Ohio Sen. JD Vance is set to participate in a town hall in Pennsylvania on Saturday with evangelical religious leader Lance Wallnau, who said after this month’s presidential debate that Vice President Kamala Harris used “witchcraft.”
Wallnau, a Texas-based celebrity evangelist, is a self-described prophet. Two decades ago, he coined and popularized the Seven Mountains Mandate — an increasingly popular belief on the American right that says conservative Christians are called to occupy positions of power in seven key spheres of society, including business, education, media and government.
Since 2016, Wallnau and his allies have presented former President Donald Trump as a flawed but anointed leader — like the biblical figure King Cyrus — who has been chosen by God to restore Christian power in America. After denying Trump’s 2020 election defeat and telling followers that God had a plan to keep him in office, Wallnau joined pro-Trump protestors in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, to pray for divine intervention to stop Congress from certifying the electoral count as rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol.
In recent months, Wallnau — with support from the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — has hosted a series of get-out-the-vote worship rallies in swing states, where he and other evangelists have delivered a blend of pro-Trump political commentary and prophetic warnings about the coming end times, framing the 2024 election as an epic struggle between forces of good and evil.
Wallnau has warned that Harris is being guided by demonic forces and has used “the spirit of Jezebel” to deceive followers.
“She can look presidential,” Wallnau said on an online talk program this month, referring to Harris’ debate performance. “That’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft. That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth, but it seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe is operating on her and through her.”
Wallnau and a spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a statement, the Harris campaign blasted Vance for campaigning alongside Wallnau, whom they called a “conspiracy theorist.”
“While Vance and Donald Trump are peddling lies, stoking division, and clinging to the past because they have no solutions to lead us forward, Kamala Harris is leading us into a future of opportunity for all Americans. That’s the leadership Americans deserve, not the distraction and dysfunction the Trump-Vance ticket has to offer,” spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said.
Wallnau, a Pennsylvania native, has campaigned with Republican candidates before, including 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano.
While Wallnau is part of a group of evangelical leaders that Trump has previously embraced, the event with Vance is a new level of engagement between the former president’s world and Wallnau’s said John Fea, the chair of the history department at Messiah, a private Christian college in Pennsylvania.
“They used to come and they used to, you know, pray with Trump and get photo ops and so forth, but they’ve never been used in any significant way at the presidential level to campaign,” Fea said.
Kirk, who leads Turning Point USA and spoke at this year’s Republican National Convention, has aligned himself closely with Wallnau.
He has hosted Wallnau on his podcast, endorsed Wallnau’s voter mobilization efforts and has personally invoked the Seven Mountains Mandate. After NBC News wrote about Kirk’s connection to the movement in June, Turning Point attempted distance Kirk from the worldview, writing in a statement that “Charlie probably couldn’t tell you what the seven mountains are.”
Vance has appeared alongside other controversial religious leaders as the GOP vice presidential nominee.
Earlier this month, Vance participated in an event at Generation Church in Mesa, Arizona, where lead pastor, Ryan Visconti, has a history of anti-gay comments on social media.
In one post on his X account from July of this year, Visconti wrote that in order for “America to be ‘great again,’ we need to go back to opposing the abomination of gay mirage [sic] & abortion as we did before.”
A separate post from the fall of 2023 features Visconti saying that in “God’s eyes, there’s no such thing as ‘gay marriage,’ and argued in a lengthy thread posted earlier that year that “God wants homosexuals to repent and change.”
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