As noted last night on the Rachel Maddow Show, Virginia GOP Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and evangelist Cindy Jacobs will be appearing (and, it would seem, sharing a stage together) at the Freedom Federation anti-health care reform Awakening 2010 conference, scheduled to be held at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia this April 15th and 16th. Noting Cuccinelli's plan to attend the conference Maddow observed, "A lot of conservative politicians admit they want to repeal health reform, but it takes a brave new Virginia style conservative politician to say they want to repeal health reform while appearing at an event with a faith healer -- repeal and replace indeed."
People For The American Way's Kyle Mantyla has posted footage of Cindy Jacobs' attempts at faith healing of HIV and cancer during a March 2010 conference in Dallas but Jacobs is not just a faith healer. As shown in video footage from the 18th International Transformation Network Institute on Nation Transformation conference, held October 2008 in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Cindy Jacobs claims the power to cast out gay demons. During an October 7, 2008 evening ceremony at the conference Jacobs conducted a mass exorcism, casting out not only "spirits" of homosexuality but also spirits of pornography, addiction, lust, bisexuality, and perversion. [below: exorcism of "homosexual spirits" begins 40 seconds into video]
Cindy Jacobs' purported exorcism and faith healing powers are part of, writes authority on Christian Zionism Rachel Tabachnick, an entire new health care paradigm emerging on the evangelical right in which the first recourse for almost any malady, imagined or real, is faith healing and exorcism.
Jacobs is also fond, it would seem according to the following account from a book by her close colleague C. Peter Wagner, of burning statues of Catholic saints, rosary beads, Books of Mormon, "totem poles," and a wide range of other [presumably "idolatrous"] assorted religious and mystical items.
In Wagner's book Hard-Core Idolatry - Facing the Facts (1999, published by the Wagner Institute of Practical Ministry), on pages 38 and 39 Peter Wagner describes how the Holy Spirit came to Cindy Jacobs and "told her that told her that in [the Argentinian city of] Resistencia they must burn the idols, like the magicians did in Ephesus. Ed Silvoso, Cindy Jacobs and the Resistencia pastors agreed."
Burn the idols !
What sort of items were on the "burn list" ?
"...the kinds of material things that might be bringing honor to the spirits of darkness: pictures, statues, Catholic saints, Books of Mormon, pictures of former lovers, pornographic material, fetishes, drugs, Ouija boards, zodiac charms, good luck symbols, crystals for healing, amulets, talismans, tarot cards, witch dolls, voodoo items, love potions, books of magic, totem poles, certain pieces of jewelry, objects of Freemasonry, horoscopes, gargoyles, native art, foreign souvenirs, and what have you."
Resistencia's believers, Wagner goes on to describe, brought from their homes enough of the allegedly evil items to fill a 55 gallon drum, which Jacobs and her fellow evangelists poured gasoline onto and then set on fire. As Wagner writes,
This was a major power encounter, because the witches and warlocks had surrounded the area and done their occult sacrifices, killing animals, burning incense, and sending the most powerful curses they could muster toward the evangelists. When the flames shot up, a woman right behind Doris screamed and manifested a demon, which Doris immediately cast out!
Cindy Jacobs and Peter Wagner are two of the leaders who have created and promoted a new evangelizing paradigm called "Spiritual Mapping" which has gained recent media notice because of a Christian group, Repent Amarillo, which has made a Google Map of its alleged ideological enemies, which the group is harassing, in Amarillo, Texas.
Among Peter Wagner's beliefs is the claim, which Wagner made during a talk on "Spiritual Mapping" he gave in the early 1990's to a church audience, that the Japanese economic slump of the early 1990's happened because Japanese emperors have ritual intercourse with a sky goddess who, Wagner posits, "may be a succubus."
As eccentric as the religious outlook shared by Cindy Jacobs and her colleagues Ed Silvoso and C. Peter Wagner might seem, the three are in fact prominent leaders of a major movement within charismatic evangelical Christianity with influence over many millions of Christians worldwide.
The new Christian right
All three are apostles in C. Peter Wagner's International Coalition of Apostles, a globe-spanning network almost 500 strong. As a quick indication of the sheer scale and potential electoral heft of the entity Peter Wagner has in less than a decade pulled together, one of Wagner's apostles is Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference which purports to represent ten million Hispanic evangelicals and five million Hispanic charismatic Catholics within the United States. Rodriguez played a substantial role in the creation of the Democratic "centrist" group the Third Way's Come Let Us Reason Together agenda.
Cindy Jacobs is also a "prophet" in C. Peter Wagner's Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, along with Lou Engle, whose organization TheCall played a substantial role in the passage of the anti-gay marriage Proposition Eight resolution in California during the 2008 election. Like Cindy Jacobs, Engle claims homosexuality is caused by demon possession.
Lou Engle has publicly called for Christian martyrs to stop legal abortion and gay marriage, and he predicts that legal abortion will cause a second American civil war. Engle, who compares compares his seven children to "arrows" in his "quiver," is bringing his anti-gay, antiabortion, sexual purity-obsessed TheCall event to Uganda in early May 2010.
Engle has impressive political connections too - he claims to have lived for 7 months in a rented Washington condo with Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, and led the December 2009 Family Research Council "Prayercast" against health care reform, attended by GOP senators Brownback and DerMint and RepublicanCongress memebrs Randy Forbes and Michelle Bachmann. On June 5, 2009 Engle blessed and anointed Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee at a Virginia Beach, VA megachurch ceremony.
In a recent interview with journalist Bill Berkowitz, Heads Up: Prayer Warriors and Sarah Palin Are Organizing Spiritual Warfare to Take Over America, published at Alternet.org, my colleague Rachel Tabachnick sketches out aspects of the increasingly prominent movement, known as the New Apostolic Reformation, on which Tabachnick and I have written extensively over the past year and a half (see resource section on the New Apostolic Reformatio and the Transformation movement and this special section of stories mapping out Sarah Palin's extensive ties to the NAR.
As described in the story Rick Warren's Dissertation Advisor Leads Network Promoting Uganda Anti-Gay Bill and detailed in the 20 minute documentary Transforming Uganda, which was cited by Political Research Associates Project Director Kapya Kaoma in his January 20, 2010 testimony before Congress' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, leaders in C. Peter Wagner's religious networks are closely tied to the draconian and internationally condemned Anti Homosexuality Bill now before Uganda's Parliament.
Cindy Jacobs, C. Peter Wagner, Argentine evangelist Ed Silvoso, and other major leaders in Wagner's movement recently gathered in Dallas, Texas for a March 4-6 conference, Convergence 2010. During the conference Ed Silvoso declared that it does not matter whether the Democratic Party or the Republican Party candidate for the governorship of Hawaii in 2010 wins because "both are in the kingdom."