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In the days after the January 6th storming of the US Capitol, many analysts noted the strong currents of Christian nationalist sentiment and evangelical spirituality visible in the crowds that day. Christians who participated – both those entering the Capitol and those in the surrounding crowds – sang evangelical worship anthems, prayed individually and collectively, blew shofars (ram’s horns whose liturgical use originates in Jewish rituals), prophesied, and attempted to exorcize demons from the Capitol Building itself. Alarmed by the mixture of violence and invocations of evangelical piety that day, the National Association of Evangelicals put out a statement condemning the violence but sidestepping the question of whether any of the rioters themselves represented evangelicalism: “The mob at the Capitol was provoked by leaders, including President Trump, who have employed lies and conspiracy theories for political gain. Evangelicals are people who are committed to truth and should reject untruths.” Implied is that some of the people who participated may have been Christians -- may even have been evangelicals -- but they did not exemplify true evangelicalism. So what was the relationship between American evangelicalism and the violence of January 6th?
This paper takes a historical approach to answering this question, casting back 30 years from 2021 to see where some of the theological and practical foundations of that day were laid in a movement that represented the heart and soul of American evangelicalism – the 10/40 Window prayer and missions movement. The spiritual warfare paradigms which were formulated amidst the 10/40 Window campaign would resurface around the Capitol on January 6th, animating the crowds of Christians using spiritual violence against their demonic enemies, even as some tipped over into physical violence. At least three of the primary prayer leaders who helped organize and orchestrate that 1990s global intercession effort were present at the Capitol that day, helping to guide the spiritual warfare in the crowds.
The 10/40 Window campaign of the 1990s exhibited a moment of unity for American evangelicals and for global evangelicalism, with millions of believers banding together to intercede, give financially, and send missionaries to a geographical strip between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude across North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The 10/40 Window was the most unchristianized section of the globe, the heartland of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and a prime target for concentrated evangelization.
It was the evangelist Luis Bush who first coined the concept of the 10/40 Window in 1990, and many missionaries and missions agencies would join the global campaign for this “unreached” region. But it was Bush’s friend, the missiologist, church growth expert, and maverick Fuller Theological Seminary professor C. Peter Wagner who would organize the prayer and spiritual warfare campaign aimed at enlisting millions of believers in concentrated prayer. Wagner invited a mentee of his, a forty-something evangelist and charismatic prophet named Cindy Jacobs, to help shape the 10/40 prayer strategies.
Wagner and Jacobs were then collaborating on a new conceptual framework for prayer and spiritual warfare neatly captured in the title of Jacobs’ 1991 book Possessing the Gates of the Enemy: A Training Manual for Militant Intercession. Together Wagner and Jacobs formulated a paradigm Wagner called “strategic-level spiritual warfare,” which involved prayer walks to do “spiritual mapping,” i.e., discerning the particular demonic principalities and powers – Wagner dubbed them “territorial spirits” – that held sway over a geographical region. Then, strategies could be developed with orchestrated campaigns of thousands of intercessors praying simultaneously and boots-on-the-ground spiritual warriors using spiritual weapons, such as shofars, to cast out the territorial spirits and expand Christian spiritual territory. Along the way, Wagner and Jacobs enlisted a fellow prophet, Dutch Sheets, to develop these strategies. Sheets’ 1996 book Intercessory Prayer would sell more than a million copies and become a mainstay of this burgeoning evangelical prayer and spiritual warfare movement.
Some mainstream evangelical leaders flinched as they observed such militaristic and detailed charismatic schemas of spiritual warfare deployed through the 10/40 Window missions movement, especially when tied to modern-day prophecies from people like Jacobs and Sheets. But Wagner, Jacobs, and Sheets’ frameworks and intercessory guides galvanized the global evangelical community with estimates of between 30 and 50 million Christians joining these organized intercessory campaigns.
The culmination of the 10/40 Window warfare strategy was a 1997 special operation involving a team of 26 of Wagner and Jacobs’ strategic intercessors trekking to the slopes of Mt. Everest for a three-week spiritual battle against a major territorial spirit called the Queen of Heaven whom Jacobs and other prophets believed to be the key demonic potentate holding back the evangelization of the 10/40 Window. Peter Wagner’s wife Doris helped lead this “Operation Ice Castle,” and she was accompanied by one of Jacobs’ mentees, a young spiritual warrior named Becca Greenwood.
If we fast forward 20 years, Peter Wagner passed away in October 2016, but not before he became one of the first major evangelical leaders to full-throatedly endorse Donald Trump early in the campaign. Sheets, Greenwood, and Jacobs would become key Christian supporters of the Trump administration using their, even more developed strategic-level spiritual warfare programs to mobilize charismatic evangelicals to do spiritual warfare on Trump’s behalf. Hundreds of charismatic prophets would prophesy in the lead-up to the 2020 election that God wanted Trump to have a second term.
When Trump lost the election and refused to concede, Sheets launched a massive media campaign that would galvanize American Christians to join the spiritual battle for Trump’s promised second term. No Christian leader did more to mobilize Christians to be in DC on January 6th than Dutch Sheets. During the riot, Jacobs and Greenwood were present in the crowds, helping guiding national prayer efforts, live streaming, and praying against the territorial spirits infesting the Capitol Building. Sheets led an intercessory prayer call throughout the rioting with more than 4000 intercessors joining him. Jacobs and Greenwood even had Sheets call into the riot live on speakerphone to help pray and exorcize the demons in the Capitol.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
Many commentators have noted the markers of evangelical theology and spirituality on display during the violence and chaos of the January 6th Capitol Riot. Rioters and the surrounding crowds prayed, sang evangelical worship songs, did spiritual warfare against demonic entities, and carried flags and wore apparel that signified their loyalty to Jesus, the Bible, and Donald Trump. But what was the relationship between these spiritual practices and the violence that occurred that day? This paper examines how spiritual warfare thought leaders and paradigms that were popularized among American and global evangelicals in the 1990s through the massive 10/40 Window missions prayer campaign became instrumental in the Christian mobilization for and participation in January 6th. Following the trajectory of three of these 1990s leaders, the paper will show how organized campaigns of spiritual violence became increasingly politicized over time and then tipped over into literal violence at the US Capitol.