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In episode one of Spirit & Power, Dr. Leah Payne speaks with Sam Kestenbaum - an award-winning journalist covering religion in America who writes widely for national magazines and newspapers, including Harper Magazine’s, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Rolling Stone. Leah and Sam discuss some of the influential conservative charismatic media makers who are energizing the religious right: pastor Greg Locke, rabbi Jonathan Cahn, entrepreneur Clay Clark, worship leader Sean Feucht, and head of Charisma News, Stephen Strang.
Resources & Links:
Pentecostals in America by Arlene Sanchez WalshPew Research Center’s 2006 study: Spirit and Power – A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals“The Future of “Born-Again Evangelicalism” Is Charismatic and Pentecostal,” PRRI by Fanhao Nie, Ph.D., Flavio Rogerio Hickel Jr., Leah Payne, Tarah Williams, Ph.D.Jerry Falwell’s “I love America” rallyEvangelical Leader Lance Wallnau pitches Trump to followers as divinely chosen for presidencyPRRI Data on Gen ZPew Data on Pentecostals and charismatics v. evangelicals
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AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY I'm Leah Payne, a historian and expert in Pentecostal and charismatic movements in the United States and beyond.
Welcome to Spirit and Power, a limited series podcast where we do deep dives into how charismatic and Pentecostal movements are shaping the American political and social landscape.
As the 2024 election approaches, I'll be tracking key stories and highlighting critical data from leading experts to keep you informed every Thursday from now until November 7.
Join me for insights from journalists and scholars exploring this critical intersection of religion and politics in America.
This week, The Media Makers.
The Courage Tour is coming to Pennsylvania.
On September 27th and 28th, there will be singing and preaching, conspiracy theories and rapture predictions, patriotism and nostalgia, which aims to, quote, significantly alter the spiritual atmosphere across seven states and 19 counties, end quote. You've got more Christians and more conservatives in those counties.
That are actually showing up and voting.
That means you're supposed to be plus two, but you're down negative two.
That means that all it takes is we've got to activate the low-hanging fruit of underperforming counties where we already have people that are for lethargy, apathy, laziness, or spiritual fog, don't know that the battle's going on.
Well, I said, yeah, the problem is we can have 4,000 or 5,000 people and really creates the momentum in other places.
But then my business friends said, but that's not strategic.
You need to take this where the battle is strongest.
Those states, if you're wondering, are swing states.
On the Courage Tour, Pentecostal and charismatic media makers are crafting striking narratives about the 2024 presidential election.
Pentecostals tell great stories.
At least that's what historian Arlene Sanchez-Walsh argues in her book, Pentecostals in America.
And I think she's right.
Pentecostals and their younger siblings in the American religious landscape, the Charismatics, have always known how to tell great stories about their experience of the supernatural world.
Heaven and hell, Jesus and Satan, the demonic and the angelic.
And they've always been creative when it comes to getting their stories out into the world.
For those of you new to thinking about Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, two movements that often get talked about in the same breath, or even hyphenated to Pentecostal hyphen charismatic, I thought it might be helpful to start out with some simple definitions.
For our purposes, Pentecostals belong to a movement, a constellation of denominations, largely born out of early 20th century revival meetings.
The most well-known, the Azusa Street Revival, happened in 1906 in Los Angeles, California.
At these revival meetings, practitioners participated in all manner of activities that outsiders thought were inappropriate or even obscene.
For one thing, their revivals were interracial.
Black, brown, and white worshipers prayed and wept and fell under the power of the Holy Spirit.
They performed practices they read about in the New Testament book of Acts.
They spoke in tongues, an ecstatic speech or speech-like sounds believed to come from God.
They practiced divine healing.
Many adopted strict standards of personal and social holiness.
No drinking, no dancing, no makeup, no gambling.
And they were quite apocalyptic.
They spoke words of prophecy about the principalities and powers of the 1900s.
They interpreted major events of the 1900s, the San Francisco earthquake, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, as signs that God was moving in the world and the end of time was at hand.
Canocostals are people who form denominations around those practices and beliefs.
As you might have guessed, given these unusual practices, Pentecostals started out small, and they were very, very fringe.
How do we even know about these early days?
Well, in part because, in addition to the work of the Spirit, they had an intuitive appreciation for mass media, marketing, and self-promotion.
Maybe it's because the Azusa Street Revival began in what would become the bastion of American entertainment culture.
But the Pentecostals knew how to tell a story and get that story out to the masses.
Pentecostals were also notoriously fracturous, and as they fractured along racial and doctrinal lines, they quickly expanded, aided by the creation of countless media organizations—journals and newsletters and songbooks and eventually radio and television and film.
And they had a knack for creating celebrities.
People like Amy Semple McPherson, the glam showwoman and early radio adopter who was famous during her lifetime, so famous that the song Hooray for Hollywood has a verse dedicated just to her.
Angela Temple, myself as pastor of the temple...
We're the first church in the world to own a radio station.
And when those shining silver towers were lifted up above our temple dome and flashed the message east, west, north, and south, our opportunity and privilege was broadened by hundreds of thousands of people who united with our radio church audience.
Or Sweet Daddy Grace, the bedazzled, purple-suit-loving, real-estate-buying Pentecostal celebrity across the country in Massachusetts.
First this afternoon, we hear the praise of God of heaven that he might get glory all of our lives in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today, two of the largest, most vibrant denominations in the U.S., and indeed the world, are Pentecostal, including the Church of God in Christ, a.k.a. Co-Pentecostal.
Kojik, a predominantly African-American holiness Pentecostal Christian denomination, and the Assemblies of God, a historically white Pentecostal denomination.
While Pentecostalism grew, the practices they were known for began overflowing into non-Pentecostal spaces.
Charismatics, a diverse collection of denominational and non-denominational Christians, also began emphasizing practices that were associated with Pentecostalism.
In the mid to late 20th century, people like Benny Hinn crossed the globe telling stories about the power and the anointing of God.
Here goes Dan Hoyt!
Here goes Dan Hoyt!
Here goes! My God!
My God! My God!
My God! Now, for decades, charismatic practices like speaking in tongues or prophecy or divine healing were discouraged or even banned in mainstream evangelical circles and often denigrated by evangelical leaders.
And because it's a supernatural gift in the Bible, I go back to the same question.
If God was going to give that supernatural gift to anyone, he wouldn't give it to people with bad theology because he'd be validating their bad theology, okay?
The growth of Charismatics in the 21st century, however, ultimately forced many to reconsider.
In 2006, the Pew Research Center reported that Charismatics and Pentecostals, which Pew actually describes using an umbrella category of Renewalist, made up around 23% of American Christians.
By 2011, Pew found that Pentecostals and Charismatics outnumbered evangelicals worldwide, two to one.
According to recent survey data from PRRI, the Public Religion Research Institute, around half of Gen Z and millennial churchgoers report attending charismatic services compared with only 24% of older respondents.
So they're younger, and they're also socially, politically, and racially diverse, which perhaps isn't surprising given their origin story.
And demographically speaking, Charismatics and Pentecostals represent the future of that somewhat nebulous category of born-again or evangelical Christianity in the United States and beyond.
Full disclosure, I was a part of the team that designed that survey.
All of that to say, if you want to understand the current American religious landscape, you really need to understand them.
If there's one indicator of the ascent of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity in the United States, it might be how predominantly but not exclusively white charismatic and Pentecostal activists are making their presence known in the religious right.
The old-school conservative white Protestant activists like Baptist Jerry Falwell, the suit-and-tie, part-your-hair-on-the-side type of Baptist We're succeeded by hybrids, Baptocostals like charismatic Pat Robertson, conservative white charismatics who relished their proximity to the American political elite through the Christian coalition of the 1990s.
The button-down set has been joined and even in some cases elbowed out by a much more flamboyant crew, people like Pastor to Donald Trump, Paula White, For angels have even been dispatched from Africa right now!
Africa right now! Africa right now!
From Africa right now! They're coming here!
They're coming here! In the name of Jesus!
And, perhaps most notably, folks in the charismatic network known as the New Apostolic Reformation, like Lance Walnut.
Are you willing to do the bare minimum of knocking on the door, not of an Antifa house, but of a Christian or a conservative that needs to get some encouragement?
See, if we do that, then I can take this weird statistic of 96% of eligible voters don't show up, and all I gotta do is move a percentage of that.
I don't gotta get them all. You're the key.
It's amazing how big things happen.
Big doors move on little hinges.
Now, there's nothing new about conservative white Protestant activists lobbying for political power in the United States.
And certainly nothing new about holding religious revivals, particularly those of the nationalistic Christian variety, to get the faithful amped up about exercising their right to vote.
Baptist Jerry Falwell held a pretty on-the-nose titled I Love America rally all over the country to get out the vote as part of the moral majority.
But charismatic and Pentecostal activists add a spiritually energized flavor to their activism.
I'm not 100% sure of what will happen on the Courage Tour this week, but it's a safe bet that there will be conspiracy theories.
Making sure that we're naming what is happening as a coup.
Totally agreed in the shutdown BC conversations that I've been having that's not on the federal side.
We also are often saying I can call it a coup.
And there will be prophecies.
The prophecies are clear that Detroit And this state is going to become the place that shapes the nation.
And there will be lots of talk about the demonic, the Book of Revelation, and all of this alongside nationalism of the Christian variety and plenty of efforts to get out the vote.
Today, I'd like to take time to look at how these messages get out into the world.
I'd like to look at the Pentecostal and charismatic media makers energizing the religious right, the storytellers.
My coverage of a lot of this stuff really did begin in the early months of the pandemic.
That's Sam Kestenbaum, an award-winning journalist covering religion in America.
Sam writes widely for national magazines and newspapers like The New York Times, Harper's, The Washington Post, and Rolling Stone.
And a lot of Sam's coverage of the conservative charismatic media makers began during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just to put us back in those months, people were cooped up, anxious, uncertain about what was unfolding in this country.
And I began seeing various top-up ministries that were emerging at this time.
This included things like Sean Foyt, who came through with his revival series and held a number of top-up revival meetings throughout Los Angeles and the greater area.
And God Speak, a Calvary Chapel church in Thousand Oaks, was holding services during the pandemic.
The first thing Sam noticed was how charismatic media makers were quick to make the most out of what you might call the opportunities offered by the pandemic.
While other congregations dutifully canceled worship services, Sam started checking in on the charismatic innovators.
The ones who found in California pandemic restrictions an opportunity to rebel and revive.
And he began writing about what he saw.
Most things were closed down during this time.
I noted that religion was happening here in kind of big, flamboyant, active ways.
I also spent time on the Reawaken America tour, which was this traveling, a really big traveling tour that also emerged during the pandemic.
The Reawaken America tour was created by a DJ-turned entrepreneur from Tulsa, Oklahoma, named Clay Clark, who knew intuitively how to create a party atmosphere.
For me, going to the Reawaken America tour during the pandemic, you know, it was certainly the largest gathering of people that I'd been to during that time, if we recall.
Just people were not gathering. And this was the first one I went to was in Anaheim and there were thousands of people there, which was just a novel sight to see at that time in this country.
And we're swaying in prayer.
There's really good music playing.
There's a rotating cast of really dynamic speakers on stage.
In addition to showmanship, Sam was quick to pick up on the exhilaration people felt after so many months in isolation.
I think one thing that I've tried to communicate in my reporting on this is the joy of these revivals.
There's something about getting together, especially at that time when people were not doing that.
There was something really joyous and rebellious about gathering like that.
Another thing that Sam noticed was that on the Reawaken tour, there were a lot of entrepreneurs.
At Blake Clark's show, the Reawaken America tour, there would also be lots of merchandise for sale in the parking lot, you know, in what we might call the Shakedown Street in the area outside the event proper.
Lots of merchandise for sale, lots of flags, food trucks.
We'd have, you know, food.
You might get snacks that you can come bring inside and eat.
He's identifying a longstanding tradition in American revivalism.
In addition to gathering to revive a supposedly ailing Christianity, revival meetings also had opportunities to purchase merchandise, things like songbooks or food and beverages.
Reviving, especially Pentecostal and charismatic reviving, is pretty physical work, and sometimes you just need a refreshment.
But Sam noticed that this big tent, market-driven approach was also bringing something that you might not expect in a charismatic church.
I think the one thing that Clay did really well was tap into a lot of different types of markets for that event.
I think that there certainly would be people who had come up in that tradition, who understood the charismatic Pentecostal tradition that they were participating in, who might be there really, really to worship.
These events also had a kind of a pedagogical edge to them.
That's how Clay would probably like to think of it.
People would have notebooks out.
They're taking notes about various conspiracy theories that Clay and others are furthering on stage.
Having to do with ideas about the unfolding Great Reset that will hit forces of good against evil in this country.
And there are people who would have come to this event not necessarily as part of a religious tradition either.
They might be drawn more to the political element or promises of the new types of therapy that is in the foyer of this event.
You'd also have lots of different alt-health therapies, books about how one might heal themselves through various technologies that have been suppressed by the government.
And you also would see people who are not Pentecostal, but come from other traditions.
For example, I met a family of Latter-day Saints there.
Also, there were some Mennonites I met at one event.
A pretty eclectic group of people that Clay is bringing on to Reawakening Americans.
She'd also say that the name Reawaken also evokes the Great Awakening, which also has a kind of a resonance of Chuanan language that also points back to revivalistic traditions, but is sort of hitting a couple different notes for attendees.
For those familiar with older versions of Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, this mashup of religious practices and beliefs on the Reawaken tour is kind of surprising.
Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity was known for its very sharp distinctions between the realm of Satan and the realm of Jesus, after all.
And usually, religious expressions outside of the Christian tradition and some pretty specific and narrow versions of the Christian tradition would be categorized as, well, not within the realm of Jesus,
but on the Reawakened tour and many other charismatic and Pentecostal political rallies, There's often a higher sense of meaning for attendees, although when it comes to exactly what that higher sense is, it's sometimes hard to pin down.
The general feeling I have was one of, it's all okay.
You know, it'll come out in the wash.
Like, the greater cause is the more important one.
The experience is more important.
We're going to take a short break, but we'll be back with more from Sam Kestenbaum.
This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Hi, my name is Peter, and I'm a prophet in the new novel, American Prophet.
I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened.
Oh, and the pandemic.
And that crazy election.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging.
It's not like I asked for the job.
Actually, no one would ask for this job.
At least half the people will hate whatever I say, and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy.
Getting a date is next to impossible.
I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
But the job isn't all that bad.
I've gotten to see the country and meet some really interesting people and hopefully do some good along the way.
You can find my story on Amazon, Audible, or iTunes.
Just look for American Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
I'm Leah Payne, a historian and expert in Pentecostal and charismatic movements in the United States and beyond.
Welcome to Spirit and Power, a limited series podcast where we do deep dives into how charismatic and Pentecostal movements are shaping the American political and social landscape.
As the 2024 election approaches, I'll be tracking key stories and highlighting critical data from leading experts to keep you informed.
Beginning September 26th, join me every Thursday for in-depth conversations with journalists and scholars exploring this critical intersection of religion and politics in America.
Some of the first stories I wrote about, actually, I was at the time writing for a Jewish newspaper in New York City, the Jewish Daily Forward.
And there I was writing about also folks in characters and movement that were pushing the communal boundaries.
Again, journalist Sam Kestenbaum on how he started writing about charismatic innovators.
That is, Jews for Jesus, Messianic Jews, Black Hebrew groups.
And there's a real interest among charismatics, among Pentecostals, among, you know, broadly, but especially among charismatic Pentecostals, an interest in Jewish ritual, in Hebrew Jewish markers, ritual items, like the shofar and like the prayer shawl.
And some of the first stories I wrote were about folks who were Pentecostal charismatic, but also called themselves rabbis and were bridging that divide.
I wrote, for example, about Jonathan Cahn, Rabbi slash Pastor Jonathan Cahn, who was in New Jersey, and I profiled him to the New York Times.
He was one of the first Trump prophets that I wrote about.
So my, you know, my path to writing about him came both out of this interest in this generative non-denominational space and a background in writing about Jewish life in America.
In addition to being creative with identity and ritual, media makers like Jonathan Cahn were very skilled at telling their stories and distributing those stories.
You know, one way that I've written about Jonathan Cahn and others, like I also wrote about Stephen Strang, the founding editor, I'm a publisher of Charisma Magazine, which is also Podcast Hub, a publishing house of books, Jonathan Cahn's publisher.
I, with both Jonathan and Stephen Strang, So Jonathan Cahn is a bestselling author who sells his books that are these Air Force page turners, you know, sort of half Da Vinci Code, half Grisham.
They are about prophecy unfolding in real time in America, looking at patterns of the Bible that overlaid on current events.
And he really becomes Charisma's, I think, bestselling author to date.
You know, he also had a radio ministry prior to that, so I kind of tracked him as a media figure, because I believe it is through those methods that he made his name.
Jonathan Cahn, Lance Wallnau, many other...
Lesser lights within the prophetic universe of content creators made a lot of content about this on their YouTube, Instagram, books about Trump as this type of figure, even predating the 2020 election.
The content creation continues.
And for some listeners, it might be tempting to think about charismatic and Pentecostal storytellers and the media outlets and the media personalities that constitute them as fringe.
But in terms of media following, they rival and many times exceed the followings of mainstream so-called legacy media outlets.
The big stars you may have seen in Rolling Stone We're good to go.
From the pulpit, but also from their basements or back rooms or even in their car on TikTok and YouTube and any and every social media platform.
People like Shane Vaughn, THD, seller of silver Trump coins out of Waveland, Mississippi.
Folake Kellogg, a prophetess out of Washington State, or Kat Kerr, the pink-haired visionary who speaks about heaven as a giant amusement park that is a constant construction zone because mansions are being built there all the time, that has ice cream parlors and art galleries and dinosaurs so tame you can ride them.
And when it comes to the 2024 election, the conservative, charismatic media makers, well, they're showing no signs of slowing down.
I've been following this woman, Amanda Grace, who is another prophetess, Instagram prophetess, who shows up on the Reawaken America tour and elsewhere.
I've spoken with her a number of times, and she was recently a guest on Stephen Strang's Charisma Media podcast.
And here she's doing what she does best.
She's analyzing dreams, visions, various...
Sites that then have been words of knowledge that have been given to her about what's unfolding, various dates of events, the announcement of Kamala Harris on a particular day that lines up with a dream she had.
It's all very generative.
It's all very fluid. So I think I have no doubt that whatever happens, Amanda Grace will have a compelling story to tell about it.
What if these prophecies don't turn out exactly as promised?
Every now and then, I'm approached by a journalist asking, what happens when such and such a prophecy doesn't come true?
Are people disillusioned?
Do the faithful abandon their prophet?
Usually not. The beauty of Pentecostal and charismatic prophecy is that these stories can always be reworked along the way.
Is there a bigger outcome that she wishes to have happened?
Is Trump, you know, the chosen?
I mean, yes, of course.
But I have no doubt that should some other things unfold, that Amanda Grace and others will have magnetic stories to tell about what's happening.
I think there can be some crisis involved in a prophecy network.
If someone really sets a date, sets something, I think there are do's and don'ts for prophetic success or a successful prophetic career.
But I think it is also a maybe surprisingly No one illustrates the shape-shifting and storytelling capacity more than Greg Locke, the subject of Kestenbaum's Harper's Magazine cover story, The Demon Slayers.
I'd imagine if you're tuning into this podcast, you probably have some sense of great law.
But he really rises in prominence in Trump years, his viral clips of him on stage, a really magnetic, over-the-top character.
He continued holding services at his church outside Nashville in Tennessee.
Attendance boomed so much that he has to set up theories of bigger tents outside of his small church to accommodate the growing audience there.
For much of his time, he's really going in big on Trump, a real MAGA preacher, really the face of, I would say, Christian nationalism.
Joe Biden's days are numbered!
I said they're numbered!
I've told you the whole time this election was fraudulent.
We got so much proof.
The only people that can deny it are crack-smoking, demon-possessed leftists.
I'm about to tear his whole pool but in half.
That's how he's often framed in the coverage.
Lots of media coverage of his tent revivals in Tennessee.
He goes on the Reawaken America tour.
He is recognizable across the conservative media landscape.
Sometime in 2021, as he narrates it, and I'm here kind of following the way that he narrates his own story.
I have maybe my own take on it, but he begins to back away from this broader, we might say, large-scale spiritual warfare language.
From places like the Reawaken America tour, Greg Locke is talking about Underground tunnels, sort of QAnon-flavored rhetoric about cabals of Hollywood, Luciferian agendas, and overtaking the country.
It really has a QAnon flavor to it.
He, in time, becomes aware of this other ministry going on.
So at some point during the pandemic, he does begin to back away from this really high-profile political rhetoric.
Deliverance is the children's bread.
So I'm not making, you know, over promises under delivering.
I'm just telling you what God can do tonight.
So call it out. Generational curse of heart disease.
Stroke, come out right now.
Every spirit connected to a heart attack, come out.
Gallbladder issues, come out.
Irritable bowel syndrome, come out.
Gut issues, come out right now.
Come out, come out. Spirits in the kidneys, come out.
Liver, come out right now.
Spirit of scoliosis, out right now.
Every Leviathan spirit wrapped around their spine, come out right now in the name of Jesus.
Neck pain, sinus trouble, spirit of sinusitis, come out!
Migraine headaches, up and out right now.
We take authority over you. As he says, what he begins seeing in his church, in the pews of his church, are people asking for another kind of religious experience.
That is, they are coming to him and asking to be delivered of spirits, to be delivered from demons.
There are demons entering their body.
Basically, they're asking for exorcism.
That's not a language necessarily he would use that has a bit more of a Catholic ring to it, but they...
They are asking for deliverance from demons.
And as he says it, this is a thing that sort of is coming from the pews itself and he's responding to it.
So in some sense, he's going from this macro spiritual warfare to this more modest internalized spiritual warfare of the body itself.
So he shifts his whole ministry to go from this highly, highly charged political machine to a deliverance ministry, where he is casting out a demon by the thousands at his tent outside Tennessee.
Along the way, Locke finds that he's not alone on the exorcism beat.
This also leads him to connect with a whole web on...
Deliverance ministers who have also had a boom on the internet and elsewhere during the pandemic years, which I had also done some reporting about before.
So when I saw Greg making that transition, I recognized in it he was responding to another religious media moment and attaching or adapting to that.
Sam was able to see this adaptability up close.
The conceit of this Harper's piece or the premise of the Harper's piece is I actually come to work for Greg Locke and Locke Media and help them stage one of these big revivals at their tent in Tennessee.
And I'm working alongside Locke Media, which is the media arm of his ministry, which he is also the head of that media team.
And we are Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Give me a sense of that liability, that intuitive or that flexibility of that type of media making that is towards the end of the film, which has not yet come out.
This would be come out in Jesus' name, too.
Come out in Jesus' name, too.
One, and come out in Jesus' name.
Two, if that even continues to be the name, they were telling me, oh, maybe there'll be a prophetic turn around this time.
Also, there was the war in Gaza broke out, and this became a point of much interest in that ministry and elsewhere.
Greg Locke has been once, maybe twice, to Israel since then.
There's a sense also that this story is moving.
Greg Locke isn't a deliverance ministry now.
Two years' time, I don't know where the ministry will go.
And that's not necessarily a dig on my part about his being flying in the wind, but more sense that His career is developing, and he's going where the spirit leads him.
Well, wherever the spirit leads Sam's next project, you can find it on his website, samkestenbaum.com, and we'll include links to his work on charismatic and Pentecostal media makers in our show notes, along with links to scholarly resources on the major figures and big ideas we've covered today.
Especially the polling data from the Public Religion Research Institute.
And you can find me at drleahpain.com and on most social media platforms at Dr.
Leah Payne. Thanks for listening.
Spirit Empower is a limited series podcast from me, Dr.
Leah Payne, with research from Carrie Gaspard.
You heard some Courage Tour clips from her fieldwork in this episode.
And it's produced in conjunction with Straight White American Jesus and Axis Mundi Media.
And there's even more of this week's episode available.
In fact, I'm going to ask my guests this week to reflect on one charismatic and Pentecostal-driven story that people should be paying attention to but aren't.
And for subscribers to the Straight White American Jesus Premium Feed on Supercast, you get an extra segment of this show each week, in addition to all other premium benefits on Swagg.
