Footage from a 1997 evangelical video shows Hayford enthusiastically introducing and endorsing a talk during which his colleague C. Peter Wagner claimed that the early 1990's economic downturn of the Japanese economy was due to what Wagner depicted as a Shinto ritual in which Japanese emperors have sexual intercourse with a demonic sky-goddess being that, posited Wagner, may have been a succubus. Wagner blamed slack Japanese stock prices on the alleged tryst. As British religious scholar Richard Bartholomew notes, C. Peter Wagner's treatment of the Shinto ceremony is factually dubious on a number of counts.

US GOP Senator John Ensign belongs to the 5-10 million member (estimates vary) denomination, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which Church on The Way Pastor Jack Hayford has headed for 5 years. Hayford gave the benediction at former president George W. Bush's 2001 inaugural prayer sevice. In 2006 Senator Ensign addressed the Foursquare Gospel International Church's yearly convention via a videotaped message. In 2003, Senator Ensign traveled to Philadelphia and addressed the yearly Foursquare Gospel convention in person. Jack Hayford has also been one of the regularly featured speakers at Promise Keeper events. The Promise Keepers, which John Ensign joined in college, has promoted evangelists who practice demon deliverance, otherwise known as exorcism.

As Church On The Way head Hayford introduced Peter Wagner in the 1993 video,

"Spiritual mapping is a recently adopted term to describe a new dynamic sphere of Christian ministry that is helping many as they seek to discern and break the real strongholds of the enemy: that is, in Bible terms, our enemy, the adversary The Devil and the demonic forces of Hell he commandeers. In this lesson, Peter Wagner helps us see that Spiritual Mapping is Biblical. This can great increase our readiness for pray and deepen our convictions that we're on solid Bible-based turf as we adopt this means for prayer. I think you'll be especially moved as Dr. Wagner gives examples of how prayer targeted through Spiritual Mapping has helped spread the Gospel in many areas."

During his talk, C. Peter Wagner claimed that Japanese emperors have sex with the "Sun Goddess" during a special Shinto ritual,

"So, there is a spirit called a "harlot", a principality who dominates nations, who dominates territories, who dominates people groups, very very clearly - to such an extent that she has fornication with kings. And I can give you an example of how she does this. Japan, as a nation, is one of the nations of the world which has consciously, openly invited national demonization. And they do this through what's called a Daijosai Ceremony where, when a new emperor comes in, and we had a new emperor about three or four years ago, when a new emperor comes into power this Daijosai Ceremony takes place, it is a Shinto based ceremony, and as a part of this ceremony the emperor goes to this specially chosen, specially built place - I think it cost them, I forget, something like 50 million dollars to put this thing on, to build these places.

He eats rice that has been planted and harvested and chosen through witchcraft, and at a certain time that night the Sun Goddess visits him in person and has sexual intercourse with the emperor. It's a very, very powerful thing. So the emperor becomes one flesh with the Sun Goddess. And that's an invitation for the Sun Goddess to continue to demonize the whole nation. And, Japan is under the power of the Sun Goddess. The flag indicates that - the Land of The Rising Sun, the whole thing is glorifying the Sun Goddess...

You ask, "is this physical or not ?" - it could be. Because there is a certain spiritual phenomenon, succubus - it's called succubus. There is a documented physical relationship between human beings and demonic beings."

Peter Wagner went on to outline the purported impact of the alleged imperial sex with the "Sun Goddess", or succubus:

"Since the night that the present emperor slept with the sun Goddess, the stock market in Japan has gone down - never come up since. This has been a disastrous year - first year the rice harvest failed, first year Japan has ever had to import rice. For Japan to import rice is not just an economic disaster - they lose face. For the Japanese it's very serious. The auto industry is falling apart because of the Yen - the Yen is becoming so strong against the Dollar they can't export anything or sell anything. I mean, this country has really gone downhill from - check it. Some people say it's just a coincidence. Okay [chuckles]. We don't think so. We who are in spiritual mapping, we don't think so..."

[image, right: a Medieval depiction of a succubus]

Succubus-based economics isn't the only peculiar aspect of theological positions Jack Hayford has endorsed or championed. The Van Nuys megachurch pastor has played a key role in promoting recently invented concepts and practices that are radically reinventing and redefining contemporary Christianity, on a worldwide basis.

A June 24, 2009 AP story by John Christofferson concerned an uproar over a YouTube video, of footage taken ata Bridgeport CT church, which showed an apparent attempt to exorcise a "homosexual demon" from a 16 year-old boy. But  coverage of the subsequent outrage the video provoked uniformly failed to note that the exorcism attempt may well have been the product of a unified religious ideology promoted from Jack Hayford's Church on The Way, from former NAE head Ted Haggard's Colorado Springs New Life Church, and even at Sarah Palin's most significant church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

Pastor Jack Hayford's 20,000-plus Van Nuys, CA Church on The Way is one of the biggest megachurches in the United States. During the 1990's the church was headquarters for a budding international ministry, Cleansing Stream Ministries, that specializes in teaching Christians to cast out their own demons, a practice that AP reporter Richard N. Osling, in a 2003 Associated Press story, dubbed "do it yourself exorcism."  

Hayford has authorized a book, now available in a free Internet version, that functions as a manual for self-exorcism.  [ see, Jack Hayford Introduces Peter Wagner Talk On Spiritual Mapping ] One of the practices promoted by Cleansing Stream Ministries is the casting out, from Christian believers, of demons allegedly invited in by sexual "sins" such as homosexuality.

The exorcism of gay demons and the Jack Hayford-endorsed sex-with-demons economic theory are part of a new evangelical paradigm promoted in the 1990's and into the next decade from Ted Haggard's Colorado Springs New Life Church that centers around practices known as "Spiritual Warfare" and "Spiritual Mapping", in which believers seek to geographically map out and then expel demon spirits held to cause sickness and death, murder and violent crime, lack of church attendance, and traffic accidents, economic fluctuations and even environmental degradation.

As described in my recent Talk To Action story Jack Hayford Introduces Peter Wagner Talk On Spiritual Mapping, pastor Hayford has been a leading promoter of "Spiritual Warfare" and "Spiritual Mapping." Prior to the late 1980's, the former term had precedent within Christianity, but the latter, "Spiritual Mapping", was coined quite recently, in the late 1980's, by George Otis, Jr. and refers to a set of practices pioneered by C. Peter Wagner, George Otis, Jr., Cindy Jacobs, Ed Silvoso, Harold Caballeros, and other Christian evangelists during the 1980's and 1990's.

The ideological vision of creating a Christian theocratic earthly utopia by driving out demon spirits was for over a decade exported from Ted Haggard's New Life megachurch. During the late 1990's, Haggard's church sent a team to Africa to `anoint', or spray down with cooking oil, entire cities in Mali such as Timbuktu in an effort to ward off demon infestations.

In the late 1990's Haggard's church sent teams of church members to walk the streets of Colorado Springs, to do what Ted Haggard dubbed "Grid Praying". Some teams prayed for city residents, others mapped out and tried to expel demon spirits allegedly infesting the city.  In the 1997 This American Life radio segment #77, "Pray", public radio journalist Alix Spiegel described New Life Church's Prayer Walking and demon-expulsioon program. Spiegel characterized the underlying outlook as "medieval".

Prayer Walking has gained wide popular culture traction even to an extent on the American left. But it is the pleasant, Jekyll-sided face of a wider agenda, a demon expulsion program. Prayer-walkers pray for unknown city residents and they are also encouraged to map and and take notes on alleged ideological enemies, who are held to be under demon influence. Together with Ted Haggard, Jack Hayford co-edited the 1997 book Loving Your City Into The Kingdom: City Reaching Strategies For 21st Century Revival (Regal books), which presented a soft PR face to the demon the Spiritual Mapping / Spiritual Warfare paradigm, which effectively demonizes everyone on Earth who does not subscribe to Haggard's and Hayford's form of evangelical Christianity.

Components of the Prayer Walking and demon deliverance ideology are being incorporated into the police practices of Orlando, Florida and Peoria, Illinois, in novel and factually-challenged efforts that partner local Christian churches with police departments of those cities; teams of church members, with police backup for safety, walk high-crime areas and try to pray down violent crime and murder rates.

At Ted Haggard's church, as described in Speigel's 1997 public radio episode, church members were "prayer walking" Colorado Springs block by block, praying for all the city's inhabitants. They were also methodically identifying demons, which were associated in one case, described by Spiegel, with a high school playground area frequented by drama students whose free-thinking had invited down demons who then infested the playground area. Haggard's church members were also maintaining a 24-hour 7-day a week "prayer shield" over Colorado Springs, to prevent expelled demons from re-infesting the city.

The new demon-busting  paradigm has been globally popularized over the last decade through a 1999 pseudo-documentary called "Transformations" by George Otis Jr. , seen by millions of Christians around the world. In 2001 then-Wasilla, Alaska mayor Sarah Palin borrowed a Transformations video from one of her former Wasilla Assembly of God pastors.

Created by George Otis Jr., whose father George Otis Sr. has been reported to have prayed with and anointed then-California governor Ronald Reagan, the first Transformations video presented the claim that Christians could effect dramatic declines in crime rates, addiction, and traffic accidents, as well as cause miraculous reversal of environmental degradation, by driving demon spirits and individuals accused of witchcraft and sorcery from cities, towns, and geographic areas.

As shown in video footage from an October 16, 2005 ceremony at Sarah Palin's most significant Alaska church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, Palin was anointed and blessed by a top celebrity of the Spiritual Warfare / Spiritual Mapping movement, Kenyan Evangelist Thomas Muthee, known to millions of Christians worldwide for his role in the first "Transformations" video in which Muthee described hounding an alleged "sorcerer" out of a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya. [see: Spiritual Mapping and Spiritual Warfare - Muthee and the "Transformations" Franchise / 1]

Thomas Muthee is one of two religious leaders close to Sarah Palin who have public claimed to have successfully fought witches; the other is Alaska religious leader Mary Glazier, whose prayer group Sarah Palin joined in 1989. Glazier, who has publicly claimed her prayer group used prayer-warfare to drive an alleged witch out of Alaska, has been credited by movement leaders with first bringing the Spiritual Warfare / Spiritual Mapping paradigm into the state of Alaska. [ see: Media Gives Palin's Strange New Global Christianity a Pass ]

The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel was founded in the 1920's by the colorful media sensation, flamboyant and troubled evangelist and revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson. During the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, McPherson organized a theatrical church production depicteding what "Sister Aimee" called "the hanging and burial of monkey teachers." Jack Hayford was brought in to preside over the Foursquare Gospel denomination in 2003 after its previous head was implicated in a church-based financial Ponzi-scheme.

During the European Medieval period it was widely believed that succubus beings, known in the Latin plural as succubi, could take on physical form and have sexual relations with human males, a form of spiritual parasitism that was believed to drain vital male life-energy. In the Medieval conception, succubi were ugly but over the course of the 20th Century conceptions of succubi have changed and the mythical beings now play a significant role in popular culture and are commonly rendered in comic artistic portrayals as alluring, physically attractive, and often exceedingly beautiful.

Hayford's succubus-based economic model is part of a wider religious and ideological construct known as "spiritual mapping", which goes hand in hand with a recasting of "spiritual warfare", a preexisting concept in Christianity that used to mean self-struggle. Paired with "spiritual mapping", "spiritual warfare" has been redefined by Jack Hayford, C Peter Wagner, Sarah Palin's prayer group leader Mary Glazier, and others, to mean the taking of geographic territory, by driving out demons.

"Spiritual Mapping"/"Spiritual Warfare" concepts were the subject of a 2005 doctoral dissertation [PDF of dissertation] written for the University of Utrecht by Dutch missionary Rene' Holvast and a late 2008 book from Brill Publishing as well. Spiritual Mapping / Spiritual Warfare has also been covered extensively in writing here at Talk To Action in conjunction with coverage of Sarah Palin's religious associations.

Spiritual Warfare/Spiritual Mapping comes freighted with a comprehensive ideology casting all non-Christians, and denominational Christians and Catholics as well, as under demonic influence. The new evangelizing paradigm shifts emphasis away from converting individuals to Christianity and towards attempts to take geographic territory and "disciple" nations.

In the new scheme, alleged human sins can open "portals" that allow in demons who can then exert influence over individuals, ethnic groups, cities, nations, and family lineages (as "generational curses"). That influence is held to be different from "demon possession" but can be remedied in a manner similar to that sometimes prescribed for cases of alleged demonic possession: exorcism (of the demons).