At the 2022 Road to Majority conference in Nashville, Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, who was nominated by members of the House Freedom Caucus as House speaker prior to Kevin McCarthy’s confirmation, was one of four guests on a panel titled “Drawing the Line: The Hijacking of Our Mountains of Societal Influence and How to Reclaim Them.” The panel was emceed by Madgie Nicolas, the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s national strategist of African American engagement, who introduced Donalds and the other participants as “four gatekeepers that [have] been helping, enforcing the Seven Mountains of influence.” Nicolas declared, “We need to reclaim our dignity in this country, we need to reclaim our sovereignty, and we need to reclaim our White House.”
Pentecostalism is notably associated with right-leaning constituencies among Latino Americans. Between 2016 and 2020, according to some reports, Trump picked up eight points among Latino voters; in the midterm elections, Republicans cut into the Democratic advantage in 2018 by an estimated 10 points. The survey data on Latino Pentecostals and neo-charismatics specifically is thin, but anecdotal evidence is abundant. In heavily Latino Miami-Dade County—the largest county in what was once considered the biggest “swing state” in the nation—President Joe Biden won only 53 percent of the vote, compared with the 63 percent share won by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the 62 percent share won by former President Barack Obama in 2012. Pastor Frank Lopez, who heads the Jesus Worship Center, a Miami-based church with two campuses that is allied with KCIA, “an alliance of apostles and prophets,” has characterized Biden as “an ignorant leader with a destructive agenda” who is “rebelling against God.” Lopez is hardly a voice in the wilderness; he hosts prominent Latin American conservatives on his YouTube show and serves on the board of directors of the Asociación de Ministros Hispanos del Sur de la Florida, a Miami-based association of pastors that has collaborated with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition.
To be clear, the concept of spiritual warfare is gaining in popularity among all ethnic groups, including among white nationalist extremist groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, a reactionary group that aims to recruit inside law enforcement agencies, also promotes the idea. At the group’s founding meeting in 2013, a New Apostolic Reformation adherent who went on to become the leader of the Republican caucus in the Washington State House spoke, along with several prominent far-right figures, including Stewart Rhodes, then the leader of the Oath Keepers, who was convicted in November on seditious conspiracy charges relating to the January 6 insurrection.
