type of faith falls in line. Without that you have well just life and free will, and cults do not want free will, they want submission and obsession. The idea that you will have a better life, maybe not on this planet or even when alive but later so keep on believing, starving, earning, worshiping or fucking. That last one is always the biggest element in most cults. Remember they are almost all started by Men. Gwen broke that glass ceiling literally and is now with her God so I assume she can eat now, you don’t need food in heaven. And that Men are well men and they are ruled by the Dick. Why do you think all are Warriors of God and carry a big Sword there?
There are many cults and many types of them. The John Birch Society, the KKK, the White Supremacy movements that have many extensions the same way the Southern Baptists have Churches. Where to you think White Christian Nationalism comes from? I often recall the Westboro Baptist Church. But think of all the Pro Life Movements, where they literally killed Doctors, so much for pro life. And Politics make for strange bedfellows and none are more strange than the obsessive histrionic belief in Donald Trump. I have long said he hit the boxes of having money and fame. We all know that both are due to bluster and production values that the show The Apprentice provided. Like all Churches, Businesses have the Front of the House and the Back of the House. The back runs it all, they collect the money, hide the money and disperse the money, to themselves. It is all a type of grifting, or the long con. And without a certain type of believers that continue to come through the doors there is no way a business can last and you need that door open 24/7. Thank GOD for the Internet as now you never are closed.
The rise of Social Media parallels the rise of White Supremacy as it enabled, permitted, tolerated and allowed it. There were always factions and groups who in their isolation found support but then you have a massive communication too to facilitate it. Fox News and Tucker Carlson became the de facto propaganda machine and in turn those incidents of violence prompted by racial and religious animosity were easily dismissed and the faux rise of “antifa” became the new warrior cry and ones to blame. In my day it was Hippies, before that Communists and so on. The same way the lay elections at Soccer Moms, Tea Partiers and other “groups” that will be the determining factor are just concocted by the Media in which to bring eyes to screens, now those screens are more than Televisions, they are Phones, Computers, IPads and any form of technology one uses to find like. And as in all Math equations, like likes like.
As I watched the recent film on Showtime on Waco and I began to realize the complex web of how Guns and how those with guns meet, interact and the individuals, almost all exclusively white men who are lost and misdirected and use often Religion as their expression of frustration it allowed me to learn more about the way we use whatever tool we have in our kit to become a weapon. McVeigh was prompted by Waco and led him to find an enabler or more than one (which we still do not know and never will) I do find it ironic that it was the current DOJ Head, Merrick Garland who Prosecuted him but I am not sure I agree that it was flawless as he failed to realize that others were involved to help him plan and act upon it. And when we look at many of the mass shootings they are prompted by far more than a lone wolf who did not get laid, were bullied, were Racist, were Homophobic, Misogynist, Anti Semitic or whatever “ist” you need to validate your rage.
Jeffrey Toobin has written a new book, Homegrown, documenting some of this history behind Waco and the fanaticism that grew out of the 90s. The culmination of that was in fact Columbine. I had read the great book by Dave Cullen on the subject and knew the boys were not in fact bullied or sad losers. They had been in fact arrested and with that they conned their Parents, the Authorities that they were not a problem. But the myths remain. The same way a Teacher called that trigger by the drawings by one of them, the same was true in Michigan and yet the Parents there did know and in turn took off running. Denial is the same as complicity in many of these young men who are enabled to get guns, to hide the second life in the same way a Man hides a Mistress. Talk about Cults again and its relationship to reality TV take a look at Scandoval. What a farce that took up hours of rage and mob mentality to denigrate an idiot on a “reality” show and his affair. Do you actually know these people? Why do you care? Apply that rationale to the angry white men/boys who for some reason seen others as enemy’s and wish to do them harm. And when I got into an online argument with someone who was convinced that Columbine was a standard school shooting (again are any?) I pointed to the facts behind their reasoning, how they were perceived in legal filings as “good young promising men” by Therapists and Law Enforcement. Their parents relieved and meanwhile they planned on. Their killing of most of the victims was in the School Library and they took pleasure while shooting them. It is not a pretty story but again we have a gun problem, we have a massive mental health problem and we have no way of stopping or circumventing any of it. Time and time again we have failed to see signs, ignore flags and in turn we are so afraid we in fact contribute to it by buying more guns. And I will write a post about the history of how guns became the most significant issue in America today, a type of de facto defense mechanism that has little to do with the 2nd Amendment but more about money and strategy by the NRA and Gun Manufacturers. As all things in life there is always history and a back story.
But without a leader, a type of person, either dead or alive, in which to draw members there is no cult. Think Jesus and that is the starring member of that cult. When one looks at many “cult” fanatics there are usually patterns of behavior and failed businesses that often push one to form a type of community and in turn prove the naysayers wrong. The intent may be benign, but usually it evolves and becomes grander in both scope and scale. They almost always do. But as Americans we are illiterate, we like to emote, we like to believe what we believe and refuse to spend anytime doing the homework, taking the time to ask questions, and expect that our “instincts” are right. Really? Your instincts? We have two: Fight or flight. And with that we have some with higher order thinking skills motivated largely by the biggest motivator – Money. Money is the only thing that matters regardless of Class, Race, Gender etc, etc etc. And anyone who tells you different is either a Charlatan aka a Cult Leader or a Pathological liar aka a Cult Leader. Some are better than others at manipulating people to BELIEVE and not all of it is about a belief but it is about money. See Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos on that one.
It all falls to those who are Believers, Followers and those who are Leaders. And they are distinctly different. It is the Cult of Personality.
I think of the Church as that built on the foundation much akin to the Champlain Towers in Surfside Florida. Often they begin thanks to the well organized funding and messaging ambitions of the Corporation and continue on throughout regardless of who is the CEO and the doors are opened to anyone willing to pay the price of entry. And then it takes just one mistake of a member or leader that leads the Church as a whole to re-examine their history, their practices and their long term growth and stability. The Catholic Church is one such example.
Then we have the franchised religion. These are the ramshackle churches that align country towns, exist in neighborhoods, set up a temporary pop up shop on Sundays in a bar or community center to spread the word and that defines much of the Southern Baptist Organization.
All of them have factions and side groups that embrace a more hardcore view of the world, a script that follows the Book of Myths as if it is law with a traceable cohesive view that demands adherence and complete idolatry. Yes, beware of false idols.
I am writing a great deal about religion as I had not really understood its toxicity until I moved to Nashville. I was a live and let live believer in that you need what you need to be you and then I met the Christians of Nashville. And from that I learned of the Nashville Way which is to contradict themselves repeatedly and largely in jibberish. Here is a true real world current example over the issue of the Nathan Forrest, the founder of the KKK, whose bust sits in the Capital building. With the issue of removing Confederate Soldiers statues and markings throughout the country as they represent the most negative periods in America’s history. The Plumber Governor is going forth to finally remove it and have it sent to the State Museum. Meanwhile the State Legislator is going forward to prevent this. And this is what he said:
In 2020, Lee announced “represents pain and suffering and brutal crimes committed against African Americans,” Lee declared last summer, though on the campaign trail two years earlier, the future governor said he was against removing Confederate monuments.
However, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, a staunch opponent of relocating the Forrest bust from the Capitol, and House Speaker Cameron Sexton have argued for months that the governor and his cabinet members on the Capitol Commission did not follow state law by failing to get a vote of concurrence from the State Building Commission before proceeding to the Historical Commission.
And here is where once again it goes all in circle of jerks who seem to be determined to be heard regardless that the outcome will be said it will just go around the infamous roundabouts that align the roads in the South to further confuse and frustrate drivers trying to go in a straight line.
Adam Kleinheider, a spokesman for McNally, on Thursday said the lieutenant governor expects the State Building Commission to vote on the matter at its next scheduled meeting July 22. The makeup of that commission is similar to the Capitol Commission and probably would result in the same outcome, barring the unexpected. McNally “continues to stand by his assertion” that the Building Commission needs to concur with the Capitol Commission vote — despite the fact the Historical Commission already has approved removal.
And with that the Attorney General Herbert Slatery stated both sides’ argument for the proper protocol are valid. Slatery opined that the speakers, who argued the Capitol Commission should have taken the issue to the Building Commission before the Historical Commission, and the Lee administration, which went straight to the Historical Commission, each had legitimate interpretations.
Got that? Good. Welcome to Nashville, that is the way and truth and the light. In other words cover your ass talk out of both sides of your mouth and inevitably deny responsibility, put it on others and good to go. I met many like that and all of them had asses in pews on Sunday which is where all of this is learned and reinforced.
And with that I have been sure that the Churches role in the insurrection of January 6th and the election of Donald Trump; the rise of the new right and all the varying hate bills regarding LGBQT rights, as well as removing the right to choose regarding a woman’s body is moving across state lines in a fast clip. They are a determined, focused and well funded group with regards to turning America into a Theocracy.
This is an article from the Post regarding another mega church that is determined to do just that. They are insidious throughout the Country. And they too have had their problems in the past decades the most recent was in Seattle, with the Mars Church leadership controversy. But this is like whack-a-mole, as there is another ready to step into their former mall space the next day. And just like a mall shop they have Yelp reviews in which to enable the followers to find the one that fits, like purple soled Nikes. Ah yes Heaven’s Gate is awaiting you, just get on the space ship and ride to God. So Aliens are Christians?
And below that article I have placed an opinion piece from the New York Times regarding the decline of the Evangelical Movement. Hmm which is it? I leave that to you to decide.
An American Kingdom
A new and rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, wants a nation under God’s authority, and is central to Donald Trump’s GOP
FORT WORTH — The pastor was already pacing when he gave the first signal. Then he gave another, and another, until a giant video screen behind him was lit up with an enormous colored map of Fort Worth divided into four quadrants.
Greed, the map read over the west side. Competition, it said over the east side. Rebellion, it said over the north part of the city. Lust, it said over the south.
It was an hour and a half into the 11 a.m. service of a church that represents a rapidly growing kind of Christianity in the United States, one whose goal includes bringing under the authority of a biblical God every facet of life, from schools to city halls to Washington, where the pastor had traveled a month after the Jan. 6 insurrection and filmed himself in front of the U.S. Capitol saying quietly, “Father, we declare America is yours.”
Now he stood in front of the glowing map, a 38-year-old White man in skinny jeans telling a congregation of some 1,500 people what he said the Lord had told him: that Fort Worth was in thrall to four “high-ranking demonic forces.” That all of America was in the grip of “an anti-Christ spirit.” That the Lord had told him that 2021 was going to be the “Year of the Supernatural,” a time when believers would rise up and wage “spiritual warfare” to advance God’s Kingdom, which was one reason for the bright-red T-shirt he was wearing. It bore the name of a church elder who was running for mayor of Fort Worth. And when the pastor cued the band, the candidate, a Guatemalan American businessman, stood along with the rest of the congregation as spotlights flashed on faces that were young and old, rich and poor, White and various shades of Brown — a church that had grown so large since its founding in 2019 that there were now three services every Sunday totaling some 4,500 people, a growing Saturday service in Spanish and plans for expansion to other parts of the country.
“Say, ‘Cleanse me,’ ” the pastor continued as drums began pounding and the people repeated his words. “Say, ‘Speak, Lord, your servants are listening.’ ”
The church is called Mercy Culture, and it is part of a growing Christian movement that is nondenominational, openly political and has become an engine of former president DonaldTrump’s Republican Party. It includes some of the largest congregations in the nation, housed in the husks of old Baptist churches, former big-box stores and sprawling multimillion-dollar buildings with private security to direct traffic on Sundays. Its most successful leaders are considered apostles and prophets, including some with followings in the hundreds of thousands, publishing empires, TV shows, vast prayer networks, podcasts, spiritual academies, and branding in the form of T-shirts, bumper stickers and even flags. It is a world in which demons are real, miracles are real, and the ultimate mission is not just transforming individual lives but also turning civilization itself into their version of God’s Kingdom: one with two genders, no abortion, a free-market economy, Bible-based education, church-based social programs and laws such as the ones curtailing LGBTQ rights now moving through statehouses around the country.
This is the world of Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White and many more lesser-known but influential religious leaders who prophesied that Trump would win the election and helped organize nationwide prayer rallies in the days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, speaking of an imminent “heavenly strike” and “a Christian populist uprising,” leading many who stormed the Capitol to believe they were taking back the country for God.
Even as mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations continue an overall decline in numbers in a changing America, nondenominational congregations have surged from being virtually nonexistent in the 1980s to accounting for roughly 1 in 10 Americans in 2020, according to long-term academic surveys of religious affiliation. Church leaders tend to attribute the growth to the power of an uncompromised Christianity. Experts seeking a more historical understanding point to a relatively recent development called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR.
A California-based theologian coined the phrase in the 1990s to describe what he said he had seen as a missionary in Latin America — vast church growth, miracles, and modern-day prophets and apostles endowed with special powers to fight demonic forces. He and others promoted new church models using sociological principles to attract members. They also began advancing a set of beliefs called dominionism, which holds that God commands Christians to assert authority over the “seven mountains” of life — family, religion, education, economy, arts, media and government — after which time Jesus Christ will return and God will reign for eternity.
None of which is new, exactly. Strains of this thinking formed the basis of the Christian right in the 1970s and have fueled the GOP for decades.
What is new is the degree to which Trump elevated a fresh network of NAR-style leaders who in turn elevated him as God’s chosen president, a fusion that has secured the movement as a grass-roots force within the GOP just as the old Christian right is waning. Increasingly, this is the world that the term “evangelical voter” refers to — not white-haired Southern Baptists in wooden pews but the comparatively younger, more diverse, more extreme world of millions drawn to leaders who believe they are igniting a new Great Awakening in America, one whose epicenter is Texas.
That is where the pastor wearing the bright-red T-shirt, Landon Schott, had been on the third day of a 40-day fast when he said the Lord told him something he found especially interesting.
It was 2017, and he was walking the streets of downtown Fort Worth asking God to make him a “spiritual father” of the city when he heard God say no. What he needed was “spiritual authority,” he remembered God telling him, and the way to get that was to seek the blessing of a pastor named Robert Morris, an evangelical adviser to Trump, and the founder of one of the largest church networks in the nation, called Gateway, with nine branches and weekly attendance in the tens of thousands, including some of the wealthiest businessmen in Texas.
Morris blessed him. Not long after that, a bank blessed him with the funds to purchase an aging church called Calvary Cathedral International, a polygonal structure with a tall white steeple visible from Interstate 35. Soon, the old red carpet was being ripped up. The old wooden pews were being hauled out. The cross on the stage was removed, and in came a huge screen, black and white paint, speakers, lights and modern chandeliers as the new church called Mercy Culture was born.
“Mercy” for undeserved grace.
“Culture” for the world they wanted to create.
That world is most visible on Sundays, beginning at sunrise, when the worship team arrives to set up for services.
In the lobby, they place straw baskets filled with earplugs.
In the sanctuary, they put boxes of tissues at the end of each row of chairs.
On the stage one recent Sunday, the band was doing its usual run-through — two guitar players, a bass player, a keyboardist and two singers, one of whom was saying through her mic to the earpiece of the drummer: “When we start, I want you to wait to build it — then I want you to do those drum rolls as we’re building it.” He nodded, and as they went over song transitions, the rest of the worship team filtered in for the pre-service prayer.
The sound technician prayed over the board controlling stacks of D&B Audiotechnik professional speakers. The lighting technician asked the Lord to guide the 24 professional-grade spotlights with colors named “good green” and “good red.” Pacing up and down the aisles were the ushers, the parking attendants, the security guards, the greeters, the camera operators, the dancers, the intercessors, all of them praying, whispering, speaking in tongues, inviting into the room what they believed to be the Holy Spirit — not in any metaphorical sense, and not in some vague sense of oneness with an incomprehensible universe. Theirs was the spirit of a knowable Christian God, a tangible force they believed could be drawn in through the brown roof, through the cement walls, along the gray-carpeted hallways and in through the double doors of the sanctuary where they could literally breathe it into their bodies. Some people spoke of tasting it. Others said they felt it — a sensation of warm hands pressing, or of knowing that someone has entered the room even when your eyes are closed. Others claimed to see it — golden auras or gold dust or feathers of angels drifting down.
That was the intent of all this, and now the first 1,500 people of the day seeking out those feelings began arriving, pulling in past fluttering white flags stamped with a small black cross over a black “MC,” in through an entrance where the words “Fear Go” were painted in huge block letters above doors that had remained open for much of the pandemic. Inside, the church smelled like fresh coffee.
“Welcome to Mercy,” the greeters said to people who could tell stories of how what happened to them here had delivered them from drug addiction, alcoholism, psychological traumas, PTSD, depression, infidelities, or what the pastor told them was the “sexual confusion” of being gay, queer or transgender. They lingered awhile in a communal area, sipping coffee on modern leather couches, taking selfies in front of a wall with a pink neon “Mercy” sign, or browsing a narrow selection of books about demonic spirits. On a wall, a large clock counted down the final five minutes as they headed into the windowless sanctuary.
Inside, the lights were dim, and the walls were bare. No paintings of parables. No stained glass, crosses, or images of Jesus. Nothing but the stage and the enormous, glowing screen where another clock was spinning down the last seconds as cymbals began playing, and people began standing and lifting their arms because they knew what was about to happen. Cameras 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were in position. The live stream was on standby. In the front row, the 85-year-old retired pastor of the church this used to be secured his earplugs.Advertisement
What happened next was 40 nonstop minutes of swelling, blasting, drum-pounding music at times so loud that chairs and walls seemed to vibrate. The huge screen became a video of swirling clouds, then a black galaxy of spinning stars. The spotlights went from blue to amber to gold to white. A camera slid back and forth on a dolly. Fog spilled onto the stage. Modern dancers raced around waving shiny flags. One song melded into the next, rising and falling and rising again into extended, mantralike choruses about surrender while people in the congregation began kneeling and bowing.
A few rows back, the pastor stood with one hand raised and the other holding a coffee cup. And when the last song faded, a worship team member walked onstage to explain what was happening in case anyone was new.
“The Holy Spirit is in this room,” he said.
Now everyone sat down and watched the glowing screen. Another video began playing — this one futuristic, techno music over flash-cut images of a nuclear blast, a spinning planet, advancing soldiers, and when it was over, the pastor was standing on the stage to deliver his sermon, the essence of which was repeated in these kinds of churches all over the nation:
America is in the midst of a great battle between the forces of God and Satan, and the forces of Satan roughly resemble the liberal, progressive agenda. Beware of the “seductive, political, demonic, power-hungry spirit that uses witchcraft to control God’s people.” Beware of “freedom that is actually just rebellion against God.” Beware of confusion. Beware of “rogue leaders.” Beware of a world that “preaches toleration of things God does not tolerate,” and on it went for a full hour, a man with a microphone in a spotlight, pacing, sweating, whispering about evil forces until he cued the band and gave instructions for eternal salvation.
“Just say, ‘Holy Spirit, would you teach me how to choose to obey you,’ ” he said, asking people to close their eyes, or kneel, or bow, and as the drums began pounding again, the reaction was the same as it was every Sunday.
People closed their eyes. They knelt. They bowed. They believed, and as they did, people with cameras roamed the congregation capturing peak moments for videos that would be posted to the church’s website and social media accounts: a man with tattooed arms crying; a whole row of people on their knees bowing; a blond woman in a flower-print dress lying all the way down on the floor, forehead to carpet.
When it was over, people streamed outside, squinting into the bright Fort Worth morning as the next 1,500 people pulled in past the fluttering white flags.
By late afternoon Sunday, the parking lot was empty and the rest of the work of kingdom-building could begin.
One day, this meant a meeting of the Distinct Business Ministry, whose goal was “raising up an army of influential leaders” across Fort Worth.
Another day, it meant the church hosting a meeting of a group called the Freedom Shield Foundation, a dozen or so men huddled over laptops organizing what one participant described as clandestine “operations” around Fort Worth to rescue people they said were victims of sex trafficking. This was a core issue for the church. Members were raising money to build housing for alleged victims. There were always prayer nights for the cause, including one where church members laid hands on Fort Worth’s sheriff, who sat with a Bible in his lap and said that the problem was “the demonic battle of our lifetime” and told those gathered that “you are the warriors in that battle.”
Another day, it meant the steady stream of cars inching toward the church food bank, one team loading boxes into trunks and another fanning out along the idling line offering prayers.
A man in a dented green sedan requested one for his clogged arteries.
A man trying to feed a family of seven asked in Spanish, “Please, just bless my life.”
A stone-faced woman said her mother had died of covid, then her sister, and now a volunteer reached inside and touched her shoulder: “Jesus, wrap your arms around Jasmine,” she said, and when she moved on to others who tried to politely decline, the volunteer, a young woman, gave them personal messages she said she had received from the Lord.
“God wants to tell you that you’re so beautiful,” she said into one window.
“I feel God is saying that you’ve done a good job for your family,” she said into another.
“I feel God is saying, if anything, He is proud of you,” she said in Spanish to a woman gripping the steering wheel, her elderly mother in the passenger seat. “When God sees you, He is so pleased, He is so proud,” she continued as the woman stared straight ahead. “I feel you are carrying so much regret, maybe? And pain?” she persisted, and now the woman began nodding. “And I think God wants to release you from the past. Say, ‘Jesus, I give you my shame.’ Say, ‘Jesus, I give you my regret,’ ” the volunteer said, and the woman repeated the words. “ ‘You know I tried my best, Jesus. I receive your acceptance. I receive your love,’ ” the volunteer continued, and now the woman was crying, and the food was being loaded into the back seat, and a volunteer was taking her name, saying, “Welcome to the family.”
Another day, the Kingdom looked like rows of white tents where a woman in a white dress was playing a harp as more than a thousand mostly young women were arriving for something called Marked Women’s Night.
“I feel the Lord is going to be implanting something in us tonight,” a 27-year-old named Autumn said to her friend, their silver eye shadow glowing in the setting sun.
“Every time I come here the Lord always speaks to me,” her friend said.
“Yeah, that happens to me all the time, too,” said Autumn, who described how the Lord had told her to move from Ohio to Texas, and then to attend Gateway Church, and then to enroll in a Gateway-approved school called Lifestyle Christianity University, where she said the Lord sent a stranger to pay her tuition. Not long after that, the Lord sent her into an Aldi supermarket, where she met a woman who told her about Mercy Culture, which is how she ended up sitting here on the grass on a summer evening, believing that the Lord was preparing her to go to Montana to “prophesy over the land” in anticipation of a revival.
“I don’t understand it; I just know it’s God,” Autumn said.
“So many miracles,” said her friend, and soon the drums were pounding.
They joined the crowd heading inside for another thunderous concert followed by a sermon by the pastor’s wife, during which she referred to the women as “vessels” and described “the Kingdom of Heaven growing and taking authority over our nation.”
Another day — Election Day in Fort Worth — hundreds of church members gathered at a downtown event space to find out whether their very own church elder, Steve Penate, would become the next mayor, and the sense in the room was that of a miracle unfolding.
“Supernatural,” said Penate, a first-time candidate, looking at the crowd of volunteers who’d knocked on thousands of doors around the city.
A candidate for the 2022 governor’s race stopped by. A wealthy businessman who helped lead the Republican National Hispanic Assembly drove over from Dallas. The pastor came by to declare that “this is the beginning of a righteous movement.”
“We are not just going after the mayorship — we’re going after every seat,” he said as the first batch of votes came in showing Penate in sixth place out of 10 candidates, and then fifth place, and then fourth, which was where he stayed as the last votes came in and he huddled with his campaign team to pray.
“Jesus, you just put a dent in the kingdom of darkness,” his campaign adviser said. “We stand up to the darkness. We stand up to the establishment. God, this is only the beginning.”
Another day, 100 or so young people crowded into a church conference room singing, “God, I’ll go anywhere; God, I’ll do anything,” hands raised, eyes closed, kneeling, bowing, crying, hugging. At the front of the room, a man with blond hair and a beard was talking about love.
“Everyone says they have the definition for what love is, but the Bible says, ‘By this we know love,’ ” he said. “Jesus laid down his life for us, and we are to lay down our lives for others.”
He dimmed the lights and continued in this vein for another hour, the music playing, the young people rocking back and forth mouthing, “Jesus, Jesus,” trancelike, until the blond man said, “It’s about that time.”
He turned the lights back on and soon, he sent them out on missions into the four demonic quadrants of Fort Worth.
One group headed east into Competition, a swath of the city that included the mirrored skyscrapers of downtown and struggling neighborhoods such as one called Stop 6, where the young people had claimed two salvations in a park the day before.
Another team headed west toward the green lawns and sprawling mansions of Greed.
Another rolled south toward Lust, where it was normal these days to see rainbow flags on bungalow porches and cafe windows including the one where a barista named Ryan Winters was behind the counter, eyeing the door.
It wasn’t the evangelicals he was worried about but the young customers who came in and were sometimes vulnerable.
“Maybe someone is struggling with their identity,” Ryan said.
He was not struggling. He was 27, a lapsed Methodist who counted himself lucky that he had never heard the voice of a God that would deem him unholy for being who he was, the pansexual lead singer of a psychedelic punk band called Alice Void.
“I never had a time when I was uncomfortable or ashamed of myself,” he said. “We all take care of each other, right, Tom?”
“Oh, yeah,” said a man with long gray hair, Tom Brunen, a Baptist turned Buddhist artist who was 62 and had witnessed the transformation of the neighborhood from a dangerous, castoff district that was a refuge for people he called “misfits” into a place that represented what much of America was becoming: more accepting, more inclined to see churches in terms of the people they had forsaken.
“It’s all mythology and fear and guilt that keeps the plutocracy and the greed in line above everybody else,” Tom said. “That’s what the universe showed me. If you want to call it God, fine. The creative force, whatever. Jesus tried to teach people that it’s all one thing. He tried and got killed for it. Christianity killed Jesus. The end. That’s my testimony.”
That was what the kingdom-builders were up against, and in the late afternoon, Nick Davenport, 24, braced himself as he arrived at his demonic battlefield, Rebellion, a noisy, crowded tourist zone of bars, souvenir shops and cobblestone streets in the north part of the city. He began walking around, searching out faces.
“The sheep will know the shepherd’s voice,” he repeated to himself to calm his nerves.
“Hey, Jesus loves y’all,” he said tentatively to a blond woman walking by.
“He does, he does,” the woman said, and he pressed on.
“Is anything bothering you?” he said to a man holding a shopping bag.
“No, I’m good,” the man said, and Nick continued down the sidewalk.
It was hot, and he passed bars and restaurants and gusts of sour-smelling air. A cacophony of music drifted out of open doors. A jacked-up truck roared by.
He moved on through the crowds, scanning the faces of people sitting at some outdoor tables. He zeroed in on a man eating a burger, a red scar visible at the top of his chest.
“Do you talk to God?” Nick asked him.
“Every day — I died twice,” the man said, explaining he had survived a car accident.
“What happened when you died?” Nick asked.
“Didn’t see any white lights,” the man said. “Nothing.”
“Well, Jesus loves you,” Nick said, and kept walking until he felt God pulling him toward a young man in plaid shorts standing outside a bar. He seemed to be alone. He was drinking a beer, his eyes red.
“Hi, I’m Nick, and I wanted to know, how are you doing?”
“Kind of you to ask,” the man said. “My uncle killed himself yesterday.”
“Oh,” said Nick, pausing for a moment. “I’m sorry. You know, God is close to the brokenhearted. I know it doesn’t feel like it all the time.”
He began telling him his own story of a troubled home life and a childhood of bullying, and how he had been close to suicide himself when he was 18 years old, and how, on a whim, he went with a friend to a massive Christian youth conference in Nashville of the sort that is increasingly common these days. A worship band called Planet Shakers was playing, he said, and deep into one of their songs, he heard what he believed to be the voice of God for the first time.
“The singer said if you’re struggling, let it go, and I halfheartedly said, ‘Okay, God, I guess I give it to you,’ and all of the sudden I felt shaky. I fell to the ground. I felt like a hand on my chest. Like, ‘I have you.’ I heard God say, ‘I love you. I made you for a purpose.’ When I heard that, I bawled like a baby. That was when I knew what I was created for. For Jesus.”
The man with red eyes listened.
“Thanks for saying that,” he said, and Nick continued walking the sidewalks into the early evening, his confidence bolstered, feeling more certain than ever that he would soon be leaving his roofing job to do something else for the Lord, something big. He had been preparing, absorbing the lessons of a church that taught him his cause was righteous, and that in the great spiritual battle for America, the time was coming when he might be called upon to face the ultimate test.
“If I have any choice, I want to die like the disciples,” said Nick. “John the Baptist was beheaded. One or two were boiled alive. Peter, I believe he was crucified upside down. If it goes that way? I’m ready. If people want to stone me, shoot me, cut my fingers off — it doesn’t matter what you do to me. We will give anything for the gospel. We are open. We are ready.”
Ready for what, though, is the lingering question.
Those inside the movement have heard all the criticisms. That their churches are cults that prey on human frailties. That what their churches are preaching about LGTBQ people is a lie that is costing lives in the form of suicides. That the language of spiritual warfare, demonic forces, good and evil is creating exactly the sort of radical worldview that could turn politics into holy war. That the U.S. Constitution does not allow laws privileging a religion. That America does not exist to advance some Christian Kingdom of God or to usher in the second coming of Jesus.
To which Penate, the former mayoral candidate, said, “There’s a big misconception when it comes to separation of church and state. It never meant that Christians shouldn’t be involved in politics. It’s just loving the city. Being engaged. Our children are in public schools. Our cars are on public streets. The reality is that people who don’t align with the church have hijacked everything. If I ever get elected, my only allegiance will be to the Lord.”
Or as a member of Mercy Culture who campaigned for Penate said: “Can you imagine if every church took a more active role in society? If teachers were preachers? If church took a more active role in health? In business? If every church took ownership over their communities? There would be no homeless. No widows. No orphans. It would look like a society that has a value system. A Christian value system.”
That was the American Kingdom they were working to advance, and as another Sunday arrived, thousands of believers streamed past the fluttering white flags and into the sanctuary to bathe in the Holy Spirit for the righteous battles and glories to come.
The drums began pounding. The screen began spinning. The band began blasting, and when it was time, the pastor stood on the stage to introduce a topic he knew was controversial, and to deliver a very specific word. He leaned in.
“Submission,” he said.
“We’ve been taught obedience to man instead of obedience to God,” he continued.
“God makes an army out of people who will learn to submit themselves,” he continued.
“When you submit, God fights for you,” he concluded.
He cued the band. The drums began to pound again, and he told people to “breathe in the presence of God,” and they breathed. He told them to close their eyes, and they closed their eyes. He gave them words to repeat, and the people repeated them.
“I declare beautiful, supernatural submission,” they said.
The Christian Right Is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It
The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.”
Back then, much of the public sided with the religious right on the key culture war issue of gay marriage. “In 2004, if you had said, ‘We’re the majority, we oppose gay rights, we oppose marriage equality, and the majority of Americans is with us,’ that would have been true,” Jones told me. Youthful megachurches were thriving. It was common for conservatives to gloat that they were going to outbreed the left.
Activists imagined a glorious future. “Home-schoolers will be inordinately represented in the highest levels of leadership and power in the next generation,” Ned Ryun, a former Bush speechwriter, said at a 2005 Christian home-schooling convention. Ryun was the director of a group called Generation Joshua, which worked to get home-schooled kids into politics. The name came from the Old Testament. Moses had led the chosen people out of exile, but it was his successor, Joshua, who conquered the Holy Land.
But the evangelicals who thought they were about to take over America were destined for disappointment. On Thursday, P.R.R.I. released startling new polling data showing just how much ground the religious right has lost. P.R.R.I.’s 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people, shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year. (As a category, “white evangelicals” isn’t a perfect proxy for the religious right, but the overlap is substantial.) In 2020, as in every year since 2013, the largest religious group in the United States was the religiously unaffiliated.
One of P.R.R.I.’s most surprising findings was that in 2020, there were more white mainline Protestants than white evangelicals. This doesn’t necessarily mean Christians are joining mainline congregations — the survey measures self-identification, not church affiliation. It is, nevertheless, a striking turnabout after years when mainline Protestantism was considered moribund and evangelical Christianity full of dynamism.
In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, white evangelicals were also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56. “It’s not just that they are dying off, but it is that they’re losing younger members,” Jones told me. As the group has become older and smaller, Jones said, “a real visceral sense of loss of cultural dominance” has set in.
White evangelicals once saw themselves “as the owners of mainstream American culture and morality and values,” said Jones. Now they are just another subculture.
From this fact derives much of our country’s cultural conflict. It helps explain not just the rise of Donald Trump, but also the growth of QAnon and even the escalating conflagration over critical race theory. “It’s hard to overstate the strength of this feeling, among white evangelicals in particular, of America being a white Christian country,” said Jones. “This sense of ownership of America just runs so deep in white evangelical circles.” The feeling that it’s slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia.
QAnon is essentially a millenarian movement, with Trump taking the place of Jesus. Adherents dream of the coming of what they call the storm, when the enemies of the MAGA movement will be rounded up and executed, and Trump restored to his rightful place of leadership.
“It’s not unlike a belief in the second coming of Christ,” said Jones. “That at some point God will reorder society and set things right. I think that when a community feels itself in crisis, it does become more susceptible to conspiracy theories and other things that tell them that what they’re experiencing is not ultimately what’s going to happen.”
The fight over critical race theory seems, on the surface, further from theological concerns. There are, obviously, plenty of people who aren’t evangelical who are anti-C.R.T., as well as evangelicals who oppose C.R.T. bans. But the idea that public schools are corrupting children by leading them away from a providential understanding of American history has deep roots in white evangelical culture. And it was the Christian right that pioneered the tactic of trying to take over school boards in response to teachings seen as morally objectionable, whether that meant sex education, “secular humanism” or evolution.
Jones points out that last year, after Trump issued an executive order targeting critical race theory, the presidents of all six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention came together to declare C.R.T. “incompatible” with the Baptist faith. Jones, whose latest book is “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” could recall no precedent for such a joint statement.
As Jones notes, the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 after splitting with abolitionist Northern Baptists. He described it as a “remarkable arc”: a denomination founded on the defense of slavery “denouncing a critical read of history that might put a spotlight on that story.”
Then again, white evangelicals probably aren’t wrong to fear that their children are getting away from them. As their numbers have shrunk and as they’ve grown more at odds with younger Americans, said Jones, “that has led to this bigger sense of being under attack, a kind of visceral defensive posture, that we saw President Trump really leveraging.”
I was frightened by the religious right in its triumphant phase. But it turns out that the movement is just as dangerous in decline. Maybe more so. It didn’t take long for the cocky optimism of Generation Joshua to give way to the nihilism of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. If they can’t own the country, they’re ready to defile it.
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