I was happy to be interviewed, & I think @7im did a very fair job of writing about the complex case of Derrick Peterson, a former sheriff deputy & candidate for Portland's school board who was commissioned as an apostle by Ché Ahn in 2020. rollingstone.com/politics/polit… 1/
Ché Ahn also listed Peterson as an advisory board member at 1Race4Life, an anti-abortion/racial-reconciliation org that he founded in 2020 after George Floyd's murder. web.archive.org/web/2021120511…. 2/
Last week Oregon Live ran a story where Peterson downplayed his 2020 apostolic commissioning & said he "is not affiliated" with 1Race4Life. oregonlive.com/education/2023…. Since then he was removed from Ahn's site & the 1Race4Life site has gone dark. What is going on here? 3/
To be clear, I haven't spoken to Peterson, & I'd be happy to do so, but, on the surface, his story doesn't hold water. Among #NAR leaders, Ché Ahn probably has the most clearly articulated theology/philosophy of apostleship (which he unapologetically got direct from Wagner). 5/
Ahn commissioned Peterson as a "marketplace apostle" (a phrase straight from Wagner's ideology), which connotes a leader who aligns with the #NAR agenda of societal transformation & #7MM/Christian supremacy but who doesn't work primarily in the church. place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewconten… 6/
Ché Ahn has spoken & written for decades about his understanding of apostles, & here are a couple of key passages from his 2019 book "Modern-Day Apostles" amazon.com/Modern-Day-Apo… where he makes clear how rigorous & serious his vetting process is for these commissionings. 7/
Incidentally, one of the other people Ahn commissioned (as an evangelist) through HIM in 2020 was Jay Koopman, who was Ahn's associate pastor at HRC & is now Sean Feucht's right-hand man. harvestim.org/leadership/com… Again, this hardly suggests Peterson was some sort of outsider. 8/
Now the 1Race4Life website is down, but the advisory board also includes: Bill Johnson (Bethel), Cindy Jacobs, Jim Garlow, Eric Metaxas, Samuel Rodriguez, & Lance Wallnau, a veritable who's who of the #NewApostolicReformation cinematic universe. web.archive.org/web/2021120511… 9/
Each of these fellow 1Race4Life board members played an important role in instigating Christians to attend the protests/riot on #January6th. Ahn, Wallnau, & Jacobs were all in DC that day. Note that Peterson does not deny knowing these folks. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cha… 10/
If Peterson has so little connection to Ché Ahn & HIM, why is he showing up to preach at churches in the HIM & Bethel networks? And why is he doing FB live videos with Stacey Campbell, a core HIM apostle in Canada? facebook.com/mattoxkent/pos… 11/
The #NAR leadership culture is fundamentally relational, not organizational. While I'm sure not everyone in HIM shares all of Ché Ahn's politics, Peterson's effort to hide/dismiss his affiliations without explaining the nature of his connections there is downright confusing. 12/
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I know Trump's rally at MSG got lots of press attn for its fascistic undertones, but the most fascistic thing to happen this week in Trump world -- in my view -- is this prophecy spoken over Trump by Messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn at a relig ldrs event. 1/
You'll need some context to understand what he's saying in this prophecy, but I promise: When you understand the message he's conveying to Trump & to this audience, it's chilling.
1st, who is Jonathan Cahn?
He's mostly likely the most famous Messianic Jew in America today. 2/
Cahn has so many NY Times bestselling books, he's probably 1 of the most-read & most-followed religious figures in the entire U.S., but he's gotten little mainstream media attention.
Excellent (& terrifying) reporting here from @AndyKroll & @mtredden about how Russ Vought, a far-right extremist former OMB director & likely 2nd Trump Admin cabinet member, is thinking about the agenda for Trump 2.0...
Something we must all grasp heading into this election is how much Trump's lies about the 2020 election have become a new "lost cause" narrative, propagandizing & radicalizing many far-right actors to attack democracy in the name of defending the Constitution. 2/
In truth, our civic crisis today rests upon an even deeper & more far-reaching epistemic crisis -- a crisis in how we know what we know.
1/3 of Americans today believe Trump's 2020 lies, & that reality distortion field is warping their very citizenship & view of democracy. 3/
I was at the New Apostolic Reformation's "Million Women March" event on the National Mall today.
I gave comments to several reporters there but thought I'd offer a more extended set of reflections on this very alarming Christian nationalist episode. 1/
1st, on crowd size: I'm suspicious of almost all claims about counting large crowds (unless there's a long history of benchmarking that exact space, e.g. Presidential inaugurations).
To illustrate: the NT Times story says there were "hundreds" there. 2/
The most important film you'll see this year--perhaps your entire life as a democratic citizen--is "Stopping the Steal" (HBO, released Sept 17, directed by @danreed1000)!
This is the inside story of the United States' recent past & impending future. 1/
If you are a true citizen, this movie will keep you up at night. This is the inside story of the anti-democratic campaign to overturn the 2020 election.
And I know you think, "OK, another January 6th documentary," but No.
This is the human story of how we came to the brink. 2/
Here we actually get to meet the heroes who barely saved our democracy in 2020.
The real-life citizens who stood down mobs. The local elected officials who put themselves in harm's way for the rest of us.
The women & men who stopped the rampaging, conniving president. 3/
In sum, the Courage Tour is a 2020-election-denying, Christian nationalist, conspiracy propagation machine masquerading as a Pentecostal-style Christian revival.
I witnessed this reality distortion field up close at their Eau Claire, WI stop. 3/