“Please, come join us,” insisted an attractive college student flashing her bright Aquafresh smile.
Before I was able to decline her friendly invitation I was gently pulled into a large prayer circle of thirty or so Charismatic Christians. “I’m sorry my hand is sweaty,” the girl said with a sheepish grin.
Those were the last words she spoke that I understood. We quickly surrounded a handful of young preachers who whooped and hollered before surrendering English for the unintelligible language of tongues. The manic participants sounded like a cross between a prayer service and a Native American tribe preparing for battle.
Eventually, they raised their hands toward the sky pointing to God, which allowed me to escape and enter the seating area at Ford Field, where Lou Engle, founder of The Call, had gathered 27,000 fundamentalist Christians from across the nation on 11.11.11, a date that came to him in what he believes to be a divinely inspired vision. The majority of the crowd was Caucasian, however a significant number were African American. There was a large youth component, but the age of participants reached across the spectrum.
While I can’t speak for the entire conference, which was a 24-hour call to fast and prayer, I did spend 14 hours at Ford Field watching sermons, surveying sideshows, videotaping the gathering, and interacting with the hyped-up crowd. So, my observations, while not complete, do offer a significant snapshot of the 11.11.11 Detroit rally.
In a press release prior to the event I wrote that I expected 11.11.11 Detroit to be a “gay bashing” and “Muslim trashing” extravaganza.After all, The Call had chosen Detroit as its rally site in an effort to convert the region’s estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Muslims.
The Associated Press reported that Apostle Ellis Smith, Engle’s local “point person” for The Call, referred to Islam in a sermon leading up to the revival as a “false,” “lame” and “perverse” religion.
Engle had previously held an infamous event in Uganda that whipped up anti-gay hysteria. In 2008, the electrifying preacher organized a rally at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium in support of Proposition 8, a successful measure to prohibit marriage equality in California.
To my surprise, the festivities, which were aired on God TV, were appreciably toned down. Sure, there was red meat on the menu, but it was not the all-you-can-eat buffet that I had come to expect from Engle and other leaders of the 7 Mountains Movement (aka The New Apostolic Reformation) that he is a key part of.
Indeed, most of the aspersions on Friday evening and Saturday were deliberately cast though euphemism. Homosexuality was never explicitly mentioned, but was instead lumped together with other “sins” under the umbrella of “sexual immorality.” Other times, speakers camouflaged their anti-gay agenda by simply saying they supported “traditional marriage.” During the entire time I observed the event there was not one reference to healing homosexuality and no “ex-gays” were trotted up on the stage to tell tales of how they “prayed away the gay.”
However, the Detroit Free Press reported that Apostle Smith claimed that at the event, “a lesbian came from the homosexual community and said she has never experienced such love. And she is now working to change her lifestyle.”
(I’m sure this alleged lesbian was very stable and well adjusted because it is common for healthy and secure LGBT people to spend weekends attending revivals that consider them demonic.)
The conversion of Muslims was also downplayed and “Dearborn,” referring to the Detroit suburb with perhaps the nation’s largest Muslim population, euphemistically replaced the word “Islam.”
It took several hours to figure out what was really going on – but I gasped when the disturbing pattern finally revealed itself. This elaborate show had all the trappings of a modern religious revival – from the thumping music to the two gargantuan video screens suspended above the enraptured audience. But this ostensibly religious event was little more than a political front.
Its real aim was to peel African American support away from the Democratic Party in a swing state during a critical election year. Not only is President Barack Obama’s reelection at stake, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow is locked in a tight race that includes social conservative and former GOP Rep. Peter Hoekstra. This cynical revival was not about “values” — it was about votes. It was not about worship, but winning office for Republicans by promoting what writer Ed Kilgore called in The New Republic, a “big-God, small-government creed.”
The amazing part was that the audience seemed totally unaware of the underlying motives and machinations. After all, the words “Democrat” and “Republican” were never spoken and there was only one local politician identified on-stage. It seemed that even some of the minor speakers might not have been privy to the overarching strategy. Nonetheless, a brilliant display of political subterfuge was unfolding as the oblivious crowd bopped to Christian rock with their hands swaying above their heads.
This is not the first attempt of white fundamentalists to lure black voters away from the Democratic Party. Immediately following the 2004 presidential election, social conservatives made a strong push to lure African-Americans. Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center hate group, The Traditional Values Coalition, hosted a right wing meeting of 70 black religious leaders in Los Angeles.
“In 2004, the religious right was concerned about re-electing George W. Bush,” said Al Sharpton at First Iconium Baptist Church. “They couldn’t come to black churches to talk about the war, about health care, about poverty. So they did what they always do and reached for the bigotry against gay and lesbian people.”
Unbelievably, at the Los Angeles meeting Sheldon played an anti-gay video featuring disgraced Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. Remember, Lott had to step down as Senate Majority Leader after he publicly pined over Strom Thurmond not winning the presidency as a Dixiecrat. African-American columnist Leonard Pitts put Sheldon’s power grab in perspective:
“Whether the issue was slavery, segregation, lynching, voting rights or housing discrimination, social conservatives have always taken a position that history later judged to be ignorant and flat-out wrong….which leaves me at a loss to understand why any African American possessed of a functioning brain would give this atavistic bunch the time of day.”
Still, the attempt was gaining some momentum until Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, which badly frayed the burgeoning unholy alliance. The effort was further hampered by the emergence of Barack Obama as the Democratic standard bearer.
In this renewed effort in Detroit, Lou Engle and his minions were smart. They wisely figured out that direct attacks on the Democratic Party would not fly, nor would all-out verbal barrages against President Barack Obama, who still has strong African American support. They also understood that the baggage surrounding white Evangelical racism would have to be addressed and surmounted before real progress was made.
To overcome these obstacles and recruit African Americans to vote for the GOP they devised what seems like a five-part strategy.
1) Pick a key swing state with a beleaguered city that had an economically disadvantaged African American population
2) Create an emotional spectacle where tearful white people pleaded for forgiveness and repented onstage for past racism
3) Sharply define new wedge issue(s) and create a racially-based conspiracy theory that could ultimately be used against the Democratic Party
4) Exploit these emerging wedge issue(s) to the point they become more important than fixing the economy
5) Redefine voting criteria so candidates are primarily judged by where they stand on these wedge issue(s) – with the ultimate goal of leading many African Americans to conclude that they are best represented by the conservative GOP.
Lou Engle understands that much of Michigan is conservative. If he were able to peel off fifteen or twenty percent of Detroit’s black Democratic vote, he might be able to turn the state solidly red. The main wedge issue he selected to accomplish his plan is abortion. For good measure, he helped weave a conspiracy theory: Sinister white bigots who run programs like Planned Parenthood were using abortion to reduce African American birthrates.
“What Birmingham is to the civil rights movement, Detroit is to abortion,” bellowed Engle at the event. “Detroit has a calling…blacks and Latinos could lead the parade of history.”
Engle’s message was aided by a parade of socially conservative African American ministers. One preached that black people must choose “BC (Biblical Correctness) over PC (Political Correctness).” The subtext was that the pro-life GOP is on the side of the Bible and thus should be the party of African Americans. Another pastor was even more explicit when he declared that African Americans had a choice: “God’s way or a political party’s way.” (Read More)
A large stadium in Detroit will be packed tonight with America’s most radical religious extremists — and Truth Wins Out will be there. TWO will monitor hate preacher Lou Engle’s 24-hour prayer rally at Ford Field to report on the mischief and mayhem spewed by these zealots.
Engle (pictured) is notorious for his angry sermons that use violent imagery against LGBT people. In 2010, Engle brought his organization, The Call, to Uganda, where the legislature was already considering the infamous “Kill the Gays Bill.” His rally stoked the fires of homophobic hatred and helped to create an even more frenzied climate of intolerance in that country.
The twin goals of the noxious Detroit event are to convert nearby Dearborn, Michigan’s large Muslim population to fundamentalist Christianity and to demonize LGBT Americans. (Yes, they actually preach that homosexuality is caused by gay demons)
Monitoring and reporting on our dedicated and dangerous foes takes money. We’ve done a great job budgeting to be in Detroit this weekend and have cut costs to $500. Please help us cover these basic costs by making a generous tax-deductible contribution to Truth Wins Out today.
Why are we going to Detroit?
TWO strongly believes that fighting back is the key to winning equality. When we undermine the credibility and believability of our opposition, they become less effective at advocating for their unworthy cause. The more time these charlatans spend defending their words and actions, the less time, money, and energy they have to attack the LGBT community. The desire to strategically put our enemies on the ropes and force them into uncomfortable positions is why TWO founded its Center Against Religious Extremism.
Truth Wins Out does not believe in monitoring our foes from a distance. To keep our edge and maintain the expertise our members deserve, we consistently enter the “belly of the beast” to offer original reporting. TWO has attended numerous right wing events including: the 2011 Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC, The 2010 Awakening Conference at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, and the 2010 Truth Academy in suburban Illinois.
TWO goes where the action is so we can make studious observations and gain keen insights that help advance the LGBT movement. We pride ourselves on being a content provider that breaks essential news stories and conducts serious, original research. At TWO, we are not followers – we are leaders.
Please help us do our crucially important work with a generous tax-deductible contribution today. If you can cover the entire event, please consider a $500 donation. If you can contribute $50 to help with our hotel room, that would be great. Or, maybe pitch in $15 to help with a tank of gas.
Contact: John M. Becker, Communications Director
Phone: 920-265-6023
Email: john@truthwinsout.org
TWO Tells America to Hang Up When they Get ‘The Call’
DETROIT – Truth Wins Out will be in Detroit, Michigan this weekend monitoring Lou Engle’s The Call prayer rally at Ford Field. The event’s objectionable goals are to convert Muslims to fundamentalist Christianity and to demean LGBT Americans.
“Lou Engle’s offensive Call is a gay bashing and Muslim trashing event that no decent person should answer,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Engle’s divisive beliefs and incendiary rhetoric are repugnant to the vast majority of Americans and have no place in the religious and political dialogue of the 21st century.”
Engle and other event organizers have attempted to soft-pedal the rally’s dangerous aims when speaking with the mainstream media, portraying it as an ecumenical gathering of concerned Americans praying for Detroit’s economy. However, when speaking to supporters like the Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group, his true intentions become clear – The Call: Detroit is being held to counter what Engle describes as “the rising tide of the Islamic movement” and to cause “God [to] invade the heavens over Dearborn and [cause] Muslims [to] have dreams of Jesus.”
“At a time when Americans are looking for ways to come together, The Call is doing everything it can to tear them apart,” said Truth Wins Out’s Communications and Development Director John M. Becker. “This event is not about the Bible, but injecting bile into the public discourse in an effort to demean and demonize minority groups.”
Lou Engle is a notorious anti-LGBT extremist who frequently uses violent imagery in his tirades against homosexuality. In 2010, Engle brought The Call to Uganda, where the legislature was already considering the infamous “Kill the Gays Bill.” His rally stoked the fires of homophobic hatred and helped to create an even more frenzied climate of intolerance in that country.
The Detroit rally is intimately connected to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s controversial The Response Houston prayer rally in August. Perry’s rally was organized by the International House of Prayer, an organization that employs Lou Engle, and many of the same religious leaders who spoke in Houston will also speak in Detroit, including Cindy Jacobs, a self-styled prophet who blamed a massive bird die-off in Arkansas earlier this year on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” These leaders are part of a radical movement known as dominionism, which seeks to overthrow secular government in America and install a government of, by, and for conservative Christians in order to help usher in the End Times.
“It is ironic that The Call’s answer to the alleged threat of Muslim sharia in America is imposing a form of Christian sharia that would shred our beloved Constitution,” said TWO’s Besen. “Truth Wins Out will continue monitoring gatherings of religious fundamentalists like The Call: Detroit in order to unmask their true agenda.”
Truth Wins Out (TWO) is a nonprofit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism, monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their lies and exposes their leaders. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
Dominionist hate pastor Lou Engle is bringing one of his shouty wingnut rallies to the city of Detroit in November:
Lou Engle and Rick Joyner will be working together in September to promote The Call: Detroit, Engle’s prayer rally on November 11. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since both are closely involved in the New Apostolic Reformation, or the movement which believes that God is ordaining a new generation of prophets and apostles. Both have prophesied that America is turning into Nazi Germany and have claimed to know the reasons behind natural disasters, with Joyner calling Hurricane Katrina God’s judgment for homosexuality and Engle asserting that the Joplin, Missouri tornado was God’s punishment for legal abortion. Engle and Joyner, who leads MorningStar Ministries and The Oak Initiative, are also strong proponents of Seven Mountains Dominionism, which posits that fundamentalist Christians should take control over the seven most influential sectors of society: government, family, media, business, education, arts and entertainment, and the church.
Bleeeeengh. For a closer look at what sorts of things Lou Engle says when he doesn’t think the media is watching, check out my investigative report from last fall, “The Stealth Bombers Meeting.”
Oh, and here’s a long video of Lou talking about his Detroit rally, emotionally lying like the snake he is, for the benefit of the already brainwashed and easily led. He is SUCH a creep.
Sometimes the bogeyman is real and a vast right wing conspiracy truly exists in the shadows. This happens to be the case with the Seven Mountains Movement, an extremist group of evangelical Christians with a radically different vision of America.
This fringe group of zealots wants to turn this country into a Christian version of Iran. Their goal is to purify America and cleanse it of sin – and sinners – so Jesus will be pleased and return. They have identified seven key areas (or mountains) of life they intend to infiltrate and take over: business, government, education, arts, entertainment, family and media. This cabal believes that they must have dominion over these arenas because they are “critical to God’s purposes.”
As part of the plan to penetrate academia, the Seven Mountains Movement is staging an event at Harvard University. The April 1-2 Social Transformation Conference ostensibly aims to employ “faith-based principles to better our society.” The group claims its message is about “changing our society using the time-tested principles of the Judeo-Christian worldview which has profoundly influenced the founding of this country as well as western civilization itself.”
That’s a euphemistic way of saying that the Seven Mountains Movement wants this country to become a theocracy.
Unfortunately, this group is more than just off-the-wall theoreticians. These evangelicals are currently active and in the forefront of antigay organizing worldwide. For example, one of the group’s “prophets”, Julius Oyet, played a key role in introducing and promoting Uganda’s deadly Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Indeed, as researcher Bruce Wilson has discovered, Oyet served on a committee that planned and co-wrote the bill, and even decided who would introduce it in parliament.
Four of the eight listed speakers for the Harvard conference are apostles in this movement. Two of these speakers work directly with Julius Oyet. One, Apostle Os Hillman, has played a role in the financing of Oyet’s virulently homophobic Uganda ministry.
These leaders are different and more threatening than the traditional Religious Right because they have married evangelicalism to a form of reconstructionist theology, which is a demented utopian biblical vision where fundamentalist achieve dominion over the earth.
This plan is described as a world free from poverty, crime, sickness and hunger. The only obstruction to this utopia is a list of literal demons, which must be purged from society – including LGBT people. To initiate this process, the Seven Mountains Movement has held large rallies throughout the world and disseminated media products under the brand name of “Transformations.”
“Expelling demons is a concept viewed so literally that the movement uses a process called ‘spiritual mapping’, in which ‘homosexual sites’ are designated on maps, sometimes marked with yellow pushpins,” said researcher Bruce Wilson. “The Harvard conference is part of that strategy – in that it is an effort to mainstream the movement’s leaders. Harvard does not officially endorse the conference, but the conference is being co-branded with the Harvard name.”
This movement looks very different from garden-variety antigay movements associated with the US religious right. It is multiracial, multi-ethnic and wears a facade of cultural inclusivity. It organizes differently, has different funding mechanisms, and different models for the creation of churches and ministries. It is also anti-gay beyond belief.
“If we’re struggling with a homosexual, same-sex desire, let the bible kill you, rather than make it easier for you, and say well, there must be a better scriptural answer to this,” Lou Engle, one of the movement’s leading lights, bellowed at a St. Louis revival last year. “Brothers and sisters, let the Bible kill you rather than you twist the scriptures! And in that killing, it will break you so that you can find a redeemer and a savior!”
This crazy crowd is the emerging new Christian right. It has operated largely under the radar of media and academia and is currently on the ground organizing political efforts in major US cities.
The Harvard Social Transformation Conference represents a major opportunity to shine a spotlight on this movement, which has for years been advancing through stealth operations. Let’s hope that LGBT advocates in Massachusetts will stand up to these biblical bullies and let people know that their presence at Harvard is poison ivy.
This is Colleen Thomas, a home health administrator turned physicist who specializes in the science of creation. She is also the “mother” of a race of good aliens here on Earth to defend humans from lizard people. Yes, lizard people!
The tenor if this message is this: if Obama goes to India as planned (though, he’s already there) he and all of his “cronies” will be killed by a tsunami. By the good aliens I think? Because Thomas doesn’t like Obama, and would prefer it if he surrendered himself to one of his FEMA death camps so Thomas and her friends can… do something. I don’t know! It’s unclear. Very factual, but unclear. There’s also something about Reptilians eating human bodies after natural disasters. Remember how there were no bodies recovered after the 2004 tsunami? Except for all the bodies they recovered and all the photographs of said bodies? Well, that. That’s Reptilian conspiracy. They steal the bodies to eat them. Perfect.
Cool. Watch the video.
How is this message fundamentally any more insane than what we deal with from, say, Peter LaBarbera or Bryan Fischer, or Cindy Jacobs, or Lou Engle, on a daily basis? Just curious. Anyway, happy Tuesday!
[h/t PZ Myers, who knew something was amiss the second he saw the ugly Thomas Kinkade-looking painting in the background]
What can be said about this week that doesn’t involve either Christine O’Donnell or Lady Gaga? Very little, so let’s not try.
Lady Gaga went to the VMAs with soldiers discharged under DADT; then she carried it further by calling on her “Little Monsters” to call their Senators, so they did; then she taught everybody a civics lesson, explaining to an uninformed American public what a “filibuster” is; and then she talked directly to the Senate via a recorded video, and encouraged people to continue calling their Senators.
Music this week comes from Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, for two reasons: A. Sharon is awesome. If you like neo-soul/blues/whatever, and ladies with big voices, you will like Sharon. B. I’m going to see her live this weekend, and I’m giddy with anticipation. The songs we’ll start with are “How Long Do I Have To Wait For You?” and “Tell Me.” The first one has shown up in a Late Friday Random Ten before, and I try not to repeat things, but I don’t care, because I make the rules. So let’s listen to these two amazing songs, and then we’ll hit shuffle on the second one and see what the iTunes [which crashed this week, which caused me to have about three panic attacks as I rebuilt the library] does. More videos after the jump.
I always wondered when this would happen. I can’t imagine the International House of Pancakes likes being associated in any way, even tangentially, with hatemongering bigotry and mouthbreathing insanity:
IHOP (pancake), based in Glendale, Calif., has sued IHOP (prayer), based in Kansas City, for trademark dilution and infringement. The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, essentially said there was room for only one IHOP and that would be the restaurant chain that has been using the initials since 1973.
The religious group drawing thousands from around the world to south Kansas City to prepare for “end times” was started just 10 years ago.
[...]
[T]the chain, which has 1,476 restaurants across the country, claims it has six registered trademarks with the IHOP acronym and that the religious group’s use of the same four-letter logo causes, according to the lawsuit, “great and irreparable injury and confuses the public.”
The lawsuit further accuses the church mission of adopting the name International House of Prayer knowing it would be abbreviated IHOP — the intent being to misappropriate fame and notoriety of the food chain.
On Tuesday, IHOP (pancake) spokesman Patrick Lenow said the suit was filed only after the church mission refused repeated requests to stop using the trademark.
I wish the real IHOP all the luck in the world in their lawsuit.
To my surprise, the festivities, which were aired on God TV, were appreciably toned down. Sure, there was red meat on the menu, but it was not the all-you-can-eat buffet that I had come to expect from Engle and other leaders of the 7 Mountains Movement (aka The New Apostolic Reformation) that he is a key part of.
It took several hours to figure out what was really going on – but I gasped when the disturbing pattern finally revealed itself. This elaborate show had all the trappings of a modern religious revival – from the thumping music to the two gargantuan video screens suspended above the enraptured audience. But this ostensibly religious event was little more than a political front.
A large stadium in Detroit will be packed tonight with America’s most radical religious extremists — and Truth Wins Out will be there. TWO will monitor hate preacher Lou Engle’s 
Muslims to fundamentalist Christianity and to demean LGBT Americans.
