At the memorial service in Tucson, President Obama stated, "We can question each other's ideas without questioning each other's love of country."  But for some sectors of the Religious Right, this is not about overheated rhetoric which can easily be toned down.  They believe that they are fighting mortal enemies who are intentionally destroying America.. and who happen to be other Americans.

The underlying and growing anti-Semitism in these narratives has been evident for years to anyone who bothers to look at the books and videos being marketed to millions in the prophecy/conspiracy genre.  The message is often camouflaged in Christian Zionist "pro-Israel" sentiments and many Jewish leaders have decided to look the other way.  In these prophecy narratives all other religions are brutally destroyed, but there is a particular fixation on the humiliation and destruction of Judaism.  Those  promoting these narratives do not see them as anti-Semitic since they are convinced that they will save many Jews from eternal damnation.

Persecution

Gen. Boykin's short video "Marxism in America" [ link to transcript] was produced and promoted by the The Oak Initiative, a newer Religious Right organization based at Rick Joyner's MorningStar Ministries. Joyner, a leader in the apostolic and prophetic movement, and other apostles have described Palin as anointed by God - a belief that she appears to have taken to heart.  In communications sent across the country, the apostles compared Palin to the biblical Esther or Deborah and even sang prophecies about the election.  

The Oak Initiative board includes Joyner, Boykin, and a who's who of leading apostles, and Louis Sheldon, among others.  Sheldon wrote in a column on the "War on Christianity" on his Traditional Values Coalition website in 2005:

"A dangerous Marxist/Leftist/Homosexual/Islamic coalition has formed - and we'd better be willing to fight it with everything in our power. These people are playing for keeps. Their hero, Mao Tse Tung, is estimated to have murdered upwards of 60 million people during his reign of terror in China. Do we think we can escape such persecution if we refuse to fight for what is right?"

Gen. Boykin is now a regular on the end times prophecy circuit, including a prophecy event titled "Maranatha4, Standing Alone" in 2004 which also featured Walid Shoebat and Paul McGuire.  

If you want a mini-course on New World Order conspiracy theories, check out one of McGuire's several websites. McGuire teaches prophecy at King's College and Seminary and is a former syndicated radio host, author, and guest on Fox News and God TV, and advisor for the History Channel's "Seven Signs of the Apocalypse."  He claims that the Council on Foreign Relations "is the one-world government" and and that the Federal Reserve is "the invisible government behind the government."  McGuire also claims that the Illuminati, or controlling elite, have secret underground laboratories where they are having new body parts grown while simultaneously plotting to eradicate one third of the earth's population.

From McGuire's website,

"The second phase of the operation of the Invisible Government will be to create a crisis and then declare Martial Law. If this happens you lose all of your Constitutional freedoms and America becomes a Third World Police State. Do not make the mistake of saying, "It can't happen here." It is happening here and there is plenty of credible evidence to prove it. Just watch the YouTube created by my friend General Boykin, the man who freed the hostages in Iran, helped create Delta Force and was the General who came in at the end of Black Hawk Down to save our troops. I have talked to him personally and our analysis is the same. You must watch his YouTube video and download my MP3 "American Dictatorship Are You Ready for the Microchip? The same international bankers who illegally took over our money system in 1914 with the Federal Reserve Act in 1914 after meeting on Jekyll Island are meeting again on Jekyll Island to destroy the dollar, create a world currency and a world government."

At the prophecy confence, Boykin described himself as persecuted by the press and betrayed by President George W. Bush, all because of his dedication to his faith.  

In a recent interview published on Identity Network, a major apostolic and prophetic website, Gen. Boykin stated,

Yes, Dan, unquestionably we are getting closer to the 'End times.' There are a couple of things that we ought to focus on. One is Christ told his disciples that during this time when we would see wars and rumors of wars and great pestilences and nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom. He also said 'and before all of this, you'll be taken before kings and rulers and you'll be persecuted in my name', and I think we all realize that Christians are persecuted today in America at an unprecedented level.

[Dan is Dan Wooding of ASSIST Ministries who conducted the interview. The article was featured on the popular Identity Network website of Jeremy Lopez, which is described as an "Apostolic and Prophetic Resource."]  

Boykin has retired from the military but recently served as one of the two team leaders for the  Center for Security Policy's "Team B II" report titled "Shariah: Threat to America."

The "apostolic and prophetic" or New Apostolic Reformation is an international movement  which has emerged from the Independent Charismatic branch of evangelicalism.  The movement emphasizes the supernatural gifts and methods of "spiritual warfare" that they believe will aid them in a war against evil in the end times. They teach that they must reform the Protestant church by eliminating denominations and unifying the Protestant church under their apostles and prophets.  

Think of it as the Tea Party movement of evangelicalism.  The apostles teach that the existing church and institutions are corrupt and that they must remain free from rigid theological labels and institutionalization. (This partially explains why the New Apostolic Reformation has remained invisible to the general public despite the participation of major figures like Ted Haggard.)

Palin as Victim

During the 2008 presidential campaign, a Maine pastor wrote the following in Canada Free Press:

Marxist Muslim Barack Hussein Obama is carrying through with Islam World Rule by destroying the most powerful nation on Earth.

...Liberal talk show regulars delight in poking fun at her [Sarah Palin] as mother and wife as well as devout Christian. ...However, what Sarah Palin and husband Todd are going through now is typical of what every evangelical worldwide lives with daily in the grassroots.

[The writer, Grant Swank, has a more recent article at Renew America titled "Obama Beheads America. He has also contributed to Conservative Crusader, Mosque Watch and Chalcedon Report."]

Part of Palin's appeal has been her politics of victimization, a narrative which the Religious Right has made their own.  The "moral majority" did not survive, but the persecuted minority, with them as David against the evil secular humanist Goliath, has been a winning formula. But this is not just a ploy.

The urgency and paranoia can be partially explained in the prevalence of narratives warning that born-again believers will be persecuted in a coming "New World Order" or one-world government of the Antichrist.  They are convinced that we are rapidly approaching the end times, and that America is sliding down the slippery slope of Marxism/socialism/communism/fascism (all at one time) in preparation for the reign of the Antichrist.  

The human villains in this narrative are members of a cabal of elites who are pulling the strings and manipulating American government and leaders - intentionally deflating the dollar, destroying the American economy, taking away U.S. sovereignty, and laying the groundwork for a global one-world government.

There are versions of this "New World Order" narrative which are sanitized of the Antichrist and overt religious references while maintaining the same basic story line. Some are overtly anti-Semitic and others sanitize direct references to Jews.

Among the Antichrist narratives are various renditions which differ on the exact timing of events.  For instance, in the John Hagee and Tim LaHaye versions (dispensationalism), the born-again believers are whisked away before things get really bad here on earth.  However, the version which is growing in popularity describes believers as remaining on earth through part, or even all, of the years of the one-world government of the Antichrist.

A visual example of the anticipated persecution of Christians is John Hagee's video "Vanished: In the Twinkling of an Eye,"  In "Vanished" Hagee provides narration between scenes dramatizing the events which immediately follow the ascent to power of the Antichrist (head of the European Union in this case).  In scenes that look very much like Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when synagogues across Germany and Austria were burned, churches are torched around the world by supporters of the Antichrist and newly born-again Christians are beaten in the streets.  In this version of the Antichrist narrative, as in hundreds I have seen, the partners of the Antichrist include Jews and Catholics. [Below, churches burned by Antichrist supporters in Hagee's movie.]

Cloud Ten Productions continued with a series of movies featuring the same European Union Antichrist complete with concentration camps and guillotines which are remarkably similar to the FEMA concentration camps equipped with guillotines (or gas) in New World Order conspiracy theories.  In both narratives, Christian patriots are terrorized by a global one-world government.

Hagee teaches that born again Christians will be Raptured or taken to heaven before the Antichrist takes power.  This movie, along with other prophecy series, are presented as a warning that you don't want to get "left behind"  because it's going to be ugly.  Other prophecy teachers and preachers see the Rapture as defeatist and escapist.  An Antichrist/New World Order narrative in which born again believers become end time warriors and purge the earth of evil and the Antichrist themselves is growing in  popular.  

In the last few years much of the Religious Right has been in the process of making the transition between these two narratives.  The result has been a bizarre theological hybrid, as some right wing sectors of evangelicalism have been pulled to and fro between a separatist bunker mentality and an aggressive political Christianity.  

The New Apostolic Reformation

The vision of muscular and victorious end times warriors purging the earth of evil appears to be winning the battle. Even many of those who are still teaching that the Rapture will take place any minute are also admonishing their followers to try to wrest control of the country from the "spirit of the Antichrist" until the last moment.  Prophecy media is filled with swords and militarism.

Leading the way in this muscular Christianity are the apostles and prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation. Below is a montage of images from national New Apostolic leaders.

The movements communication networks of prayer warriors are in each of the fifty states and are organizing in some areas precinct by precinct.  Their goal is openly described as dominion and victory.

For these believers, many of whom are very decent and well intentioned people, there is a war to be fought against the Antichrist and his minions for their country. And you do not compromise with the devil.

[Part Two explains the increasingly common practice of spiritual mapping and the targeting of others as demonic. For a window into the alternate worldview that is resulting in so much anger and paranoia in the Religious Right and Tea Party groups, read the transcript of Gen. Boykin's short video, Marxism in America.]