DAILY TRIFECTA: When Spiritual Warfare Uses Live Ammunition
Nailed to the crossfire
THE SET-UP: Carl Sagan saw billions and billions of stars. He also saw the future:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
That now-famous passage comes from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Published in 1995, it warned of a coming Millennium addled by “pseudoscience and superstition,” motivated by “ethnic or national prejudices” and governed by “fanaticism.” These “habits of thought familiar from ages past,” Sagan opined, will extinguish the flame of reason. And that’s when “darkness gathers” and “the demons begin to stir.”
For millions of 21st Century Americans, demons do, in fact, haunt the world. They are the forces of “The Enemy” and they are engaged in “spiritual warfare” with God’s army of believers. It’s a war being fought on the front lines of politics and culture—in school-board meetings, libraries, movie theaters, doctor’s offices and voting booths. They adorn themselves with “spiritual armor” to engage the demons arrayed against them. And they pray for champions anointed by the Almighty to fight Satan’s minions in an existential battle for the soul and future of the nation.
This is the world Vance Boetler occupies. His truncated hunting expedition appears to be his real-world response to this collective fantasy. For him, and millions of Evangelical, Pentecostal, Apostolic and Charismatic Christians who live in the demon-haunted world with him, political opponents are not mere mortals who happen to disagree with them about abortion, sexuality or food stamps. They are “demonic forces” who seek to foil God’s divine plan the nation “He” gave them. Although it is entirely unfair to superimpose Boetler’s violence onto millions who share his belief in spiritual warfare, it is not unfair to question the political power and influence they’ve accrued, particularly over the last decade.
The voters who live in the demon-haunted world are the same voters who’ve hardened into the impregnable political base upon which Trump’s MAGA movement stands. It includes Young Earth Creationists like Speaker Mike Johnson, prosperity gospel celebrities like Paula White and Christian Nationalist opportunists like lethality-loving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. For Christian Zionists like Trump’s Ambassador to Israel, he’s God’s eschatological gift to Rapture-hungry believers who seem to have grown impatient with the Lord. Displacing the Palestinians is key to the unfolding of the “End Times.” Once they are out, the prophecy is fulfilled and Jesus will begin his holy evacuation of a doomed world.
That why Ambassador Mike Huckabee is doing everything he can to convince anyone who’ll listen that Palestinians are made-up people living on land deeded to Israel in supernatural real estate deal that occurred five thousand years ago. give or take a millennium. That’s also why Huckabee, a loudly-professing “man of God,” has no problem with thousands of dead or hungry Gazan kids or with ejecting millions of Palestinians who, he’d say, are standing in the way of God’s expressed wishes. And Huckabee has ideas about Iran, too. He texted ‘em to Trump and Trump, knowing full-well how it would massage his base, quickly shared it. Huckabee began by stipulating that “God spared you in Butler, PA,” then lavished with him with praise and ultimately reminded him “there is only ONE voice that matters … HIS voice.” And what does Huckabee think HE is saying about Iran? Wrote Huckabee:
Not since Truman in 1945. I don’t reach out to persuade you. Only to encourage you. I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s.
Did Mike Huckabee just imply that God’s got a hankering for nuclear annihilation? What else could he mean with that allusion to Truman in 1945? And how could a “good Christian” actually call for such a thing?
Actually, it’s easy. It’s right there in the Bible … the Old Testament, to be precise. God directed his people to commit genocide … repeatedly. Anyone who’s been to Sunday School knows that “Joshua blew the horns at Jericho and the wall came tumblin’ down.” Once the walls tumbled around the Canaanites, every man, woman and child was exterminated, per the “ONE voice that matters.”
Huckabee knows that story, and is likely familiar with Amalek, too. Prime Minister Netanyahu often compares the people of Gaza to the Biblical people of Amalek. Like the Canaanites, God directed his people to exterminate them. It’s right there in the Book of Samuel. Here’s the King James translation of 1 Samuel 15:3:
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. It too.
God even did it himself. What is the story of the Flood if not genocide writ large?
Obviously, there is another way to look at these stories … as stories. Allegories and morality plays brimming with metaphors and analogies. But that’s not how Huckabee sees ‘em. Nor how Netanyahu and the colonial settlers in “Judea and Samaria” see ‘em. It certainly isn’t how the people of the West Bank and Gaza experience it. Nor is it how Vance Boelter and millions of Americans see it in a world bereft of candlelight and haunted by their demons. - jp
TITLE: The Spiritual Warfare of Vance Boelter
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/minnesota-shooting-vance-boelter-religious-beliefs.html
EXCERPTS: Millions of Christians believe in spiritual warfare, and for most of them, prayer is where it ends. The concept is not even unique to [the New Apostolic Reformation movement (NAR)], or to charismatic and Pentecostal Christians. I grew up with similar ideas in an Evangelical congregation where no one spoke in tongues or laid hands on the sick or anointed new apostles, and I can still recall Ephesians 6:12, which says, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” I became an atheist, not a terrorist, and although that’s more common than Boelter’s trajectory, I don’t think spiritual warfare is an innocuous belief. It is apocalyptic in character and profoundly conspiratorial because it adds a demonic dimension to worldly tensions.
For authoritarians, spiritual warfare is a useful notion. Their political opponents aren’t simply misguided; they’re agents of the devil, and their humanity is questionable. Boelter’s Christianity did not force him to kill, but it did give him permission to act. And although he is accused of carrying out an assassination campaign by himself, he is not, in the broadest sense, alone. In the run-up to Obergefell, I saw a man blow a shofar outside the Supreme Court and I laughed. After the decision came down, I forgot about him for a while. I distrust liberal triumphalism, but I did think maybe there’d be some breathing room.
Trump won the presidential election just over a year later, and I remembered the shofar and what it means to some Christians. In the Book of Joshua, the Israelites sound them as they besiege the city of Jericho. The walls fall down, the Israelites march in, and they kill nearly everyone they find. The average crank may be content to blow his horn, but what happens when his side loses a battle? Maybe he went home, not just to pray, but to vote, and to donate to the Alliance Defending Freedom, an act that has material consequences on its own. But sometimes there’s a man like Boelter, who decides that prayer is insufficient and that voting is no good as long as liberals can still do it. CNN reported on Monday that he texted his family after his shooting spree. “Dad went to war last night,” he said. He’s stopped playing army men. Now he’s in it for real.”
TITLE: Minnesota shooting draws attention to Bible school with ties to Christian nationalists
https://religionnews.com/2025/06/17/christ-for-the-nations-institute-denounces-alleged-violent-acts-by-graduate-vance-boelter/
EXCERPTS: The search for a motive has put a spotlight on Christ for the Nations Institute, an influential Dallas-based Bible college for nondenominational charismatic Christians, where Boelter graduated in 1990.
But school officials, who have confirmed Boelter attended the school, said they have had no contact with him since he left three decades ago. “We are completely unaware of what led to this kind of mental, emotional, social, and spiritual bankruptcy since he left CFNI,” the school said in a statement posted to its website Monday.
In addition, the statement denounced the “hateful actions” of the Minnesota shooter.
“CFNI unequivocally rejects, denounces, and condemns any and all forms of violence and extremism, be it politically, racially, religiously or otherwise motivated. Our organization’s mission is to educate and equip students to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through compassion, love, prayer, service, worship, and value for human life,” the Bible college said in a statement.
“These core Christian values and principles, which we highly esteem and embrace, are in stark contrast to the hateful beliefs, behavior and actions now being attributed to Mr. Boelter.”
Gordon Lindsay grew up in Zion, Illinois, a failed Christian utopia founded by John Alexander Dowie, and then became a follower of faith healer and preacher William Branham before launching out on his own, according to a short film on his life produced by the ministry.
Lindsay eventually started his own printing company and a magazine called The Voice of Healing.
He was known for telling his students, “Everyone ought to pray at least one violent prayer each day,” an idea still promoted by the school in promoting the power of prayer.
That quote has gained attention since last weekend’s attacks, with some seeing it as a sign of hostile intent. But Matthew Taylor, author of “The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy,” said that quote from Lindsay is a reference to the belief in spiritual warfare.
“They aren’t saying a prayer to do violence against people, but it’s spiritual violence,” said Taylor.
In its statement, the school essentially agreed, saying that Lindsay’s quote encourages students to “incorporate passion in their prayers as they contend for what God has for them and push back against evil spiritual forces in our world.”
“Christ For The Nations does not believe in, defend or support violence against human beings in any form,” the statement read.
The school does have ties to leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, including several evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump: Dutch Sheets, the school’s former executive director; speaker and prophet Cindy Jacobs; and Lance Wallnau, a preacher who prophesied that Trump would become president. A 2013 edition of the Voice, the school’s magazine, features an interview with Wallnau, where he discusses the 7 Mountain Mandate — a belief that evangelical Christians should dominate all aspects of culture, including the government, media and education.
Jenna Ryan, who was convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and later pardoned by Trump, is also a former student at Christ for the Nations, attending the school in 2003 and 2004, according to The Washington Post. However, Ryan also told the Post she had dropped out of organized religion and had become a spiritual healer.
TITLE: We Should Not Be Shocked That the Alleged Minnesota Shooter’s Christian School Is Connected to Political Violence
https://religiondispatches.org/we-should-not-be-shocked-that-the-alleged-minnesota-shooters-christian-school-is-connected-to-political-violence/
EXCERPTS: While the [Christ For The Nations Institute (CNFI)] was founded by Gordon Lindsay in 1970, the Christ for the Nations ministry—originally called Voice of Healing—was founded by Lindsay in 1948 to promote the ministry of faith-healer William Branham. Like many other Pentecostal faith-healers—Frank Sandford, John Alexander Dowie, Charles Fox Parham, F.F. Bosworth—Branham’s and Lindsay’s theology was derived largely from a movement known as British Israelism.
According to this movement, White people were the true Israel of the Bible, a belief that was pivotal to the mid-century Latter Rain revival Lindsay helped organize with his Voice of Healing. In fact, Branham had been ordained into ministry by the National Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and Lindsay had strong connections with white-supremacist networks throughout North America.
When Branham unexpectedly left the revival circuit, Lindsay pivoted the Voice of Healing ministry and used it to promote a coalition of dozens of faith-healing revivalists. He eventually distanced himself when Branham’s preaching became violently antisemitic—though it’s unclear whether Lindsay ever actually recanted his views on British Israelism. In 1967, shortly before opening Christ for the Nations Institute, he changed the name of his ministry from Voice of Healing to Christ for the Nations.
The school has been led by the Lindsay family ever since—first Gordon, then his wife Freda, his son Dennis, and now his grandson Golan. Though CFNI doesn’t explicitly teach British Israelism, elements of the Lindsay family’s beliefs remain idiosyncratic. Dennis has published books with titles such as Lucifer’s Illusions: Pyramids, Crystals, and the New Age Mirage, The Zodiac: God’s Master Plan Revealed in the Stars, and Giants, Fallen Angels, and the Return of the Nephilim.
Lindsay’s ministry was central to what became the New Apostolic Reformation, and he simultaneously played a role in shaping the Identity theology that would inform the most violent forms of White supremacism. In more recent years, the NAR has been central to the right-wing Christian support of Donald Trump and the MAGA-ization of all three branches of America’s federal government. Ultimately, Lindsay’s CFNI became the place where a future alleged assassin would develop his views on the Bible.
Much has been written about CFNI’s, and the NAR’s, teachings on spiritual warfare. The quote about violent prayer that adorns the entrance to CFNI reflects the same ideology that led to the Capitol Riot. And when so-called prophets and apostles consistently blur the lines between the kingdom of God and America’s civil government when they talk about spiritual warfare, there will be people who take those lessons literally and act on them.
The Minnesota assassin may have been one of them.
Less has been said about just how mainstream CFNI has become. The violent prayer and the faith-healing tradition of British Israelism are not fringe ideas. A few years ago they were, but that’s no longer the case.
Kari Jobe is a world-renowned worship leader who, with her husband Cody Carnes, visited the White House in December 2019 with dozens of other NAR worship leaders. She got her start in music at Gateway Church—which her father, Mark Jobe, took over after the fall of founding pastor Robert Morris—and attended CFNI in 2004. In fact, Gateway Church has a longstanding reciprocity partnership with CFNI; students can dual-enroll in Gateway’s King’s University and get credit for CFNI courses on how to prophesy and engage in spiritual warfare. Jobe, whose leadership has helped Gateway rebound from its high profile child sexual abuse scandal, is a talented singer; in 2024, she and her husband performed at Carnegie Hall.
The CFNI website features endorsements from numerous leaders in the world of violent prayer and faith-healing. One comes from Dodie Osteen, mother of televangelism superstar Joel Osteen and wife of John Osteen, a revivalist who worked with Gordon Lindsay and William Branham. Any revival that spawns a New York Times bestselling author cannot be considered fringe, and in fact the school that Joel Osteen’s mother endorses is quietly far more influential than many people outside of the NAR want to believe.
Another CFNI endorsement comes from Bill Johnson, the apostle of Bethel Church in Redding, California. Johnson, whose church was founded by Latter-Rain preacher R.T. Doherty, has made a name for himself as a best-selling author who teaches people how to expel demons, heal bodies, and even raise the dead. While seminary-trained pastors tend to reject Johnson’s views, their congregations sing Bethel’s award-winning music every week during church services and listen to it on Christian radio stations.
Pat Robertson, who looked for a charismatic minute like he might become the frontrunner for the 1988 Republican nomination, has also endorsed CFNI.
The picture that begins to emerge around CFNI isn’t just one of a school whose founder has a deeply troubling history connected to the development and spread of white-supremacist ideology. There’s a bigger picture about the growing trend of political violence in the United States with connections not only to the New Apostolic Reformation but specifically to CFNI—a school that’s become much more mainstream in recent years than its small size and fringe ideology might suggest.
Today, CFNI is endorsed by prolific writers, would-be politicians, and all-around movers and shakers of what’s become a violent Christian nationalism. Its teachings on spiritual warfare culminated in the Capitol Riot and appear to have been influential in the Minnesota assassinations. And, given the increasing influence of the NAR and specifically CFNI, what we saw last weekend may be just the beginning.
SEE ALSO:
Accused Minnesota assassin Vance Boelter expressed growing concern that the US was ‘turning against Israel’ years before evil attack
https://nypost.com/2025/06/18/us-news/accused-minnesota-assassin-vance-boelter-expressed-concern-that-us-was-turning-against-israel/
Sean Feucht calls allegations of financial, moral misconduct spiritual warfare
https://www.christianpost.com/news/sean-feucht-calls-misconduct-allegations-spiritual-warfare.html
Why the religious beliefs of Trump defense pick Pete Hegseth matter
https://theconversation.com/why-the-religious-beliefs-of-trump-defense-pick-pete-hegseth-matter-245601