Why experts say Christian nationalists’ rhetoric may spur violence | US elections 2024

As the sky darkened on the National Mall in DC last Saturday, evangelical pastor Ché Ahn addressed the thousands of worshippers gathered there and issued a decree.

Trump, Ahn said, was a figure akin to the biblical King Jehu, and “Kamala Harris is a type of Jezebel, and as you know, Jehu cast out Jezebel”.

“I decree in Jesus’s mighty name, and I decree it by faith,” said Ahn, “that Trump will win on November the fifth, he will be our 47th president, and Kamala Harris will be cast out and she will lose in Jesus’s name.”

The Bible story Ahn invoked is extremely violent. In it, Jehu throws the Phoenician princess Jezebel from a window. She is then trampled by horses, her corpse left to be eaten by dogs. Ahn did not get into the particulars of this story at the DC event, but he likely didn’t need to: in his world of charismatic and evangelical preachers, pastors, self-styled prophets and apostles, and their many followers, the story of Jezebel is a key narrative.

The rally on the mall on 12 October, advertised under the name A Million Women, was billed as a gathering for women to wage spiritual warfare against changing gender norms in the US. Drawing tens of thousands, the event showcased the ability of leaders from the New Apostolic Reformation, a growing movement on the Christian right, to mobilize followers – and ply them with militant political rhetoric.

Experts fear their spiritual message has the potential to spur real-world political violence, especially if Trump were to lose the November election.

As Ahn spoke, the crowd that had gathered on the mall to “turn back hearts to God” through prayer and praise, swayed and listened. Some had heard about the rally through Bible studies and church groups and seemed unaware that many of the featured speakers were deeply involved in rightwing politics. Others had participated in the Capitol protest that devolved into a deadly riot on 6 January 2021. All received the messages of a dire, good-versus-evil vision of American politics that the speakers brought that day – and peddle regularly on podcasts, YouTube channels and Christian television and in front of their congregations.

Matthew Taylor, a scholar whose work has focused on the New Apostolic Reformation, said veiled calls for violence cloaked in religious rhetoric are common in the NAR, a loosely-affiliated network on the Christian right that embraces modern-day apostles and prophets.

“Having it be a women’s march, I think they kind of dialed back some of the more violent rhetoric,” said Taylor, who is a senior researcher at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. But Ahn’s decree, he said, “shocked” him.

“I could very easily picture, if you had the right mix of charismatic identity theology that’s aligned with the NAR, and unhinged, violent tendencies in an individual – yeah, that could very easily be an instigating factor in an assassination attempt,” said Taylor.

Leaders in the movement who spoke with the Guardian emphasized that they meant only to draw their followers into battle of a spiritual nature, and correctly pointed out that the rally on the mall was peaceful.

“We were fasting, all of us on that stage were fasting,” said Folake Kellogg, a pastor who helped organize the event and spoke there. “We had not eaten, we were praying. We knew that the battle is not against any human being. We love our brothers and sisters.”

Ahn disputed the idea that his decree could spur his followers to violence, writing in an email that such language was “all spiritual” and that “[a]nyone who advocates physical violence in Jesus name is not a true follower of Jesus who taught us to turn our cheeks”.

Leaders in the NAR “believe themselves to be what they call kings and priests and [members of] a royal nation”, said Jonathon Sawyer, an academic whose research focuses on religious and political extremism. Such figures “have the sense that when they offer some type of decree such as this, that there is a tangible impact that will happen in the ‘natural sphere’ and in politics”, he added.

Because pastors like Ahn lean so heavily on biblical allegory, they are afforded a degree of plausible deniability if followers interpret their speech as an incitement to violence. And in the world that Ahn occupies, this kind of language has been thick in the air for years. Ahn’s decree itself was likely familiar to some: on 5 January 2021, Ahn issued a nearly identical one at a Stop the Steal rally in Washington DC.

The notion that Harris herself embodies the spirit of Jezebel has also become commonplace among preachers in the NAR.

“Republicans, like Ahab in the Bible, accommodate Jezebel,” said the pro-Trump, self-styled prophet Lance Wallnau on a 13 September episode of his podcast titled Trump vs The Jezebel Spirit: How Trump Can Still Win, which aired after the presidential debate. In the episode, Wallnau alleged collusion between the ABC anchors who aggressively fact-checked Trump’s many falsehoods, and the Harris campaign, saying: “What was accomplished was she looked presidential, and that’s – we’ll go to this later – that’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft.”

Wallnau, who enjoys a following of 1 million on Facebook and 78,000 on YouTube, where he offers a near-constant stream of discourses on topics ranging from electoral politics and theology to wellness supplements, frequently casts the 2024 election in apocalyptic terms.

“We’re in a place, my brethren, where in 30 days – 30 days or so – the die is cast. I don’t think we come back from this one if Trump cannot secure a victory,” said Wallnau on his 7 October show. “I think that once he’s removed, the anti-Christ forces are going to start to move at a faster rate.”

Jenny Donnelly, the organizer of the 12 October rally, hopes the women she summoned to the National Mall – “Esthers”, she calls them – will be ready to fight such anti-Christ forces. Donnelly frequently cites the Bible story of Esther in her appeals to women and moms. In it, Esther, the Jewish wife of a Persian king, risks her life to save her people from persecution. Donnelly and others in the NAR invoke the story, which forms the basis of the Jewish holiday Purim, to urge their followers to take on spiritual battles of their own.

Many women in attendance at the rally wore T-shirts emblazoned with the words “If I Perish, I Perish”, a statement in the story.

“We had a dream in 2022 that we will collectively come together today and declare a war cry,” said Kellogg, a pastor affiliated with Donnelly, early in the day on 12 October. “On the cross, the last words of Jesus, he said: ‘It is finished.”

Shortly after, a dramatic video played on the large screens broadcasting the event on the mall.

“On this day of atonement, we gather to stand and cry out for America,” said the narrator of the video. “If we perish, we perish. United, we will make way for the Lord. The time is now.” A short clip of a hand casting a ballot flashed on the screen.

“As America goes, so go the nations of the Earth,” said the narrator. “This is the last stand.”