A prayer at a “ReAwaken America” occasion in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, just a few days in the past, at which Michael Flynn appeared, captured the sensibilities of this second: “Father God, we come to you within the identify of Jesus. We’re asking you to open the eyes of President Trump’s understanding, that he’ll know the time of divine intervention. He’ll know the way to implement divine intervention. And you’ll encompass him, Father, with none of this deep-state trash, none of this RINO trash. You encompass him, individuals that you simply choose, with your individual mighty hand. Within the identify of Jesus.”
Flynn, a retired Military lieutenant normal who as soon as led the Protection Intelligence Company, resigned as President Donald Trump’s nationwide safety adviser after lower than a month for allegedly deceptive the vp, after which pleaded responsible to mendacity to the FBI. (He later filed to withdraw his responsible plea, insisting that he had been arrange by the FBI, and was ultimately pardoned by Trump.)
Flynn has been embraced by MAGA world partly as a result of he’s seen as a martyr, the sufferer of a “deep state” hit job. However what turned him right into a rock star on the best was the post-pardon chapter of his life, because the Related Press’s Michelle Smith factors out within the not too long ago broadcast Frontline documentary “Michael Flynn’s Holy Battle.” It was then that Flynn, whom a former navy colleague describes as being prone to “excessive pondering”—absolutely took up residence in a world of fantasy and phantasm, of crazed conspiracy theories and disinformation.
Flynn didn’t simply declare that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump; he floated the thought of getting Trump declare martial regulation and attempt to “rerun” the election. He instructed that the president ought to seize voting machines. And he stated that the election concerned “most likely the best fraud that our nation has ever skilled in our historical past.” At an occasion in Arizona final month, Flynn stated, “Do you know {that a} governor can declare warfare? A governor can declare warfare. And we’re going to most likely see that.”
Flynn has additionally asserted that COVID-19 was unleashed deliberately by world elitists in an effort to “rule the world,” “management humanity,” and “steal an election.” He has warned concerning the risks of a “new world order” wherein individuals resembling Invoice Gates, George Soros, and World Financial Discussion board Govt Chairman Klaus Schwab “have an intent to trace each single one in every of us, they usually use it below the pores and skin. They use a way by which it’s below the pores and skin.”
But it surely doesn’t finish there. In a video deposition for the Home committee investigating January 6, Republican Consultant Liz Cheney requested this query of Flynn: “Do you consider the violence on January 6 was justified morally?” To which he responded, “Take the Fifth.” Cheney then requested, “Do you consider the violence on January 6 was justified legally?” Flynn responded, “Fifth.” After which Cheney requested this query of the previous normal: “Do you consider within the peaceable transition of energy in america of America?”
“The Fifth,” Flynn replied.
“It was a surreal second,” The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman wrote. “Right here was a retired three-star normal and former nationwide safety adviser refusing to opine on the foundational requirement of a constitutional democracy.”
Today, Michael Flynn is constructing a nationwide, grassroots motion that’s fusing deranged political concepts with a mangled model of the Christian religion. In April 2021, the “ReAwaken America” tour was launched by Clay Clark with an occasion in Tulsa, Oklahoma. For the second occasion, held on the River Church in Tampa, Florida, that June, Flynn signed on because the star attraction. Organizers declare that greater than 10,000 individuals got here to the Pentecostal church for a sold-out present. Since then, the “ReAwaken America” Tour has averaged greater than a gathering a month. Charisma Information, which is aimed toward Pentecostals and charismatics, is a sponsor. (Charisma Information describes itself this fashion: “To passionate, Spirit-filled Christians, Charisma Information is probably the most trusted supply for credible information and perception from a charismatic perspective.”)
Tour audio system embody a variety of COVID and election conspiracists—Flynn, Eric Trump, Alex Jones, Mike Lindell, Roger Stone, Sidney Powell, Peter Navarro, Charlie Kirk, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. amongst them—and the occasions are permeated with Christian symbols and apocalyptic visions, the language of non secular warfare and Christian nationalism. Fears and grievances are stoked, and persons are invited to be baptized.
“The performances wrap the narrative of election fraud in a megachurch environment, full with worship music and prayer,” The New York Instances’ Charles Homans reported.
“Clearly the main focus of the tour—to kill the spirit of concern, expose the reality about medical fraud, expose election fraud and the nice world reset whereas selling Jesus is King and never finished with America but—resonates with a large number of People,” Pamela Christian wrote in Charisma Information. (Christian’s web site describes her as “a motivational speaker, writer, and media persona who supplies steadiness between rational thought and non secular realities.”)
“The vast majority of individuals attending aren’t churchgoers,” Clay Clark informed her. “As I’ve talked to many, I hear them categorical dissatisfaction with elements of the Bible not being taught, lack of authenticity or having been burned by the church. Their curiosity in attending the ReAwaken America Tour is to be taught fact about medical and election fraud. However then they expertise real Christian fellowship, their minds are modified and their hope renewed that we actually can flip our nation crimson—not crimson as in Republican, however crimson as within the shade of our Lord’s blood shed for us to stay in fact.”
In November, Flynn informed a packed sanctuary at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, “If we’re going to have one nation below God, which we should, we’ve to have one faith. One nation below God and one faith below God.” He has described this as “a second in time the place that is good versus evil.”
“Mike Flynn has emerged as a martyr and a mascot for the far-right contingent of the Christian-nationalist motion in america,” Samuel Perry, a sociology professor on the College of Oklahoma, a scholar of Christian nationalism, and himself an individual of the Christian religion, informed Frontline.
What is being finished by many individuals on the American proper within the identify of Jesus is a desecration of the precise Jesus—the Jesus of the Gospels, the Sermon on the Mount, and the parable of the Good Samaritan; the Jesus who shattered social, cultural, and non secular limitations and frolicked with the “unsuitable” crowd; the Jesus who was drawn to the forsaken and the despised, the marginalized and the outcast; the Jesus who demonstrated profound distrust of political energy and who declined Devil’s provide of the kingdoms of the world. The Jesus who stated, “My grace is enough for you, for my energy is made excellent in weak spot” and “A brand new command I offer you: Love each other. As I’ve liked you, so it’s essential to love each other” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be known as the kids of the Lord.” The Jesus who gained, even when haltingly and imperfectly, the affections of my coronary heart a few years in the past.
It doesn’t appear to have dawned on too many Christian nationalists and MAGA “tradition warriors” that the individuals with whom Jesus clashed most intensely, and who ultimately crucified him, have been those that wielded political and non secular energy.
At present, the individuals in politics who most frequently invoke the identify of Jesus for his or her political causes are typically probably the most cruel and judgmental, probably the most consumed by rage and concern and vengeance. They hate their enemies, they usually appear to wish to make extra of them. They declare allegiance to the reality and but they’ve embraced, even unwittingly, lies. They’ve inverted biblical ethics within the identify of biblical ethics.
This doesn’t imply these individuals aren’t good associates or dependable neighbors or beloved relations. It doesn’t imply they’re with out advantage in different areas of their lives. And it doesn’t imply they wouldn’t present private kindness to these in want. I do know such individuals; you would possibly too. And even those that maintain poisonous political opinions deserve some measure of grace and understanding. Lots of them are being misled.
However we additionally have to instantly and candidly identify issues, and the views of Michael Flynn and those that assume like him—the views and sensibilities of lots of these in MAGA world and who declare to be followers of Jesus—are malicious. They could consider themselves as devoted, however they’re selling views and attitudes which might be antithetical to the life and teachings of Jesus.
“After you have made the world an finish, and religion a way, you’ve gotten nearly gained your man, and it makes little or no distinction what sort of worldly finish he’s pursuing,” a senior satan advises a junior satan in C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. “Offered that conferences, pamphlets, insurance policies, actions, causes, and crusades, matter extra to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he’s ours—and the extra ‘spiritual’ (on these phrases) the extra securely ours.”
This isn’t the place a variety of Christians needed to finish up, however it’s the place they’re. They should change path, to look to heal somewhat than to wound, to change into ministers of reconciliation as an alternative of brokers of antipathy. Within the identify of Jesus.
