In what we can only assume is an effort to prove he’s not weird by standing next to people who may be even weirder than he is, JD Vance will be doing a town hall today with Christian extremist Lance Wallnau during a Monroeville stop on Wallnau’s “Courage Tour.”
What is the Courage Tour, you ask? Well, it’s an effort on the part of Wallnau and other far-right pastors (and Charlie Kirk) to undermine the Johnson Amendment by getting right-leaning churches in battleground states to host what are more or less pro-Trump revival meetings. As television has led me to believe that a “revival meeting” is where people do church outside in a tent with someone who is definitely scamming them in some capacity, this tracks.
Wallnau is a leader in the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement and one of the authors of Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate — a deeply disturbing Christian movement centered on them taking over the “seven spheres” of society — family, religion, education, media/entertainment, business, government, and science/technology (the science and technology mountain was added after COVID; media and entertainment used to be separate mountains). Once they do that, not only will they be in control of all of us … Jesus will come back!
Because of course.
The official website for the Courage Tour describes it as “marking the dawn of our nation’s Third Great Awakening.” It behooves me to mention that the Second Great Awakening ended in the Great Disappointment — when followers of William Miller were devastated after Jesus failed to come back on his predicted date of October 22, 1844, at least partly because many of them had trusted him so much that they’d already rid themselves of all their worldly possessions. Just saying!
Wallnau sees himself not just as a guy trying to practice his own religion in peace, but as engaging in “spiritual warfare” against the rest of us. Why? Because of how we are all demonic.
“The Left is loaded with demons,” Wallnau has said. “I don’t think it’s people anymore. I think you’re dealing with demons talking through people.”
It will not surprise you in the least that he has also said a number of completely batshit things about Kamala Harris. Aside from being “literally demonic,” Wallnau has claimed that Harris only beat Trump in the debate earlier this month because of “witchcraft.”
“When I say ‘witchcraft’,” he tweeted, “I am talking about what happened tonight. Occult empowered deception, manipulation and domination. That’s what ABC pulled off as moderators, and Kamala’s script handlers set up the kill box. One sided questions and fact checking sealed the box. Witchcraft. It’s not over yet, but something supernatural needs to disrupt this counterfeit momentum because the same public that voted in Obama is voting again and her deception is advancing.”
He has also repeatedly called Harris a Jezebel and accused her of having a “Jezebel spirit” — which, in addition to being a feminist website, a mediocre Bette Davis movie, and a lady from the Bible who is supposed to be especially evil but does not appear to have done anything more disturbing than the “good guys” of the Bible did (including God) apart from the fact that she did them while being a woman and having a different religion, has also long been used as a slur against Black women.
This has nothing to do with the election, but I sure would like to point out that he also once tweeted that “some people deserve to starve” … according to the Bible.
And that he once prayed “in tongues” for Trump not to be arrested. (Clearly not very effective!)
He also claims to have “prophesied” that Trump would win and was (he says) the first Christian leader to compare him to the Biblical character of King Cyrus.
This is what JD Vance is embracing today. This is what he is taking seriously. Not just a man, but an entire movement that thinks that more than half of the people in this country are literally possessed by demons who are talking for us (but watch them sob over “deplorables”), that makes no secret of its desire to control every aspect of our lives (while he claims no interest in Project 2025) and eliminate the separation of church and state to the point where we are all forced to live in a theocracy.
Or, even worse, forced to live in a world in which they have dominion over all of the entertainment. Can you imagine? Every single movie and television show starring Kirk Cameron and Kevin Sorbo?
If the mere specter of that future does not disqualify Trump/Vance for a large majority of the country … I don’t know what we’re gonna do.