To give an indication of how different Morningstar Ministries is from "your father's religious right", here are a few videos with footage from Morningstar. The first, an ad for Morningstar's "University" features a pop song with lyrics such as "There's a last day army rising up for war." Morningstar Ministries has bought and refurbished Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's former palatial PTL Ministries estate. Founder Rick Joyner has recently described having a long phone conversation with Sarah Palin.

http://www.youtube.com/v/PtoxgqsLIG0

Here's Rick Joyner talking about meeting with members of Congress, his phone conversation with Palin, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/v/jBPUnwXxB7s

Here's a video I did last September which, among other things, traces the extensive connections between Sarah Palin's key church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, and Rick Joyner's Morningstar Ministries.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1679097

Rick Joyner has stated that Morningstar is properly identified as a "Third Wave" mininstry. The Third Wave is a tendency that - according to World Christian Trends AD 30 To AD 2200, only emerged in the early 1980's and by AD 2000 had encompassed 295 million Christians worldwide. It's probably even bigger now. Wasilla Assembly of God head pastor Ed Kalnins, who has blessed Sarah Palin in at least 2 public ceremonies, declares, in the video below, that he believes in the "Five Fold Ministry" - a concept tracing from the late 1940's Latter Rain revival, which forms an important component of Third Wave theological belief. From October 2nd to October 5th, 2008, Morningstar's Head of Prophecy and Vice President, Steve Thompson, led a "Prophecy" conference at the Wasilla Assembly of God.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1775569

A number of the other entities comprising the Freedom Federation are also identifiably associated with the Third Wave and also its newest incarnation, the New Apostolic movement: Lou Engle's The Call To Action, Ron Luce's Teen Mania Ministries, Bishop Harry Jackson's High Impact Leadership Coalition and, arguably, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Coalition, which is led by the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez who also  controls the global Apostolic ministry 3DBN - the "Third Day Believers Network".

Rodriguez, who created the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Coalition (NCHLC) in 2000, may have played a significant role in George W. Bush's 2nd term re-election bid ; in 2004, Hispanic evangelical and Hispanic charismatic voters swung heavily towards Bush and the GOP.

The Third Wave/New Apostolic movement played a significant role, via Lou Engle's TheCall, in the passage of California's Proposition Eight. Engle's group had a number of field officials in the state coordinating the pro-Prop 8 effort.

The Third Wave/New Apostolic Movement is both extremely different from traditional Christianity and also has evolved very different ways of political organizing. According to World Christian Trends AD 30 To AD 2200, Third Wave Christianity bears no relation to traditional Christianity. I personally believe that's an overstatement, but agree it's radically different.

For over a decade, the hub of efforts to promote the Third Wave / New Apostolic movement was arguably located at Ted Haggard's Colorado Springs New Life Church and also in the adjacent World Prayer Center. By the late 1990's, Haggard's joint efforts, together with C. Peter Wagner, had created prayer-network communications webs that were coordinating upwards of 40 million Christians globally in simultaneous prayer. Those communications networks are new and immense, and they are being turned towards political organizing.

I've written an overview of the Third Wave / New Apostolic movement here, at Religion Dispatches and there is a considerable body of writing on those movement, as well, at Talk To Action in the Special Focus: The New Apostolic Reformation, the Third Wave, and Sarah Palin's Churches site section.


by Bruce Wilson on Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 05:57:21 PM EST

Also, I noted at least two groups that are listed with the SPLC as hate groups.  I'm not in the least surprised, except that the "religious right" seems to be associating more and more with them.

I'm hoping that people may finally realize that the religious right is connected with (and possibly even defined by) various forms of bigotry.

by ArchaeoBob on Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 07:12:10 PM EST