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Some religious organisations are protecting their wealth and political influence while threatening democratic norms--all with the aid of America's political elite.
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00:00A nation supposedly founded on the separation of church and state.
00:04We break and divide every demonic confederacy against the election, against America,
00:09against that who you have declared to be in the White House.
00:13It's outlined right in the Constitution.
00:15I don't care what you think about fraudulent Sleepy Joe, he's a sex trafficking, demon possessed mongrel.
00:22But that separation is vanishing in new and dangerous ways.
00:25We have a responsibility to preserve the foundations, and they are religion and morality,
00:30and we have to preserve them in public life.
00:32What was once a simple money grab by a few unscrupulous charlatans...
00:36Whatever you do right now, don't you stop tithing.
00:39I just need more! I just need more!
00:42...has become a coordinated accumulation of wealth and political power.
00:46Preachers began basing their sermons around economic and political matters.
00:51Backed by guns and ammunition.
00:53We need to stock up, team up, and train up like we've never done before.
00:58To reshape the country.
00:59God, country, constitution, second amendment, and homeschooling.
01:03I think it is fair to use the F word, fascism.
01:07It's a radical movement that thinks the only votes that are legitimate are those that support them.
01:14While those who still believe in that separation of church and state be damned.
01:19God bless America.
01:23For over 70 years, our leaders have told us one thing under the bright lights.
01:27The protection of the lives and property of Americans is the responsibility of all public officials.
01:34I care.
01:35We're trying.
01:36We have it so well under control.
01:38Help is here, and we will not stop working for you.
01:42But for decades, America's shadow government and its powerful friends have spent trillions of dollars on an agenda that serves
01:48their interests, not ours.
01:51You guys paid for all this.
01:53So when the shit really hits the fan, we're on our own.
01:57This is not science fiction.
01:58This is reality in America right now.
02:00The truth is, the rich and powerful will do whatever it takes to save themselves, while the rest of us
02:06die.
02:21You only have to open your eyes to witness how the teachings of Jesus Christ have inspired millions to help
02:27their fellow Americans, both materially and spiritually.
02:30Our goal is to serve the community, and we just praise the Lord for all the opportunity that he's giving
02:36us.
02:37But in this nation first founded by persecuted Christians, members of that same faith have used their beliefs to justify
02:44the persecution of others.
02:45It's right there in the founding documents of one of America's largest churches.
02:50If you go back, they're defending slavery on biblical grounds, and they're calling the ownership of other human beings as
02:56part of their sacred rights and privileges.
02:58It actually provides a moral frame and actually fuels to the fire that leads to the secession of the southern
03:04states.
03:09The endorsement of slavery by many prominent churches helped create an enormous wealth gap.
03:15Families that owned human beings were on average 14 times richer than families that did not.
03:21The social and economic impact on the African-American descendants of slaves would continue generation after generation.
03:30But in 1954, the Supreme Court issues a ruling that many hope will begin to shrink the gap.
03:40Brown v. Board of Education begins desegregating schools across the country,
03:44opening the doors to better-funded, once-whites-only public schools to black students.
03:52In the South, the ruling is seen as a direct threat to the racist power structure.
03:58Education cannot thrive in a climate such as would result from the mixture of the races in the public schools.
04:05I have said in every county in Mississippi that no school in our state will be integrated on our new
04:13government.
04:13In response, southern white elites band together to form what are known as white citizens' councils.
04:19The mission?
04:20Block any form of advancement of blacks by any means necessary.
04:30You're not of Texas if you're not for segregation.
04:32But the religion has been taken out of democracy.
04:36And I say there is no democracy without religion.
04:39God made them that color, and the only time they ever make it up is when they violated it.
04:45Laws of God, laws of God.
04:47White citizens' councils were made up of some of the South's most prominent politicians, judges, police, and religious leaders.
04:57Some are members of the historic Southern Baptist Church, whose preachings helped justify this racist ideology in the South for
05:05more than a century.
05:09I believe that we stand on the verge of a historic moment.
05:13The most famous Southern Baptist preacher is Billy Graham.
05:17I have no power to forgive anybody.
05:20I have no power to change anybody.
05:23A national celebrity who fills stadiums with devotees hanging on his every word.
05:29An even larger audience watches him on TV at home.
05:32There will come a day when men's hearts are literally going to fail them because of fear.
05:41In the early 60s, another religious leader is also garnering a mass following.
05:46One day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little
05:52white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
05:55I have a dream today.
05:57After the March on Washington in August of 1963, Billy Graham was asked to comment on the march.
06:02He said, it will only be in heaven that little black children will walk hand in hand with little white
06:08children.
06:09And so in Graham's theology, these are things that we couldn't hope for on this earth because the problem was
06:15too big to be solved.
06:16And that is the way that white evangelicals thought about social action and political action in the 1960s.
06:23They should be praying, they should not be marching, they should not be engaged in civil disobedience.
06:29Don't ever say it's a white man's religion or a black man's religion.
06:33It's a world religion.
06:37The battle for civil rights, led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other black ministers, is largely waged
06:44from the pulpits.
06:45But few southern white evangelical leaders join the fight.
06:49It is very hard for people to call Billy Graham a racist.
06:51But the fact of the matter is, Billy Graham, like many white male evangelicals of his day, felt that white
06:58men should be in power before other people.
07:02When you read people like James Baldwin or Martin Luther King, they're just mystified at why white Christian churches aren't
07:09standing up on the side of civil rights.
07:11King openly calls on his white religious counterparts to act.
07:15I think the church, religious organizations, have a great deal to do in this period of transition.
07:23Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from Birmingham jail is just dripping with this.
07:27He's writing that letter as he's sitting in jail for demonstrating for civil rights to the so-called moderate leaders
07:33in Birmingham.
07:34He says, who are these white Christians sitting safely behind their anesthetizing stained glass windows?
07:45Many southern pastors were affiliated with segregated religious schools, people like Bob Jones.
07:51And he went so far as to call segregation God's established order.
07:55Like churches and other religious organizations, these private, mostly whites-only schools were exempt from paying federal taxes.
08:03But many Americans began to publicly question why.
08:07One of the key issues was concern that racially segregated academies, religious schools, would have their tax privileges taken away
08:15from them.
08:15The Internal Revenue Service proposed to make private schools prove they are not practicing racial discrimination or lose their tax
08:23-exempt status.
08:24So all these pastors, you know, they got together, they were really concerned.
08:28And they felt like they had a right to segregate people by skin color, but also to receive tax exemptions.
08:35But by the 1970s, America is becoming a more inclusive country.
08:40Overt racists find themselves shunned, their beliefs mocked by mainstream culture.
08:46And I think that, I mean, if God had meant us to be together, he'd have put us together.
08:50Well, look what he'd done.
08:51He'd put you over in Africa, he'd put the rest of us in all the white countries.
09:00So in the summer of 1979, at a hotel in Lynchburg, Virginia,
09:05a group of influential religious and conservative leaders, including Jerry Falwell, Paul Wyrick, and former Nixon aide Howard Phillips,
09:12meet in secret to strategize on how white evangelicals could protect their agenda against the rising tide of inclusion.
09:20They knew the Stop the Tax on Segregation wasn't really going to be a very appealing rallying cry for this
09:27new movement that they wanted to ignite.
09:29They sort of went down a laundry list of issues that they thought might sort of ignite a hyper-conservative
09:35counter-revolution.
09:36When they got to abortion, it was almost like a light bulb went off, and they were like, huh, that
09:41could work.
09:42This was like around six years after Roe v. Wade was passed.
09:46The majority in cases from Texas and Georgia said that the decision to end the pregnancy during the first three
09:52months belongs to the woman and her doctor, not the government.
09:55When Roe v. Wade was passed, most Protestant Republicans supported it.
10:02The Southern Baptist Convention had passed resolutions in 1971 and 1974 affirming liberalization of abortion law.
10:11Ronald Reagan passed the most liberal abortion law in 1967.
10:16It's like really amazing to think about that now.
10:20They used the abortion issue to sort of unite that new movement.
10:24What single issue could say more about a society's values than the degree of respect shown for human life at
10:31its most vulnerable, human life still unborn?
10:36Your membership and belonging really hinges on that issue, but it's really, um, it's a modern creation, and it was
10:43created for political purposes.
10:45Under Reagan, the Republican Party, historically concerned with tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, uses the right to life
10:52as political camouflage.
10:56And soon, the GOP solidifies the working class white parishioners of evangelical leaders as its new loyal base.
11:03More, more, more years!
11:06More, more years!
11:07More, more years!
11:07And so, over time, these pro-choice voices were purged from the Republican Party.
11:13What we see today is almost a new religion, a pro-life religion.
11:17The evangelical movement's elites are now kingmakers, delivering state and presidential elections to the politicians willing to protect their new
11:26religious benefactors.
11:30And just as the 60s saw church leaders playing a transformative role on both sides of the social upheavals,
11:35the so-called greed decade of the 1980s will see a new style of Christian preacher transform the relationships some
11:43Christian Americans have with their church.
11:45The blessing has landed!
11:47Say it like you mean it!
11:48We've all seen the gospel as preached on television.
11:51You may gain some material things, but what if you lose with God?
11:55He controls the universe!
11:57Joel Osteen has a $10 million mansion practically across the street from his $3 million mansion.
12:06Jesse Duplantis, in 2018, asked his followers to buy him a $50 million jet.
12:11You know, I've owned three different jets in my life and used them and just burning them up for the
12:16Lord Jesus Christ.
12:17Kenneth Copeland and his partner Gloria are worth upwards of $700 million and use their private jets to go to
12:23big-game ranches and ski resorts.
12:26This is a preaching machine.
12:29Wealthy televangelists flaunting their possessions as a sign of God's bountifulness is not new.
12:36You actually have televangelists at this point who are competing with one another over who can live the most glamorous
12:41lifestyles.
12:42But these modern-day ultra-rich TV preachers aren't just interested in acquiring more and more money.
12:48Do you understand what I'm saying?
12:49Whatever you do right now, don't you stop tithing.
12:52They are also interested in the political influence that money can buy.
13:01There has always been tithing, giving money to your church or temple to help others less fortunate.
13:06But in the 1980s, as cable television delivered hundreds of channels into people's homes, it created an opportunity for a
13:13new kind of church.
13:15From coast to coast, live via satellite, it's time to praise the Lord!
13:25For these evangelicals of the airwaves, tithing was something you did to help yourself.
13:30What you give to God, God returns to you a hundredfold.
13:34A believer in prosperity gospel means that God essentially is a glorified piñata.
13:40And if you strike at heaven long enough, riches and wealth will come tumbling down.
13:46It dovetails with the ethos of the 1980s and the ways in which media put out a lifestyle.
13:53So if you think about television shows like Dynasty.
13:56If the champagne is too burned for your taste, Miss Devereaux, don't drink it.
13:59The caviar I trust is not burned.
14:02I really wouldn't know.
14:04This is Osotrova, and I prefer Petrossian beluga.
14:08That had a connection, believe it or not, to the ways in which Jim and Tammy Faye Baker were living
14:12with air-conditioned dog houses.
14:14And all of this promoted a lifestyle of God and wealth.
14:19If all the demons in hell and all the bureaucrats in the world could stop me from building, when I
14:24go to heaven, he'd let me work on mansions.
14:27If that pastor is driving around in a Rolls Royce and flying a private jet, his wealth is a sign
14:33of how much God wants you to be rich.
14:35This is pretty transparently a con.
14:37You can't defeat me! You cannot defeat a child of God!
14:43Congregants of Prosperity Ministries were told to give to God, but to send their money to the preacher's address.
14:50Failure to give enough was seemingly the only sin for which you'd be punished.
14:54What keeps people in the pews in Prosperity Gospel churches is a sick downward spiral.
14:59You think if you give more, then you're going to get more.
15:02If you don't get more, you're chastised by your pastor to give more because you aren't giving enough.
15:08And so for many people, they don't know how to break out of that cycle.
15:11If you're wealthy, you're one of God's chosen. If you're poor, you're part of the sinful masses.
15:17It's a message viewers at home would hear again and again.
15:20You need to make a vow of faith of $1,000. Oh, Bob, couldn't you say $25? No!
15:25I don't understand why, but there's something happens at a level where people step into faith and give $1,000
15:31that don't happen at other levels.
15:33You're going to have a breakthrough through this $273 seed.
15:40By the 1990s, the most egregious of the cable TV prosperity ministers had been brought down for preying on their
15:47parishioners.
15:47Swaggart is stepping down from his powerful TV ministry while the Assembly of God Church investigates him for having an
15:54affair with a prostitute.
15:55I have sinned against you, my lord.
15:59Their fall from grace was a wake-up call to other, more mainstream preachers to seek salvation not just from
16:05God, but protection against the laws of man from elected officials.
16:10Historians write about the Reagan administration. What do you want them to say?
16:13I guess maybe just that I helped perpetuate this great American dream.
16:18In the new century, prosperity ministries made a comeback on TV.
16:23One of my chandeliers cost more than most people's house. I got 22 chandeliers in the house.
16:26But media reports raised questions about whether these preachers were paying their fair share to the government.
16:32All of it is tax exempt, but should it be?
16:382007 prosperity gospel preachers were investigated by a Senate Judiciary Committee led by a Republican, Chuck Grassley.
16:46Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent letters to six well-known TV churches across the country requesting financial records on
16:52compensation, expenses, and amenities, including use of fancy cars and private jets.
16:57That would violate non-profit status under the tax code.
17:01Investigators are digging into whether ministry resources are being diverted into an array of for-profit companies.
17:07They thought, are these pastors taking advantage of their status just to enrich themselves?
17:13Creflo Dollar, one of the prosperity preachers named by Grassley's committee, defended his church.
17:18I just believe that the people that make an investment into the ministry should be the primary ones that we
17:25respond to and that we open our books up and we're transparent to, versus the watchdog people.
17:31And there was such an outcry at the time against these pastors getting investigated at all.
17:37He has the right to have what he has. This is America. You are able to drive what you want
17:42to drive, live where you want to live.
17:44The committee pulled back and they said, well, we encourage these pastors to, you know, self-reform.
17:51Grassley had given the ministries a month to respond to his committee's questions.
17:54His requests were all but ignored, but some in the media continued to press the issue.
17:59How much money did you pay for Tyler Perry's Gulfstream jet, for example?
18:03Well, for example, that's really none of your business, but...
18:06Isn't it the business of your donors?
18:08I think what's troubling is not just that they're taking advantage of their followers, but they're taking advantage of the
18:13rest of us through their public subsidies and tax exemptions.
18:17In exchange for their lucrative tax-exempt status, religious institutions are supposedly constrained by the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits nonprofit
18:24organizations from endorsing partisan political candidates.
18:28But as the wealth of these churches grew, their leaders saw the value in using some of their parishioners' supplied
18:34wealth to exercise the political power needed to protect themselves.
18:38They're not just having these sort of tax-exempt entities and lack of transparency for a means of amassing these
18:45fortunes, but also engaging in partisan politics at the same time.
18:49Prosperity Gospel is now talking about elections as a matter of demonic influence.
18:54Democrats winning as a matter of satanic influence.
18:58You can hear it in the televised sermons.
19:00We break and divide every demonic confederacy against the election, against America, against that who you have declared to be
19:07in the White House.
19:08The media said Joe Biden's president.
19:11Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
19:15Using all the powers of that con, that money con, to now put into play as a power con.
19:22Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
19:25But could this power of the pulpit provide religious leaders protection from even the darkest allegations?
19:31Ask the Catholic Church.
19:33You may not like who I am as much as you like who you think I am.
19:39Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy.
19:43During John F. Kennedy's run for presidency in 1960,
19:48many believed his Catholic faith would make him unelectable.
19:51Anti-Catholicism was widespread, forcing the candidate to face it head-on.
19:56The question is whether I think that if I were elected president,
20:00I would be divided between two loyalties, my church and my state.
20:04Let me just say that I would not.
20:06Kennedy was able to overcome worries about him being a puppet of Rome.
20:10But in his home state of Massachusetts, where nearly half the population identifies as Catholic,
20:15the church exerted exactly the kind of political influence Kennedy denied existed.
20:20For decades, the Catholic leadership could act with near impunity, with little to fear from elected officials.
20:32When it comes to holding power to account, the Boston Globe's Michael Resendez knew there was no greater power in
20:38the city than the one wielded by the Catholic Church.
20:41The city of Boston was the most Catholic city in the United States.
20:45And also, Boston was really a collection of Catholic, ethnic, blue-collar people who really revered the Catholic Church.
20:55The legislature responded to the Catholic Church whenever it wanted something or whenever it sought to block something.
21:00Something the Globe's investigative team Spotlight learned when it began looking into a lawsuit against Father John Gagan,
21:07a former Boston priest who was suspected of sexually abusing nearly 150 young boys over decades.
21:13In a civil lawsuit, there is a process known as discovery when both sides turn over the evidence that they've
21:20accumulated that they may use at trial.
21:22But all of these documents were sealed by the court at the request of the Boston Archdiocese.
21:29The head of the Archdiocese was one of the most powerful men in Boston.
21:33Cardinal Bernard Francis Law was also a media-savvy, charismatic figure.
21:38You may not like who I am as much as you like who you think I am.
21:45Cardinal Law was a very, very influential prelate, not only in the Archdiocese of Boston, but all over the United
21:51States.
21:52And he often hoped that he would become the first pope from the United States of America.
21:58Cardinal Law was friendly with the Reagan administration, played a role in the fact that Ronald Reagan won the state
22:06of Massachusetts twice.
22:08Cardinal Law was especially close to George Herbert Walker Bush.
22:13They had a friendship, just really understood how to play politics.
22:20Cardinal Law's imposing presence helped the church remain off-limits to the city's investigative journalists.
22:27But in 2001, a new editor at the Globe authorized the Spotlight team to dig deeper into the Father Reagan
22:33case.
22:34So the first thing we did, we just called all our sources and asked them if they knew anything about
22:38the issue of clergy sex abuse.
22:39And pretty quickly, we came up with the notion that there was more than one bad priest, that there were
22:46other John Gagans.
22:47But they needed more than a notion. They needed proof.
22:51Enter Phil Saviano of SNAP, the survivor's network of those abused by priests.
22:56For Saviano, it was personal.
23:00I was sexually assaulted. I don't know. I remember five or six times specifically, mostly when I was 12 years
23:10old.
23:11The priest came to town on a new assignment.
23:14And the fact that I lived in the neighborhood and that I was the newspaper boy put me in contact
23:20with this priest quite a bit.
23:24Saviano had spent years cataloging his own story and amassing evidence from other survivors.
23:29Phil showed up in the Spotlight office and he had a box of material for us to read.
23:35Several books, newspaper articles, magazine articles.
23:39One of the things in his box was a disc.
23:41And the disc contained expert testimony in a clergy sex abuse case from Texas.
23:47The Boston Archdiocese estimated that only about half of all practicing priests were celibate.
23:52Of that number, six percent of priests were having sex with children.
23:57Could the same be true of priests in Boston?
23:59The answer came from the church's own documents.
24:02The Boston Archdiocese, like many other dioceses, publish an annual directory of clergy.
24:07So you can look up a particular priest and see where he's been assigned.
24:11A lot of priests had assignments that we didn't really understand.
24:17Like some priests were assigned to emergency response.
24:20Some were sickly.
24:22Some were on loan.
24:24And eventually we got the notion that maybe these kind of strange assignments were euphemisms for priests who had been
24:32accused of clergy sex abuse and had been put on the shelf.
24:35So we came to understand that emergency response meant that a priest was confined to the rectory.
24:42Sick leave often meant that a priest had been assigned to a facility for abusive priests.
24:47So all of these euphemisms, we decided to put them all together in one database.
24:54If six percent of clergy were having sex with children, six percent in the Boston Archdiocese would have translated to
25:0090 priests.
25:01And that, in fact, was about the number that turned up in our database after we'd been through the church
25:06directories.
25:08They had a smoking gun.
25:10The pattern was clear.
25:12Then, another breakthrough.
25:14The Globe is successful in lifting the confidentiality order on the church's sealed documents.
25:19And the documents were released to the public showing that Cardinal Law and his bishops all knew that John Gagan
25:26was a serial pedophile and had molested more than 150 children over 30 years in six different parishes.
25:32We learned through the Spotlight investigation that there are a number of cases that police knew about, but they brought
25:39the cases to Cardinal Law and he convinced them not to tell anybody, to keep it quiet.
25:43It took Spotlight's tireless investigation to finally overcome the church's power to protect its home.
25:50Today, the thousands of documents once confidential both illustrated and underlined the mistake and tragedy.
25:58We kept writing stories. We kept finding allegations against more abusive priests.
26:02And finally, Cardinal Law resigned on December 13th of 2002.
26:10In 2017, Cardinal Law died in Rome at the age of 86.
26:15But the sex abuse scandal that he came to symbolize persists to this day.
26:19The Catholic Church in America alone has now paid something like $4 billion to the victims of clergy sexual abuse.
26:25This is a very deep problem within the Catholic Church.
26:28A problem the church saw a solution to in 2020.
26:34Resendez was reporting for the Associated Press when news of the federal government's pandemic relief paycheck protection program was announced
26:41by President Trump.
26:42They asked Congress to pass the paycheck protection program giving small businesses emergency economic relief.
26:49For many Catholic parishes, this program designed to help struggling businesses make payroll at the height of the pandemic was
26:55heaven sent.
26:58We know that President Trump met with more than 600 Catholic officials in a teleconference situation.
27:05And during this meeting, President Trump explained that they were all going to be eligible for the paycheck protection program.
27:11And he also reminded everyone that we were approaching an election.
27:15And what we noted is that a lot of the dioceses that had made big payments to survivors, in some
27:21cases dioceses that have filed for bankruptcy, they were awarded paycheck protection funds that allowed them to essentially replenish their
27:28coffers.
27:28This story and many other stories by many other reporters really do reflect the enduring power of the Catholic Church.
27:36Someday, the Associated Press won't exist. Someday, the Boston Globe won't exist, but the Catholic Church will endure.
27:45Religious institutions have long wielded their political influence through generally accepted democratic norms.
27:51But some evangelical leaders have taken a decidedly anti-democratic approach to gaining power.
27:56How many of our Christians want everybody to vote?
28:00I don't want everybody to vote.
28:02At stake is the very soul of our nation.
28:07Barrett is a devout Catholic who's taken conservative stances on abortion, gun rights and immigration.
28:13The human rights campaign has called for a, quote, absolute threat to LGBTQ rights.
28:19October 2020.
28:21The Senate is set to debate the third Supreme Court Justice President Trump will place on the court.
28:27Conservative Christian Amy Comey Barrett.
28:29Well, we're pleased today to welcome Judge Barrett.
28:32Senator Sheldon Whitehouse takes the floor to expose the dark forces he says are behind her nomination.
28:37We look forward to working with you, Republicans in the Senate.
28:41And a larger plot to undermine democracy.
28:44This is a conservative activist behind the scenes campaign to remake the nation's courts.
28:48And it's a $250 million dark money operation.
28:54The Senator paints a grim picture of the state of our union, arguing a shadowy group of conservatives are leveraging
29:00their wealth to take over the courts and overturn popular policies supported by the majority of Americans.
29:05They want judges to rule, to reverse Roe, to reverse the Obamacare cases, and to reverse Obergefell and take away
29:13gay marriage.
29:13That is their stated objective and plan. Why not take them at their word?
29:24While Christians make up 65% of the U.S. population, only one in four Americans identify as evangelical.
29:30That's still a massive voting bloc.
29:33And with 70% of those potential voters claiming to be conservative, evangelicals have often been the deciders in this
29:39country's elections.
29:40When you accept Christ as the Savior, it changes your heart and changes your life.
29:44Using their power to endorse politicians that will protect and promote a biblical worldview.
29:48Our Savior died on a cross so your sins can be forgiven and he doesn't want you to be quiet
29:53about it.
29:53He wants you to share the gospel and share it with everyone.
29:57The right-wing Christian power elite and its donor base have long dreamed of seeing the government adopt its religious
30:02values as public policy.
30:05The plan to make this dream a reality first came together four decades ago.
30:11August 1980 in Dallas, Texas, the biggies of conservatism have come together to make speeches and Ronald Reagan is appearing
30:19in front of evangelicals.
30:20This book will teach you about your economy.
30:22James Robeson, a famous Dallas evangelist, said to Reagan, you should say this when you get up on stage.
30:30Now I know this is a nonpartisan gathering and so I know that you can't endorse me, but I only
30:37brought that up because I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.
30:45And the crowd went wild. So that married evangelicals to a potential presidential candidate who looked out for their interests.
30:54But getting evangelicals to vote for sympathetic candidates is only the first part of their plan to reshape America.
31:00The next speaker would reveal just how far they are willing to go.
31:04The second thing that happens that very same day is a speech by Paul Weyrich.
31:09How many of our Christians have what I call the goo goo syndrome? Good government. They want everybody to vote.
31:18I don't want everybody to vote.
31:19We don't want everyone to vote.
31:21The elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country
31:26and they are not now.
31:27As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
31:34And this is something that has been part and parcel of how evangelicals think about voting, too.
31:40As long as they can get the votes out for candidates who support their issues, then voting should not be
31:47extended to people who won't vote the way that they want them to vote.
31:52The views expressed more than 40 years ago on that stage in Dallas would prove to be prophetic.
32:00Today, a new agenda is being set by an elite group of Christian power brokers that seeks to replace our
32:05secular democracy with so-called Christian nationalism.
32:09Where Americans, regardless of their faith, would be governed in accordance with the Christian Bible.
32:15It's an ideology that's being pushed by a new brand of religious radicals.
32:19I don't care what you think about fraudulent, sleepy Joe. He's a sex trafficking, demon possessed mongrel. He's of the
32:27left. He ain't no better than the Pope and Oprah Winfrey and Tom Hanks and the rest of that wicked
32:32crowd. God is going to bring the whole house down.
32:36It's not just political theater. Influential church leaders, highly funded think tanks and secretive religious organizations are trying to transform
32:44the very fabric of American society.
32:47Our society is inherently, irreducibly pluralistic. So to assert that only members of a certain sort of elect group should
32:56dominate all aspects of government and society is extraordinarily divisive and unfair.
33:02One of the most effective groups quietly pushing a religious agenda in Washington is a shadowy entity known as the
33:08family.
33:09The family is the oldest and still the most influential Christian nationalist organization in Washington.
33:16What it tries to do is to gather those whom it feels are placed in power by God, senators, congressmen,
33:22military leaders, business leaders, tries to gather them into a biblical worldview, exporting American power around the world.
33:32From its inception, the family has had a fondness for mixing Christianity with authoritarian power.
33:38Blayton Brady, the founder of the family in 1935, he sees working people organizing to get better working conditions and
33:45rights as a threat to his vision of Christian unity and Christian nation.
33:50In 1935, he's looking at German fascism and saying, that's the future.
33:55After World War II, they would arrange for delegations of U.S. congressmen to travel to Germany so they could
34:03get the sage advice of these former Nazis.
34:05The idea that America could learn from Nazi Germany was embraced by the family's next leader, Doug Coe, an elusive
34:12figure seen here in a rare piece of video.
34:15Jesus said, you have to put me before other people.
34:20And you have to put me before yourself.
34:24Hitler, that was a demand to be in the Nazi party.
34:27You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people.
34:33Doug Coe, this longtime leader and advisor to every president, Democratic or Republican, since Eisenhower.
34:39And Time Magazine, in fact, once named him one of the most powerful religious leaders.
34:43One of Coe's most enduring legacies is the family's annual event, the National Prayer Breakfast.
34:48The President of the United States and the First Lady.
34:53On its surface, it appears apolitical.
34:55But what the public sees is far from the full story.
34:58The National Prayer Breakfast in Washington happens in February of every year.
35:03The President always speaks.
35:04My special thanks to Bob Stomp and Doug Coe.
35:09Doug Coe and all of his associates.
35:12In fact, the Prayer Breakfast represents a week-long lobbying festival.
35:17It's about influence.
35:19What is the end goal of all these shadow campaigns by well-heeled religious elites?
35:24And how would they reshape the country?
35:26I think it is fair at this stage to use the F word, fascism.
35:33Christ has been displaced by the worldly strongman figure.
35:37You would certainly look at the loss of reproductive rights, the loss of LGBTQ rights, men being in places of
35:43authority.
35:44You would see white supremacy strengthen even more.
35:48If you look at all of the voter suppression bills now that are being pushed and calling into question a
35:54fairly decided election, frankly, I don't even want to use the word conservative.
35:57It's a radical movement.
35:58The President saying new laws in more than 16 states are part of a painful pattern aimed at denying minorities
36:05and women the right to vote.
36:06You can see the anti-democratic nature of the movement.
36:10It's a movement that, for some, has given way to visions of a coming apocalypse.
36:14It's nearly impossible to determine exactly how many people have relocated to the region as part of this movement.
36:21They're guarded by their very nature.
36:23As a growing Christian army seeks to take over a small corner of the U.S., what does it mean
36:28for the rest of us?
36:31Far from the nation's capital, a new army of Christian conservatives is assembling here, in western Idaho and across the
36:38northwest,
36:40arming themselves with a new theological dogma.
36:42And, according to local reports, they're arming themselves with an increasingly lethal arsenal.
36:47Gun and ammo manufacturers driven out of other states by restrictive gun legislation.
36:52There are now 180 in Idaho alone.
36:56There's been a huge increase of conservatives moving into Idaho.
37:02We kind of consider ourselves the last of the Mohicans.
37:05They call this newly imagined state the American Redoubt.
37:11The American Redoubt consists of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and then eastern parts of the states of Washington and Oregon.
37:22The term American Redoubt was coined by James Wesley Rawls in 2011.
37:29Rawls is a former U.S. intelligence officer who went off the deep end, and he started a popular survivalist
37:36blog some years back.
37:37We have a breaking news story.
37:39Navy protesters are on the streets of Los Angeles.
37:41It isn't hard to find Rawls' apocalyptic rhetoric online.
37:44When the big machine stops, and things fall apart, it's going to get very, very ugly in the big cities
37:50and the suburbs.
37:51And the only places with relative safety are going to be in lightly populated, food-producing areas.
37:58Rawls believes in a sort of Christian theocratic idea of what the United States should be.
38:03That modern liberal society is unstable, that life in our decadent urban centers is going to fall apart.
38:12And so Rawls started telling people, get yourself a whole bunch of guns and join with your fellow patriots out
38:18here to be ready for the coming claps.
38:20It's a call to arms that has been heeded by a growing number of radical Christians from across the country.
38:25The core of this movement is to help like-minded, conservative Christians move to the Redoubt area.
38:31Rawls is clearly showing that he expects a war.
38:35He expects the American Redoubt to have to defend itself with arms.
38:41A group of professionals is helping train new arrivals, even providing them with homes that are ready-made for riding
38:47out the apocalypse.
38:49I've seen the underground homes, the ones that people have dug, or they've built on top of the ground, but
38:56then buried the structure.
38:57So you can't see it from the road at all.
38:59It's nearly impossible to determine exactly how many people have relocated to the region as part of this movement.
39:06They're guarded by their very nature.
39:08A secessionist movement like the American Redoubt is born out of a Christian nationalist ideology that seeks to consolidate power
39:15for a small group of believers.
39:18Everything that Americans have held near and dear for generations, they are trying to systematically destroy.
39:25To be self-reliant and to be proficient with firearms.
39:30That is your duty.
39:32That is your responsibility.
39:34But this spiritual migration may only serve to destabilize the foundations of the country itself.
39:41The endgame of the American Redoubt is the world's going to end, and people up here are going to be,
39:46you know, fighting Mad Max-style battles in the hills.
39:50I honestly think that some people want that to happen.
39:52And the movement here is growing, or perhaps mutating.
39:56It was a packed house Saturday morning in Roseburg.
39:59In May 2021, five Oregon counties voted to secede from their state and join a newly imagined one they call
40:06Greater Idaho.
40:07They want to expand the state of Idaho.
40:10Portland and Salem politicians just don't have the same values anymore that we do here.
40:16The message from these radicals is clear.
40:18There's safety in numbers.
40:22Apocalyptic ideology is incredibly effective because it turns into something of a democratic kill switch.
40:29Only by the grace of Jesus Christ are we awakened.
40:32In which, when they don't win elections, when they do not have control over governmental bodies, they can claim that
40:39an apocalypse is nigh.
40:42For some white evangelicals, January 6th was just another moment in the ways in which they think that the government
40:50should be put aside for a leader that they believe should be the real president.
40:56We have evangelicals right now who are being radicalized.
41:02Evangelicals are some of the highest number of people who believe that the pandemic was a scam and their support
41:09of guns, God and babies has allowed them to harden themselves against many of the things that are enshrined in
41:18law in America right now.
41:22They are not the people who believe themselves to be.
41:25That is, the holders up of the soul of the nation.
41:29Rather, they are the people who are driving the nation's soul apart.
41:34Those who believe in the world is the power of the nation-born olehened o'clock is to be the
41:36power of the weakening of America.
41:36U.S.A.
41:37media sharing the message from China.
41:39Thealı however, not most amazing rainbow or famous 가능 have answered the trustee of the country and then you know
41:39it was north and we got theそう perch..
41:41You
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