Spirit and Power S2 Ep 3: Mama Bears, Queen Esther, and "Don't Mess w/ Our Kids"
On October 12, 2024, tens of thousands of Christians gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., answering a call from charismatic activist Jenny Donnelly and pastor Lou Engle. The event, held on Yom Kippur, blended prayer political mobilization as speakers urged believers to take action ahead of the 2024 election. With banners reading #DontMessWithOurKids, the rally tapped into fears about gender and sexuality, echoing similar movements abroad. The results of the 2024 election suggest Donnelly's efforts were effective. With insight from journalists Alice Herman and Elle Hardy, Dr. Leah Payne asks: who is Jenny Donnelly? How did she rise to this unique position of influence in the Trump media-verse? And how is her fusion of faith, activism, and conspiracy shaping the Christian right?
Links and Additional Resources:
“‘Mama bears are rising up’: the rightwing Christian entrepreneur aiming for a takeover of local US government,” The Guardian, Alice Herman
Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World, Elle Hardy
“Kamala Harris is being called ‘Jezebel’ – a Biblical expert explains why it’s a menacing slur,” The Conversation, Meredith Warren
“The particularly Pentecostal flavor of Mayra Flores' Christian nationalism,” Religion News Service, Erica Ramirez
Gender & Pentecostal Revivalism, Palgrave Macmillan, Leah Payne
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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Axis Mundy Axis Mundy I'm the only man in that crowd!
With my assistant, he gives me an old Bible.
It's the call of Mordecai to mobilize what I'm looking at.
The movement was filled with a sense of revival.
And in the dream a woman stands up and she says these two words in the book of Esther actually mean Nazgul.
I exploded out of the dream instantly knowing what it meant because I watched the third part of the Lord of the Rings where the Nazgul witch king is destroying the armies of men and he says no man can kill me.
But the king's daughter takes off her helmet, lets her hair down and says I am no man.
And she pierces the Nazgul witch king.
I wake up and I know Oh, the Lord is saying, there is coming a righteous women's movement that is going to gain authority in America over principalities and powers, ideologies that are seeking to destroy the children of this nation.
Then I begin to hear of this Her Voice movement, the woman named Jenny Darnley, and she was hearing about what I was calling for.
And we joined together in 2022.
We begin dreaming about a million women on the Mall in D.C. On October 12, 2024, tens of thousands of Christians gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., answering a call from right-wing charismatic activist Jenny Donnelly and Pastor Lou Engel.
The event, held on Yom Kippur, blended prayer and political mobilization as speakers urged believers to take action ahead of the 2024 election.
With banners reading, hashtag, don't mess with our kids, the rally tapped into fears about gender and sexuality, echoing similar movements abroad.
The results of the 2024 election suggest Donnelly's efforts were effective.
Today, we're asking, who is Jenny Donnelly?
How did she rise to this distinct position of influence in the Trump mediaverse?
And how is her fusion of faith, activism, and conspiracy shaping the Christian right?
Music
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, your Esther moment.
how Jenny Donnelly and women like her are mobilizing the right through girl boss activism and multi-level marketing business sense.
I honestly don't remember who told me about Jenny Domely first or how I stumbled upon her social network, her social media presence.
But I've been interested for a long time in the role of women on the Christian right
This is Alice Herman, a journalist who covers power and money flows on the Christian right.
I spent the last couple of years working at The Guardian.
Now I'm working at a small investigative outlet in Sarasota.
Moms for Liberty had this moment, and it seemed to be kind of waning as an organization.
There was this big scandal at the top, and a research collaborator at one point had said, you should really look into this group called Her Voice Movement.
Seems to be filling the role that Moms for Liberty had played before, or at least aspires to do some of the same things.
Moms for Liberty was a group founded in 2021 to oppose mask mandates in schools.
They made a big splash with help from right-wing media and started fading after multiple controversies surfaced around its founders.
When Alice looked into her voice movement, she found a prolific social media content creator.
Jenny Donnelly.
I prayed a really dangerous prayer.
Five words.
Put me in the fight.
Here was the plan that God gave me.
He said, every time you bump into, oh, I'm failing, or, oh, I said that wrong, or, oh, I reacted wrong, or, oh, I didn't make dinner again, or whatever.
Like, anytime I bumped into I'm failing in my head, I heard something.
He said, I want you out loud to say this.
I'm a really good mom.
This is the threshold.
This is the thing.
This is where Goliath sits in your life.
This is where the devil sits in your life.
This is where you're like, I'm sure I heard God.
Maybe I didn't.
Because right here is where you have to cross over into losing your life.
Possibly dying.
Possibly losing your reputation.
Possibly people not liking you.
All the things that Bob brought up earlier which was like, I want people to like me.
I'll stay on this side.
Esther got to become queen.
And it didn't click right away.
Perhaps you were made queen, put in that position, because you need to say the Jews.
Perhaps that's the only reason God chose you.
Perhaps you were chosen to be the one in Florida or in your state right now, wherever you are right now in this time with America.
There's some decrees, there's some legislation where books and pornography and things are getting into our children.
If you be a bystander on that, I don't know how to help you from here.
I was curious about her voice movement, which is run by Donnelly.
I ended up spending a lot of time on Donnelly's Instagram page, on her TikTok, like on Facebook.
And I ended up going to a big rally that she had helped convene in Washington, D.C. With social media-based activism, it is notoriously difficult to measure real-world impact.
How many of these accounts are just bots trying to create the appearance of a movement?
When Alice went to see Donnelly at her DC rally, she was surprised at how many people showed up.
That also prompted me to look more into Donnelly's background as a businesswoman and as a wellness and spiritual influencer on the right and into the movement that she came out of.
If you encounter Donnelly on social media, you'll notice right away that she's a slim, fashionable, very pretty, very well put together blonde.
I wanted to know how Alice would describe her to someone who has never heard of her voice movement.
A right-wing Christian activist who uses social media and conservative donor networks to mobilize women.
I've seen her described as a mom influencer, but I think of her more as an activist and somebody who is able to...
That's really interesting because charismatic influencers are fluent in how to use social media, mass media.
But I think people aren't always aware of the business savvy that goes along with that a lot of times.
How did you first get clued into Jenny Donnelly as someone who she has a really I was interested in the business side of Donnelly's operation.
I still don't really...
I couldn't tell you that I have an understanding of her full donor network or how much money her various organizations and efforts are bringing in.
But she has this group called...
Tetelestai Ministries, which some of her other organizing groups fall underneath.
And it's a 501c3, so they do report 990s to the federal government, which you can look at, and that can give you a clue as to how much.
I think the most recent 990s are from 2023, but she was able to bring in more than $2 million that year, which was many times more than she had brought in years prior.
You do see this fairly rapid growth of the organization, which was founded in...
2020 or 2021.
2020 at the earliest.
I think the organization was founded in 2021.
It hasn't been around for a long time, but she has managed to grow it pretty dramatically.
And I think some of her business savvy comes from her work in multi-level marketing.
She was involved with a multi-level marketing company called Advocare, which sells supplements.
I think they still exist, but they've shrunk pretty dramatically.
She joined AdvoCare in the late 90s and was involved for at least 10 years.
During that time, she said that she was making millions of dollars.
In a lawsuit that was filed, I think, in 2017, in which she was initially named as a defendant, she was quoted saying that being part of this organization was driving a Lamborghini on a road that has no speed limit.
So like it's this really thrilling kind of enterprise for her.
AdvoCare ended up collapsing because there was this lawsuit.
North Texas company with some big name endorsers is in big trouble with the Federal Trade Commission.
ITM reporter Ginger Allen
I think there's a lot of negative media attention, and the FTC had sanctioned them at one point, alleging that they had the people at the top, of whom Donnelly was one of them.
Bilked, lower-level participants of their money.
So she had had great success in multi-level marketing, and I think that can help us understand how she operates as a businesswoman.
I keep saying she's a businesswoman.
I understand she runs a nonprofit, but I think there is a sort of marketing component to her work that we can understand through her work with AdvoCare, if that makes sense.
She came onto my radar as a part of, I would say, a sort of group of Charismatics and Pentecostals who really figured out how to make the most of the pandemic.
She feels akin to someone who maybe like Sean Foyt or even Greg Locke.
It's been fascinating to watch the speed of her ascent and the really slick branding and all of that.
Is not amateur.
Her branding is super slick.
I haven't looked as deeply into the marketing side of AdvoCare and what she was doing then, how she was presenting herself then, but she's clearly very adept and skilled at presenting an image or an idea of herself to other women in particular,
which is her main audience, of this person who is kind of perfectly imperfect mom.
On Instagram, her profile, Jenny L. Donnelly, describes her as a public figure with a focus on prayer, fasting, and advocating for America's salvation.
She identifies herself as a mother of five and wife to Robert, and she sees herself and the women who follow her as living into their Esther moment.
Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia, is a powerful biblical figure known for her courage, faith, and strategic advocacy.
She risked her life to save her people from genocide, declaring, If I perish, I perish.
Pentecostal and charismatic women activists see Esther as a model of spirit-empowered leadership, bold, prophetic, and divinely positioned for such a time as this.
Her story resonates with women who feel called to challenge injustice, break barriers, and exercise spiritual authority.
They believe God anoints them to embrace their Esther moments and act courageously.
I think this is connected to the marketing that you were talking about.
If you look at her Instagram or any of her social media profiles, she is immaculately dressed and she is talking about her wonderful relationship with her husband and her kids.
And at the same time, she will testify to the challenges of parenting in a way that seems pretty authentic and I think brings people into this feeling that if they could She seems sort of like a conservative Glennon Doyle.
A lot of the same emotional prompts, like, moms struggle to keep it all together.
And there's sort of a narrative there that I thought, they come to very different political conclusions.
But what do you think of that?
Does that sound...
About right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that they're maybe starting from the same point for their audience, maybe similar, and sort of like honest conversations about womanhood.
So, yeah, I totally see that.
I've noticed that there's a lot of activities for girls, too.
A strong mentoring.
I know that she offers a lot of different courses.
If you can think of a course, a wellness course, she offers that.
Tetelestai Ministries offers a diverse range of courses, including the Dream Interpretation Masterclass designed to help participants become adept at interpreting their own dreams and understanding God's messages during sleep.
Walking in Freedom and Victory, designed to teach students to overcome life's challenges.
A worship course, a birthing course, a marriage course, a rest training course.
She offers products and services that may appeal more to women and girls.
So she offers a weight loss course.
I know that she works with young people.
She talks about it a lot at her events.
Can you talk a little bit about how...
So we have this businesswoman, kind of girl boss, entrepreneur, and she is one of a star in a constellation of activist celebrity types.
I just wonder if you could talk about her place in the Trumpian celebrity crew.
They go to each other's conferences and appear in each other's media feeds.
And what is her place that she holds in all of that?
Yeah, I think that her place within that constellation is as a mobilizer of Christian women.
And I think a good window into her role within that universe was at this rally in D.C. on October 12th of 2024.
She, alongside Lou Engel, who has called massive prayer rallies to the Capitol before, In this dream, I was in an open-air gathering, and as far as I could see, women were coming from everywhere.
Young and old women.
They were coming from everywhere.
It's a movement of women who are going to rise up and let their voices be counted.
It's Psalm 68. The Lord gives the command.
Great is the number of the women that herald the good news.
Lou Engle is a charismatic Christian leader, revivalist, and co-founder of The Call, a movement known for large-scale prayer and fasting gatherings focused on spiritual revival and social issues, historically, abortion and LGBTQ plus rights.
Angle's intense prophetic style and deep ties to conservative evangelical and Pentecostal networks have made him a key figure in the intersection of charismatic Christianity and right-wing politics.
His influence extends into movements like the New Apostolic Reformation, shaping political activism through spiritual warfare rhetoric, They had convened what was described as a gathering of women,
a women's national call on the mall.
They were going to show up and pray for America.
It was held on Yom Kippur, which these figures find a lot of meaning in.
Jewish theology.
And so they held this rally on Yom Kippur.
People were fasting.
It was supposed to be women gathering to pray for America, to pray for a return, largely a return to what she sees as the natural order of gender roles in the U.S. Charismatic Christians have embraced Christian Zionism,
intertwining their theology with support for the modern state of Israel, and often appropriating Jewish rituals and holidays like Yom Kippur.
From blowing shofars in worship services to the U.S. Capitol, to hosting Passover seders with Christian reinterpretations, many charismatic communities see these practices as a way to reclaim the so-called Hebraic roots of their faith.
Anti-trans current at this rally.
There was a lot going on.
There were a lot of different speakers, but that was probably, if I could point to one kind of unifying theme that day, it would be opposition to LGBTQ inclusion and especially to trans inclusion.
You know, she's harnessed this maybe...
Latent anxiety about changing gender norms and pushed it into this movement of women that she has begun to organize through this group called Her Voice Movement, which is organized into these little prayer groups that are all over the U.S. and that communicate with each other using an app that you can download on your phone.
And they go to events.
She's had different rallies at state capitals.
And this rally in D.C. showed how she was working with and was able to work with other figures in the charismatic movement to just mobilize tons of people in person.
The presumption heading into 2024 was that
had women's votes on lockdown.
You know, it's interesting to see this kind of mobilization.
It doesn't actually depend on traditional gender norms in the way that I think people assume about evangelicals.
There's a kind of girl power type theme or something.
And I think you're totally right that she is a leading figure in that.
It's not the go and be a wife and mom in the home, right?
It's this kind of you're a business lady, you're all these kinds of things.
I don't even totally know how to analyze some of this myself with whatever my own assumptions might have been about gender roles in the evangelical movement.
Like maybe I would have expected a big crowd of ladies wearing long denim skirts at the rally.
And that was not the vibe.
It was, first of all, it was a pretty diverse crowd.
There were people who had come from around the world.
It was not only women.
Like it was maybe 60% women, but there were a lot of families, a lot of husbands and partners who had showed up.
and I would assume other similar events, didn't only seem to have attracted people who were already I talked to a lot of people who didn't say they were going to vote for Trump.
Maybe they didn't want to talk about who they were voting for, their politics, but this wasn't like a MAGA rally.
However, a lot of people had showed up because maybe they had heard about it through their Bible study group or they saw it on Facebook.
There were different routes that people found their way to this rally, and then what they got when they were there was a very political event.
Turning Point USA, the far-right.
group that's run by Charlie Kirk was there handing out flyers, encouraging people to vote for Trump.
Lance Wallnau was there encouraging people to vote for Trump.
Actually, he was encouraging people to vote, but he wanted to get people to vote in a certain way.
Yeah. That's also, I don't know that all of her events are quite like that, but she does play a role in politicizing women who identify as Christian into right-wing politics.
I got to D.C. the day before the rally,
and...
The night before, Donnelly and some of her co-organizers were hosting these pre-rally prayer sessions.
I was at a hotel in, like, the conference room.
And for several hours of the day, they were cycling in groups of, I'm not good at estimating crowds, but maybe 100 to 300, mostly women at a time, who were coming into the room and then Donnelly would pray over them.
Thank you, Jesus, that you love every person in here so much that you would bring them to Washington, D.C., sitting in this room at this time, for this moment, for this purpose.
And there was a real emphasis on using prayer to relieve themselves of demonic entities causing all manner of ailments from depression,
anxiety.
Trauma from past life experiences, hypertension, back pain, you name it.
It was really an emotional gathering of people praying for relief.
That was the pre-rally prayer session.
And then the actual event was a little bit different.
The pre-rally event was more women are involved with.
Her voice movement and then the actual day itself seemed to have attracted like a broader group of people.
This was on the National Mall.
Very hot day in October at like 7, 8 in the morning.
There's thousands of people in the mall and they're...
Being encouraged to fast.
This is a hot day and people aren't eating and people are going through a lot of different kind of emotions, it seems like.
You have a series of speakers, some of them political, some of them are just praying.
There's a lot of praise music.
Imagine kind of a festival vibe.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, yeah.
But emotionally more intense.
I hate to stop this, but we
have a hard shot at several doors.
Before we're in, we're going to have, on the day's appointment, the Jewish erotic blessing to be released over us.
In one moment, I just want to thank, can you say, we don't have time to bring under my staff, our leadership, who put this thing out?
Come on!
We always shout!
Thank you, Esther, and Hank Hughes for the amazing world that you've done.
And now, everyone, right now, Misha, let's lead us.
And would you just lift your hand?
So festivals, I think that's the perfect metaphor.
A festival is the perfect feeling because it's like a lot of the same sort of emotional journeys that you go on all together.
It's so powerful to experience it all together.
If this is the Christian festival, like a rock festival, what is the closing act?
What's the Beyonce or Chapel Roan of this movement?
By the very end of the day, the crowd had...
Not entirely, but dissipated, but it was a lot smaller.
The last event was Cheon, who is a pastor with an enormous network of churches that span the globe, casting out Jezebel, in his words,
and he was using Jezebel as an analogy for Kamala Harris, essentially casting out Kamala Harris.
And like breaking this altar.
Queen Esther is an Old Testament hero.
A villainous royal woman in the Bible is Jezebel.
In the Old Testament, Jezebel was a Phoenician princess, wife of King Ahab of Israel, who promoted idolatry and opposed Israel's prophets.
The term Jezebel has long been weaponized against women, particularly black women who are seen as too independent or too close to power.
Figures like Kamala Harris, Beyonce, and Nicki Minaj have all been targets of this label.
During the 2024 campaign, conservative activists deployed the term against Harris, portraying her as a Jezebel spirit.
Kamala Harris mocked Jesus publicly when a Christian shouted at her rally, Jesus is king.
She responded with arrogance in her eyes, you are at the wrong rally.
God was telling her, I'm not just a king, but I am the king of kings and a lord of lords.
And God humiliated her for overstepping her place.
God chooses kings and queens.
God removes kings.
God places kings.
Nobody steps on the throne without God saying yes.
Praise God that Jezebel was not elected into power.
Praise God that Jezebel was not elected into the throne.
The biblical Jezebel was vilified for her authority and independence.
And in Revelation 2, an apocalyptic Jezebel is a rival of John of Patmos, a prophet who teaches Christian communities.
But that was like the last, that was the final event.
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about The roots of her voice movement.
Her voice movement is a lot smaller than that event.
In Jenny Donnelly's description of things, her voice movement was born out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
At the time, in 2020, she had a church in the Portland area, and COVID lockdowns had suspended her ability to...
congregate at church for some period of time.
And she saw the Black Lives Matter protests as this chaotic force that she was extremely opposed to.
And she saw this massive mobilization for racial justice.
She thought, why can't we do that on the Christian right?
She has not been able to mimic the number of people that organically took to the streets after George Floyd was murdered, which is what she...
Has said that she aspires to do, but that's her origin story.
It's an explicitly reactionary origin story.
The mechanics of the group are...
The group is organized into small...
Cells of two to ten people who gather to pray on a monthly basis.
Those groups are organized within their cities and their states.
I think there's a chapter of Her Voice Movement in every state across America, and they can coordinate through this app that I had mentioned before.
They also have hosted pretty regular events over the last few years.
At one point, they were doing rallies at every state capitol.
I think this was in...
2022 or 2023, testing the water for how many people can we get out into the streets.
In 2024, she had this prayer rally in which she convened tons of people with the help of other figures in the movement.
From what I understand, they're planning more street demonstrations.
They also, though I think it's really important to note, have some role in
politics. In 2023 or early 2024, Donnelly received a pledge donation of about half a million dollars from the
A secretive network of ultra-wealthy Christian donors known as Ziklag spent nearly $12 million to influence the 2024 election in favor of Donald Trump by mobilizing Republican-leaning voters and challenging voter eligibility in key swing states.
Backed by billionaire families, Ziklag funds right-wing advocacy groups and remains a tax-exempt charity.
Investigative reporting by ProPublica and Documented reveals Ziklag's long-term goal of reshaping American culture using churches, voter challenges, and targeted messages on issues regarding gender and sexuality.
The Guardian reviewed footage of Ziklag meetings and found that the donation to Donnelly Was to encourage the growth of prayer hubs in key swing states to get Christian women into the ballot box.
And so Donnelly was able to see some organizational growth through that funding push ahead of the 2024 election.
There's always some debate when it comes to figures like this about how grassroots they are.
A story of the grassroots, right?
Just one mom out in the world.
But the story that you're telling is a somewhat under-told story on her social media account, which is that there's significant funding.
How would you characterize this in terms of, is this a grassroots movement that has, at some point in time, gotten some significant partners?
Or is this...
I guess to use a business model, I'm thinking of like venture capital.
There are these venture capital investors who might see someone like her as a vehicle with potential.
I think there's a little of both.
I think that Ziklag definitely saw her and her organization as a group with potential.
The growth of the organization.
At least in the last year, can probably be attributed significantly to that cash infusion.
I think she may also be tapping into something her prayer hubs are offering, a sense of community.
So I am a wife and a mother of four kids, and we started a prayer hub about six months ago, so we've been meeting monthly as a family to pray over our nation, our state, and our city.
If you mine her content, you can find a lot of political material in there, but it's not all political.
I could see one of her posts popping up in my feed and not immediately knowing that she's a political activist.
So I don't know that there is this groundswell of transphobic moms who want to take to the streets to mobilize around that cause.
However, I think by...
Describing shared experiences of loneliness as a mom or just wanting to have more female friendships, things like that, and then offering a space to have some community.
I think she's tapping into something real, and in that way, there is a grassroots base.
But the political side of her organization is fueled by cash.
That's really interesting.
It kind of reminds me of...
Unlikely partnerships that you get with anti-vax communities, where a lot of moms, there's a pretty wide spectrum of where they fall politically.
But through social media, the shared experience of mothering in the 21st century and all the challenges and stuff, they arrive in these media hubs.
I can see how how social media is super instrumental in creating this, but also why you could you might be able to actually spend quite a bit of time with her and not clue into the political stuff right away.
Here's a question I have.
As she's moved forward through the pandemic, she's honed a message that is increasingly political.
What's the trajectory that you see with her?
She has this campaign associated with her voice movement.
It's called Don't Mess With Our Kids, and it's an explicitly anti-trans.
That is billed towards moms who are opposed to trans rights and who don't want their kids to be trans.
They think this is a thing that's threatening them.
That's something that I think she's landed on.
I don't know that she's set out with that specific campaign in mind.
She's picking up on something that's already in the culture and running with it.
Donnelly didn't come up with this idea.
She has worked very closely with this guy named Christian Rosas, who is a Peruvian political consultant who was very deeply involved with a series of street protests in Peru against LGBTQ inclusion that caught fire in 2016 and persisted for several years after that.
*music*
Journalist L. Hardy, whose book Beyond Belief, How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World, explores how charismatic and Pentecostal movements operate across the globe, is familiar with Rosas and his style of activism.
Rosas took on the education and political system with what he would frame as a common sense kitchen table issue, that my kids shouldn't be indoctrinated with liberal ideas about
He's appealing to the kind of people who aren't especially politically active.
They might see something on Instagram, hear something at church, their friend tells them about it, and next thing they're protesting with a placard because nothing is more important than your kids.
The whole movement is designed to look very spontaneous and grassroots.
That Christian himself is simply taking up arms on behalf of the silent majority because someone has to.
Elle notes that Peru, perhaps not unlike Portland, Oregon, was an ideal incubator for this kind of activism.
For geographic and geopolitical reasons, Peru has been a hub for a lot of LGBT activism, and in time that has led to a counter-activism, especially around gender and sexuality.
It's also starting to see the evangelical, charismatic Pentecostal wave that has been moving through Latin America for the last couple of decades.
With that comes a lot of money, a lot of transnational networks, and a lot of ideas and education that's particularly transfixed on these issues about gender and sexuality.
Obviously, Rosas believes in the conservative Christian vision of family and sexuality.
But if you boil it all down, the movement is really about seeing children as the property of their parents and all the rights that that entails.
His movement is don't mess with my kids.
It pushes back against the education system and the media and all sorts of other outside ideas and says it is my right to impart certain ideas and values in my children.
Alice notes that this argument was persuasive in Peruvian public life.
They were able to implement some legislation and some national policy that basically this was like a Peruvian movement that had some success in affecting its goals.
And so Donnelly has worked closely with...
One of the key figures in that movement to attempt to translate it into the U.S. And something that she says, and I've heard her say this multiple times, is she'll say, we're just copy-pasting.
We're copy-pasting.
So I'm so glad that we are together today, Shauna, and I'm glad that we are with you, all of our listeners.
So our guest today, this is really, really special.
So pumped about this.
Because Don't Mess With Our Kids actually did not originate in the U.S. In fact, we heard about it from Christian Rosas from Lima, Peru.
I ended up on a Zoom one day and he was explaining this to a group of us.
And when he said what him and his sister did, I thought this has to happen in the U.S. And this is really what brought us to this moment.
It's a very clear blueprint from this Latin American conservative movement that she is trying to copy-paste into a U.S. context.
It doesn't seem like this has had the same degree of organic participation that the movement No te metas con mis hijos, which means don't mess with our kids, don't mess with my kids had in Peru, but she has tried to employ
some of the same tactics, specifically like getting people into the streets that were used there.
It's just so interesting to me.
I keep coming back to her location in the Portland area because I don't know if Jenny Donnelly gets made in Dallas, Texas.
Or Sarasota.
I was thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement, all the stuff about gender identity and all that.
Portland, Oregon was being used by the Trump administration during those years as the icon of social and political ills in this country.
I think she probably could have come from a more conservative city, but she...
But also maybe not, because in Portland, she is able to position herself as uniquely aggrieved, herself and other like-minded people.
And I think there are infinite possibilities to create straw men and to contrast herself with whatever...
As a reactionary movement, Portland couldn't be more perfect for her and her purposes, yeah.
And she's also, she's planning demonstrations in liberal cities, cities where they will probably or could potentially, like, create some conflict, draw attention.
You can see that media savvy coming back again.
Looks like she's got something planned in Los Angeles, which is another great location for a kind of reactionary scene.
Where does she go next?
Where will she be in five years?
What do you think?
I have no idea.
I am so interested by this question, too, because, like, I don't see this movement for this organization.
This campaign, whatever she's doing, I don't see it flourishing as a series of street protests.
Maybe that's a way to bring people in initially.
I think she's probably trying to find her place right now.
I think a lot of activists on the right who had been so focused on local communities during the Biden administration and fighting against the Biden administration, at least rhetorically, are now in power or at least...
Their candidate, Trump, is in power.
And so what do they do with that?
I have no idea.
I think she's going to be trying to position herself so that she can get more funding to do who knows what.
But she has to, I think a lot of this is how can she pitch herself to groups like Ziklag now that the election's been won?
Like, what's the next goal?
So, yeah, I guess I have the same question for you.
We've got to keep the gas pedal down.
We've got to keep the momentum down.
We've got to preach the gospel out and about.
We've got to pray for people, see people healed, saved, delivered, and see the voices of men and women rise up to protect the next generation.
So we're not slowing down.
We're only speeding up, actually.
So here we are in a new season where we're aiming towards the month of May, just like we aimed toward October 12th.
Now we're aiming towards the month of May.
This is the May Day tour.
It's called May Day USA.
Why is it called May Day?
Not because it's in the month of May, although I like how that synchronizes.
Because the Lord shared with us, this is a May Day situation.
The hearts of America must be turned towards God, and we want you to put a special focus on the next generation.
Mayday is about the next generation.
I predict, and I think Alice and Elle would agree, that wherever the spirit moves Donnelly and her donors and her constellation of business ventures, she'll let us know on her Instagram feed or perhaps through an online course.
For more from Alice Herman and Elle Hardy, 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. Lea 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.
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.
*music*
That's it for this episode of Spirit and Power.
Thank you so much for listening.
I'm Leah Payne.
Listen next week for the final episode of this season to see 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.
