Dec. 26, 2022 - Straight White American Jesus
08:54
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| Axis Mundi Michael Flynn was a three-star general in the U.S. | |
| Army. | |
| He served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Barack Obama. | |
| He was Donald Trump's national security advisor for about three weeks at the start of the Trump administration. | |
| Several recent documentaries and media profiles have traced how Michael Flynn has gone from the highest halls of power in the Trump administration to become a conspiracy theorist, a 2020 election denier, and an icon of right-wing mobilization. | |
| One subject that has received less scrutiny is Michael Flynn's religious identity and his religious rhetoric. | |
| Flynn was raised Irish Catholic in Rhode Island, so on the surface, he's a far cry from the Pentecostal and independent charismatic folks we've been looking at in this series. | |
| In a recent interview, a reporter asked him if he was a Christian nationalist, and Flynn and his media spokesperson shrugged it off. | |
| They say you're a Christian nationalist. | |
| Are you? | |
| What is that? | |
| I'm an Irish Catholic. | |
| I think we should skip that question. | |
| He's an Irish Catholic general. | |
| I'm a follower of Jesus. | |
| How's that? | |
| 33 years in the military serving his country. | |
| What I'm more interested in is how Michael Flynn, a retired general, an expert in war strategy and intelligence, has, since the 2020 election, adopted a robust vocabulary of spiritual warfare. | |
| I mean, there is a spiritual war and there is a political war. | |
| And they are going on! | |
| They're going on in this country right now! | |
| I tell people that I'm standing here tonight because of the most powerful weapon system known to man, and that's prayer. | |
| One of the major venues where Michael Flynn shares his theological reflections is something called the Reawaken America Tour. | |
| If you've somehow missed news coverage on the Reawaken America Tour, I'd recommend you look it up. | |
| It's a wild scene. | |
| The best way that I can describe it is charismatic revival fury wrapped in COVID denialism with a creamy center of right-wing celebrity-dom and just a dash of QAnon. | |
| The tour has gone to dozens of cities, where they usually set up a two-day conference with a vast panoply of speakers, including Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and Mike Lindell, independent charismatic pastors and prophets, COVID anti-vax activists, plus worship music and people blowing shofars. | |
| The Reawaken America Tour looks like someone took the energy and eccentricities of the Capitol Riot, bottled it up, and took it on tour all over America, charging people hundreds of dollars to spend a couple days immersing themselves in it. | |
| They've even recently taken to baptizing people in giant tubs at the events. | |
| All of this Mad Hatter spirituality and smorgasbord of conspiracies is the brainchild of General Michael Flynn and a Pentecostal charismatic podcaster named Clay Clark. | |
| Clark and Flynn both spoke at the January 5th, 2021 rally in D.C. | |
| The same one that Cheyenne used to offer his apostolic declaration. | |
| Recognize that Jesus, our Lord and Savior, gives us our rights. | |
| Not corrupt, bureaucrat, deep state, fakely, falsely elected officials. | |
| Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus is King and President Donald J. Trump is our President! | |
| Have a good day! | |
| This country is awake. | |
| Tomorrow, tomorrow, trust me, the American people that are standing on the soil that we are standing on tonight, and they're going to be standing on this soil tomorrow, this is soil that we have fought over, fought for, and we will fight for in the future. | |
| The members The members of Congress, the members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States Senate, those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don't have the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight because tomorrow we the people are going to be here and we want you to know that we will not stand for a lie. | |
| We will not stand for a lie. | |
| When Flynn speaks extemporaneously about the Reawaken America Tour, we again find this blending of spiritual warfare language with contemporary politics. | |
| Every place we go there's still some adversary or some opponent principally politically but definitely spiritually there is something going on and so and you know whatever you want to call it I'm one of these Irish Catholic kids I don't normally wear this on my sleeve you know but what I what I do believe is I believe what I see and I believe what I | |
| What I hear and I believe that I witness, what I witness is we're really up against a real evil in this country because they're trying to destroy the fabric of our society, which is built on the foundations of really Judeo-Christian principles and values. | |
| And I always tell people that I've written about it. | |
| And this will probably surprise no one who's been listening to this series. | |
| But on the Reawaken America stage, you can sometimes find that where's Waldo of the religious right, Sean Foyt? | |
| Talk about an oddball pairing. | |
| Sean Foyt, hipster worship troubadour, and Michael Flynn, retired general, have even become friends. | |
| If you want, I'll just say a few words and... Yeah, share with us what's going on. | |
| You know way more than most everyone. | |
| I mean, I, but you know, honestly, I know that your audience is sort of transcends age just because of the The quality and the creativity and the beauty and really the love that you show in your very creative talent and your ability to bring music to a lot of people. | |
| So I'm so in awe of having developed the relationship with you. | |
| And what I would tell everybody is this. | |
| Talking to Foyt, Flynn once again invokes this imagery of battle and spiritual warfare with a slightly garbled citation of Ephesians chapter 6. | |
| God is with us, but we now have to stand up, step up, speak up, and sort of wear that armor, wear that shield, wear that sword, wear that, you know, that faith. | |
| More than we've ever done. | |
| I always tell people, Sean, that prayer is the most powerful weapon known to man. | |
| And it is. | |
| It is. | |
| And so God also created warriors, though. | |
| You're a warrior. | |
| I mean, you are a warrior. | |
| When I first met you, And I started to get to know you. | |
| I'm like, wow, we have these different warriors that have different talents and God has given us these talents. | |
| You know, I wonder sometimes why I am doing what I'm doing, because I continue to just be incredibly persecuted. | |
| But I know I know what I am up against. | |
| And I have the lifetime of experience that I have been honored by serving our country in different capacities. | |
| You know what you know what my purpose in life is. | |
| And I and I still am still trying to struggle. | |
| It is one thing to hear pastors or even worship leaders talk about spiritual warfare and expanding spiritual territory. | |
| history. | |
| But this language of warfare and prayer weapon systems and spiritual adversaries sure has a different resonance coming out of the mouth of a literal general. | |
| Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWADGE episode. | |
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