Lance Wallnau, a vocal leader of the country’s growing grassroots evangelical movement, says it initially took some time to convince evangelical Christians to recognize Former President Donald Trump as divinely chosen to navigate these chaotic times.
“I got a lot of backlash after he was elected,” Wallnau said in a rare television interview on CBS News, “because they were looking at how evangelicals could justify voting for a barbaric character like Trump. I said, ‘Look, give him some time. He doesn’t know who we are, but his values resonate with our community.’”
Judging by the crowd gathered on a recent rainy summer day in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Wallnau appears to have succeeded.
Wallnau leads the “Courage Tour,” a traveling event that targets key counties across the country with a mix of religious and political activism. These events encourage participants not only to vote, but also to sign up to work as poll workers and poll watchers.
His efforts are part of an idea he popularized that calls for Christians to exercise religious and political dominance. He calls it the “Mandate of the Seven Mountains,” referring to government, family, religion, arts and entertainment, media, education and business. Once a fringe belief, it has become a popular refrain that mixes religious and political messages, says Matthew Taylor, an author and scholar of religion.
Wallnau tries to recruit Pro-Trump Evangelicals willing to look beyond the former president’s past conduct and focus instead on his views on abortion, gender issues and Israel.
“You literally see two sets of values and worldviews on display,” said Joshua Standifer, a Courage Tour speaker who runs Lion of Judah, a group that recruits evangelicals to work and monitor elections. “And it just so happens that one of them naturally aligns more with what we believe right now.”
Hundreds of people attended the Wisconsin event led by Wallnau last month, and tens of thousands more followed the revival online — a decidedly political religious roadshow.
The goal is to motivate independent charismatic Christians to proselytize for Trump before the November election, and to continue that effort beyond Election Day if that’s what it takes for him to win the presidency. In Greek, “charisma” means “gift,” and charismatic Christians, many of whom are nondenominational, emphasize the gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as miracles and speaking in tongues.
In his interview with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Maj. Garrett, Wallnau described the tour as a “mixed platter” of spiritual renewal and political activism. “This is spiritual activism,” he said.
“You can’t make America great again until you start revival with God,” Wallnau told the Eau Claire audience, later adding, “If you don’t learn to mobilize and take action at the grassroots level, you’re letting the devil rule your culture.”
“We’re going to flood polling places across the country with Spirit-filled believers,” Standifer told the crowd. “We believe it’s time to unleash the roar of Christian voters across America.”
Jacqui Brokaw, one of the attendees at the ceremony, said she wanted to elect Trump “because he stands for something.” She hopes to galvanize others in the region and turn Wisconsin from blue to red.
“If we don’t get our elections this year, we’re going to lose our whole country,” warned David Jansen, one participant.
“What we’re seeing today is the most targeted and tactical electoral mobilization effort ever undertaken by Christian nationalists,” Taylor says. He believes the stakes are much higher than politics.
“If Trump wins, it will be part of the momentum that allows Donald Trump to say, ‘I don’t just have a democratic mandate, I have a divine mandate to change the country in accordance with the biblical values that these people claim to have,'” Taylor said.
Trump’s relationship Donald Trump’s relationship with the evangelical community dates back to his first campaign for the White House in 2015, when Paula White-Cain, a leading charismatic Christian figure, became one of his top religious advisers.
That year, White-Cain organized a meeting to introduce Trump to other prominent charismatic figures, including Wallnau. After their first meeting, Wallnau wrote that Trump had been chosen as “the trumpet of God,” to be “a wrecking ball of political correctness.”
“I had this idea in 2015, when I first met Trump, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, this guy looks like the character Cyrus in the Bible,’” Wallnau said, referring to the book of Isaiah, which describes Cyrus as a foreigner chosen by God to free the Jews from captivity.
Wallnau was one of the first charismatic leaders to spread the idea across his vast social media following that Trump had been anointed by God as a Cyrus for our times. His Trump is a conquering hero, and Wallnau sees his own role as convincing his followers to help God elect Trump.
“If at the end of the day we haven’t mobilized you to be an election observer, a poll worker, someone involved in election integrity or someone who can help someone else get people out to vote, I’m not sure we’ve done what we need to do,” Wallnau told the crowd in Eau Claire.
“You won’t have to vote anymore, my fellow Christians. I love you Christians,” Trump said at the Turning Point Action Summit of Believers in July.
Following Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, charismatic Christians supported Trump’s claims that the election was stolen from him in the weeks leading up to his election. the insurrection on January 6. Wallnau also supported him and was scheduled to speak at a rally at the Capitol that day before it was canceled.
At the Eau Claire tent, Wallnau justified the riots that took place at the U.S. Capitol nearly four years ago.
“January 6 was not an insurrection,” he said. “It was an intervention to combat election fraud.”
“A lot of the people who were leading this movement also went to the polls on January 6 because they felt strongly that the election was being stolen,” Taylor said. “They felt that Donald Trump was right.”
Taylor claims this mindset extends to a “demonic conspiracy” that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
“[They] “I believed that a conspiracy of demons manifesting through the Democratic Party, manifesting through disloyal Republicans, manifesting through Mike Pence, was preventing Trump from winning the election and doing the will of God,” Taylor said.
For Wallnau, this presidential election is nothing less than a battle of good versus evil.
“I don’t see how anyone with any moral clarity could stay away from an election like this. I mean, the stakes are so clear,” Wallnau said. “I say to Christians, you know, what would you say during the Civil War?”
Wallnau uses apocalyptic language during revivals, creating a spiritual battle between devout believers and demons speaking through Democrats or liberals. In a speech on FlashPoint Live, he told the audience, “You see, the left is full of demons.”
Wallnau described what he saw as the multitude of forces arrayed against the former president.
“[Trump]”He’s like Samson. He has his hands between two pillars,” Wallnau says. “He’s practically in competition with academia, the media, the government, the intelligence community, and to some extent, a lot of businesses.”
But Wallnau is betting he can channel the hyperfocused Christian political energy he fuels to overcome those obstacles.
“The tendency to just watch the election, pray about it, eat popcorn, watch the results and go to bed is over,” Wallnau said. “Christians, as people of faith, should probably engage in this process of shaping culture much more aggressively and intentionally from now on, because it’s shaping itself without them.”
