On a sweltering evening in the thumb pad of Michigan's mitten, a self-described prophet promised 700 Christians under a crisp white tent that they were about to cheat death. They would do this by winning the swing state for Donald Trump. The reasoning was simple: Each of the Christians assembled would soon feel a call to become a poll watcher or to knock on doors or to organize their church—to take part in some act that would aid the Republican presidential candidate.
And that act would keep them safe, the prophet said, because God would not call them home before they had completed the task He had given them. "The greatest argument you have with death is an unfulfilled assignment," the man, Lance Wallnau, told the crowd. This was the third stop of the "Courage Tour," a traveling worship spectacle passing through key battleground states ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
Organized by Wallnau, a sixtysomething Texas-based evangelical with a salesman's persona, the three-day event was a marriage of the religious and the political, a swirl of prophecies and PowerPoints and speaking in tongues. It was a call to arms, a campaign strategy session, and—above all—an honest-to-God old-fashioned Pentecostal tent revival. Advertisement It was also a showcase of the power of a rapidly growing, militant right-wing movement in American Christianity.
Wallnau is a major leader in a coalition of Christians who believe that Trump is prophesied to play a critical role in the nati.
