Christian Right Observer Weekly (Volume 12)
Christian Right Observer Weekly (Volume 12)
CROW's 7 stories on the Christian Right that you need read this week.
1. Christian Right Leader Tony Perkins Remains Confident that, if Re-elected, Trump Would Sign a National Anti-Abortion Bill
Former President Donald Trump, who is running for re-election, recently ruffled feathers among some anti-abortion zealots by publicly suggesting that he opposes the idea of a national abortion ban.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, however, remains confident that Trump would sign such a ban if Congress were to send it to his desk. In fact, during an interview following Trump’s remarks, he implied that Trump told him as much in private conversations. Here are Perkins’ exact words from 10 days ago:
“This I’m confident of, I’ve had conversations, not today, but leading up to this with the former president. If Congress were to reach a consensus on a piece of legislation and send it to his desk, I have no doubt that he would sign it.”
2. Examining the Links Between Leonard Leo and the Catholic Hardliners Leading Project 2025
Leonard Leo is an “ultra conservative” Catholic lawyer and activist with a $1.6 billion war chest. Leo has already forced much of America to submit to his extreme religiosity by stacking the U.S. Supreme Court with Catholic hardliners who have ruled against abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights.
He and his allies are now poised to take over America's federal agencies via Project 2025, an expansive plan spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation that will go into effect if Trump or another Republican is elected president. The plan expressly aims to dismantle many or most federal agencies (the so-called “administrative state”) and to choose who will preside over the remains.
Leo has already had “unparalleled influence” in shaping our federal courts, including (as noted) the U.S. Supreme Court. He “participated in the Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett Supreme Court selection and confirmation process as well as the outside efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito … confirmations,” according to the Catholic Information Center (where Leo sits on the board of directors). All of these justices are Catholic, with the exception of Gorsuch who was raised Catholic but now attends an Episcopal Church, per CNN.
Leo also organized and attended a luxury fishing trip to Alaska with Alito and billionaire Paul Singer. And he is featured in a painting alongside Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (who is Catholic) and billionaire Harlan Crow.
But Leo’s ambitions extend beyond the courts. Organizations within his network have reportedly funded at least 40 groups advising Project 2025, per NBC News.
Leo is also linked to Project 2025 co-author Roger Severino—VP of Domestic Policy at Heritage—who served as the Director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Trump. Severino began his career at the “Becket Fund for Religious Liberty” where Leo sits on the board of directors. Severino is one half of a “Catholic Right” power couple. The other half is Leonard Leo protégé Carrie Severino, who previously clerked for Becket and Clarence Thomas.
It was Roger Severino who wrote the section of Project 2025 outlining a plan to withdraw the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill (mifepristone), which is also under attack in a case pending before the Supreme Court. If the religious right fails to convince the Supreme Court, Project 2025 is their “Plan B” (pun intended).
Leo and his network are also linked to Kevin Roberts, a rabidly partisan fundamentalist Catholic activist, who has served as president of Heritage since 2021. In 2020, Roberts had been featured on the Resources page of “WhereYouAre,” which calls itself a “collaboration of people in touch with … centers of Opus Dei in Texas.”
Opus Dei is a “small but powerful” group “within the Catholic Church” whose members “abide by strict conservative teachings'' and “believe they are called to serve God” not only in their personal lives, but also in their professions, per the Australian Broadcasing Center. Many of Opus Deis’ members keep their membership a secret.
Leo reportedly belongs to Opus Dei.
Leo also sits on the Napa Legal Institute’s board of directors, a faith based organization whose chairman of the board is Timothy Busch, one of Leo’s closest allies. Bush co-founded Napa Legal’s sister organization, the Napa Institute, whose annual conference in July 2022 included Kevin Roberts as a speaker. Leo is a Napa Institute donor.
In December that year, Busch announced that the Napa Institute would open an office near the U.S. Capitol within the headquarters of the Eternal World Television Network (EWTN), a global Catholic-themed television and radio network.
The month before, Kevin Roberts had been interviewed during an EWTN broadcast where he called himself an abortion “purist” and said that he wanted “not a single abortion happening in this country.”
Roberts reconnected with Leo’s network in 2023 when he spoke during “A Duty to God and Country,” an event organized by the Catholic Information Center (CIC) and Napa Institute. As noted, Leo sits on CIC’s board of directors.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 (Heritage) Director Paul Dans belongs to the New York chapter of the Federalist Society, which is co-chaired by Leo at the national level, while Steve Bannon, Project 2025’s unofficial media partner, has served with Leo on the board of directors of Reclaim New York (founded by Rebekah Mercer).
Bannon, you may recall, has closely aligned himself with proponents of the so-called “rad trad” (radical traditional) Catholicism movement and specifically said that he wants to destroy the administrative state, an express goal of Project 2025. As observed by Media Matters, Bannon has repeatedly used his War Room perch to normalize Project 2025’s radical agenda.
3. Good News! Newly Funded Project Will Map Resistance to Christian Nationalism
The University of Connecticut’s Meanings of Democracy Lab was awarded $300,000 last month from the Henry Luce Foundation to chart resistance to Christian Nationalism. UConn Associate Professor of Sociology Ruth Braunstein, who heads the Lab, will create a database of individuals and organizations involved in this battle to save our secular, multiracial democracy. The project will also include a podcast and interactive web platform.
“I noticed that as Christian nationalism was gaining power and influence in American politics, it was also unleashing a wave of resistance,” said Braunstein.
Reporting and networking the resistance to Christian Nationalism is lacking right now. And while the mainstream media is finally catching up to the threat of Christian Nationalism and other forms of right-wing Christian theocratic movements like the New Apostolic Reformation, they are severely lacking with this coverage.
"As Christian nationalists … turn toward authoritarian theocracy, the press should be paying attention to those rising up to preserve democracy in US. The leaders of the resistance are on the front lines of this war," wrote Braunstein in a column for Religion News Service.
Don’t forget to follow UConn’s Meanings of Democracy Lab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/USDemocracyLab/
4. A Rogues Gallery Meets in Florida
Peter Thiel, who is “taking a break from democracy,” will be keynote speaker at a Culture, Religion, and Technology Fireside chat April 19. He will be joined by Bambi Francisco Roizen, who organized the even, writes on the Unequally Yoked website: “We were yoked together in 1776, when our united goal was to be a nation under God. But that God-fearing identity has been shattered.”
Joining Thiel and Francisco Roizen will be “Christian Nationalist” and Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Education Ryan Walters, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, MAGA millionaire and aspiring oligarch Paul Martino (who has public education in his crosshairs), anti-(teachers) union Freedom Foundation President Aaron Withe, and James Lindsay, who the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as “a leading voice in the reactionary anti-student inclusion, anti-LGBTQ, and conspiracy propaganda movements.”
5. NAR ‘Don’t Mess With Our Kids’ Call to the Capitols Recap: Partners, Elected Officials, and the Movement’s Future
"He mandates us to go into all of the Earth & take Dominion...into your schools, into school board meetings & take Dominion”
said the Pennsylvania Don't Mess with Our Kids Call to the Capitol captain. This captain just happened to be also a group leader at Harrisburg Life Center Ministries. Life Center is a New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) Apostle Che Ahn led Harvest International Ministry.
And Che Ahn recently commissioned Apostle Jenny Donnelly who has two anointed tasks: one of which is to birth a global movement off of the seemingly secular sounding and triple monikers Her Voice, Don't Mess with Our Kids, Call to the Capitols. This Saturday almost 20 thousand of predominantly Christian Dominionists descended upon our State Capitols wearing pink and blue, blowing culturally appropriated shofars, and waving Appeal to Heaven flags.
The rallies were carefully orchestrated with the few secular attendees lured in by the anti LGBTQ rhetoric being exposed for the first time to Seven Mountain prayer points including government. And the Christian Dominionist movement had the following government figures attend and/or speak:
ALABAMA
Susan DuBose Representative
ALASKA
Jamie Allard State Representative
Michelle Altherr State Senate candidate
Jerome Davison US Congress candidate
Pamela Carter State House candidate
Jeff Zink US Congress candidate
Lisa Fink State Representative candidate
Janelle Bowles Peoria Unified School Candidate
ARKANSAS
Mary Bentley State Representative
CALIFORNIA
Ellen Zhou San Francisco Mayor Candidate
COLORADO
Trent Leisy House Representative candidate
CONNECTICUT
Stacey for Senate 24
ILLINOIS
Jim Marler US Congress candidate
IOWA
Samantha Fett State House candidate
Oliver Bardwell House Representative candidate
MICHIGAN
Herman Barbe State Representative candidate
Alexandra Taylor Supreme Court candidate
MONTANA
Bowen Greenwood Clerk of the State Supreme Court
OHIO
Darlene Yost, wife of Attorney General Dave Yost
OKLAHOMA
Stacey Jo Adams State Representative candidate
Gabe Wooley State Representative also spoke at City Elders event
RHODE ISLAND
Anthony DEllena Republican Party field organizer
Representative Patricia Morgan US Senator candidate
David Cook State Representative
Phil King Senator
Bryan Hughes Senator
Julie Short Mansfield City Council
Dr Mary Bone SBOE District candidate
VIRGINIA
Karen Hamilton, wife of Cameron Hamilton Virginia Congress candidate
WISCONSIN
Charity Barry Wisconsin Congress candidate
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/zmAzUbJeh5r6NQus/?mibextid=qi2Omg
PARTNERS, PROMOTERS & PRESENTERS
American Association of Evangelicals
Dr Carol Swain
Moms for Liberty National
Ohio Patriot Academy
The Family Leader Iowa
Turning Point Action's Wisconsin
TPUSA Faith plains states
REPORTED ATTENDANCE
Arkansas 150
California 300
California 100 in Rotunda
Ohio 500
Iowa 350
Virginia 200
Georgia 200
Texas 2500
Washington 3500
NEWS ARTICLES
North Carolina ABC 11
6. Million Women March: The Future Is the Esther’s Faceless Army
“It reminded me really of a prophetic word that's been given to the end times and that is that it would be a nameless faceless Army that would actually be what brings in the Great Harvest of the billion souls”
-Call to the Capitols State Leader
This nameless faceless Army will make their strategic move to our nation's Capitol for their Million Women March on October 12. At each state Capitol Rally, attendees were encouraged to do three things:
Scan a QR CODE
Start a Prayer Hub
Download their new app
The QR CODE led attendees to identify their State & text their phone number and connect them with their state's Coalition partners:
Christians Engaged who runs a campaign school and is mobilizing Biblical voters.
Pacific Justice Institute whose founder calls public schools spiritual death camps trains candidates and has free downloads for the Her Voice app users.
The Prayer Hubs already number in the thousands across our country and serve two purposes:
Keep Call to the Capitol attendees Engaged until the Million Women March.
Introduce other Christian denominations to the Dominionist Seven Mountains through prayer points.
The Her Voice MVMT app is available on both Google Play and Apple. Donnelly's latest video shows a mobile demo of the app which allows users to create a login for their State chat.
This chat feature will be essential to foster and foment six months of moving from a faceless Army single date March defending kids to a movement in the streets that will turn our nation back to God in time for the presidential election. Don't Mess with Our Kids is not nameless or faceless. New Apostolic Reformation Movement Apostles across the country led by Lance Wallnau have recruited Peruvian consultant Christian Rosas of Con mis hijos no te metas to leverage his marketing expertise. His advice according to Wallnau?
“We could have all Latin America. All of South America. And he showed me all the pictures We will all go to the embassy on the same day as you RISE UP in your country. It will be a Latino movement. And they will stand behind the church of the United States. This is a global movement.”
7. We Will Take Cities. We Will Take States. The Courage Tour and Lance Wallnau.
NAR Apostle Lance Wallnau and Evangelist Mario Murillo first Courage Tour just launched this weekend in Duluth, Georgia. Prior to the tour start, Wallnau was anointed by a Texas NAR ministry.
"Dr Lance, we are with you. The Army of God is rising. We say this time we will not let this Battleground be lost. We will not stop with just having a man in the White House.
We will take cities.
We will take states.
We will take governments.”
And Wallnau is indeed trying to take Battleground cities and states in coordination with the America First Policy Institute. Back in October Wallnau mentioned to his Colorado Fire & Glory crowd that he was going to get pastors to download AFPI's Biblical Foundations Why Faith and Politics Do Mix sermon curriculum. A sharp eyed doctoral student and fellow Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood spotted the AFPI curriculum being promoted with a QR CODE at the Georgia rally.
This official link is important as Wallnau and AFPI offshoot America First Works have talked about seven key Battleground states and 19 key counties (Project 19) to activate voters as conservatives. Wallnau's Georgia Courage Rally showcased AFPI Center for the American Dream chair and Dominionist Dr Alveda King who trained attendees on the Seven Mountains “How to OCCUPY and Enforce God's Kingdom with Power in the Earth and Airwaves.”
Pastor Jentzen Franklin, who was part of the AFPI Biblical Foundations launch and whose son Drake Franklin serves as AFPI’s Southeastern Development Director & Policy Analyst in the Center for American Values, also spoke at the Duluth event.
Finally, Wallnau is leveraging the Courage Tour rallies as a vehicle to drive people to NAR Apostle Jenny Donnelly's Don't Mess with Our Kids and Million Women March with featured tour speakers NAR Prophet Lou Engle and Donnelly. The Courage Tour official website just updated additional new tour speakers to include: Wallbuilders David and Tim Barton, Apostle Leon Benjamin, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Patriot Academy Rick Green, TPUSA Faith Strategic Director Jared Fleming, former POTUS Shield member & Reverend Herman Martir, Moms for America Shelli Boggs, and Faith Wins Chad Connelly.
Addendum: Georgia Congressman Barry Loudermilk made a special appearance at the Courage Tour Georgia Rally. Watch his interview with Wallnau HERE.
Great report. For a map of Project 2025’s connections and to Opus Dei, see www.stopthecoup2025.org.
We are a nonpartisan campaign closely tracking the key people, groups and money driving Project 2025. — AC d’Adesky