One obvious answer: C. Peter Wagner's apostles. As I've now extensively documented, Wagner and top apostles in his movement advocate burning books and scripture (including books of Mormon), and destroying religious relics associated with Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.

The following is my latest tally of Wagner apostles associated with The Response.

So far I've determined that at least 17 of C. Peter Wagner's current or former apostles, from his International Coalition of Apostles or Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders (note: I may have missed a few apostles; The Response was a long event to watch) either endorsed or helped lead The Response, or were onstage at the event.

By definition, this is not a perfect tally because it is impossible to do one; the International Coalition of Apostles pulled down its "short list" of ICA apostles in 2010, so that the membership roster of this invitation-only, dues-paying (current yearly dues for a US apostle is $450 a year) organization, some of whose apostles enjoy international influence, is now hidden from public scrutiny. And, the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders (ACPE is another of Peter Wagner's major apostolic groups) membership list is only posted sporadically (notably by ICA/ACPE apostle Cindy Jacobs and by ACPE apostle Steve Shultz.)

[image, below: ICA apostle Doug Stringer, master of ceremonies at The Response. Governor Rick Perry praised Stringer at his "2009 state of the state" address.]

The ICA represents what may be the largest, and currently the most prominent, apostolic network among the many such networks which, according to C. Peter Wagner, comprise the movement that Wagner has dubbed The New Apostolic Reformation.

Since the official website for The Response has now been wiped from the Internet, I have posted the list of endorsers, leadership, and honorary co-chairs of The Response here at Talk To Action.

In September 2008, with the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain's vice presidential running mate in the 2008 election (Palin was closely tied to two of Wagner's apostles), I began harvesting versions of the then-publicly available ICA membership list. I have republished these lists here.

As an additional, important note, as described in an August 3rd, 2011 story published in the Texas Observer, Rick Perry's Army of God, One of Peter Wagner's ICA apostles, Tom Schlueter, who runs the Texas Apostolic Prayer Network (one of several national networks under Wagner's apostles--TXAPN is under ICA apostle John Benefiel's Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network), anointed governor Rick Perry in a September 28, 2009 private ceremony held in the governor's office at the Texas State Capital.

[image, below: ICA apostle Tom Schlueter anoints Rick Perry, September 28, 2009

 

The Response Leadership

Of the sixteen people listed as leaders of The Response, two were apostles in C. Peter Wagner's International Coalition of Apostles (Alice Patterson and Doug Stringer); both had prominent onstage roles at The Response and enjoy close ties to Perry.

Six more of The Response's leaders were current or former employees for ministries headed by Wagner's apostles:

Luis & Jill Cataldo, employees at Mike Bickle's IHOP; Randy & Kelsey Bohlender, IHOP employees who head the Zoe Foundation, with apostle Lou Engle and the Cataldos serving on the foundation's board; Doug Sliker, a senior leader at IHOP who serves with Lou Engle on the board of Engle's The Call; and Laura Z. Allred who, according to her website, has worked in the ministries of Doug Stringer, Lou Engle, and Cindy Jacobs (who each heartily endorse Allred.) Cindy Jacobs and Laura Allred can be seen discussing antiabortion politics at this GodTV segment.

Leaving political figures such as Texas governor Rick Perry, Republican political operative Wayne Hamilton, who works closely with Perry, and Congressman Bob McEwen out of the mix, from the list of The Response leadership we find that fully eight out of thirteen listed leaders are, or have been, Wagner apostles or work (or have worked) in their ministries. One more, Jim Garlow, works so closely with Wagner's apostles (co-authoring books, speaking at NAR conferences, and co-leading NAR initiatives), that he is in all but name an apostle.

Only four of the religious figures in The Response leadership--David Lane and Rebekah Ayodele, and American Family Association leaders Don Wildmon and Buddy Smith, are not easily identified as being in the New Apostolic camp.

But the AFA's partnership with Wagner's NAR apostles, in producing The Response, was not casual; the partnership  proved sufficiently controversial that former AFA supporters Marsha West and Brannon Howse (who had been the American Family Association's Minnesota spokesman) made a high-profile break with the AFA because of its relationship with the NAR, which fundamentalist critics have accused of being a cult--a charge Peter Wagner strongly denies.    

The Response Endorsers and Honorary Co-Chairs    

The following listed The Response endorsers and co-chairs are, or have been, in C. Peter Wagner's apostolic networks (ICA or ACPE) or in the personal apostolic networks of Wagner's apostles. Most of the identified ICA apostles have been listed in the most recent International Coalition of Apostles membership lists available (April 2010.)

[image, right: Rev. Samuel Rodriguez gives a prayer at The Response]

Former ICA apostle Samuel Rodriguez (shown on ICA membership lists, 2009-2010) was listed as a honorary co-chair of The Response. Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, also serves on the boards of the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today.

Rodriguez also co-founded, with Morningstar Minstries head Rick Joyner, the Oak Initiative and and has served on its ICA-dominated board, along with Ardell Daniels, husband of ICA apostle Kimberly Daniels, and ICA apostles Cindy Jacobs, Lance Wallnau, Larry Jackson, and Negiel Bigpond.

Samuel Rodriguez' NHCLC colleague Mark Gonzales, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference's Vice President For Governmental Affairs, listed as an endorser of The Response, also serves as an apostle in Cindy Jacobs' US Reformation Prayer Network Apostolic Council and, by his own description, is in an "emerging leaders group" affiliated with the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders. ICA apostle Cindy Jacobs serves, in turn, on the NHCLC advisory board along with Charisma magazine publisher Stephen Strang, listed as an ICA apostle into 2007.

Among listed endorsers of The Response who appear on recent ICA short lists are: C. Peter Wagner and Doris Wagner (these two appeared on the endorsers list but were removed following media publicity), Che Ahn, John Benefiel, Jim Hennesy, Jane Hansen Hoyt, James ("Jay") Swallow, Cindy Jacobs, Doug Stringer, Paul Tan, and  Willie Wooten. ICA apostle Dr. Bruce Cook was listed among the Houston-area endorsers.

International House of Prayer head Mike Bickle, recorded as being in the original group launched as the Wagner-led Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders and listed as serving in ACPE into 2003, played a major onstage role at The Response.

Among the apostles not on any official The Response leadership, co-chair, or endorsement list, but who spoke onstage at the event were Bishop Harry Jackson, who serves on the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, and Don Finto, listed as serving in the International Coalition of Apostles from its 2001 founding through into 2003.

Eddie and Alice Smith, The Response endorsers, are not listed as Wagner apostles but are involved in numerous Wagner entities and initiatives (including the Strategic Prayer Network, the predecessor to the Global Apostolic Prayer Network) and have played a significant role in his developing movement.

According to Rene Holvast, author of Spiritual Mapping in the United States and Argentina, 1989-2005: A Geography of Fear, in 2000 (before the founding of Wagner's International Coalition of Apostles) Eddie and Alice Smith were running a major prayer initiative out of the World Prayer Center, that Peter Wagner co-founded with former National Association of Evangelicals president Ted Haggard and which served as a major fulcrum for Wagner's developing movement.

Alice Smith is currently listed as a 'core faculty' member with the Wagner Leadership Institute, who teaches the core WLI course Intercession: Gateway to Spiritual Authority. She has been listed as a WLI faculty member as early as 2001 (WLI began in the late 1990s.) The Wagner Leadership Institute has played an important role in disseminating Wagner's ideas to evangelical leaders and influentials.

Alice Smith was also an early member of Wagner's Spiritual Warfare Network, intitiated in 1990, which was the first in a lineage of successive prayer warfare networks (see this account, from ICA apostle and WLI Southeast head Jacquie Tyre) that has led to the Texas Apostolic Prayer Network (under John Benefiel's prayer network HAPN.) TXAPN was headed in 2005 by ICA apostle Alice Patterson and is now led by ICA apostle Tom Schlueter--who anointed Rick Perry at the Texas State House in September 2009.

According to C. Peter Wagner, on page 96 of his book 7 Power Principle I learned After Seminary (2005, Regal/Gospel Light), the husband and wife team of Eddie and Alice Smith are "two of the household names in the United States prayer movement." On the same page, Wagner writes that "Alice [Smith] is one of Doris's and my closest personal intercessors."

Also directly in Wagner's movement are The Response endorsers Fred and Wilma Berry. As described on their ministry website, the Berrys are in the apostolic network of ICA apostle Bill Hamon:

"In 2004, Fred & Wilma were ordained as an apostle/prophet team with Christian International, a ministry founded by Apostle Bill Hamon.

In 2006, Fred and Wilma Berry re-opened the Azusa Street Mission location and were commissioned by Apostle Bill Hamon and the Christian International Board of regents to Pastor the new Azusa Street Mission.

ICA apostle Alice Patterson (listed 2010), who by her own description (see Patterson's book Bridging The Racial and Political Divide) has worked with Rick Perry since 2002, and was praised in an official speech by the TX governor in 2004, stood alongside Rick Perry, with Houston pastor C.L. Jackson, at The Response.

As she describes in her book Bridging the Racial and Political Divide, Alice Patterson asked noted Houston Pastor C.L. Jackson to give a prayer on Rick Perry's behalf at the 2002 TX state Republican Party convention; Jackson, a lifelong democrat agreed and, during the event, made a dramatic public switch in party allegiance, from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

For almost a decade, Patterson, Jackson, and Perry appear to have been part of a carefully stage-managed strategy, by Republicans working in concert with C. Peter Wagner's apostles, to rebrand the GOP as the party of "racial reconciliation."

One ICA apostle (listed 2010) who shows up neither on The Response leadership or endorsement rosters, or at the event itself, is Ed Silvoso who, according to the official International Coalition of Apostles web site, convened the 1999 Singapore meeting which led, in turn, to the formation of the ICA in 2001.

In Bridging The Racial and Political Divide, Patterson calls Ed Silvoso her "spiritual father" and a division of Silvoso's Harvest Evangelism ministry publishes Patterson's book. As I have documented at length, Silvoso's International Transformation Network and Harvest Evangelism ministries are heavily involved in Uganda and have worked with apostle Julius Oyet, professed co-author of Uganda's internationally condemned Anti Homosexuality Bill.

Another apostle who did not appear on the endorsers list or onstage at The Response but nonetheless was an enormous background presence (and some reports placed him backstage at the event) was apostle Lou Engle.

Cofounder of The Call with The Response endorser apostle Che Ahn, Engle has become known for his signature The Call events, which typically feature inflammatory rhetoric against gay marriage and legalized abortion, that Engle has predicted will lead to a second American civil war.

According to C. Peter Wagner, as stated during the February 3, 2008 commissioning of the Wagner Leadership Institute Seattle, there is "nothing in the Bible that condemns abortion" but "the Holy Spirit has revealed to us [Wagner seemed to be referring to prophets in his movement] that abortion is murder." Lou Engle is one of Wagner's prophets.  

In May 2010, Engle staged one of his The Call rallies in Kampala, Uganda, at which apostles John Mulinde and Julius Oyet, and government officials such as Nsaba Buturo and David Bahati, decried the influence of homosexuality on Uganda society and called for passage of Uganda's so-called "kill the gays bill", which Oyet claims to have co-written with Bahati--who introduced the bill in Uganda's parliament in early 2009.  

The Response was scripted and orchestrated by pastors and musicians from Engle's The Call ministry, which resembles a perpetually touring rock band, and from Bickle's Kansas City-based International House of Prayer, which Lou Engle co-directs, that trains musicians and works in such close concert with Engle's The Call that the two ministries often seem to function together as one.

Like Mike Bickle, Lou Engle has served on Peter Wagner's Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders (ACPE) though the two do not seem to have served on ACPE in the same time period.  

Other figures on The Response endorsement list who do not call themselves apostles and are not in any of the ministerial  networks of ICA apostles but nonetheless have been working with Wagner's listed ICA apostles for years include David Barton, Former Vice Chair of the Texas Republican Party, and Founder of Wallbuilders.

Barton is probably the most significant figure among Christian nationalist history revisionists and has ties to Peter Wagner's movement going back over two decades. Governor Rick Perry praised Barton in three official speeches [1, 2 (Barton introduced Perry prior to this speech), and 3] from 2004-2005, and David Barton was featured prominently as an endorser for governor Perry during his 2010 reelection bid.

In her 1991 book Possessing the Gates of the Enemy (1991, Chosen Books) on page 21, ICA apostle and ACPE prophet Cindy Jacobs describes a vision she had, of David and Cheryl Barton being involved in an auto accident while driving to attend a prayer event in Florida. Jacobs claims her prayers helped avert a terrible accident shown to her in the vision, writing,

A beginning of a new decade—thoughts tumbled out one after another as I tried to fall asleep in a hotel room in Braden-ton, Florida. My husband, Mike, and I had just flown in from our home in Texas to meet with other prayer leaders and to partake in a prayer session we called "Ninety Hours of Prayer for the Nineties."

[..]

At 2 A.M. I awakened with a start... I saw a mental picture or vision of good friends, Dave and Cheryl Barton. They were driving their van from the Dallas area where they lived to our meeting with their three children curled up asleep in the back. All of a sudden, in the vision, the van's right front wheel rolled off, and the van careened wildly into a horrible accident.

I knew immediately that they were in serious danger and that God wanted me to pray that the wheel bearings would hold until we could see the Bartons and warn them. Dave was doing a mighty work for God with his book America: To Pray or Not to Pray? and he was coming under spiritual attack. The hours dragged on as I cried out to God to keep that wheel in place and protect them. All through the night I sensed a tremendous battle taking place in the heavenlies."

As Jacobs details, David Barton and his wife were among those "prayer leaders" who had journeyed to the nearly four-day long prayer event that Jacobs mentioned, and while Jacobs flew to the event, the Bartons made the journey, from the Dallas areas to Florida, in what (per Jacobs' description) was an old or poorly maintained vehicle, indicating a fierce level of commitment. It was the same year, 1990, that C. Peter Wagner began the initial phase of the Spiritual Warfare Network, which Cindy Jacobs was later to head.

The power of prayer to effect change in the temporal realm ("in the natural") has been a major preoccupation of Wagner's apostolic movement, and it was also much on David Barton's mind in the late 1980s.

As Barton described in his 1988 book America: To Pray Or Not To Pray?, in 1987 he received a personal message from God (much in the same manner as Peter Wagner's prophets, who claim to receive personal revelation from God) that sent David Barton on a course of investigation which led him to believe that national measures of school performance were in apparent decline, and crime was rising, because of a supernatural mechanism--God's judgment on America, it would seem, for a lack of public prayer and other demonstrations of Christian piety.

The trigger, according to Barton, were the early 1960s US Supreme Court decisions, Engel v. Vitale, 1962, which prohibited compulsory prayer in public schools, and Abington v. Schempp, 1963, that barred public school-sponsored Bible classes. As David Barton wrote in his 1988 book,

"In July 1987, God impressed me to do two things. First, I was to search the library and find the date that prayer had been prohibited in public schools. Second, I was to obtain a record of national SAT scores (the academic test given to prospective college-bound high school students) spanning several decades. I didn't know why, but I somehow knew that these two pieces of information would be very important.

Barton goes on to describe his amazement at the correlation between the 1962 and 1963 Supreme Court decisions he cites and the apparent decline in national SAT scores. Over the last decade, David Barton has appeared with increasing frequency at New Apostolic Reformation events and has been a consistent endorser from its early years--on the "board of reference", of The Call: an NAR initiative co-founded by Wagner apostles Che Ahn and Lou Engle.

David Barton has also played a major role in an evolving strategy to upgrade the Republican Party's public image, to make it more welcoming to non-European ethnic groups in America. As ICA apostle Alice Patterson, who appeared onstage alongside Rick Perry at The Response, describes in her book Bridging the Racial and Political Divide, in 2000 her good friend Susan Weddington, who was then serving as Chair of the Texas Republican Party, "asked David Barton to do research to find out why black Republicans had left the party they founded."

Barton's subsequent, wildly revisionist research, which seeks to paint the Democratic Party as racist and neglects to mention the GOP's own, more recent racist track record, notably the GOP's "Southern Strategy" of the last several decades, provides an essential component of the New Apostolic Reformation's "racial reconciliation" project spearheaded in Texas by Patterson.

Also in David Barton's category, as a response endorser, is Jack Hayford, former head of the International Foursquare Gospel denomination, who has helped mainstream the Spiritual Mapping/Spiritual Warfare paradigm--pioneered by C. Peter Wagner, Cindy Jacobs, Ed Silvoso, and others--within denominational structures.

Hayford can be seen in a 1993 video, embedded in this story, introducing an early talk in which Peter Wagner introduces Spiritual Mapping. In the talk, Wagner claims Japan has been collectively demonized because the Emperor slept with the "sun goddess" (who, ventures Wagner, may be a succubus.)

Yet another figure in a similar category as Barton and Hayford is Jim Garlow, a frequent figure onstage at events staged by ICA apostles (such as Convergence 2009 and Convergence 2010 and, of course, The Response.)

Apostle Cindy Jacobs, who calls Garlow a "good friend", credits Jim Garlow with leading the national drive to mobilize pastors to rally voters in favor of antigay initiatives in three states (including California) during the 2008 election.

Although Garlow is not officially an apostle and has claimed not to be familiar with the New Apostolic Reformation, he nonetheless contributed a chapter to the 2010 book The Reformer's Pledge, with every other chapter in the book written by NAR apostles--including C. Peter Wagner, Cindy Jacobs, Lance Wallnau, Chuck Pierce, and Lou Engle (see Rachel Tabachnick's Talk To Action story  Disinformation and Misinformation - Becoming Educated About the New Apostolic Reformation.) By many indications, Jim Garlow functions, all but in name, as an apostle in Wagner's movement.

Jim Garlow's association with Peter Wagner, and the "Third Wave" movement Wagner helped influence, traces back, according to Garlow, to a controversial Fuller Theological Seminary course taught by Peter Wagner and the late John Wimber, MC510. As Garlow describes,  

In early 1983 my friend John Patredis handed me a copy of Christian Life magazine with an unusual cover article titled simply "MC510." That symbol was the course designation for a class at Fuller Theological Seminary called "Signs, Wonders, and Church Growth." The course was largely taught by John Wimber under the supervision of Dr. C. Peter Wagner.

The cover story told of Wimber, a Southern California pastor, who taught about healing and praying for the sick in, of all things, a seminary class. Over the years, I had heard many people say that they had been healed with no evidence to support the claim. I had also seen television preachers claim that people were healed without any substantive proof. Although I was open to the concept of healing as a truly biblical notion, I did not have enough understanding to actually engage in praying for the sick. I had longed to see God's healing power released in our day as it had been in the past. That is exactly what was described in the article "MC510." According to this report, people were actually being healed, complete with medical confirmation.

Hungry to experience God's presence and power, I decided to travel from Dallas-Ft. Worth, where I was living at the time, to Anaheim, California, to attend a one-week version of the class. That would be the beginning of a significant change in my life. I became, as I call it, "Wimber-ized."

Jim Garlow is currently the head pastor of the San Diego-area Skyline Methodist Church, a position Garlow inherited from John Maxwell, who was among the early faculty members of Peter Wagner's Wagner Leadership Institute.