Here’s the latest out of North Carolina:
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, is planning a campaign fundraiser Tuesday with a secretive religious group that for years has been publicly accused of wielding cult-like control over its followers and of engaging in criminal behavior including slave labor, financial fraud and the sexual and physical abuse of children.
The fundraiser backed by leaders of Word of Faith Fellowship, based in rural Rutherford County in western North Carolina, has raised questions among critics about Robinson’s connections to the group, which has given him thousands of dollars in campaign donations. Some of the accusations against the church have resulted in criminal convictions; church leaders deny the rest.
Robinson has long espoused conservative Christian values and has made speaking at churches a key part of his campaign for governor. The practice has come under scrutiny because of the secular nature of his role in the state’s second-highest executive office — and because of the hardline nature of Robinson’s comments during those sermons.
Here’s some more context:
Congregants of the Word of Faith Fellowship were regularly punched, smacked, choked, slammed to the floor or thrown through walls in a violent form of deliverance meant to “purify” sinners by beating out devils, 43 former members told The Associated Press in separate, exclusive interviews.
Victims of the violence included pre-teens and toddlers — even crying babies, who were vigorously shaken, screamed at and sometimes smacked to banish demons.
“I saw so many people beaten over the years. Little kids punched in the face, called Satanists,” said Katherine Fetachu, 27, who spent nearly 17 years in the church.
Word of Faith Fellowship, an evangelical church with hundreds of members in North Carolina and branches in other countries, also subjected members to a practice called “blasting” — an ear-piercing verbal onslaught often conducted in hours-long sessions meant to cast out devils.
As part of its investigation, the AP reviewed hundreds of pages of law enforcement, court and child welfare documents, along with hours of conversations with Jane Whaley, the church’s controlling leader, secretly recorded by followers.
The AP also spent more than a year tracking down dozens of former disciples who scattered after leaving the church. Many initially were reluctant to break their silence because they had hidden their pasts from new friends and colleagues — and because they remain afraid of Whaley.
Those interviewed — most of them raised in the church — say Word of Faith leaders waged a decades-long cover-up to thwart investigations by law enforcement and social services officials, including strong-arming young victims and their parents to lie. They said members were forbidden to seek outside medical attention for their injuries, which included cuts, sprains and cracked ribs.
Unfortunately, this isn’t that surprising, since Robinson is a Christian Nationalist:
On the Sunday before the Fourth of July, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, stood on a church pulpit and called for the extrajudicial killing of people he considered to be enemies of Christian America. Republicans’ continued support for and promotion of Robinson’s candidacy show how the GOP and the religious right have mainstreamed calls for violence in the name of Christian nationalism.
The address — first reported by The New Republic’s Greg Sargent — was part of “God and Country Sunday” at Lake Church in White Lake, North Carolina. “We now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent,” Robinson declared, adding that “some folks need killing. … It’s a matter of necessity!” He compared these supposed enemies on the American left to Nazis in World War II: “We didn’t argue and capitulate and talk about, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t fight the Nazis that hard.’ No, they’re bad. Kill them.” And the state’s would-be governor had no qualms about marshaling state power: “Time to call out, uh, those guys in green and go have them handle it. Or those boys in blue and have them go handle it.”
The exact identity of the “folks” who deserved death was unclear. There are “wicked people doing wicked things, torturing and murdering and raping,” Robinson said. But he clearly had in mind a far broader spectrum of leftist foes, warning about those “making 1776 a distant memory” and those advancing “the tenets of socialism and communism.”
Cameron McGill, the church’s pastor, defended Robinson. “Without a doubt, those he deemed worthy of death [were] those seeking to kill us,” McGill told The New Republic, claiming that Robinson “certainly did not imply the taking of any innocent lives.” The pastor, in other words, gave Robinson his permission to deem some fellow citizens “worthy of death” based only on conspiratorial lies that such people want to kill Christians.
Robinson, an unabashed Christian nationalist, has a long history of extremist and bigoted positions, promoting conspiracy theories, and making racist, antisemitic, homophobic and transphobic attacks on fellow Americans. He launched his political career by attacking gun control and ridiculing survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He has expressed support for the 1970 National Guard shooting of anti-Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University, denied the Holocaust and called for trans women to be arrested for using women’s restrooms.
Attorney General Josh Stein (D. NC) has been hitting Robinson on this (see above) and last month he released an ad campaign hitting Robinson on this:
Health and Democracy are on the ballot next year and we need to get ready to flip North Carolina Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Stein, Jackson or any of the Democratic candidates of your choice and with the North Carolina Democratic Party:
Governor:
Josh Stein
Mike Morgan
North Carolina Supreme Court:
Allison Riggs
Lt. Governor:
Rachel Hunt
Attorney General:
Jeff Jackson
Secretary of State:
Elaine Marshall
State Party:
North Carolina Democratic Party
