Above: Democrat Josh Shapiro (left), Republican Doug Mastriano (right).
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports, Group of Pa. Republicans bucking party to endorse Democrat Josh Shapiro for governor:
In what analysts are calling an unprecedented move in an era of extreme hyperpartisanship, a group of Republican leaders — including a number of former officials who have been stalwarts of Pennsylvania’s GOP establishment for decades in Harrisburg and D.C. — is bucking their party to endorse Democrat Josh Shapiro for governor.
Mr. Shapiro, the sitting attorney general, will roll out the endorsements of 10 Republicans on Wednesday as part of a continued effort to label his candidacy a reach-across-the-aisle aficionado who will unify the parties to get things done.
The list includes two former U.S. representatives, Charlie Dent and Jim Greenwood; former state House Speaker Denny O’Brien; former Lt. Gov. and longtime state Sen. Robert Jubelirer; and former state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman.
The endorsements aren’t just vague odes to bipartisanship in a divided country; they serve as a direct hit against state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor, and it’s reminiscent of the effort before the GOP primary among Republican insiders to coalesce support around an alternative. That effort failed, but Mr. Shapiro’s camp and allies are hoping this lends credence to his argument that Mr. Mastriano is on the fringe of his own party.
Morgan Boyd, the chair of the Lawrence County Board of Commissioners and the only current official on the list, said Pennsylvania is at a crossroads and that Mr. Shapiro is “the only candidate with a vision, the experience and the plan to bring it back.”
Mr. Boyd said he was drawn to the Republican Party because he believes in fiscal responsibility, small government and using government as a force for good. This isn’t a time to vote for someone simply because of the letter next to their name, he added.
“I think there’s actually a large number of moderate Republicans across the state right now who are considering either openly supporting Josh or silently supporting him through their vote,” Mr. Boyd said. “I would encourage them to use their experiences to search within their hearts and make the determination themselves that they feel is best for the commonwealth. I think that, by and large, they’ll come to the same conclusion that I did.”
Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, said it’s hard to break ranks in this era of negative partisanship and that, even though some Republicans have deviated from former President Donald Trump, it remains “pretty rare.” In Pennsylvania statewide races, it’s even more rare, he said — especially to come out publicly in support of the opposition.
The list of GOP endorsers represents the “bedrock” of the Pennsylvania Republican Party in recent years, Mr. Borick said, and speaks to the many Republicans who aren’t enamored with the direction of the party. Endorsements don’t matter much, he said, but as Mr. Shapiro puts together his case, they’ll serve as evidence against his opponent.
“I think for most Republicans, they accept Mastriano as their nominee and most likely will vote for him,” Mr. Borick said, “but on the margins — and the margins are going to be very important — I think the endorsements will help Shapiro’s case in key areas,”
Mr. Borick said he expects Mr. Mastriano and his allies to counter that these GOP officials are RINOs — Republicans In Name Only — who don’t speak for the [MAGA/QAnon] movement right now and that voters should discount their voices because they’re not truly Republicans.
Actually, they are the REAL Republicans. The MAGA/QAnon cult are White Christian Nationalist fascists.
I would encourage the approximately 20% of Republicans who are not in thrall to the MAGA/QAnon cult to start planning now to form a Sane Republicans group to support the Democratic nomineees for statewide offices in Arizona.
UPDATE: The New York Times reports, “The Far-Right Christian Quest for Power: ‘We Are Seeing Them Emboldened’”, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/us/christian-nationalism-politicians.html
Doug Mastriano, a state senator, retired Army colonel and prominent figure in former President Donald J. Trump’s futile efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, was addressing a far-right conference that mixed Christian beliefs with conspiracy theories, called Patriots Arise. Instead of focusing on issues like taxes, gas prices or abortion policy, he wove a story about what he saw as the true Christian identity of the nation, and how it was time, together, for Christians to reclaim political power.
The separation of church and state was a “myth,” he said. “In November we are going to take our state back, my God will make it so.”
Mr. Mastriano’s ascension in Pennsylvania is perhaps the most prominent example of right-wing candidates for public office who explicitly aim to promote Christian power in America. The religious right has long supported conservative causes, but this current wave seeks more: a nation that actively prioritizes their particular set of Christian beliefs and far-right views and that more openly embraces Christianity as a bedrock identity.
[T]heir rise coincides with significant backing among like-minded grass-roots supporters, especially as some voters and politicians blend their Christian faith with election fraud conspiracy theories, QAnon ideology, gun rights and lingering anger over Covid-related restrictions.
Their presence reveals a fringe pushing into the mainstream.
“The church is supposed to direct the government, the government is not supposed to direct the church,” Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican representing the western part of Colorado, said recently at Cornerstone Christian Center, a church near Aspen. “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk.” Congregants rose to their feet in applause.
A small handful of people who espouse this vision, like Ms. Boebert, have recently come to power with the blend of Christian messaging and conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump elevated. Others, like Mr. Mastriano, are running competitive races, while most have long-shot campaigns and are unlikely to survive primary races.
The ascension of these candidates comes amid a wave of action across the country that advances cultural priorities for many conservative Christians.
[D]eclaring the United States a Christian nation and ending federal enforcement of the separation of church and state are minority views among American adults, according to the Pew Research Center. Although support for church-state integration is above average among Republicans and white evangelicals, many Christians see that integration as a perversion of faith that elevates nation over God. The fringe vying for power is still a minority among Christians and Republicans.
Like Mr. Mastriano, some of the candidates pushing that marginal view already hold lower-level elected positions but are now running for higher office where they would have more power, said Andrew Seidel, a vice president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
“We are seeing them emboldened,” Mr. Seidel said. “They are claiming to be the true heirs of the American experiment.”
At the Patriots Arise event, Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to Mr. Mastriano and the former co-counsel for the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn the 2020 election [a Coup Plotter aider and abetter], told the audience that “what it really means to truly be America first, what it truly means to pursue happiness, what it truly means to be a Christian nation are all actually the same thing.”
[A]cross the country, candidates have attempted to appeal to voters by championing Christian identity in policymaking.
In Arkansas in May, State Senator Jason Rapert, who founded a group called the National Association of Christian Lawmakers in 2020, lost the Republican primary for lieutenant governor with 15 percent of the vote. The group offers model legislation, like prohibiting abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy and requiring the display of “In God We Trust” at public schools.
In Oklahoma, Jackson Lahmeyer, lead pastor of Sheridan Church, made a long-shot attempt to unseat Senator James Lankford, who has embodied traditional social conservatism. Mr. Lahmeyer lost, but got 26 percent of the vote. “Our Constitution is built upon the Bible,” he said in an interview. He said that he did not advocate a theocracy and that he supported the separation of church and state, which he said “had nothing to do with the church staying out of the affairs of the state.” He also said that “trying to remove Christianity, which this nation was birthed upon,” from public schools had “absolutely” led to the rise in school shootings.
In Wisconsin, State Representative Timothy Ramthun is significantly trailing in a bid for governor that emphasizes his Christian faith and a promise to decertify the 2020 election. He created a 72-page report of what he sees as evidence of election fraud, and called his push to fight it “Let There Be Light” after words attributed to God in the Bible. In an interview, he described his efforts as a Christian act of truth-seeking. “I don’t lie,” he said. “I work for the Lord first and foremost.”
In a livestream on Rumble, a video site popular with the far right, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, urged followers to be proud of “Christian nationalism” as a way to fight “globalists,” the “border crisis” and “lies about gender.” “While the media is going to lie about you and label Christian nationalism, and they are probably going to call it domestic terrorism, I’m going to tell you right now, they are the liars,” she said.
Around the country there are active efforts to leverage the growing religious fervor in the American right into voter turnout. That includes more typical Republican voter outreach efforts, but also new groups mobilized since President Biden took office.
[A] sense of religious grievance is deepening in the ultraconservative wing of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, a contingent that is increasingly allied with right-wing political causes like the extreme push to punish women for abortion.
[In] a sign that political operatives see opportunity to capitalize on that feeling of persecution, the next day a second conference was held in the same auditorium with an explicit purpose to mobilize the constituencies these pastors represent.
Chad Connelly urged attendees to scan a QR code on the screen so he could connect their churches to precinct poll-watching efforts, and said his group, Faith Wins, worked with 312 churches in Virginia to register 77,000 new voters ahead of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s win. Mark Meadows, former chief of staff for Mr. Trump, described the importance of America as a Christian nation in personal terms, with a story of how his 11th great-grandfather escaped religious persecution on the Mayflower. “You may never see the fruit of your labor, but I can tell you this: God will use your obedience to change this great nation,” he said.
Rick Green, who leads a group called the Patriot Academy that runs “biblical citizenship” training programs in hundreds of churches to instill the belief that America was founded on Christian values, told the audience he saw “a window of opportunity right now to convert millions of Americans to the principles of liberty and to biblical values” because of “the chaos and insanity of the last two years.”
In some places there are signs that conspiracy theorists and far-right activists are embracing an explicitly Christian nationalist identity.
Andrew Torba, who founded Gab, a social media platform popular with extremists, and is from Pennsylvania, wrote on the site that he endorsed Mr. Mastriano as part of his own efforts to build “a coalition of Christian nationalists at the local and state levels to help pioneer a grass-roots movement of Christians in PA to help take it back for the glory of God.” Mr. Torba has written about building Gab as “a parallel Christian society on the internet.”
The day after a mass shooting in Buffalo, where a white man was charged with killing 10 Black people after posting a racist screed online, Mr. Torba posted on Gab, “The best way to stop White genocide and White replacement, both of which are demonstrably and undeniably happening, is to get married to a White woman and have a lot of White babies.”
So-called replacement theory is the notion that Western elites want to “replace” and disempower white Americans.
[E]vents at times use violent rhetoric and imagery.
The Patriots Arise event, where Mr. Mastriano spoke, opened with a video of conspiracy theories related to QAnon that prophesied that “control systems” including “media propaganda, the child trafficking and the slave economy” would “crumble down.” A robotic voice-over forecast a “great awakening,” and an image of a guillotine blade accompanied the promise of “executions, justice, victory.”
When Mr. Mastriano finished, a man in an American flag cowboy hat and shirt presented him with a long sword, inscribed with “For God and country.”
“Because you’ve been cutting a lot of heads off,” explained Francine Fosdick, a social media influencer who organized the event and whose website has promoted a QAnon slogan. “You are fighting for our religious rights in Christ Jesus, and so we wanted to bless you with that sword of David.”
He raised the gold hilt in his right hand. “Where’s Goliath?” he asked.
-Sounds like Bible story cosplay time.
Sarah Jones writes at the New Yorker, “White Christian Nationalism ‘Is a Fundamental Threat to Democracy”, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/06/white-christian-nationalism-is-a-threat-to-democracy.html
An ideology is on the march. Traces of it are detectable in a racist massacre in Buffalo; in Tucker Carlson’s monologues; in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s public comments. Find it again in the right’s anti-abortion rhetoric, which poorly disguises demographic anxiety, or in the right’s response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which shows it embracing God and guns with ever greater conviction. This ideology has a name, argue sociologists Samuel L. Perry of the University of Oklahoma and Philip S. Gorski of Yale University. Perry and Gorski call it white Christian nationalism, and in their view, it represents a pressing threat to democracy.
In “The Flag and the Cross,” their new book from Oxford University Press, white Christian nationalists undergo careful scrutiny. Combining research with data analysis, Gorski and Perry argue that white Christian nationalists share a set of common anti-democratic beliefs and principles. “These are beliefs that, we argue, reflect a desire to restore and privilege the myths, values, identity, and authority of a particular ethnocultural tribe,” they write. “These beliefs add up to a political vision that privileges the tribe. And they seek to put other tribes in their proper place.”
Sarah Jones spoke with Gorski and Perry about their findings and the threat white Christian nationalism poses to democracy.
The interview follows in this piece.
Frederick Clarkson at Salon explains, “He’s on a mission from God: Pennsylvania GOP candidate Doug Mastriano’s war with the world”, https://www.salon.com/2022/07/04/hes-on-a-mission-from-god-pennsylvania-candidate-doug-mastrianos-with-the-world/
Mainstream media generally describe Mastriano as an “election denialist” and a “Christian nationalist.” He unconvincingly denies the latter, but he and his supporters are also more complicated than the label usually suggests. He is well known for having spoken at the Jericho March in December 2020 that unsuccessfully called for the Electoral College to switch its votes to Donald Trump. He was also slated to speak at the “wild protest” on Jan. 6, 2021, organized by “Stop the Steal” activist Ali Alexander, along with the likes of Roger Stone, theocratic activist Lance Wallnau and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. And of course, promoting the Big Lie has been central to his politics since Trump’s election defeat.
But there’s more.
Some religious leaders who back Mastriano’s campaign say they are in direct communication with God, see themselves as God’s army, and see Mastriano as a general in their war for the world.
Mastriano’s core support is a fusion of QAnon, the far-right Patriot movement and the revivalist New Apostolic Reformation — which views him as a military and political leader in advancing the biblically prophesied end times. We see this in his role in the Jericho March during the run-up to Jan. 6, and more recently when he joined members of the “Shofar Army” in a ceremony of “spiritual warfare” on the Gettysburg battlefield, and as the headliner at a conference, Patriots Arise.
“[A]postle” Abby Abildness is a quietly powerful national and international religious leader, as well as a legislative lobbyist at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg.
She is an important leader in the contemporary religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a dynamic theological and organizational revamping of much of pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. For decades, NAR has led the abandonment of traditional mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations in favor of prayer networks.
These prayer networks are led by what is known as the “fivefold ministry” as mentioned in the biblical book of Ephesians: Apostle, prophet, teacher, pastor and evangelist. The networks comprise both physical churches and prayer groups of various sizes.
Abildness is a leader in several such networks, which aim to take control of what they call the “Seven Mountains” of society in order to achieve Christian dominion. These metaphorical mountains are religion, family, government, business, education, arts & entertainment and media. Abildness, whose chosen mountain is government, is working with her allies to increase electoral engagement in apostolic networks, and to involve them in pushing for legislation. She heads the Pennsylvania Apostolic Prayer Network and plays leading roles in other important international networks, including the Oklahoma-based Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network headed by Apostle John Benefiel and the Texas-headquartered Reformation Prayer Network, led by Apostle Cindy Jacobs.
The NAR has generally abandoned written doctrines along with denominations, in favor of its own notions of Old Testament biblical law. [So they reject New Testament Christianity?] Its movement is further informed by revelations from those understood to be apostles and prophets revealing what God wants. They believe God wants Doug Mastriano.
[M]astriano sponsored several bills based on models found in the Christian nationalist legislative playbook formerly called “Project Blitz.” These bills would have mandated teaching the Bible in public schools and made it legal for adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples. In the face of organized opposition and intensive media coverage by the New York Times, the Guardian and Salon, among others, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, which published the Project Blitz legislative playbook, scrubbed all mention of Project Blitz from its website in 2019. But the affiliated Pennsylvania State Legislative Prayer Caucus remains. Its state director, then as now, is Abby Abildness.
Mastriano has denied that he works directly with NAR, but has clearly had a close relationship with Abildness and the wider NAR movement.
[R]eported here for the first time are two videos featuring Mastriano before his run for governor. Filmed on the Gettysburg battlefield on July 18, 2020, just days after his prayers against antifa with Abildness, the videos reveal his involvement with a group called the Shofar Army. In the videos, Mastriano performs a ritual act of spiritual warfare — blowing shofars with the Shofar Army and Prophet Bill Yount of Blowing the Shofar Ministries. But as later became clear, they understood the warfare as physical, not just spiritual.
In one video, the leader, Earl Hixon, prays, “Thank you, Father. We tread upon the enemy.” Pointing to Mastriano, he continues, “Father God, I am looking to our new general here, that you have appointed, this Joshua. In Jesus’ name!” Mastriano raises his outstretched arm in apparent acknowledgment. A year later, Warren Baker, a member of the group, sounded the shofar at the launch event for Mastriano’s campaign for governor. (Former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis also attended the launch.)
In the second video, Hixon follows the Army’s shofar blasts by declaring he wants to “mark this day in the history of eternity.” He then leads the Army in shouts of the imprecation, “Arise, oh God, and let your enemies be scattered!”
Salon asked André Gagné, professor of theological studies at Concordia University in Montreal, and author of a study of Trump’s evangelical followers, to help interpret the videos.
Hixon recognizes “the ‘angelic hosts, the warring hosts that have gathered here on this journey,'” Gagné explained. “This is a reference to the assistance of angelic beings in the battle to be waged. Hixon thanks God for this ‘Joshua,’ pointing to Mastriano, believing that from this moment there will be new ‘anointing’ on him.”
Joshua, of course, led the Jews to the Promised Land, fighting the Canaanites along the way, including the genocide at Jericho.
Gagné continued, “Hixon also says that Mastriano now has ‘got new eyes, the new eyes of a seer’ and connects it to the idea that we’re on the physical ground, yes, there’s the grassroots, but there is a double-edged sword as well in Jesus’ name.”
This, Gagné says, refers to the “opening of Mastriano’s ‘spiritual eyes’ and the presence of the ‘angelic and warring hosts.'” It may also refer to the need to wage war on two fronts, both the physical and the spiritual.
“This entire ritual,” Gagné continued, “potentially builds a bridge between the language of ‘spiritual warfare’ and the physical realm, where possible physical violence could eventually be enacted to push back against the forces of darkness and establish the Kingdom of God.”
“Now, the blowing of trumpets,” he concluded, “is found in different contexts in the biblical record, and the ritual means different things for Christians. But in this specific ‘spiritual warfare’ ceremony, the most likely meaning is associated with the expectation and possible eruption of physical warfare.”
Mastriano was the star of a two-day Patriots Arise conference at a hotel near the Gettysburg battlefield the following year, in April 2021. The small stage was festooned with flag bunting and “Mastriano for Governor” signs. The event announcement declared,
It is TIME (sic) for the Patriots to Arise for God & Country! Just as they did in the first American Revolution during 1776.
The conference opened with a sounding of the shofar by 10 members of the Shofar Army. The call, blown three times, was what leader Don Kretzer called “an alarm sound that has been around for almost 4,000 years.”
[T]he Shofar Army and NAR leaders envision themselves as waging “spiritual warfare” against a host of enemies, whom they understand to be possessed or controlled by demons. So when they repeatedly ask God to smite his enemies in this way, some people, as Gagné suggests, may feel compelled to act out the metaphors in more literal fashion. (It’s probably fair to wonder whether that informed what happened on Jan. 6.)
The conference hosts, “apostolic and prophetic” leaders Allen and Francine Fosdick, auctioned items as a fundraiser for Mastriano (“our dear brother in Christ warrior”) but not for any of the other far-right Christian GOP primary candidates from Pennsylvania and Maryland who were also present.
Prophet Julia Green of Iowa preceded Mastriano at the podium. She said Mastriano had heard about a prophecy God had given her, and that was why he had invited her to appear at his events.
[G]reen further prophesied that current Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, would be “removed by my hand” in the wake of a scandal, and that “Treason will be written on him for all eternity.” The crowd cheered. Wolf’s allegedly treasonous acts were not identified (and have not surfaced to this point). Mastriano said nothing.
The conference began with a dramatic QAnon video comparing conspiracy-theory adherents to American soldiers. It was followed by anti-vax, anti-mask and anti-tax speakers, as well as Bobby Summers, an advocate for the idea of “sovereign citizenship.”
The event was similar (albeit much smaller) in terms of theme, tone and content to the ReAwaken America tour, led by Michael Flynn.
These events are headlined by such figures as Roger Stone, Jenna Ellis and Eric Trump, along with anti-vax and anti-mask presentations and, of course, endless propaganda about alleged election fraud. There is also a strong revivalist Christian component, including opening the event with the blowing of shofars, and speeches by pastoral provocateurs such as noted book-burner Greg Locke.
[O]ne aspect of the tour is the evident cross-fertilization of the factions of the religious and political right that is reshaping American conservative politics and public life, from the MAGA movement to Jan. 6 to the Mastriano campaign.
[J]ulie Green’s May 25, 2022, interview with Scarlett illuminates much about the Mastriano campaign and the wider movement. Green says that Mastriano campaign functions “are not a normal, everyday political event. … They are all focused on the Lord. They are powerful! They are anointed!” She calls Mastriano “a very powerful man of God.”
Scarlett replies that he has talked with a “certain general” (without naming him) who said, about candidates he supports, “that these rallies in the 2024 cycle will start out with [evangelical Christian] praise music, then the candidate, who is a Patriot Christian, will come forward, give whatever their message is, then it will end with revival. It’s going to end with altar calls.”
Green replied that this was “already happening” at Mastriano’s events.
[T]hose around Mastriano and his campaign — from Abildness to the Patriots Arise conferees, the Shofar Army and Prophet Julie Green — see themselves as entering a future where the temporal meets the supernatural.
When God is ready, they believe, the heavens will open and angelic forces allied with Christians of the right sort will battle the demonic forces of Satan to the end. This apocalyptic vision drives their support for Mastriano.