Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 2: Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible. Today's guest is Stephanie mccrumman. She's
Speaker 1: a Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the Atlantic and previously
Speaker 1: worked as a journalist of the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: And we look forward to speaking with her about some
Speaker 2: of her recent.
Speaker 1: Writing on Christian nationalism, and more specifically her recent article
Speaker 1: in The Atlantic entitled The Army of God Comes out
Speaker 1: of the Shadows. So, Stephanie, one of the people you
Speaker 1: interviewed called the New Apostolic Reformation the most significant religious
Speaker 1: movement of the twenty first century and a serious threat
Speaker 1: to democracy. Is it really becoming a more dominant form
Speaker 1: of American Christy anity It seems.
Speaker 3: That it is. I should say that overall Americans are
Speaker 3: becoming more secular, So that's the overall trend, but within
Speaker 3: people who identify themselves as Christians, this particular segment has
Speaker 3: been growing very rapidly in recent decades. And part of
Speaker 3: the reason it's flown under the radar a bit is
Speaker 3: because the old categories that have been used to measure
Speaker 3: religiosities are are a bit out of date. So a
Speaker 3: lot of polls and surveys and stuff ask people, you know,
Speaker 3: are you Baptists, are you Catholic? Are you this that
Speaker 3: people who identify with these ideas that sort of fall
Speaker 3: under the umbrella of New Apostolic Reformation, they don't identify
Speaker 3: with the denomination. And you know, paradoxically, if you ask
Speaker 3: them if they are religious, they might even say no, because,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the key beliefs, one of the
Speaker 3: core beliefs, is that denominations are sort of a sin,
Speaker 3: if you will, because they divide the Kingdom of God.
Speaker 3: And so the surveys that do ex suggests certainly that
Speaker 3: charismatic Christianity is just growing like crazy, not only in
Speaker 3: the US but around the world. And this particular set
Speaker 3: of ideas that fall into the category of New Apostolic
Speaker 3: Reformation are also just growing by leaps and bounds. So
Speaker 3: people who adopt these ideas, if you ask them, oh,
Speaker 3: are you a follower of the New Apostolic Reformation, they
Speaker 3: would say, I don't know what you're talking about, but
Speaker 3: they if you say, do you believe in God's Kingdom,
Speaker 3: then they would say yes, or the Seven Mountains mandate,
Speaker 3: which I can explain, they would say yes.
Speaker 2: So I grew up a Catholic and altibore the whole thing,
Speaker 2: and in Catholicism, at least in the past, you could
Speaker 2: be a Democrat or Republican, right, But what you're talking
Speaker 2: about now it's also a political movement.
Speaker 3: The big shift in thinking really is that they believe
Speaker 3: that that is their duty as Christians, their mandate, their
Speaker 3: God given mission, is to establish the Kingdom of God
Speaker 3: on earth. It goes beyond thinking that the US is
Speaker 3: a Christian nation and whatever the US is more a
Speaker 3: component of this larger thing called the Kingdom of God.
Speaker 3: The Kingdom of God is to the extent that it
Speaker 3: is translatable into a political party, you know, it aligns,
Speaker 3: of course with the conservative agenda, I suppose not necessarily exclusively.
Speaker 3: So they very much believe that their job is not
Speaker 3: to like sit over in the corner and pray and
Speaker 3: wait for the kingdom to come, you know, in the
Speaker 3: next millennia or whatever, but that they are to establish
Speaker 3: it in the here and now, and that means going
Speaker 3: into politics. It means going it's not just the political realm,
Speaker 3: but every realm of life, to assert God's dominion over
Speaker 3: every sphere of life. So that's what the Seven Mountains
Speaker 3: mandate is. The people of God, you know, their mission
Speaker 3: to exercise dominion over let's see, what are the Seven Mountains? Education, family, government.
Speaker 3: That's where politics and media are. It's a central part
Speaker 3: of what they believe they are supposed to do. And
Speaker 3: that's what makes this movement so aggressive politically and effective politically.
Speaker 3: They see their mission is to mobilize people.
Speaker 2: I just have to say, someone who spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time in the Middle East and dealing with Middle Easterners,
Speaker 2: it says John it sounds to me like you could
Speaker 2: substrate Christianity for Islam and you'd have Isis, or you'd
Speaker 2: have Iranian theocracy in there is. That is exactly what
Speaker 2: Isis preaches that we need to bring in their version
Speaker 2: of heaven on earth and to fulfill the word of God,
Speaker 2: and they need to suppress people who think differently.
Speaker 3: What do you do with the infidels? If you will,
Speaker 3: what is to become of them? Maybe it'll be like,
Speaker 3: you know, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, where if you didn't
Speaker 3: agree and you could exist as long as you didn't
Speaker 3: involve yourself in certain you know, in politics or certain
Speaker 3: that's nice, of course. Yeah, And I should say that
Speaker 3: there is a very explicitly militaristic component of this movement too.
Speaker 3: They talk about spiritual warfare, and there are people who
Speaker 3: are in this movement who have training camps. They speak
Speaker 3: of the manifest Sons of God, which is supposed to
Speaker 3: be as an elite unit, if you will, of God's army,
Speaker 3: that they are supposed to be endowed with special powers
Speaker 3: when the time comes to do battle. There very much is,
Speaker 3: they will say, a component of warfare in the natural.
Speaker 3: That's that's their language they use.
Speaker 2: So let me get to a.
Speaker 1: Little bit sort of the potential conspiracy part of this. Right,
Speaker 1: So it is about dismantling the institutions of secular government
Speaker 1: to clear the way for the Kingdom of God. Right, yes,
Speaker 1: but clearly to them, the secular government doesn't include Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: And what we have now?
Speaker 1: How is it democrats and the media became the Satanists?
Speaker 1: Why there is only one part of the government become
Speaker 1: the enemy and the other one not behind it? How
Speaker 1: did it become like so tied to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Let's see, let's back up just a few notions. If
Speaker 3: you're a believer in this life, human history, everything a
Speaker 3: great battle between God and Satan, and history is biblical history,
Speaker 3: and time is biblical time, and Heaven is real, and
Speaker 3: Hell is real, Satan is real, demons are real. This
Speaker 3: is how people think. So the question becomes who gets
Speaker 3: assigned to what? Who is satanic and who's demonic, and
Speaker 3: so on and so forth. So Trump comes along, and
Speaker 3: obviously he's in the early days, if you remember, he
Speaker 3: had a problem with evangelical voters.
Speaker 4: Foremost among the myriad Trump supporters put in an awkward
Speaker 4: position by the release of that Access Hollywood tape on
Speaker 4: Friday are Republican evangelicals Christian conservatives who are being forced
Speaker 4: to choose between voting as they almost always do for
Speaker 4: a Republican candidate, and on the other hand, seeming to
Speaker 4: condone Donald Trump's screamingly impious behavior, which is what's going
Speaker 4: to story going to be Is Trump going to have
Speaker 4: the normal evangelical turnout or does he lose a bunch
Speaker 4: of time. I think he's going to lose a lot
Speaker 4: of evangelical women in the same way that he's going
Speaker 4: to lose a lot of women overall.
Speaker 3: You know, the evangelical establishment, we're supporting other candidates. Trump
Speaker 3: needed some component of these voters, and basically he was
Speaker 3: introduced to this world. These were the low propensity voters,
Speaker 3: if you will. These were people that were sort of
Speaker 3: that hadn't quite been tapped into by the Christian right,
Speaker 3: you know, when they're you know, searching for these low
Speaker 3: propensity voters. Lo and behold, there are all these churches,
Speaker 3: these charismatic Christian churches that haven't really been activated, if
Speaker 3: you will. And they have the benefit of being they're
Speaker 3: not just white. They're also Latino and black and brown,
Speaker 3: and they're more diverse. So Trump hooks up with this woman,
Speaker 3: Paula White, who is very much in this movement. She's
Speaker 3: an apostle in the movement, and she opens the door
Speaker 3: to this world.
Speaker 5: And so the Bigol says that Martha random meet him.
Speaker 5: But Mary sat still.
Speaker 4: She lost her praise, and when the me gets your praise,
Speaker 4: then he's got your whipping, because your praise is a
Speaker 4: whipon that you go to war with.
Speaker 3: Another figure in the movement, I think he considers himself
Speaker 3: to be an apostle. Lance Walno, a very charismatic figure
Speaker 3: in this movement. He writes a book casting Trump as
Speaker 3: God's chaos candidate and develops this whole idea that Trump
Speaker 3: is being used by God and he's a modern day Cyrus,
Speaker 3: you know, the imperfect instrument, but who nonetheless is part
Speaker 3: of God's plan.
Speaker 6: Christians building sodalities is what shifted America. Spannon's war room
Speaker 6: Charlie Kirk turning point. Our work that we did courage tour,
Speaker 6: going to the five of the seven swing sets, having
Speaker 6: rallies of thousands, signs, wonders and miracles of the night,
Speaker 6: daytime me talking to the remnants about election integrity. We
Speaker 6: were able to purge one million fake votes out of
Speaker 6: the system in America. That's how come you've got your
Speaker 6: million popular vote. We eliminated the fake ones nobody knows about.
Speaker 6: That was our job.
Speaker 3: And so this idea gets disseminated and eventually takes hold,
Speaker 3: and pretty soon every kind of profit, big and small.
Speaker 3: They're all buying into this idea.
Speaker 2: I also wanted to think of the conspiracy theory part
Speaker 2: of it, and also the latent anti Semitism that's in it.
Speaker 2: Mike Huckabee is now the ambassador in Israel. He's close
Speaker 2: to Pastor John Hagey, who I think is also a
Speaker 2: part of this. And hage is famous for saying that
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six that God punished New Orleans
Speaker 2: with Hurricane Katrina because of homosexuality. Another part of this,
Speaker 2: and my understanding of is that we need to support Israel,
Speaker 2: at least the right wing politics of Israel, because it
Speaker 2: has to rebuild the Temple and take back the West
Speaker 2: Bank in order for the end times to come. And
Speaker 2: of course the end times and I worked in Israel,
Speaker 2: and I actually worked on a kibbutz very close to
Speaker 2: mcgido with it, and the final battle of armaged it's
Speaker 2: supposed to happen is that, yeah, that God's army wins
Speaker 2: and the Jews they either have to convert or they
Speaker 2: go to Hell. And I always have trouble with Israeli
Speaker 2: politicians hugging these guys who know at the same time
Speaker 2: they think that their whole purpose in history is to
Speaker 2: bring about the end of the state of Israel and
Speaker 2: the end of the Jewish people and to send them
Speaker 2: all to Hell.
Speaker 3: What's interesting to me is to see how Natnyahu and
Speaker 3: his crowd was very much dealing with these people. And
Speaker 3: as this movement has not been written about very much,
Speaker 3: and it seemed as just I think for people who
Speaker 3: aren't in it, they think it's just what, it's just
Speaker 3: spiritual warfare demons. But net Yaou takes it very seriously.
Speaker 3: And these people have a show, which I've written about
Speaker 3: before called Flashpoint. It's a streaming show and met Na
Speaker 3: You've probably never heard of it. Most people aren't in
Speaker 3: this movement haven't heard of it. It's very popular. It's
Speaker 3: like CNN for the apostles and prophets, and instead of guests,
Speaker 3: they have prophets come on and they talk about the
Speaker 3: news and how that fits with various prophecies and whatever
Speaker 3: you know, and that often involves what's happening in Gaza
Speaker 3: and it's happening in Israel and Nettya, who's been on
Speaker 3: there at least twice. If these people, if evangelical Christians
Speaker 3: are an important political constituency in the world of right
Speaker 3: more right wing Israeli politics, then like this is the
Speaker 3: future of the evangelical world, arguably in the US.
Speaker 2: So this is a broad movement and as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell, there doesn't seem to be like a
Speaker 2: leader behind it. If everybody can be a prophet, why
Speaker 2: can't I say I'm a prophet and then say President
Speaker 2: Biden was actually sent by God? And Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: the He's the anti Christ, which is I think you
Speaker 2: can make a better argument on that.
Speaker 3: You could just say, hey, I'm a prophet, but you
Speaker 3: also have to be recognized and have a following, and
Speaker 3: people have to agree that, hey, Jerry hitting them out
Speaker 3: of the park here. So there's for example, a guy
Speaker 3: again like these people are very powerful in this world,
Speaker 3: but you may have never heard their names. A guy
Speaker 3: named che An in California is a very important apostle
Speaker 3: and has probably hundreds of churches under his spiritual authority,
Speaker 3: and he has authority over these churches. It's a very
Speaker 3: top down, not democratic structure. There's a guid named Dutch Sheets.
Speaker 3: He's the one who popularized the pine tree flag. This
Speaker 3: is a white flag with the green pine tree that
Speaker 3: says appealed to Heaven that appeared January sixth at the insurrection.
Speaker 3: But dutch Sheets has his own ministry. He's actually sort
Speaker 3: of a prophet and an apostle, has hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of followers, a minor sort of publishing empire. It's paradoxical.
Speaker 3: Is so much about this thing as paradoxical. It's authoritarian
Speaker 3: and yet it's decentralized at the same time.
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, to what extent is
Speaker 1: it a rural or regional phenomenon? Is it in cities
Speaker 1: over the place.
Speaker 3: It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Like the church that Elon Musk
Speaker 3: spoke at, it's a big naar church in Harrisburg called
Speaker 3: Life Center. There's a profit in Brooklyn. Joseph Mattera is
Speaker 3: very important. You know, not everyone who follows this goes
Speaker 3: to a church. A lot of them just follow these
Speaker 3: profits online. But you'll find little storefront churches in rural areas.
Speaker 3: You'll find big churches in cities. They're all over Texas.
Speaker 3: You'll find old Baptist churches that maybe have been overtaken
Speaker 3: by people who are embracing these ideas. Really, it's just
Speaker 3: I've noticed them all over the place. Am I reporting.
Speaker 2: Let's pause for a second. We'll be right back. Part
Speaker 2: of the conspiracy theory, part of this is that some
Speaker 2: of the people and organizations who they hose they are
Speaker 2: controlled by Satanists or demons.
Speaker 3: I may be wrong about this, but I feel like
Speaker 3: Peter Wagner, he wrote a lot about spiritual warfare and
Speaker 3: demons and stuff. And I've been to churches where like
Speaker 3: the pastor will demon map the city because you know,
Speaker 3: people this movement believe that demonic forces not only can
Speaker 3: control people, but also territories. So like whole city may
Speaker 3: be infested with demons like their jersey.
Speaker 1: I think we could all agree on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Middle East, obviously, you know, any place is
Speaker 3: not Christian, it's you know, demonic strongholded whatever territories, Washington,
Speaker 3: d C.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Roger Stone caught onto this lingo and was like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's a demon portal over the White House and whatever,
Speaker 3: and there's a whole thing in this world, you know, demonology,
Speaker 3: and so I think that there's like higher level demons
Speaker 3: and lower level demons. Like I may just be as
Speaker 3: a reporter working for a secular publication that questioned trump
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera, in God's plan, like I may
Speaker 3: just be a dupe, I may just be my mind
Speaker 3: may have been taken over by Satan, but other people
Speaker 3: may be more devoted to the mission, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. So I think that there's gradations.
Speaker 2: So I spend a lot of time in Afghanistan and
Speaker 2: interrupt dealing with ISIS, and ISIS is a very clear
Speaker 2: answer to that. The answer is that you knowingly stand
Speaker 2: against God. Whether you're controlled by a demon or not.
Speaker 2: They don't get into that, but you knowingly stand against
Speaker 2: what they believe is God's plan, and therefore you, your family,
Speaker 2: anybody who stands if you can and should be killed
Speaker 2: or at least suppressed. So I find what you're saying
Speaker 2: very scary because we've seen it actually in a much
Speaker 2: more further advanced and actually taking place in another area.
Speaker 3: One thing, and I haven't written about this, but I
Speaker 3: find it very interesting that there are military people, high
Speaker 3: profile military people, who have embraced these ideas. Michael Flynn,
Speaker 3: military intelligence, Doug Meis, military intelligence, Carol Boykin, military intelligence.
Speaker 3: Like I mean, is that just like, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of religious beliefs there's a lot of
Speaker 3: military intelligence people and some of them believe this or
Speaker 3: I don't know, what do you think about that?
Speaker 1: That's a really good question because I wonder to what
Speaker 1: extent these guys believe that when they're inside, and maybe
Speaker 1: they did, because it really goes against what they're doing
Speaker 1: in their day to day work, because they work for
Speaker 1: the government. You mentioned that preacher Lance Wall. Now you
Speaker 1: know he said you either have God or you've got
Speaker 1: a government. Well, only one person could be supreme, So
Speaker 1: how do you engage with that? How can you be
Speaker 1: in the US government as a military officer and believe that? Now,
Speaker 1: of course there's people who believe different levels of things.
Speaker 1: I suppose, and Mike Flynn has gotten more and more.
Speaker 1: I worked with Mike flinnn I know Mike Flynn fairly well.
Speaker 1: We don't get a hot bred which anymore. But he
Speaker 1: seems like he's gotten more and more radical for I
Speaker 1: don't know whether it's for true religious belief or for
Speaker 1: its political or for its money. Who knows, but yeah,
Speaker 1: those things don't go together. And so I would find
Speaker 1: out like I did not see that in our intelligence experience.
Speaker 2: So it's CIA. We just talk about varying shades of gray.
Speaker 2: There's very little black or white, and in the military,
Speaker 2: because of their mission, it's different, and I think it
Speaker 2: is black or white. That's always the question, is it delusional?
Speaker 2: Do they believe this stuff? Or are they grifters right
Speaker 2: there that are making money off of this or opportunists.
Speaker 2: A while ago, there was a it was actually a
Speaker 2: CIA guy who was pushed out of the agency who
Speaker 2: started making these absurd claims that Halian satellites had stolen
Speaker 2: the real results of the twenty twenty elections and that
Speaker 2: people like like Lynn like just started parenting this. And
Speaker 2: what's so crazy is to say that the real results
Speaker 2: were stored in Frankfort in a CIA facility, and that
Speaker 2: the Delta and the Seals were involved in a firefight
Speaker 2: with CIA and Hillary Clinton was caught there and put
Speaker 2: out a marj bartanam obey. And as crazy as this gets,
Speaker 2: Clarence Thomas's wife took this thing that hit some of
Speaker 2: the people that you're talking about supporting it or elements
Speaker 2: of it, and she wanted to overthrow the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: election results. She got to Mark Meadows with this. Who
Speaker 2: gave it to doj? So you've got religion, you've got
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories, and you've got people who should be rational.
Speaker 3: I've touched to so many people who believe this stuff,
Speaker 3: and to them it's reality. To the true believers, it's
Speaker 3: of course, they don't see it as conspiracy. They see
Speaker 3: it as reality. And it's just so deep in a.
Speaker 2: Cult, whether there's a cult leader or not, you can't
Speaker 2: question anything, right, That's sort of one of the things
Speaker 2: if you can, if you're in the Democratic Party, you
Speaker 2: could say, well, I don't think Joe Biden did that
Speaker 2: great job. You know, he did some good things and
Speaker 2: he fucked up on some other things. And with Trump,
Speaker 2: you're either all inter your all life, right or with
Speaker 2: it no A, You're either all in or you're all out.
Speaker 2: So to what extent do you think this is getting
Speaker 2: into cult territory where you're not allowed to question any
Speaker 2: of this. Either all in or you're all out.
Speaker 3: This is really basically an anti Enlightenment movement. Everything went
Speaker 3: wrong when people started trusting their brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, rationality, it's been all downhill since the fourteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: I just want touge yeah, yeah, in a very real way.
Speaker 3: And it's like they really think that was the beginning
Speaker 3: of displacing God and replacing God with our own reason,
Speaker 3: and so on a really fundamental level, you can't really
Speaker 3: trust your brain unless it is guided by God in
Speaker 3: the Bible. And the other thing about this movement is
Speaker 3: that because they embrace modern day apostles and prophets, they
Speaker 3: have innovated, if you will, the idea that God is
Speaker 3: speaking through like now there's new stuff, there's new materials.
Speaker 3: It's not just the Bible anymore. It's also that Dutch
Speaker 3: Sheets had a dream about riding on horseback to the
Speaker 3: Capitol on January sixth.
Speaker 7: This morning, December thirty. First, I dreamed I was with
Speaker 7: our prayer team and we were coming back from having
Speaker 7: accomplished an assignment. We were leading tall, muscular horses by
Speaker 7: their bridle reins. Our horses didn't appear to be tired,
Speaker 7: but they were hot and sweaty. We had apparently been
Speaker 7: running them hard. We found ourselves in a field and
Speaker 7: could see out in front of us the US Capitol building.
Speaker 7: We mounted our horses and as we sat looking at
Speaker 7: the building, we heard air sirens going off. As the
Speaker 7: sirens were sounding, we saw a huge hand come down
Speaker 7: from the sky and take hold of the dome of
Speaker 7: the Capitol building with the fingers of the hand wrapped
Speaker 7: around the dome. The thumb of the hand flicked the
Speaker 7: dome open. When it was opened, a very thick black
Speaker 7: smoke began rising up out of the building. We then
Speaker 7: heard a cavalry bugle playing the signal to charge, and
Speaker 7: we began moving toward the Capitol, not at a full gallop,
Speaker 7: but at a steady, determined, fast trot. As we started,
Speaker 7: on the ground in front of us, written in white
Speaker 7: letters or the words don't stop. That's the end of
Speaker 7: the dream. Happy New Year.
Speaker 2: No need the Jesus guy anymore, right, because you've got
Speaker 2: modern day profits.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's interesting. I don't really speak a lot
Speaker 3: about Jesus, honestly, And what they do is they speak
Speaker 3: a lot about the Old Testament a lot, and they
Speaker 3: also have fresh words. I have a fresh dream today,
Speaker 3: and the first dream is I had a vision that
Speaker 3: Trump was going to take over Gaza. So there's this constant, hourly, daily,
Speaker 3: weekly scroll of prophecies. That's where it starts to get
Speaker 3: to be more about a person a personality. And then
Speaker 3: that obviously coupled with you're not supposed to trust your mind.
Speaker 3: There's an idea of submission, submission to God. If you
Speaker 3: go to any of these churches, they'll often talk about
Speaker 3: that it's very emotional. I'm sure you've been in charismatic
Speaker 3: Christian churches and a lot of people have that these
Speaker 3: churches are like that on steroids. Like the music is
Speaker 3: really really loud. The ones that have the most money,
Speaker 3: they have these professional sound systems and lights and just
Speaker 3: pounding and the music is mantra like and there's tears.
Speaker 3: It's very free, oddly again like a paradox because you're
Speaker 3: supposed to think a certain thing and yet it's very
Speaker 3: physically free. So it feels good and there's like a
Speaker 3: lot of feeling to it, you know, and a lot
Speaker 3: of catharsists. But make no mistake, but you're supposed to
Speaker 3: submit to this and submit to this idea and submit
Speaker 3: to God and what is God? God is these things
Speaker 3: and et cetera.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting historical time because if you go back
Speaker 1: into the nineteenth century, even late eighteenth century, but the
Speaker 1: first Grade Awakening in this country, I mean, the Puritans
Speaker 1: came and they were very focused on rationality and learning,
Speaker 1: formed Harvard University and these other type of things. And
Speaker 1: then when the first Greate Awakening came, he was the
Speaker 1: personal relationship to God and the beginning of the evangelical
Speaker 1: sort of spirit in the United States. And so it
Speaker 1: almost seems like there must be a schism in Christianity.
Speaker 1: This can't be something that's supported really by the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church or other parts of the Protestant Church. How is
Speaker 1: it that this is gaining ground in those other and
Speaker 1: in general people are moving away from religion.
Speaker 3: I've gotten emails from readers. A reader who's part of
Speaker 3: a Lutheran church, and she said that it started as
Speaker 3: a study group in the church, and then it was
Speaker 3: a Seven Mountains thing, and then pretty soon like these
Speaker 3: ideas were starting to overtake the church. And it does
Speaker 3: cause sometimes splits in churches. And these ideas you will
Speaker 3: find them in many denominational churches. And yeah, and some
Speaker 3: people are like, what is this, This is weird. I
Speaker 3: think this is heretical. You know, it doesn't always go
Speaker 3: over well, but I think that it seems to be
Speaker 3: overtaking a lot of denominational churches. There are people who
Speaker 3: have needs who go there. Churches have soup kitchens and
Speaker 3: food pantries, and drug addiction programs and porn addiction programs,
Speaker 3: and people find everything that they find in churches. They
Speaker 3: find help and guidance in a community.
Speaker 2: And so putting your sociology, h what need is this filling?
Speaker 2: It offers simplicity. I guess, it offers you understand your
Speaker 2: place in the world. It offers you a hero's journey.
Speaker 2: You know, you can be just like isis. You can
Speaker 2: be a soldier of God, or you could be a
Speaker 2: sheep farmer, or you know whatever.
Speaker 1: Jerry and I both lived in Muslim countries and we've
Speaker 1: seen similar things happening there, whereas you know, if you're Indonesia,
Speaker 1: Afghanistan and Rock you know, twenty thirty forty years ago
Speaker 1: they were not as conservative. Is this a global thing
Speaker 1: that people are moving and moving more away from secular society?
Speaker 3: What need is it fulfilling? I mean, I think that's
Speaker 3: a fine question. And maybe it's just the need that
Speaker 3: any religion fills. It's just that it's doing it in
Speaker 3: this different way, and it's more complete, like you said,
Speaker 3: because it does give people a purpose. It's like, here
Speaker 3: are your marching orders. It's not just Sunday, it's every day.
Speaker 3: It's seven mountains, get with the program, figure out your
Speaker 3: in life, and their courses and seminars and trainings and everything.
Speaker 3: It's twenty four to seven. And that's also what makes
Speaker 3: it effective politically because people are constantly organizing. It's not
Speaker 3: just every four years, every two years. It's like this
Speaker 3: is a constant movement. It's always happening, always going on.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a moment.
Speaker 2: And a natural part of the fracturing of our society
Speaker 2: is more and more people become secular and their religion
Speaker 2: is none. Those that still something within the needs of
Speaker 2: faith that become more radical. I'm assuming right.
Speaker 3: I wrote about a woman who was in this movement,
Speaker 3: and if you talk to her, she would say she
Speaker 3: hates religion. She would say she hates church, and yet
Speaker 3: she follows all these prophets. I think there's a sense
Speaker 3: among the people who follow this thing that they're the true.
Speaker 3: Everything else has screwed up Christianity, it has screwed.
Speaker 2: Up, screwed it up. They're the trurgy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've all divided and all these little arguments, so,
Speaker 3: you know, angels on pinheads and whatever. Like, these people
Speaker 3: think that, oh, we're the real you know, we're open
Speaker 3: to the Holy Spirit moving. It's very mystical. It's very
Speaker 3: empowering really if you think about it, because they also believe,
Speaker 3: you know, you can fight a war spiritual warfare. You're powerful.
Speaker 3: And then look at January sixth. I mean, people really
Speaker 3: missed this dimension of the insurrection, but there were people
Speaker 3: outside in this movement doing spiritual warfare. Matthew Taylor's written
Speaker 3: an excellent book about this. Dutch Sheets was traveling the
Speaker 3: country rallying people after the twenty twenty election and preparing
Speaker 3: people and visited the White House and people had different motivations,
Speaker 3: but a lot of them thought that they were taking
Speaker 3: the capital for God, for the King. And what did
Speaker 3: they do when they got to the rotunda, these people
Speaker 3: they prayed, They prayed, some of them did, and they
Speaker 3: had the flags.
Speaker 2: And it's cool. Though it's anfidemocratic right. It's against the constitution.
Speaker 2: They don't want separrasial church and state. They don't support
Speaker 2: democratic values. Only the people of God right get to
Speaker 2: them right. They want a theocracy. At the end of the.
Speaker 3: Day, they would say democracy cannot flourish without a Christian conscience.
Speaker 3: Christianity has to flourish. But people aren't able to govern
Speaker 3: themselves without this conscience, Christian conscience.
Speaker 2: That's what communism was. It's like everybody as long as
Speaker 2: you follow Lenin's dictates, you can like disagree inside.
Speaker 1: But at the end of there was a book by
Speaker 1: Jack Pasovic that JD. Vance endorsed that describes their political
Speaker 1: opponents as unhumans and that they must be crushed on
Speaker 1: humans must be crushed. Is that a book that spreads
Speaker 1: in this group.
Speaker 3: Well, I mentioned that I mentioned that book in this
Speaker 3: story because to me it was an example of how
Speaker 3: the Seven Mountains idea and this idea of overturning this
Speaker 3: liberal order, how far that idea has seemed. He didn't
Speaker 3: refer to the Seven Mountains, but there was a part
Speaker 3: in the book where he essentially was referring to the
Speaker 3: Seven Mountains.
Speaker 2: That's very fascist, right, making the other subhuman. That was
Speaker 2: part of Nazi ideology. And this also brings us to
Speaker 2: this guy Beattie who's now at State Department, a senior
Speaker 2: at the State Department, whose writings have come out recently
Speaker 2: where he said that only good people, smart people should
Speaker 2: be allowed to have children, right and low iq trash
Speaker 2: should not have There should be eugenics, they should be
Speaker 2: euthanim But he also brings it in as basically Christians
Speaker 2: need to like have kids white Christians. And this is
Speaker 2: a guy who's now sitting in the State Department and
Speaker 2: mirroring this thing that the world is filled with unhumans
Speaker 2: and we're not worthy of basic rights to had families
Speaker 2: or to speak out.
Speaker 3: This thing gets conflated with what has been, i think
Speaker 3: personally rather vaguely called Christian nationalism, which I think doesn't
Speaker 3: really do justice to the depth of what this movement
Speaker 3: is all about. And it's worth just noting briefly that
Speaker 3: Christian nationalism would say, oh, the Founding fathers actually were Christian,
Speaker 3: and they point to all this evidence so to speak,
Speaker 3: of why our nation was founded as a Christi nation.
Speaker 3: These people, again, the more serious thinkers, think that the
Speaker 3: Founding fathers screwed it up actually, and that the real
Speaker 3: origins go back to William Penn in Pennsylvania. And there's
Speaker 3: this whole story about William Penn who came over and
Speaker 3: God gave him a vision and the US was the
Speaker 3: seceed of a nation, and that he had a covenant
Speaker 3: with God. And I mean, there's a whole different origin
Speaker 3: story is what I'm saying with this movement has to
Speaker 3: do with Native Americans. Their whole concept of what gave
Speaker 3: rise to this country is different than like your more
Speaker 3: typical sort of sentimental Christian nationalism stuff. So they would
Speaker 3: say that the Washington Monument is a pagan symbol and
Speaker 3: Jefferson messed it up, and et cetera.
Speaker 1: And if they've decided that the rest of us are
Speaker 1: devils or satan's, I don't know how you push back
Speaker 1: against that. And I worry that you know that that
Speaker 1: Trump people know that they need this support, and they
Speaker 1: clearly believe some of these things that Jerry and I
Speaker 1: know to not be true, about a deep state, and
Speaker 1: then working against Christians and working against the president and
Speaker 1: all these types of things. And you can see by
Speaker 1: some of the actions recently, things that you might have
Speaker 1: thought were just populist politician stuff where you create enemies
Speaker 1: to win power, they're taking actions that suggests that they
Speaker 1: believed some of these things. Firing all ase, FBI people
Speaker 1: destroying the state, are destroying us AID, destroying.
Speaker 2: The CIA, these type of things.
Speaker 1: So this is really an important issue to understand because
Speaker 1: it's something we're gonna have to come to terms.
Speaker 3: With they are serious about their project. I can't say
Speaker 3: I completely understand. There seems to be this sort of
Speaker 3: union between some libertarian thinkers and this movement. And I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's a temporary alliance of convenience because
Speaker 3: they both wished to tear down the state in a way.
Speaker 3: But you know, I thought it was very interesting that
Speaker 3: must Elon Musk, of all the places he could go,
Speaker 3: he went to an nar type church in Harrisburg. I
Speaker 3: don't know, maybe it was just a venue, but they
Speaker 3: call Peter Thiel a lot people in this movement, So
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's a whole other dimension that has
Speaker 3: yet to be explored. I'll mention one thing. I was
Speaker 3: at Life Center right after the election. They had an
Speaker 3: apostle speaking there. He was a guest actually, and the
Speaker 3: mood was, obviously, you know, very celebratory. They really saw
Speaker 3: this as something that they had brought about through their
Speaker 3: voting but also through prayer, and so it was that
Speaker 3: was the mood up until one point where the speaker,
Speaker 3: found seemingly out of the blue, started talking about immigration,
Speaker 3: and he said, could it be that all these people
Speaker 3: coming across the border are actually the harvest, you know,
Speaker 3: are they part of God's harvest? Is God is sending
Speaker 3: them here to us rather than sending us out into
Speaker 3: the world. And he didn't stay on it very long,
Speaker 3: but it sounded like a little bit of dissent, perhaps
Speaker 3: from the Trump agenda, and I thought that was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Hell, I'd like to say, Stephanie, I thank you for
Speaker 1: being with us. And it's really interesting stuff, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't lead me warm and fuzzy.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
Speaker 5: and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 2: The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is a production of honorable mention and Abominable
Speaker 5: pictures for iHeart Podcasts.