Meet the Republican Party's new spiritual guru, Lou Engle:
[excerpt from 2007 Engle Los Vegas speech. see here for extended transcript. right: audio excerpt from Engle sermon]
"My son Jesse, he's nineteen years old. God has given him dreams, to go to San Francisco to launch a house of prayer, one block from the Castro District - where the homosexuals boast the dominion of darkness. He's going there with weeping in his heart. With the dream that prayer is stronger than the dominion of that spirit.
...He said to me, "dad," he said, "as long as I'm there I don't think the Lord will judge San Francisco." [boos, angry murmur from Engle's audience]...
He's nineteen years old. He's starting to cast out homosexual spirits out of our new converts. It's scary. The whole thing's scary. But fathers are to send their sons into the darkest places."
As the Rachel Maddow Show has recently showcased, on December 16th the Family Research Council sponsored a "Prayercast" event, attended by GOP luminaries including Senators Jim DeMint and Sam Brownback, and House Representatives Michelle Bachmann and Randy Forbes. But FRC head Tony Perkins did not lead the prayer event. That honor fell to Lou Engle, Founder of TheCall. Besides leading the capstone stadium rally for pro-Proposition 8, antigay marriage organizers last November 1, 2008 at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, Lou Engle could also be found, at a special ceremony at a Virginia Beach megachurch last summer, anointing and blessing GOP presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich.
Is Lou Engle on the road to being the Republican Party's semi-official prayer leader ? That would be notable for many reasons - not the least of which is that Engle appears to condone, if not encourage, religious terrorism and has stated that homosexuals are gay because they are possessed by demon spirits.
In previous stories [1, 2] I've detailed Lou Engle's political extremity - video from a November 1, 2008 TheCall event shows Engle onstage at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium calling for acts of Christian martyrdom to stop legal abortion and gay marriage. Engle has forecast that legalized abortion will lead to a second American civil war and appeared, in the documentary "Jesus Camp," alongside Becky Fischer - who specializes in evangelizing children and has stated she would like Christian children to learn to be as dedicated as Hamas suicide bombers.
[Top, Left: Becky Fischer admires the dedication of Hamas' young suicide bombers. Top, Right: Lou Engle predicts legalized abortion will lead to a second American civil war, TheCall Kansas City, December 31, 2007. Bottom, Left: Lou Engle calls for martyrs, at TheCall San Diego, November 1, 2008. Bottom, Right: Lou Engle, at Jesus Camp, indoctrinates children as future antiabortion movement warriors.].
Is the GOP becoming the party of violent Christian martyrdom ? Apparently, Jim DeMint, Sam Brownback, Michelle Bachmann and Randy Forbes weren't deterred by the fact that Lou Engle has publicly made statements which resemble rhetoric deployed during the 1990's, by leaders of the anti-abortion movement, that helped incite domestic terrorism. But they weren't alone:
Engle, who has publicly called for acts of Christian martyrdom, could be found last summer blessing and anointing Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee at a Virginia Beach megachurch. Engle represents a religious right tendency that had become so dominant that known potentates such as James Dobson and Tony Perkins travel to Engle's TheCall events - such as the San Diego stadium rally which served as the capstone to the successful anti-gay marriage Proposition Eight push in California.
Lou Engle is a leader in a religious tendency, rapidly becoming the new face of the religious right, which welcomes women and minorities but features an ideology just extreme as that of the bigoted, nativist branch of the Christian right that Engle's tendency will soon overshadow. Engle has described his movement as an "underground church" and he has stated, in an interview for a documentary video about his movement,
"Right now they haven't seen the true church. There's an underground church that the world has no idea that exists. Once they get the stage, it's over with."
While the American left has heavily focused on the Tea Party movement, leaders in Engle's arising tendency, which I've described as the The Rainbow Right, wield major electoral influence with minority groups and can infiltrate Washington-based Democrat "centrist","common ground" efforts with ease.
Four of the Christian leaders appearing in the "PrayerCast" event alongside Brownback and DeMint played dominant roles in a two and a half hour, key motivational and planning conference call, held July 30th, 2008, for leaders of the Christian right who organized the successful campaign to block gay marriage in Arizona, Florida, and California. Those leaders are: Jim Garlow, Bishop Harry Jackson, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and Lou Engle of TheCall.
Engle's operation was so central to the California pro-Prop 8 drive that one of the four campaign timeline maps, distributed to members of that July 30th, 2008 conference call detailing major elements and events for the anti-gay marriage campaigns in AZ, FL, and CA, was dedicated solely to TheCall's effort in California.
[ below: map/timeline for TheCall's pro-Prop 8 effort in CA ]
Founder of TheCall Lou Engle has predicted that legal abortion will lead to a second civil war. And, as I've previously noted, the runaway hit documentary Jesus Camp, by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, featured footage of an Engle appearance at Becky Fischer's former summer camp for Christian children. In Jesus Camp Fischer states her desire to indoctrinate children to be as dedicated as Hamas suicide bombers [ see here for relevant footage of Engle at TheCall and Fischer, from Jesus Camp ].
Lou Engle's son Jesse Engle specializes in casting out gay "demons" and has established a ministry in San Fransisco, which Lou Engle has described as a place "where the homosexuals boast the dominion of darkness."
In the early 1980's, KKK and Aryan Nations strategist Louis Beam helped popularize a tactic known as "leaderless resistance" in which high profile propagandists would incite terrorist acts carried out by autonomous individuals and cell groups. During the 1990's leaders of the Army of God, wielding militant anti-abortion rhetoric, helped inspire terrorist bombings of abortion clinics and the assassination of doctors who provided abortions. Now, a decade later, one can hear such incitement coming from the stage at Lou Engle's TheCall events, which Engle's group holds in stadiums not just in the United States but around the world too, in Australia, Germany, the Philippines, Norway, England, Jerusalem and Brazil.
Over the last two decades, the American Christian right has gone truly global and established power centers in the developing world which now lend support to the long march, in the United States, towards extending Christian dominion over key sectors of society such as government, business and finance, education, media, and religion.
Engle's role as leader of TheCall has now received some mainstream media notice but the source of his influence is still largely unknown. Lou Engle serves, alongside Sarah Palin's prayer group leader Mary Glazier, on the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, one of the key leadership groups wielding influence over a sprawling, global new incarnation of the religious right known as the New Apostolic Reformation.
As detailed in a recent Talk To Action report, Peter Wagner's New Apostolic Reformation has played a major role in inspiring and organizing Ugandan legislators behind the draconian "kill the gays" bill before Uganda's parliament.
Peter Wagner was advisor for Rick Warren's dissertation for a Doctorate of Ministry from Fuller Theological Seminary. In a mid-December statement from Rick Warren, Letter To Uganda's Pastors, Rick Warren lied about his connection to Wagner and made strange disclaimers that would seem to have been in reaction to the December 4th, 2009 Talk To Action report and also to YouTube videos [1, 2] from this author, showcasing Warren's penchant for urging Christians to be as devoted to Jesus as the followers of Hitler, Lenin, and Mao were to their respective leaders. In the unusual statement, Warren writes both the question, below (in bold type) and the response:
Are you and Peter Wagner attempting to rid the world of homosexuals? Absolutely not. Peter Wagner was a seminary professor of mine, but not my doctoral dissertation advisor. I have not had contact with Peter Wagner for many years and am certainly not conspiring with him for any purpose. Additionally, the event chronicled at Angels Stadium in 2005 has been grossly misrepresented. I was simply arguing that Christians could have a tremendous effect for good in the world if they had the same dedication as the followers of Mao. I would never argue that anyone should emulate or espouse the views of Mao, Hitler or Lenin.
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