The Moral Paralysis of Church and State

A Supreme Court hearing on the 14th Amendment and a sex scandal in the Dominionist IHOPKC ministry illustrate the moral paralysis of our time.

In the blur that is life in our times, it’s hard to slow down long enough to take in all the evil fruit now manifesting, decades after being planted. This past week, two developments typified to me the moral crisis taking place in both American politics and American Christianity. Given that so many of my fellow religionists seem hell-bent on mixing these two very distinct spheres together, insisting the will of God for America is Christian fascism and the forcing of their will upon the rest of a democratic, free and pluralistic society, it seems to me these two incidents are somewhat interrelated. I will try my best to explain here why.

The political one illustrates the sheer power that lies, aggression, thuggery and lawlessness can have upon a nation’s ability to both recognize and resist a threat to our continued social and political existence. The religious one illustrates the importance of sound doctrine keeping us from losing our moral common sense.

The Political

No sooner had the inked dried, so to speak, on my last article about Donald Trump’s (losing) effort to argue for a President’s right to break the law with impunity, than yet another courtroom reality show played out. In this one, the Colorado supreme court had decided that Trump was disqualified from being on the ballot in their state, because he had attempted an insurrection to thwart the transfer of power to the opponent he lost to. He thus ran afoul of the 14^th Amendment, specifically designed to keep Confederates from ever again holding office, so they cannot use that position of power to undermine the Union a second time.

Since it’s Republicans who have been forever arguing that states have the right to make up their own electoral rules (while Democrats want a national law standardizing elections in all 50 states), you would think they would support “states’ rights” in this matter. But no, since it was their guy who was being disqualified, suddenly they discovered a change of philosophy.

Based on the attitudes behind the questions asked by all nine justices on the Court, one could get the impression that the 14^th Amendment was misguided and unnecessary. The framers of that 1868 amendment understood that protecting democracy itself was more important than letting the public learn the hard way, by electing demagogues and con men.[1] This was understood in the light of Lincoln’s dictum that sometimes, at least, you can fool all of the people, let alone merely   half. Therefore, letting the people get caught up in a moment of unbridled passions produces so much regret later on, it would have been better to have prevented it in the first place.

You can interpret that as “out of control government” or the like, and admittedly, some matters in life can be a toss-up of principles. But there’s no war as traumatic as a civil war, and as Lincoln put it in the Gettysburg Address, government of, by and for the people (democracy) ought never again perish from the earth. But because our civil war was fought out over a very moral issue—the right of some to keep others in human bondage—there needed to be a decision from Heaven.[2]

Thus it was, as some observers lamented, virtually no questions were brought up by the justices as to the context of the situation when the 14^th Amendment was passed; that no effort was made to ask what was in their minds at the time? Because what was clearly in mind was preventing our Constitutional republic from becoming a suicide cult, that we not give opportunity for proven subverters of the union from holding office again, from which perch they can more effectively “slit throats,” as Ron DeSantis so classily put it recently.

Thus did Trump’s lawyers argue the absurdity that that those lawmakers who crafted the 14^th specified offices such as Congressional representatives, Senators and the like, but since they did not specifically mention the two most powerful (President and Vice-President), that those two were exempt. And if that wasn’t clear as mud enough, they were happy then to argue in the most torturous and hair-splitting way over whether they were actual “officers” just because they occupied “offices” in the US government.[3]

This interpretation Israeli asset extraordinaire and gatekeeper of the Christian mind, Jay Sekulow, assured his audience he was “down” with. For most normal parents, not held in thrall to such propaganda specialists, I’m sure the discussion sounded like their experiences with their two-year olds, when the latter had it in their little minds that they were going to come up with the kitchen sink if need be, to get their way.

So extraordinarily-shallow was this hearing that many legal commentators were dumbfounded by why even the three liberal justices hardly showed any curiosity about the intent of the men who crafted the 14^th. That today’s six conservative justices glossed over their normal obsession with “original intent” tells us volumes about their so-called “commitment to principle.” But why the liberals?

The disturbing conclusion by many was that they were fearful for the safety of themselves and their families, given that one of the legacies of the Trumpian era is the open threat of violence toward anyone he unleashes his cult followers upon. This is the cultural place this utterly vile man has dragged us down to.

And cult followers they truly are. When they equivocate that Donald Trump, you see, has not been actually convicted of insurrection, they ignore his menacing avowals to be a dictator, hit back “10 times harder” on anyone who has crossed him,   his threat to give Russia carte blanche to attack any NATO member who hasn’t “paid their dues,” to occupy blue states with martial law, regularly encourages his followers to inflict violence on anyone he singles out, and has the backing of a small army of lawyer-enablers now to overthrow our Constitution in the name of saving it. Truly, just the proposed future law-breaking by this “Man of Lawlessness…the Son of Destruction” (II Thess 2:3) is breath-taking.

When you ask them about the endless parade of Republican operatives and officials in his own administration that testified in the January 6 Committee hearings of the detailed ways in which Trump organized and initiated that attempted coup, (the actual violence perpetrated at the Capitol building being but a small part of that effort),[4] they will smugly tell you they just hadn’t tuned in. Why? Because loyalty to the cult means you don’t listen to anything from the outside world that might disturb your conditioning.

Is it any wonder Americans are losing their social, political and moral common sense in the light of this reprobate man’s bottomless, shameless and aggressive gaslighting (Dan 7:25)?

The Religious

The other event is yet another sex scandal within the Christian Dominionist / NAR world,[5] one of the most influential religious sectors of the ever-evolving MAGA/Trump/fascist cult. Mike Bickle, the founder of IHOP-KC,[6] and the central figure behind the earlier Kansas City Prophets, has been recently going through a long, tormenting process of being uncovered as a four decades-long groomer of young, sometimes-underaged women. It has also apparently been an embarrassing process for his governmental peers, who seem desperate to protect the global “Harp and Bowl” (worship-prayer) movement at all costs, by burying, ignoring or minimizing the allegations against him.

As far as church sex scandals go, this one was tame by comparison. It’s not in the category of anything as racy as the three-way that involved Liberty University heir Jerry Falwell Jr, his wife, and a pool cleaner. It is certainly no big deal out here in Hollywoodland,[7] where affairs are not even seen as scandals, yet who fault church people as dishonest hypocrites that can’t even admit to their own human frailties.[8]

In this one, Bickle sought to recruit impressionable women, some as young as 14, to a secret life of “sex-short-of-actual-intercourse.” He would then apparently control them through personal prophecies, or the hope that they can be the next “bride of the great spiritual leader” once his current wife dies, something he claimed God showed him.

Looking back on my short life, I can say that I too have had some experience with a similar incident. While at a Bible school once upon a time, we too had a scandal with a young president who had “married a second wife” with whom he was having “morning devotions” in his office. He likewise justified it by claiming God told him his real wife was going to die.

The difference there was, our school was teaching some pretty good stuff. There was nothing in the doctrinal atmosphere that would have encouraged him go so astray. The same can’t be said about IHOPKC, a ministry that fairly screams cult and false doctrine on so many levels.

Full Disclosure

Before diving any further into a potential bath of self-righteousness, I would like to do an honesty/reality check here. I have this saying that, “Sex and money make liars and hypocrites of us all,” because there’s not a soul on God’s green earth who doesn’t love both. At the same time, what’s the point of committing oneself to the Kingdom of God if you don’t accept, even grudgingly, its rules?

Although I occasionally worry that I’m a world class cynic posing as a realist, I have to admit that even I am surprised at how naïve I can be at times.[9] When someone brought the news of the scandal to my attention, even I was shocked at how long-standing this pattern was, going back to pre-Kansas City Fellowship days, how little he had been detected (or how much had been buried by staff), how many young women were involved over the years, and how many parents sent their kids to be subjected to his IHOP school to be exposed to his distorted vision of the last days.

The reason perhaps is that I just hadn’t been keeping up on this ministry for the last 20 years. The “Kansas City Prophets” phenomenon, like Ukraine, is no mere abstraction to me. I was a part of this 40 year-long now, continuous ministry (1983-the present) during most of the 1990s (1992-2000). I arrived there late in the process, but with the conviction that some of its initial supernatural qualities told me that God had a legitimate work in mind here, in spite of its rudderless history.

Within months of arriving, I felt God show me there was a sex scandal lying under the surface, and that Mike was at the heart of it, something I’ve never shared with anyone until now. I knew that if that was the case, how it turned out would depend on how he himself decided to handle it.

Mike’s secret affairs, if they were even indeed a thing, was not what this ministry was about anyway, at least for me. All I knew was that God wanted me to be there at that time, that I was convinced (and still am) that He called this work into being, that it was a big part of “God’s purpose for my life,” as a clear word given to me put it, and that it didn’t depend upon the success or failure of any given personality.

Looking back, my assumption was that this ministry was intended to be a light to a faithful remnant of an ever-more apostate Church world, guiding them through the Great Tribulation, to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, while binging in a great harvest (Rev 7:9). To this day, I simply cannot think of a more important and urgent subject for any of us to take up.

I had just come through eight tumultuous years in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the heart of the “Word of Faith” heresy that was hijacking what little good was to be found in the Pentecostal / Charismatic phenomenon. I was in despair that Tulsa’s mind science/prosperity hermeneutic of the New Covenant was indicative of the future of the most vital, “in-the-Spirit” circles of Christianity. At the same time, I was hopeful that a “fellowship of prophets,” “marvelous comrades” as the KCF people put it, could speak to these things, while brainstorming the mystery clues in the Bible about the last days. This was my hope, that the Kansas City phenomenon was an effort to counter the growing wave of ear-tickling fads and eschatological chaos.

Silly me. My time in Kansas City turned out to be yet another eight frustrating years. You can find that story in depth at “Vintage Metro: My Time With The Kansas City Prophets” here. For now, I do not want to go into an in-depth study of Dominionism and its many tentacles, as the “damnable heresy” of the last days that Peter (II Pet 2:1), Jude and others warned us about. I’m seeing the need to do that kind of a series now, but like all things, it’s a matter of time, energy and finances.

The Real Question

For now, I’d like to limit this article to the theme of losing our moral, political and spiritual common sense. To wit, why apparently did IHOP leadership suppress this scandal for so long?

Some of it was because these young ladies apparently were either in love with Mike, or felt honored to have the attention of this famous leader and helped keep it hidden, for decades in some cases. If Mike is anything, he’s certainly a real “people person,” a natural extrovert and very persuasive. Everyone liked his friendliness, his willingness to be personable and accessible, myself included.

What I didn’t like about him was his tendency to novelty when it came to doctrine. In spite of his intensity when it came to studying the Bible, he had a bent to come up with off-beat themes and ideas that it seemed he could mark as “his brand.”[10] I had the sense he never had much of any formal theological or even Bible school training, or he would have been more aware of the traditions he was pulling from. Quite the contrary, he seemed to disdain theology and delegate it out to others to “figure it out,” which is both irresponsible and impossible at the same time.[11] 

I also didn’t like the spiritual pretentiousness of the “companies” he was envisioning with their special devotion (forerunners, Nazirites, etc). The Bible is a spiritual exercise in deflating the human ego, not puffing it up and filling it full of “great swelling words of vanity” (II Pet 2:18; Jude 1:16). He had a tendency to flatter his audience and exaggerate a possibly-miraculous future for a faithful remnant (“stadiums will be filled,” etc.), by confusing a coming Great Harvest (Rev 7:9) during Great Tribulation with “a great revival.”

His efforts to read a “Bridal” meme into everything, taking a metaphor for the whole Body of Christ as the Bride, and turn it into a personal identity thing, I felt to be downright creepy. Maybe a female Christian can relate to it, but it made me feel embarrassed. But of course, if he had an attraction to teenage girls outside his marriage, it shouldn’t surprise us he would eventually come up with such memes. His insinuation that “forerunner” Christians like he was training were “more intimate” with God, was flattering, but ingratiating and delusional. Anyone who has a walk with God is going to be “intimate” with Him, if that’s the way you want to put it.

Like I said above, I don’t want to turn this into an exercise in self-righteousness. God alone is the ultimate Judge of us all one day, and we are warned to “not go beyond what is written” (i.e., actions, doctrine, etc—I Cor 4:6 NIV), into judging motives and factors we may not be aware of. However, public teachers and their false doctrines are not a matter of mere private offense, and in the case of Mike Bickle, his own personal life and his teachings may be more intertwined than normal.

But back to this question. The inability or unwillingness of IHOPKC leadership for so long to deal with a simple matter—that one of its leaders had a sex addiction—may have been because that leader had convinced millions that he had a vision of the last days so unique, that God had to protect this work at all costs. And yet what Bickle was promoting was an “uncommanded mandate,” an “unnecessary burden to bear” (Mt 11:30) in my opinion, while recognizing (perhaps only unconsciously) that young people with their boundless energy, willingness to sacrifice, and inexperience in recognizing error, were the perfect clay to mold into such an army.[12]

Although this “harp and bowl”/prayer and worship ministry has been classified as a part of the NAR movement currently tearing up churches all over the United States if not the world, it strikes me as more tangential and less essential to the core logic and militancy of the larger Dominionist movement, including imprecatory prayer circles.[13] On the other hand, the IHOPKC website talks of 24/7 “prayers for justice,” and Lou Engle is seen as a co-founder! Nevertheless, it apparently has five million subscribers to it around the world now, if we are to believe a recent global mass intercession day for Israel IHOPKC organized last year. Bickle himself said, with giddy anticipation, that in a few years it will be up to 15 then maybe 50 million.

Still, it means to me the whole thing was concocted out of thin air by one preacher, yet promoted as essential to the scenario entailing the last days return of Christ. Yet the NAR/MAGA/Christian Nationalism movement is the great Apostate Christianity prophesied to come (Mt 24:9-12; Luke 21:16; II Thess 2:3,11; Rev 17:3, etc.)

Indeed, the sense of self-importance and pretentiousness of this phenomenon is just off the charts. Like I said, catching up on a movement I’ve wanted to forget about the last 20 years, has spurred me to do a series analyzing the whole Dominionist phenomenon, of which the NAR is but a part. That kind of a project will take some time. Getting back to the IHOP phenomenon may take some time; earlier installments will have to build a case for why the entire Dominionist logic is illegitimate.

In the meantime, don’t be surprised if, within months if not weeks, some apostle/prophet or prophet/apostle calls Mike Bickle up on the stage during a huge conference, prophesies that all is forgiven and the Lord is hereby calling him back into service.

To a false religion. That is part of a false politics. Both of which are predicted to ravage the earth in the lead up to the Second Coming.

Stay tuned.

Notes:

[1] In the case of Confederate officers who wanted to run for office after attempting Insurrection against the Union, at least they sincerely believed in their cause. Donald Trump and his army of grifter-enablers are only interested in prolonging the con as long as possible.  In other words, the 14^th is even more pertinent in protecting us from knowing deceivers, while at least the Confederates were sincere in their justification of slavery. Dead wrong, but sincere all the same.

[2] The US Civil War was fought out over a clash of “Biblical principles.” Both the North and the South justified or condemned slavery based on the Bible, and both made an “appeal to Heaven” for God to decide. That’s why the music of the era was so apocalyptic (“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…,” e.g.), it was that dramatic. And the consensus was, especially since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement vindicated the North’s victory, that indeed, God had sided with the Abolitionists. That is, until Trump.

[3] “Trump’s lawyers do not answer that question. Rather, they say that the phrase “officer of the United States” is a term of art that excludes the Presidency because it appears in four places in the Constitution, and in each place it logically excludes the Presidency.” https://verdict.justia.com/2024/02/13/trump-lawyer-reads-the-constitution-like-a-secret-code-requiring-decryption#:~:text=Trump’s%20lawyers%20do%20not%20answer,it%20logically%20excludes%20the%20Presidency.

[4] E.g., who can ever forget that “perfect” phone call, “Brad, we only need you to find us 11,780 votes…Can’t you give us a break?”

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Apostolic_Reformation

[6] “International House of Prayer-Kansas City”

[7] That was actually the original name for the city and industry now known as Hollywood.

[8] A very understandable criticism. Yet it is true, God has very high standards. Sex is supposed to be confined within the marriage bed (Heb 13:4), so that there might be peace among you (I Thess 5:13), that no man go “a-neighing after” (Jer 5:8) his “neighbor’s heifer” (Judges14:18). Not very romantic for the Romeos of the world, but good Bible doctrine.

[9] It is not something that should cause undue self-condemnation in any of us. After all, since we are not omniscient beings like God, it’s only fair to give the benefit of the doubt to people we suspect of wrong-doing, as both the Bible and the US legal system affirm.

[10] Again, we’re talking about a fine line here. It’s okay to be creative when it comes to applying Bible principles to your own time and culture in a way that is benevolent to all people. But every Bible teacher is admonished to be a faithful “steward of the mysteries of God” (I Cor 4:1), to exegete the Scriptures as objectively as possible.

[11] He once told me that Sam Storms was the “theologian on staff” and any such questions should go to him. What I was asking him about was more along the line of pinning him down on something, if I remember correctly, and not a big technical question. Personally, I think every Christian has to be a kind of theologian to some degree, and those called to teach are supposed to be disciplined in their exegesis of Scripture, to not “make stuff up,” or read into text more than what is there.

[12] One of the four promises Augustine Alcala gave Bickle in 1982 was that God would cause many young people to flock to him.

[13] IHOPKC’s website has a number of points in its statement of doctrine that attempt to clarify that they’re not the extremists that they actually are, whether they see that or not.