[To see Rachel Maddow's coverage on Rick Perry's
religious extremist ties, go to
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/maddow-shines-light-perrys-extreme-prayer-rally-endorsers
-- moderator]

Rick Perry's Army of God

     A little-known movement of radical Christians and
     self-proclaimed prophets wants to infiltrate
     government, and Rick Perry might be their man.

By Forrest Wilder
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/rick-perrys-army-of-god

On September 28, 2009, at 1:40 p.m., God's messengers
visited Rick Perry.

On this day, the Lord's messengers arrived in the form
of two Texas pastors, Tom Schlueter of Arlington and Bob
Long of San Marcos, who called on Perry in the
governor's office inside the state Capitol. Schlueter
and Long both oversee small congregations, but they are
more than just pastors. They consider themselves modern-
day apostles and prophets, blessed with the same gifts
as Old Testament prophets or New Testament apostles.

The pastors told Perry of God's grand plan for Texas. A
chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas
was "The Prophet State," anointed by God to lead the
United States into revival and Godly government. And the
governor would have a special role.

The day before the meeting, Schlueter had received a
prophetic message from Chuck Pierce, an influential
prophet from Denton, Texas. God had apparently commanded
Schlueter-through Pierce-to "pray by lifting the hand of
the one I show you that is in the place of civil rule."

Gov. Perry, it seemed.

Schlueter had prayed before his congregation: "Lord
Jesus I bring to you today Gov. Perry. ... I am just
bringing you his hand and I pray Lord that he will grasp
ahold of it. For if he does you will use him mightily."

And grasp ahold the governor did. At the end of their
meeting, Perry asked the two pastors to pray over him.
As the pastors would later recount, the Lord spoke
prophetically as Schlueter laid his hands on Perry,
their heads bowed before a painting of the Battle of the
Alamo. Schlueter "declared over [Perry] that there was a
leadership role beyond Texas and that Texas had a role
beyond what people understand," Long later told his
congregation.

So you have to wonder: Is Rick Perry God's man for
president?

Schlueter, Long and other prayer warriors in a little-
known but increasingly influential movement at the
periphery of American Christianity seem to think so. The
movement is called the New Apostolic Reformation.
Believers fashion themselves modern-day prophets and
apostles. They have taken Pentecostalism, with its
emphasis on ecstatic worship and the supernatural, and
given it an adrenaline shot.

The movement's top prophets and apostles believe they
have a direct line to God. Through them, they say, He
communicates specific instructions and warnings. When
mankind fails to heed the prophecies, the results can be
catastrophic: earthquakes in Japan, terrorist attacks in
New York, and economic collapse. On the other hand, they
believe their God-given decrees have ended mad cow
disease in Germany and produced rain in drought-stricken
Texas.

Their beliefs can tend toward the bizarre. Some consider
Freemasonry a "demonic stronghold" tantamount to
witchcraft. The Democratic Party, one prominent member
believes, is controlled by Jezebel and three lesser
demons. Some prophets even claim to have seen demons at
public meetings. They've taken biblical literalism to an
extreme. In Texas, they engage in elaborate ceremonies
involving branding irons, plumb lines and stakes
inscribed with biblical passages driven into the earth
of every Texas county.

If they simply professed unusual beliefs, movement
leaders wouldn't be remarkable. But what makes the New
Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing
fascination with infiltrating politics and government.
The new prophets and apostles believe Christians--
certain Christians--are destined to not just take
"dominion" over government, but stealthily climb to the
commanding heights of what they term the "Seven
Mountains" of society, including the media and the arts
and entertainment world. They believe they're intended
to lord over it all. As a first step, they're leading an
"army of God" to commandeer civilian government.

In Rick Perry, they may have found their vessel. And the
interest appears to be mutual.



IN ALL THE MEDIA ATTENTION surrounding Perry's
flirtation with a run for the presidency, the governor's
budding relationship with the leaders of the New
Apostolic Reformation movement has largely escaped
notice. But perhaps not for long. Perry has given self-
proclaimed prophets and apostles leading roles in The
Response, a much-publicized Christians-only prayer rally
that Perry is organizing at Houston's Reliant Stadium on
Aug. 6.

The Response has engendered widespread criticism of its
deliberate blurring of church and state and for the
involvement of the American Family Association, labeled
a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center for
its leadership's homophobic and anti-Muslim statements.
But it's the involvement of New Apostolic leaders that's
more telling about Perry's convictions and campaign
strategy.

Eight members of The Response "leadership team" are
affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation movement.
They're employed or associated with groups like The Call
or the International House of Prayer (IHOP), Kansas
City-based organizations at the forefront of the
movement. The long list of The Response's official
endorsers--posted on the event's website--reads like a
Who's Who of the apostolic-prophetic crowd, including
movement founder C. Peter Wagner.

In a recent interview with the Observer, Schlueter
explained that The Response is divinely inspired. "The
government of our nation was basically founded on
biblical principles," he says. "When you have a
governmental leader call a time of fasting and prayer, I
believe that there has been a significant shift in our
understanding as far as who is ultimately in charge of
our nation--which we believe God is."

Perry certainly knows how to speak the language of the
new apostles. The genesis of The Response, Perry says,
comes from the Book of Joel, an obscure slice of the Old
Testament that's popular with the apostolic crowd.

"With the economy in trouble, communities in crisis and
people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need
God's help," Perry says in a video message on The
Response website. "That's why I'm calling on Americans
to pray and fast like Jesus did and as God called the
Israelites to do in the Book of Joel."

The reference to Joel likely wasn't lost on Perry's
target audience. Prominent movement leaders strike the
same note. Lou Engle, who runs The Call, told a Dallas-
area Assemblies of God congregation in April that "His
answer in times of crisis is Joel 2."

Mike Bickle, a jock-turned-pastor who runs the
International House of Prayer in Kansas City, a sort of
command headquarters and university for young End Times
enthusiasts, taught a 12-part series on Joel last year.

The Book of Joel describes a crippling drought and
economic crisis--sound familiar?--in the land of Judah.
The calamities, in Joel's time and ours, are "sent by
God to cause a wicked, oppressive, and rebellious nation
to repent," Bickle told his students.

To secure God's blessing, Joel commands the people to
gather in "sacred assembly" to pray, fast, and repent.

More ominously, Bickle teaches that Joel is an
"instruction manual" for the imminent End Times. It is
"essential to help equip people to be prepared for the
unique dynamics occurring in the years leading up to
Jesus' return," he has said.

The views espoused by Bickle, Engle and other movement
leaders occupy the radical fringe of Christian
fundamentalism. Their beliefs may seem bizarre even to
many conservative evangelicals. Yet Perry has a knack
for finding the forefront of conservative grassroots.
Prayer warriors, apostles and prophets are filled with
righteous energy and an increasing appetite for power in
the secular political world. Their zeal and affiliation
with charismatic independent churches, the fastest-
growing subset of American Christianity, offers obvious
benefits for Perry if he runs for president.

There are enormous political risks, too. Mainstream
voters may be put off by the movement's extreme views or
discomfited by talk of self-proclaimed prophets
"infiltrating" government.

Catherine Frazier, a spokesperson for the governor's
office, wouldn't respond to specific questions but wrote
in an email, "The Response event is about coming
together in prayer to seek wisdom and guidance from God
to the challenges that confront our nation. That is
where the governor's focus is, and he welcomes those
that wish to join him in this common cause."

For the moment, Perry's relationship with the New
Apostles is little known. Few in Texas GOP circles say
they've ever heard of them. "I wish I could help you,"
said Steve Munisteri, the state Republican Party chair.
"I've never even heard of that movement."

"For the most part I don't know them," said Cathie
Adams, former head of the Texas Eagle Forum and a
veteran conservative activist.

Nonetheless, Perry may be counting on apostles and
prophets to help propel him to the White House. And they
hope Perry will lead them out of the wilderness into the
promised land.

Listen closely to Perry's recent public statements and
you'll occasionally hear him uttering New Apostle code
words. In June, Perry defended himself against Texas
critics on Fox News, telling host Neil Cavuto that "a
prophet is generally not loved in their hometown."

It seemed an odd comment. It's the rare politician who
compares himself to a prophet, and many viewers likely
passed it off as a flub. But to the members of a radical
new Christian movement, the remark made perfect sense.



THE PHRASE "NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION" comes from the
movement's intellectual godfather, C. Peter Wagner, who
has called it, a bit vaingloriously, "the most radical
change in the way of doing Christianity since the
Protestant Reformation."

Boasting aside, Wagner is an important figure in
evangelical circles. He helped formulate the "church
growth" model, a blueprint for worship that helped spawn
modern mega-churches and international missions. In the
1990s, he turned away from the humdrum business of
"harvesting souls" in mega-churches and embarked on a
more revolutionary project.

He began promoting the notion that God is raising up
modern-day prophets and apostles vested with
extraordinary authority to bring about social
transformation and usher in the Kingdom of God.

In 2006, Wagner published Apostles Today: Biblical
Government for Biblical Power, in which he declared a
"Second Apostolic Age." The first age had occurred after
Jesus' biblical resurrection, when his apostles traveled
Christendom spreading the gospel. Commissioned by Jesus
himself, the 12 apostles acted as His agents. The second
apostolic age, Wagner announced, began "around the year
2001."

"Apostles," he wrote, "are the generals in the army of
God."

One of the primary tasks of the new prophets and
apostles is to hear God's will and then act on it.
Sometimes this means changing the world supernaturally.
Wagner tells of the time in October 2001 when, at a huge
prayer conference in Germany, he "decreed that mad cow
disease would come to an end in Europe and the UK." As
it turned out, the last reported case of human mad cow
disease had occurred the day before. "I am not implying
that I have any inherent supernatural power," Wagner
wrote. "I am implying that when apostles hear the word
of God clearly and when they decree His will, history
can change."

Claims of such powers are rife among Wagner's followers.
Cindy Jacobs--a self-described "respected prophet" and
Wagner protégée who runs a Dallas-area group called
Generals International--claims to have predicted the
recent earthquakes in Japan. "God had warned us that
shaking was coming," she wrote in Charisma magazine, an
organ for the movement. "This doesn't mean that it was
His desire for it to happen, but more of the biblical
fulfillment that He doesn't do anything without first
warning through His servants."

There is, of course, a corollary to these predictive
abilities: Horrible things happen when advice goes
unheeded.

Last year Jacobs warned that if America didn't return to
biblical values and support Israel, God would cause a
"tumbling of the economy and dark days will come,"
according to Charisma. To drive the point home, Jacobs
and other right-wing allies--including The Response
organizers Lou Engle and California pastor Jim Garlow--
organized a 40-day "Pray and Act" effort in the lead-up
to the 2010 elections.

Unlike other radical religious groups, the New Apostles
believe political activism is part of their divine
mission. "Whereas their spiritual forefathers in the
Pentecostal movement would have eschewed involvement in
politics, the New Apostles believe they have a divine
mandate to rescue a decaying American society," said
Margaret Poloma, a practicing Pentecostal and professor
of sociology at the University of Akron. "Their
apostolic vision is to usher in the Kingdom of God."

"Where does God stop and they begin?" she asks. "I don't
think they know the difference."

Poloma is one of the few academics who has closely
studied the apostolic movement. It's largely escaped
notice, in part, because it lacks the traditional
structures of either politics or religion, says Rachel
Tabachnick, a researcher who has covered the movement
extensively for Talk2Action.org, a left-leaning site
that covers the religious right.

"It's fairly recent and it just doesn't fit into
people's pre-conceived notions," she says. "They can't
get their head around something that isn't
denominational."

The movement operates through a loose but interlocking
array of churches, ministries, councils and seminaries--
many of them in Texas. But mostly it holds together
through the friendships and alliances of its prophets
and apostles.

The Response itself seems patterned on The Call, day-
long worship and prayer rallies usually laced with anti-
gay and anti-abortion messages. The Call--also the name
of a Kansas City-based organization--is led by Lou
Engle, an apostle who looks a bit like Mr. Magoo and has
the unnerving habit of rocking back and forth while
shouting at his audience in a raspy voice. (Engle is
also closely associated with the International House of
Prayer--Mike Bickle's 24/7 prayer center in Kansas
City.) Engle frequently mobilizes his followers in the
service of earthly causes, holding raucous prayer events
in California to help pass Prop 8, the anti-gay marriage
initiative, and making an appearance in Uganda last year
to lend aid to those trying to pass a law that would
have imposed the death penalty on homosexuals. But
Engle's larger aim is Christian control of government.

"The church's vocation is to rule history with God," he
has said. "We are called into the very image of the
Trinity himself, that we are to be His friends and
partners for world dominion."

"It sounds so fringe but yet it's not fringe,"
Tabachnick says. "They've been working with Sarah Palin,
Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Sam Brownback, and now
Rick Perry. ... They are becoming much more politically
noticeable."

Some of the fiercest critics of the New Apostolic
Reformation come from within the Pentecostal and
charismatic world. The Assemblies of God Church, the
largest organized Pentecostal denomination, specifically
repudiated self-proclaimed prophets and apostles in
2000, calling their creed a "deviant teaching" that
could rapidly "become dictatorial, presumptuous, and
carnal."

Assemblies authorities also rejected the notion that the
church is supposed to assume dominion over earthly
institutions, labeling it "unscriptural triumphalism."

The New Apostles talk about taking dominion over
American society in pastoral terms. They refer to the
"Seven Mountains" of society: family, religion, arts and
entertainment, media, government, education, and
business. These are the nerve centers of society that
God (or his people) must control.

Asked about the meaning of the Seven Mountains,
Schlueter says, "God's kingdom just can't be expressed
on Sunday morning for two hours. God's kingdom has to be
expressed in media and government and education. It's
not like our goal is to have a Bible on every child's
desk. That's not the goal. The goal is to hopefully have
everyone acknowledge that God's in charge of us
regardless."

But climbing those mountains sounds a little more
specific on Sunday mornings. Schlueter has bragged to
his congregation of meetings with Lt. Gov. David
Dewhurst, state Sen. Brian Birdwell, and the Arlington
City Council. He recently told a church in Victoria that
state Rep. Phil King, a conservative Republican from
Weatherford, had allowed him to use King's office at the
Capitol to make calls and organize.

"We're going to influence it," Schlueter told his
congregation. "We're going to infiltrate it, not run
from it. I know why God's doing what he's doing ... He's
just simply saying, `Tom I've given you authority in a
governmental authority, and I need you to infiltrate the
governmental mountain. Just do it, it's no big deal.' I
was talking with [a member of the congregation] the
other day. She's going to start infiltrating. A very
simple process. She's going to join the Republican
Party, start going to all their meetings. Some [members]
are already doing that."



DOUG STRINGER, A RELATIVELY LOW-PROFILE APOSTLE, is one
of the movement's more complex figures-and one of the
few people associated with The Response who returned my
calls. His assignment for The Response: mobilizing the
faithful from around the nation. Though he's friendly
with the governor and spoke at the state GOP convention,
Stringer says he's a political independent, "morally
conservative" but with a "heart for social justice."

Stringer runs Somebody Cares America, a nonprofit
combining evangelism with charitable assistance to the
indigent and victims of natural disasters. In 2009,
Perry recognized Stringer in his State of the State
address for his role in providing aid to Texans
devastated by Hurricane Ike.

Stringer's message is that The Response will be
apolitical, non-partisan, even ecumenical. The goal, he
says, is to "pray for personal repentance and corporate
repentance on behalf of the church, not against anybody
else."

I ask him about his involvement with the Texas Apostolic
Prayer Network, which is overseen by Schlueter. Six of
the nine people listed as network "advisors" are
involved in The Response, including Stringer, Cindy
Jacobs and Waco pastor Ramiro Peña. The Texas group is
part of a larger 50-state network of prophets, apostles
and prayer intercessors called the Heartland Apostolic
Network, which itself overlaps with the Reformation
Prayer Network run by Jacobs. The Texas Apostolic Prayer
Network is further subdivided into sixteen regions, each
with its own director.

Some of these groups' beliefs and activities will be
startling, even to many conservative evangelicals. For
example, in 2010 Texas prayer warriors visited every
Masonic lodge in the state attempting to cast out the
demon Baal, whom they believe controls Freemasonry. At
each site, the warriors read a decree--written in
legalese--divorcing Baal from the "People of God" and
recited a lengthy prayer referring to Freemasonry as
"witchcraft."

Asked whether he shares these views, Stringer launches
into a long treatise about secrecy during which he
manages to lump together Mormonism, Freemasonry and
college fraternities.

"I think there has been a lot of damage and polarization
over decades because of the influence of some areas of
Freemasonry that have been corrupted," he says. "In
fact, if you look at the original founder of the Mormon
Church, Joseph Smith, he had a huge influence by
Masonry. Bottom-line, anything that is so secretive that
has to be hidden in darkness ... is not biblical. The
Bible says that everything needs to be brought to the
light. That's why I would never be part of a fraternity,
like on campus."



WHY WOULD PERRY THROW in with this crowd?

One possible answer is that he's an opportunistic
politician running for president who's trying to get
right, if not with Jesus, with a particular slice of the
GOP base.

Perry himself may have the gift of foresight. He seems
preternaturally capable of spotting The Next Big Thing
and positioning himself as an authentic leader of
grassroots movements before they overtake other
politicians. Think of the prescient way he hitched his
political future to the Tea Party. In 2009 Perry spoke
at a Tax Day protest and infamously flirted with Texas
secession. At the time it seemed crazy. In retrospect it
seems brilliant.

Now, he's made common cause with increasingly
influential fundamentalists from the bleeding fringe of
American Christianity at a time when the political
influence of mainstream evangelicals seems to be fading.

For decades evangelicals have been key to Republican
presidential victories, but much has changed since
George W. Bush named Jesus as his favorite philosopher
at an Iowa debate during the 2000 presidential campaign.
There is much turbulence among evangelicals. There's no
undisputed leader, a Jerry Falwell or a Pat Robertson,
to bring the "tribes"--to use Stringer's phrase--
together. So you go where the momentum is. There is
palpable excitement in the prayer movement and among the
New Apostles that the nation is on the cusp of a major
spiritual and political revival.

"On an exciting note, we are in the beginning stages of
the Third Great Awakening," Jacobs told Trinity Church
in Cedar Hill earlier this year. (Trinity's pastor, Jim
Hennesy, is also an apostle and endorser of The
Response. Trinity is probably best known for its annual
Halloween "Hell House" that tries to scare teens into
accepting Jesus.) "We are seeing revivals pop up all
over the United States. ... Fires are breaking out all
over the place. And we are going to see great things
happening."

Moreover, various media outlets have documented a
possible coalescing of religious-right leaders around
Perry's candidacy. Time magazine reported on a June
conference call among major evangelical leaders,
including religious historian David Barton and San
Antonio pastor John Hagee, in which they "agreed that
Rick Perry would be their preferred candidate if he
entered the race," according to the magazine.

Journalist Tabachnick says politicians are attracted to
the apostolic movement because of the valuable
organizational structure and databases the leadership
has built.

"I believe it's because they've built such a tremendous
communication network," she says, pointing to the 50-
state prayer networks plugged into churches and
ministries. "They found ways to work that didn't involve
the institutional structures that many denominations
have. They don't have big offices, headquarters. They
work more like a political campaign."

But if the apostles present a broad organizing
opportunity, the political risks for Perry are equally
large.

In 2008 GOP nominee John McCain was forced to reject
Hagee's endorsement after media scrutiny of the pastor's
anti-Catholic comments. Similarly, Barack Obama's 2008
presidential campaign nearly fell apart when voters saw
video of controversial sermons by the candidate's
pastor, Jeremiah Wright. If anything, Perry is venturing
even further into the spiritual wilderness. The faith of
the New Apostles will be unfamiliar, strange, and scary
to many Americans.

Consider Alice Patterson. She's in charge of mobilizing
churches in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma for
The Response. A field director for the Texas Christian
Coalition in the 1990s, she's now a significant figure
in apostolic circles and runs a San Antonio-based
organization called Justice at the Gate.

Patterson, citing teachings by Cindy Jacobs, Chuck
Pierce and Lou Engle, has written that the Democratic
Party is controlled by "an invisible network of evil
comprising an unholy structure" unleashed by the
biblical figure Jezebel.

Patterson claims to have seen demons with her own eyes.
In 2009, at a prophetic meeting in Houston, Patterson
says she saw the figure of Jezebel and "saw Jezebel's
skirt lifted to expose tiny Baal, Asherah, and a few
other spirits. There they were--small, cowering,
trembling little spirits that were only ankle high on
Jezebel's skinny legs."

Those revelations are contained in Patterson's 2010 book
Bridging the Racial and Political Divide: How Godly
Politics Can Transform a Nation. Patterson's aim, as she
makes clear in her book, is getting black and brown
evangelicals to vote Republican and support conservative
causes. A major emphasis among the New Apostles is
racial reconciliation and recruitment of minorities and
women. The apostolic prayer networks often perform
elaborate ceremonies in which participants dress up in
historical garb and repent for racial sins.

The formula--overcoming racism to achieve multiracial
fundamentalism--has caught on in the apostolic movement.
Some term the approach the "Rainbow Right," and in fact
The Response has a high quotient of African-Americans,
Latinos and Asian-Americans in leadership positions.

Lou Engle, for example, is making a big push to recruit
black activists into the anti-abortion ranks. "We're
looking for the new breed of black prophets to arise and
forgive us our baggage," he said at Trinity Assemblies
of God, "and then lead us out of victimization and into
the healing of a nation, to stop the shedding of
innocent blood."

Rick Perry is a white southern conservative male who may
end up running against a black president. It doesn't
take a prophet to see that he could use friends like
these.

There's one other possible reason for Perry's flirtation
with the apostles, and it has nothing to do with
politics. He could be a true believer.

Perry has never been shy about proclaiming his faith. He
was raised a Methodist and still occasionally attends
Austin's genteel Tarrytown United Methodist Church. But
according to an October 2010 story in the Austin
American-Statesman, he now spends more Sundays at West
Austin's Lake Hills Church, a non-denominational
evangelical church that features a rock band and pop-
culture references. The more effusive approach to
religion clearly appealed to Perry. "They dunk," Perry
told the American-Statesman. "Methodists sprinkle."

Still, attending an evangelical church is a long way
from believing in modern-day apostles and demons in
plain sight. Could Perry actually buy into this stuff?

He's certainly convinced the movement's leaders. "He's a
very deep man of faith and I know that sometimes causes
problems for people because they think he's making
decisions based on his faith," Schlueter says. He pauses
a beat. "Well, I hope so."

But the danger of associating with extremists is
apparent even to Schlueter, the man who took God's
message to Perry in September 2009. "It could be
political suicide to do what he's doing," Schlueter
says. "Man, this is the last thing he'd want to do if it
were concerning a presidential bid. It could be very
risky."

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate