Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is scheduled to attend a Christian revival near Pittsburgh led by self-proclaimed prophet and apostle Lance Wallnau, who is a “rock star” in a religious movement that seeks to assert dominion over American society.
Wallnau’s “Courage Tour” is billed as “a celebration of the courage and triumph of Jesus Christ,” but its goal, spanning seven key swing states, is to leverage the voting power of suburban Christians to re-elect former President Donald Trump.
A leader of the loosely affiliated but highly networked National Apostolic Reform movement, Wallnau has supported Trump since 2015. And since Trump’s 2020 election defeat, Wallnau has been at the forefront of strategizing to get him re-elected, experts in the movement told Capital -Star.
The Pennsylvania stop of the tour begins Friday evening at the Monroeville Convention Center in Allegheny County.
Wallnau and others who share his view of Christianity’s role in civil society organized the Courage Tour to connect with a largely hushed faction of conservative Christians in overwhelmingly blue suburban counties, said Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a thinker progressive reservoir in massachusetts.
“The idea of courage is to embolden evangelicals to speak out and organize,” Clarkson said.
Wallnau, who grew up in Pennsylvania but now lives in Texas, also in 2022 embarrassed state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin), whose far-right gubernatorial campaign included elements of Christian nationalist ideals.
While the Courage Tour events have the appearance of a Pentecostal revival, “it is a very coordinated effort to organize Christian nationalist voters,” said Matthew Taylor, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore.
In the run-up to the 2024 election, Republicans did just that continued to erode the huge enrollment advantage Democrats used to be in the Commonwealth. Taylor, who attended the tour’s stop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on Monday, said evangelical Christians are likely contributing to the gains and mobilizing their peers to actively engage in elections.
In addition to giving participants access to voter data to knock on doors and mobilize Christian voters, the events aim to recruit people to work as poll watchers and election workers.
And while it may sound harmless, Taylor said, the initiative is being spearheaded by a 2020 election denier who suggests that having Christians in an influential place would be an advantage on Election Day.
“What happens is that when polling stations start closing or chaos ensues, volunteers will be thrown out. You will actually be a paid election worker,” speaker Joshua Standifer, leader of a group called the Lion of Judah, said at an event in Wisconsin.
“I call it our Trojan horse. Then they don’t see it coming, but we will flood polling places across the country with spirit-filled believers,” Standifer said in a speech video of the event published on the social media platform that used to be Twitter.
But why do evangelical Christians support Trump, who has faced credible accusations of… sexual assault, bank fraudAND 34 criminal convictions for falsifying records to cover up an adulterous syndicate with an adult film star.
Wallnau, who evangelizes through his podcasts, YouTube and Facebook posts reaching more than a million followers, made his mark early in the Trump presidential saga, making the case for why Christians should vote for a man they might consider immoral, he said Clarkson.
Wallnau made an analogy to the story of King Cyrus, the Persian emperor, who, according to the Bible, freed the Jews from slavery and helped them build the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Wallnau assumed that if a pagan king could be God’s instrument, Trump could too, Clarkson said.
Trump would play a role in America’s Christian revival and reform by helping evangelicals conquer what Wallnau described as the seven mountains of civil society – family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business and government – necessary to achieve Christian rule.
“In realpolitik Wallnaua… [Trump] doesn’t have to play by Christian rules, and Christians can sit back and not be infected by the filth of politics and Washington,” Taylor said.
