Spirit and Power S2: E2: Apocalypse Now: ICE, Immigration, and Latino Churches
One Sunday morning in Georgia, a family walks into their Pentecostal church ready for worship. They're unaware that outside something life changing is about to unfold. During the service, ICE arrests a man just outside the church doors while his family sits inside. A moment of worship and community suddenly turns into a moment of fear and uncertainty. This is the reality for many facing immigration enforcement in unexpected places today.
This week on Spirit and Power: Apocalypse Now - how Pentecostal and charismatic Christians are making sense of the Trump administration's long promised mass deportations. For some families torn asunder, it feels like the end of the world. For others, it's just the beginning. Dr. Leah Payne does a deep dive into stories of immigration and deportation with Dr. Jonathan Calvillo and Dr. Lois Olena. This episode features contrasting interpretations of the Pentecostal faith, and who is on the side of good and evil when it comes to deportations, family, and public policy.
Resources & Links:
“Fear grips immigrant communities as ICE ramps up arrests; community journalist responds,” 11 Alive News
“Tenía un proceso de asilo: detienen a inmigrante hondureño al salir de una iglesia en Georgia,” Univision
“When ICE Comes to Church,” Christianity Today, by Andy Olsen
Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century, by Daniel Ramírez
When the Spirit is Your Inheritance: Reflections on Borderlands Pentecostalism, by Jonathan E. Calvillo
The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City, by Jonathan E. Calvillo“Fear grips immigrant communities as ICE ramps up arrests; community journalist responds,” 11 Alive News
Join Leah & many other scholars, activists, and artists considering music the rise of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity at the 2025 Summer Institute for Global Charismatic & Pentecostal Studies at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, May 21-23 in Decatur, GA. Registration is free!
Spirit and Power is produced by the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement.
Created by Dr. Leah Payne
Producer: Andrew Gill
Executive Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi
Audio Engineer and Music: R. Scott Okamoto
Production Assistance: Kari Onishi
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The fraudsters, liars, cheaters, globalists, and deep state bureaucrats are being sent packing.
The illegal alien criminals are being sent home.
We're draining the swamp and we're restoring government by the people, for the people.
President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign included a pledge to implement what he described as the largest domestic deportation operation in U.S. history.
After taking office, his administration is working to deliver on that promise in dramatic ways.
Trump has attempted to limit birthright citizenship, and his administration is working on overhauling the asylum system.
Perhaps most notably, the Trump administration has rescinded a long-standing policy that limited immigration enforcement in quote-unquote sensitive areas.
In this transformative move, previously protected sensitive areas are now fair game for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE. As of January 2025, federal agents can now arrest people in places like churches and schools.
The effects are wide-ranging, but today we explore the story of one family changed forever at a Pentecostal church in Georgia.
One Sunday morning in Georgia.
a family walks into their Pentecostal church ready for worship.
They are unaware that outside, something life-changing is about to unfold.
During the service, ICE arrests a man.
Just outside the church doors while his family sits inside.
A moment of worship and community suddenly turns into a moment of fear and uncertainty.
This is the reality for many facing immigration enforcement in unexpected places.
Today, we dive into stories of immigration and deportation.
There, we'll see contrasting interpretations of the Pentecostal faith.
Who is on the side of good and evil?
When it comes to deportations, family, and public policy.
And we'll glean surprising insights into the rise of Donald Trump among Latino voters in 2024. 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 funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, where we do deep dives into how charismatic and Pentecostal movements are shaping the American political and social landscape.
This week, Apocalypse Now.
How Pentecostal and charismatic Christians are making sense of the Trump administration's tough deportation policies.
For many, it feels like the end of the world.
For others, it's just the beginning.
So this is a story that unfolded in January in which an immigrant or a migrant was detained right outside of their church area.
This is Dr. Jonathan Calvillo.
Assistant Professor of Latinx Communities at Candler School of Theology, which is at Emory University.
I'm a sociologist, and I also look at Latino religions, immigration, race, and ethnicity.
And increasingly I look at arts as a form of resistance.
This story is about these two immigrants that were Quite faithful to their church.
So they were really dedicated to attending this church.
By some accounts, they attended three times a week.
And so the couple is Wilson Velazquez and Kenya Colindres, and their children are there as well.
And so on this particular Sunday, they attended church as they usually do.
Kenya Colindres has described How the day unfolded.
And so she told her story to a local journalist by the name of Mario Guevara, who I reached out to, and he said that it was fine to share his content.
And so Kenya Colindres talks about how it was a Sunday, like many others, in which they got ready for church, they piled into their vehicle, and they drove off.
This was a church that they had helped.
To establish, it had only been around a couple of years.
And in fact, these migrants had only been in the U.S. themselves for a couple of years.
They came right around 2022. And when they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, they turned themselves in.
And Wilson Velazquez was asked to wear an ankle bracelet.
With a tracker, of course, that would allow for GPS tracking that would allow ICE to know his whereabouts.
And also he agreed to periodically check in with ICE, which he was doing, right?
By all accounts, he was following the laws.
He was following the rules.
And so they didn't quite expect that this would happen.
Though they knew that their situation was in some ways precarious, they didn't expect that they would be met by ICE in this way.
And so on their way to church, they discussed the mourning, and Wilson actually told his wife that he had had a dream recently.
Prophetic dreams are a big deal in Pentecostalism.
It comes from their interpretation of passages like Acts chapter 2. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy.
Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
And he said that in that dream he saw himself back in his home country of Honduras.
And so his wife, Kenya, she didn't like that dream.
And so though she didn't speak it out loud, she tells the reporter that when she heard that story, she rebuked it in the name of Jesus.
Rebuking is also a common practice.
Want that dream to become a reality.
She was a woman of prayer, someone who often fasted in times of need.
And so on their way to church, they were already in some ways perhaps cautious, perhaps concerned about this particular dream, as Genia tells it.
At church, the service had gotten going.
This is a Pentecostal church, Iglesia Fuente de Vida.
By all accounts, it seems to be...
Part of an independent Pentecostal movement.
And so at this church, the pastor Luis Ortiz is preaching, and all of a sudden, Wilson Velasquez notices that his phone is ringing.
From my understanding, it appears to be coming from ICE, but he didn't want to get up because he's in the middle of church.
So his wife tells him, why don't you answer?
And he said, no, we're in the middle of the preaching.
So then...
His GPS ankle bracelet starts to buzz.
It starts to vibrate.
And so he realizes, okay, I need to address this.
So then he excuses himself and steps out, goes, I think, toward the back of the church, toward where the restrooms are.
And then at that point, Kenya loses contact with him.
And a few minutes later, he calls her.
And he says that he is outside, that he has been confronted by ICE outside of the church, and he's now under arrest.
So some of the church members go out, including Wilson's family, Kenya, and some of the family members, and so they see where he's at.
They're not able to speak to him.
They'd like to address him more and perhaps even have him released, but ICE has already...
him in.
Wilson's family was devastated and scared, but not entirely surprised.
You know, they're grieving because they're seeing him getting taken away outside of the church.
Now, some of the details around that detainment point to the security measures that perhaps church members were attuned to.
For example, the pastor, Pastor Luis Ortiz, in a separate interview, talks about how they had a lock on the door, on the door of the church, the main entrance, that required a code.
And that lock was currently activated.
In other words, ICE was not able to get into the church at that moment.
So there are some questions about whether ICE actually planned to walk in.
Of course, it's difficult to know with certainty what the plan was, but what is fairly clear is that the church members were on guard.
By another account, in fact, Kenya's account, one of the ushers actually locked the door because he was aware that ICE was in the vicinity.
And so, again, the members, the church members are on guard, and there was fear that others were in danger, that others in the congregation, that the congregation itself was in danger, right?
They interpreted this time of fear and uncertainty in a very Pentecostal way.
And in listening to Pastor Luis Ortiz, and in hearing him share in some ways his theological reflection on the incident, some of his words jumped out at me.
He said to the reporter, Mario Guevara, he said to him, this is, to me, something that the church has to go through.
Pentecostals have often turned to apocalypticism as a lens for interpreting world events, especially in times of uncertainty.
From early 20th century revivals to contemporary global crises, many Pentecostals have drawn on biblical prophecy to make sense of wars, economic turmoil, and societal shifts.
This apocalyptic worldview fosters both urgency and hope.
Urgency in preparing for Christ's return and hope in the belief that God is actively at work amid the chaos.
There are two major wars that are going to be fought in Israel before the end of time.
And that war is the Gog Magog War of Ezekiel 38-39, which you see happening right now.
And three and a half years later, the Battle of Armageddon.
The end-time revival will ultimately bring us to a place of reformation, which means that there will be a straightening of those things that have gone crooked.
Squeeze that hand.
You're holding a miracle right now.
You heard me say if the enemy had his way, he would have wiped that person out a long time ago, but the devil is a liar.
Everyone watching this, we get to see this last great harvest that the prophet Joel said was coming in the last day, saith God, I'll pour out my spirit upon all flesh.
We are seeing the fulfillment of prophecy right before our very eyes.
So very apocalyptic in his theology.
This is an end times matter that the church is being persecuted.
So he's seeing this.
a form of persecution for his church and perhaps even for other Christians.
I wonder if there's anything you'd like to say to expound on just the role of apocalyptic theology in Latino Pentecostalism.
Within Latino Pentecostal churches, there is still a strong traditional interpretation of, let's say, the book of Revelation, the book of Daniel, the end times, all the literatures that are brought into the foundational texts that are understood as apocalyptic texts, all the literatures that are brought into the foundational texts that are understood as apocalyptic Latino Pentecostals tend to see that from a traditional dispensational lens.
Premillennial dispensationalism is a theological framework.
That interprets biblical history as a series of distinct eras or dispensations in which God interacts with humanity in different ways.
Central to this view is the belief that Jesus will return before a literal thousand-year reign on earth, ushering in God's kingdom after a period of tribulation.
This perspective is deeply tied to apocalypticism, a worldview that anticipates an imminent, dramatic end of history marked by divine intervention, judgment, and the fulfillment of prophetic events.
Through figures like John Nelson Darby and later publications like the Left Behind series, I have seen some Latino Pentecostal churches debate those type of details, right?
But what I want to say, so even though many of those teachings are common within Latino Pentecostal churches, where we are going to see some difference is in how current day events are being interpreted.
In light of those theologies.
So you're not necessarily going to get everyone interpreting current events in the same way.
So there may be some Latino Pentecostals, and I would say many of them currently, that see the current U.S. presidential administration in a positive light, for example, through an apocalyptic lens, but in a positive light, as a series of events that are Moving Christians toward the rapture, for example, toward the end times, but perhaps in a positive way.
Everyone watching this, we get to see this last great harvest that the prophet Joel said was coming in the last day, saith God, I'll pour out my spirit upon all flesh.
We are seeing the fulfillment of prophecy right before our very eyes.
And then there are going to be others that are going to take more negative interpretations of the current administration and say, no, these are acts of deceit, what we're seeing currently.
People are being fooled by the power and by these acts of civil religion that we're witnessing, these forms of symbolism that are being enacted and that people are bowing down to, right?
We need to be careful of these things.
So you will hear some Latino Pentecostals.
Saying that.
Though I do feel that, at least from my survey of the religious landscape currently, I think that that latter group is probably in the minority.
I think that there are a lot of Latino Pentecostals that are waiting to see how maybe the current administration is more aligned with a positive view of the end times for the church.
Preparing the church, giving leeway, for example, for the church to preach the gospel.
Yes, so in both views, the church is moving toward the end times, but from one perspective, people might say, well, this is happening so that the church can gear up.
And preach the gospel and win more souls over as we approach the end.
And then you have others that are going to say, no, this is actually, people are being deceived by what's happening.
Oftentimes, these views can vary based on the types of theologies that people have in relation to power, how they see themselves in relation to the powers that be, the powers of the state.
Do they see themselves as being in cahoots with The current administration, for example, do they see themselves as being reflected in the policies of the current administration and being in some ways protected by the current administration?
And so a church that has that type of perspective is probably going to have a view where they'll say, well, what's happening right now in this country is preparing us in a good way for the end times.
For Jonathan, it's important to understand the difference between mainstream megachurch Pentecostalism and the older grassroots forms of the movement.
He says just because megachurch leaders are highly visible in politics and the media, the megachurch isn't the experience for a lot of Latino Pentecostals.
Many of their congregations are small, working class, and meet in non-traditional church facilities.
So as I looked into this particular story about Iglesia Fuente de Vida, for example, here in Georgia, It's not in a traditional church building.
The church actually meets within a commercial center.
Some might even refer to it as a strip mall.
They have some sort of office suite and sanctuary space within this larger commercial center.
And so when we think of ICE arriving at this place, at this church, because it is a church.
For the congregation, this is their church, right?
But for other people, I noticed there's like a billiards place, there's like a smoke shop, there are other things, right?
So people are using this space in different ways.
But when ICE arrives, they're looking for the church, and that is where the church is.
And so for so many Latino Pentecostals, they are not gathering and building community within lofty...
Beautiful, state-of-the-art facilities, they are actually coming together within these often marginalized peripheral spaces.
Spaces which are sometimes invisible to people that are passing by, right?
And yet these are spaces that have been sacralized through prayer, through fasting, through...
Through worship experiences.
So churches like this are in some cases in a precarious position, right?
Because the congregations probably don't own that space.
They probably rent.
What it looks like with the facility of Iglesia Fuente de Vida is that they probably share the space with other congregations, with other churches.
What type of safety net is present for these type of Latino Pentecostals?
So we have to ask that question.
And yet, for many Latino Pentecostals, this is where they are engaging in their support networks, their primary support networks.
As I watched an interview with Pastor Luis Ortiz, I was reminded of how these congregations offer that level of support.
Because what caught my attention is that Pastor Ortiz, he knew the entire story of these migrant congregants.
They had only been in the U.S. for...
How they had come from Honduras, how they were fleeing dangerous gangs there, how they had had another family member in the last year that had already been deported.
He had been detained at the border and had been deported from the border.
The pastor knew the entirety of their story.
He knew details.
These migrants are known within their Latino Pentecostal churches.
They're cared for in the way that the church This is far from the glamorous televangelist promising prosperity in exchange for donations.
So what accounts for this wide gap between members of the same religious movement?
Jonathan says seeing Latino Pentecostals and their political orientations through the nuance of class location and generational identity is key.
So one of the pitfalls in talking about Latino Pentecostals that I see, they may emphasize those who are really on the margins and are most vulnerable to what's currently happening in the US around Migration and the policies being enacted and enforcement and surveillance and all of that, right?
The most vulnerable.
Some people will focus on that segment of the Latino population.
Then we have others who are focusing on upwardly mobile Latino Pentecostals who perhaps feel quite comfortable with the current administration and are not in danger here in the U.S. The questions of legality
are not urgent for them in a personal way.
Recent surveys show that, like an increasing number of American evangelicals more broadly, many upwardly mobile like an increasing number of American evangelicals more broadly, many upwardly mobile Latinos are drawn to attend affluent suburban megachurches in a historically white Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies
And today, as Assemblies of God members are Donald Trump's most reliable Christian voters, some AG ministers are struggling to reconcile the traditional Christian call to care for immigrants with their denomination support of Donald Trump's immigration policies.
I actually grew up in the Assemblies of God.
My parents pastored an Assemblies of God church in New Jersey and in New York.
This is Reverend Dr. Lois Alina.
And when it comes to Assemblies of God or AG credentials...
Being AG was just the air I breathed as a kid growing up in the church.
I went to an Assemblies of God undergrad, and then I taught at Evangel University.
I was on faculty at AGTS, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary.
I was involved in ministry since I was a kid in pretty much every aspect of ministry that there is, from music to outreach to small groups to kids and teens.
Lois fell in love and got married to an Assemblies of God man in college, an American.
And together...
Like her parents, they started working in church.
So in 1995, that's when I really felt this sort of calling to be credentialed with the Assemblies of God, and I got licensed in the Northern New England District.
For decades, Lois did church work of all kinds, Sunday school teaching and outreach.
She says she was fueled by a sense that caring for the poor and protecting the weak was a core part of her calling as a pastor.
Eventually, she settled down in Springfield, Missouri.
The undisputed capital of the Assemblies of God.
But in 2016, the election of Donald Trump changed things for her.
Everything I had been seeing through 2015-2016 with the political situation was so distressing to me.
And I guess really leading up to the spring of 2017 with the presidential inauguration and what was called the Muslim ban.
I was so distressed by the way that people were being turned away.
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.
I heard from a friend that there was a meeting about getting involved in helping refugees.
And I've been involved ever since then.
You know, there's nothing I had training for except, you know, just learning how to love and welcome and be a friend and be willing to learn and so on.
But I've learned a huge amount in the last eight years of doing this.
Her work with refugees started with an informal Facebook group and the official refugee resettlement organization in southwest Missouri.
Over time...
She's learned what helps people through a universally difficult experience.
When they arrive, we're able to do airport welcomes, and that's really an important first step for someone coming into the country, the kind of welcome that they get at the airport.
And so having signs and balloons, and in wintertime, we brought coats and blankets and things like that, warm food for their apartment to be established, some groceries, three days' worth of groceries.
So the arrival period is really important for them to feel like they didn't just land on the moon when they don't know anybody, but that there's somebody here who wants them here, who welcomes them.
For Lois, even though it wasn't coordinated by her church, helping refugees was all a part of being a minister in the Assemblies of God until one day in 2025.
On the 23rd of January, I sent the general secretary and our district superintendent a letter and posted that letter on Facebook.
I could have, you know, gone quietly into the night kind of thing, but I really felt clear to do sort of a public communication of this.
Lois had read the Assemblies of God General Counsel crossing a line.
I felt so distressed to see this blatant support on behalf of the political candidate who had won the 2024 presidential election.
It's always been my understanding that 501c3 tax code...
Prohibits such support.
And I would have thought that as legal counsel, she would have been mindful of this.
Even her predecessor articulated that in a 2010 article, The Politics of Religion, How Not to Cross the Political Line.
If the guidance was clear in 2010 when Barack Obama was president, why was the denomination acting differently as Donald Trump returned to the White House?
I felt like too many lines have been crossed in the last 10 years when it comes to I have for years been in a place of lament and mostly quiet protest by my actions and my vote.
I had retained my credentials in the hope that I could bring some measure of positive change with the work I do and the relationships I have.
And for the last several years, many of those efforts have involved working for racial justice as well as welcoming global refugees to our community, our church, and our home.
But that article was the beginning of the last straw.
The post-inauguration executive orders, you know, canceling the flights and pardoning the January 6th convicted criminals who attacked the Capitol.
The President's verbal attack on Bishop Mary Ann Buddy.
All of these things are just, really just, were the last straw.
It's just been so hard for me, and I know many others who, you know, to see fellow Christians who not only voted overwhelmingly for this convicted felon with his harmful rhetoric and behavior, but who continue to support his words and his actions as if Jesus never told them to love their neighbor.
You know the list.
I felt like it was time to sort of stand my ground and stay where I am as I waved goodbye to what I felt was an official movement of the AG away from where they had been all my life.
In her letter, Lois gave up her status as a minister in the Assemblies of God.
So, people said, oh, I'm so sorry to see you go, or we're sorry to lose you.
I don't feel like I went anywhere.
I felt like I was standing there waving at somebody who was walking away from what I had known to be true and right all my life, that I had been taught by my AG parents, my AG teachers.
I could no longer justify holding credentials.
In a denomination that seems to be so increasingly entwining itself with party politics, a political party now led by someone who I see as so bereft of character, I am not perfect.
I make mistakes.
I sin.
I need to ask forgiveness.
But that doesn't seem to be what's happening here with this individual I'm referring to.
In addition to her work as a minister, Lois has been involved in academic work studying the Holocaust for years.
In this moment, those two worlds intersected for her.
I spent 10 years of my life transcribing Holocaust survivor testimonies, and I see all too well this writing on the wall.
I hope I'm wrong, but I may not be.
So if this is my moment, and this is what I said when I resigned, if this is my moment to drive a spoke into the wheel of injustice, as Bonhoeffer said, well then, so be it.
So I continue to do the same work, the same refugee work.
That has not changed.
I feel like my work is continuing, but it's not continuing with me being an official credentialed minister within the movement.
I can only think...
That if I had to leave America, the United States, and go to another country because my country was at war, that somebody would meet me, somebody would help me find a house, somebody would help me find a way to work and to provide for our needs and to be safe and to have medical care, and that somebody would show me kindness if I needed to be a refugee.
That's what I'm trying to do right now.
And I feel like movements, denominations may not be able to retain what they need to in order to be that sort of spoke in the wheel.
But individual believers definitely need to do this and just continue to serve and love others.
For Jonathan Calvillo, The Assemblies of God is one to watch when it comes to understanding growing support for Trump among Latinx communities. The Assemblies of God is one to watch when it
The Assemblies of God is one of the few denominations, and in some studies it shows up as perhaps the only one that's growing, that's showing some growth, some stability, and perhaps some growth.
And we know that much of that growth is actually taking place within...
Latino congregations or Latino membership.
Yes, Latino congregations continue to grow, but I also want to say that a lot of non-Latino majority congregations are also growing from Latino members joining those churches.
So when we think of...
Latino Pentecostals, not all of them are members of Latino churches or Latino majority churches.
Many of them are now in white majority churches and multi-ethnic churches.
Many of them are also not married to Latinos and Latinas.
So there are a lot of mixed-race couples, interracial couples.
And so when we think of the politics of Latino Pentecostals, we have to move beyond simply thinking about Someone sitting in a very traditional immigrant majority church, and we have to increasingly think about Latino Pentecostals as being either of mixed race or mixed ethnicity, being in mixed race or mixed ethnicity marriages, being in mixed race or mixed ethnicity congregations.
What we have to understand is that in some ways we are experiencing a bifurcated Latino Pentecostalism.
Perhaps more of a spectrum.
So there are Latino Pentecostals who feel distant from the migrant experience.
They're focusing primarily on upward mobility and a particular view of economics that will offer them what they understand as prosperity.
They might be drawn to President Trump's So,
within the most vulnerable...
Many of those are Latino Pentecostals.
Some of them are more recent arrivals that have come from Latin America, and they arrived already as Pentecostals.
Others are folks that have found a home within Latino Pentecostalism and have found a type of support network there, but yet they're extremely vulnerable.
And then you have Latino Pentecostals who are strident about What the current administration is saying and they are diehards and they are going to go with the flow that's there.
I do think that social class has a lot to do with it.
So if you go to upwardly mobile Latino communities, they may be leaning more into this kind of prosperity gospel that aligns with the current administration.
In more working-class communities, you might actually hear some prosperity gospel there, but you might hear it deployed differently.
I've heard prosperity gospel deployed in very different ways among members of vulnerable populations, talking about we are praying for the current laws.
We are praying for a breakthrough.
True.
When you listen to Kenya Colindres, the wife of Wilson Velasquez, she sounds very prosperity gospel-ish in what she's describing.
She told one of the reporters, I believe that my husband will not be deported because I received a word from God that he would not be deported.
And so that type of theology that she's embodying, she's speaking something out in faith.
She's speaking it.
I really appreciate you saying that because I think sometimes people mistakenly think that the theologies themselves are inherently partisan, that prosperity theology must always equal Trumpism.
But what you're saying, at least when it comes to this very specific example, is that, for lack of a better word, a kind of prosperity theology is powerful and sustaining.
It creates and sustains communities.
It can be operationalized in different ways.
Do you see any examples of arts as resistance in this setting?
There is a history of Latino Pentecostals doing that work through music.
But I think that increasingly there's an overpowering of these larger economic and market forces that are really standardizing the worship experience for a lot of Latino Pentecostals.
I will say that I often catch glimpses of this older way of being when I do visit smaller independent congregations.
I will sometimes see how folks are still innovating.
Now, what's funny is that the resources may not be there for the big production, but I see that sometimes because of Pentecostalism's can-do spirit, a lot of times folks are creating new expressions.
But the problem is that some of those new expressions end up getting washed over by these larger market forces.
And frankly, it sounds a lot like white evangelicalism.
And they may take certain samples here and there from, for example, Black American gospel music and other forms of expression.
But by and large, what I see is that these sonic expressions are approximating and drawing close to white evangelicalism.
And so we have to think about how these expressions continue to be sites of power.
As Jonathan continues to study these communities, he's creating his own forms of art as resistance.
Inspired by the story of the apocalyptic Pentecostal community in Tucker, Georgia.
Like a thief in the tank, God's people snatched up out of sight.
Principalities opposing the Christ.
Young minds caught up in the hype, caught up in the heist.
Like a thief in the tank, God's people snatched up out of sight.
Principalities opposing the Christ.
Young minds caught up in the hype, caught up in the heist.
Empires, tie your rent to end fires.
Send flyers, blaming populations entire.
Town criers cry, situations dire.
The powerful conspire to sparkire.
Seeking out a scapegoat, passing out some hate notes.
If the multitudes consume, the fumes they choke.
Inhaling the smoke, provoke to cope, no hope.
Desperate to save their ways and not go broke.
Soap, then rage, the crowds want the guilty.
Seeking the other, the weak, and the filthy.
Who is the target?
They start up the party.
The raucous occasion to worship the hardy.
Point out the flawed with rounds of applause.
Celebrate laws, putting teeth in jars.
Sharpen the claws, knocking on doors.
The vulnerable strategize a new course.
Like a thief in the tank, God's people snatched up out of sight.
Principalities opposing the Christ.
Young minds caught up in the hype.
Caught up in the heist like a thief in the night.
God's people snatched up out of sight.
Principalities opposing the Christ.
Young minds caught up in the hype.
Caught up in the heist.
We've already faced ICE ages.
Texas Rangers, Border Patrols, and ICE agents.
1930s Mexican Repatriates.
For more from Dr. Jonathan Calvillo and Dr. Lois Alina, see our show notes along with links to scholarly resources on the major figures and big ideas we've covered today.
And you can find me at drleahpain.com and on most social media platforms as Dr. Leah Payne.
Thanks for listening.
Before I sign off, I wanted to take a moment to invite you to a two-day conference.
It's a live-action deep dive into how music is shaping global Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianities and, in the process, shaping faith, politics, and society around the world.
Please join me and many others in Atlanta, Georgia, Decatur, actually, May 21st through the 23rd at the 2025 Summer Institute for Global Charismatic and Pentecostal Studies at Candler School of Theology.
This year, it's Songs of the Spirit, Music and the Making of Global Pentecostalism.
Jonathan Calvio and I will both be there, and it's free to register.
It's in partnership with Candler's La Mesa Academy for Theological Studies, and we've got a special emphasis on Latin American and North American music networks.
I'll put the registration link in the show notes, and I hope to see you there.
That's it for this episode of Spirit and Power.
Thank you so much for listening.
I'm Leah Payne.
Listen next week where the winds of the Spirit take us into the halls of American political power.
Spirit and Power was created by me, Dr. Leah Payne, in conjunction with the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement, and Axis Mundi Media.
Spirit and Power was produced by Andrew Gill and engineered by Scott Okamoto.
