A small church in a small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has been flexing its political muscle and building an outsized reputation for blurring the line between church and state. Pastor Don Lamb wants his congregants to be engaged in spiritual warfare and not be “head-in-the-sand, Jesus-loves-you kind of Christians,” especially when it comes to the local school board.
To Lamb, this is not a Christian takeover. Yet his church is influenced by an elusive, hard-to-pin-down movement whose followers believe that Christians are called to control the government and that former President Donald Trump was chosen by God. It’s called the New Apostolic Reformation, and it’s nothing like the culture war–fueled Moral Majority of yesteryear. There are prophets and apostles, and a spiritual war is underway, not just in Pennsylvania. To win, the church has to do more than just preach the gospel; it has to get political.
This week, Reveal’s Najib Aminy and Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler explain what the New Apostolic Reformation is and what happens when it seeps into small-town churches like Lamb’s.
Dig Deeper
Read: Christian Nationalists Dream of Taking Over America. This Movement Is Actually Doing It. (Mother Jones)
Credits
Reporters and producers: Najib Aminy, Kiera Butler, and Steven Rascón | Editors: Cynthia Rodriguez and Marianne Szegedy-Maszak | Production assistance: Anayansi Diaz-Cortes | Fact checkers: Siri Chilukuri, Alex Nguyen, and Ruth Murai | Legal review: James Chadwick | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Score and sound design: Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson
Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, and by Reveal listeners.
Transcript
Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.
| Al Letson: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Two faded red doors serve as the main entrance to Don Lamb’s barn-style church. |
| Don Lamb: | Okay, so this is our main floor up here. We are in the middle of a building project, so we are building out this way. |
| Al Letson: | Don is a pastor of LifeGate, a small church in a small town in the very big and politically relevant swing state of Pennsylvania. |
| Don Lamb: | So this is a very small congregation. Eventually, we will build 30 feet this way and move that whole stage out of here and double the size of this sanctuary. So we sit about 150 in here and it’ll be about 300 maybe. |
| Al Letson: | From the back of the chapel, you’ll see dark gray office chairs instead of wooden pews. They’re facing a stage with a purple velvet backdrop, and right in front of the stage at the center is a wooden stand. |
| Don Lamb: | Yep. This is where we preach right here. We put it in the middle and we got our clock so we know we can’t go over time. |
| Al Letson: | While all this might look like a quiet and small church, it’s at this pulpit where Don has given some pretty fiery sermons that go beyond the gospel. |
| Don Lamb: | If America said last November, we want abortion, we want transgenderism, we want open borders, we want to die on our sword, kill us, we deserve to die. But guess what? America rejected that last November 3rd. |
| Al Letson: | To put it mildly, Don had some issues with the 2020 election. |
| Don Lamb: | Your nation as a whole did not vote for the Antichrist. It was stolen and allowed. God can take things sideways in your life. Then what do you do? Do you go back and cry? Suck your thumb. You have to fight through. |
| Al Letson: | Don is preparing his flock for a spiritual battle that is already underway, not just where he lives, but across the country. |
| Don Lamb: | This vineyard of E-Town, central Pennsylvania and of America will not be taken by Jezebel. This vineyard is our vineyard. We’re on watch and we rebuke the passivity and the unbelief. |
| Al Letson: | Don Lamb is just one man in a movement within evangelical Christianity, preaching a new world order that has already reached the highest levels of power. |
| Donald Trump: | We will restore faith and family to the center of American life and we will restore power to the people. Ladies and gentlemen, with your help and God’s grace, the great revival of America begins on November 5, 2024. It’s a great revival. |
| Al Letson: | This is more than just a great revival. This hour, what happens to that line between church and state when a movement with millions of followers seeks to dominate not just religion, but American life. Reveal’s Najib Aminy starts at LifeGate, a church that is actively waging spiritual warfare at the ballot box. |
| Najib Aminy: | Don Lamb has a sword in his office, like an actual sword, but he’s more keen on talking about the artwork on display. |
| Don Lamb: | This is a picture of Queen Esther. That’s a painting I did. |
| Najib Aminy: | Don actually went to art school, just for a year though. He dropped out to get married. That was 41 years ago. |
| Worth it? | |
| Don Lamb: | It’s very worth it. Yeah. Yeah. Just amazing. |
| Najib Aminy: | Don grew a Baptist and went to Bible study nearly every day as a teenager, but it never felt quite right. |
| Don Lamb: | Something was missing. The Bible Baptist churches were not challenging us enough to have a vibrant relationship with God. And then in my early teen years, I began to search for God and found God at a deeper time period. So that would’ve been like the late seventies, early eighties. |
| Najib Aminy: | Luckily for Don, he found what he was looking for at something called Jesus Fest in central PA. |
| Don Lamb: | You’re talking like 30,000 people in the middle of a cornfield with a huge stage, and they’re all listening to at that point, Christian rock music, which was kind of new. |
| Speaker 1: | I found it hard to believe someone like you cared for me. You put the love in my heart. |
| Najib Aminy: | In a way. This was Don’s version of taking psychedelics at Woodstock. |
| Don Lamb: | It transformed my life from gray to full color. |
| Speaker 1: | Put the love in my heart. Hallelujah. |
| Najib Aminy: | Don wanted to experience his Christianity in a far different way. In other words, Don wanted to talk with God. So he becomes a charismatic Christian. Now he knows that being in dialogue with God can raise some eyebrows and admits that even he’s skeptical at times. |
| Don Lamb: | If I get a “Thus sayeth the Lord” every day, that’s probably a little… There’s healthy interaction with God, but we believe sometimes in the charismatic circles, everyone’s looking for a word from the Lord all the time or from each other, and that can become almost hocus pocus. |
| Najib Aminy: | Today of Don’s co-pastor of LifeGate, even though he has no formal training. |
| Don Lamb: | So I did not go to any college for ministry. |
| Najib Aminy: | LifeGate is nondenominational and Don describes it as an independent evangelical church with a congregation of people who come from all different backgrounds. |
| Don Lamb: | We call ourselves spirit-filled, which would lend itself to a charismatic church. So that’s who we are. |
| Najib Aminy: | Don’s church is in Elizabethtown, which is a pretty small place. About 12,000 people live here, some right next door to each other and others who live farm fields away. Don’s church can fit no more than 1 percent of the entire town, and yet in recent years, his church has had an outsized reputation for pushing people’s buttons. |
| Tim Runkle: | I don’t want to just throw them under the bus, but they are coming with strings attached. |
| Najib Aminy: | Tim Runkle goes to a different church. He’s a working geologist, also active in local politics and goes to a lot of Elizabethtown’s public meetings. Now, these meetings aren’t the most exciting, but during the pandemic, he noticed a shift in the comments people were making. |
| Don Lamb: | I believe that God created this world and he’s in charge of it all, and I believe that our constitution comes from God, and so we have to honor the Constitution. |
| Tim Runkle: | They were making public comments and I looked up their social media and I noticed that they were regularly attending a church in the area. |
| Najib Aminy: | That church would be LifeGate. |
| Tim Runkle: | And I just peeked at that church and I noticed, hey, they got sermons out there. |
| Najib Aminy: | More and more of those sermons were about the pandemic. Lockdowns had a long ripple effect across the country, including here in Lancaster County. Houses of worship were not immune. Closed doors met fewer donations and broken connections with the faith, which left some churches in a critical state. In those early weeks, Don held services outside in the church parking lot, but eventually he moved indoors sooner than most. But kept the livestream on for those not ready to come inside. And so Tim intrigued by what he saw at his local government meetings, started listening to Don’s livestream. |
| Tim Runkle: | I work at home. I’m doing my normal work answering emails. I’m just letting it run in the background. It was very pivoted towards Covid conspiracies. |
| Don Lamb: | You’re going to say that what’s going on in the medical community is a holocaust of killing people. And immediately the principality’s going, “You’re a nut job. You’re a nutter, you’re tinfoil hat,” and “Oh, I better be quiet. I don’t want to make anybody upset. I want to get along.” No, a thousand times. No. |
| Tim Runkle: | There were shocking things and I’m just like, “Goodness.” |
| Don Lamb: | People go, “Well, you guys really have weird sermons at LifeGate.” That’s the world my people are living in. That’s why you have weird sermons because you’re living in a weird world, and we’re going to address every problem with faith. |
| Najib Aminy: | After virtually attending Don’s church, Tim makes the connection about the people showing up at his local civic meetings and LifeGate. And not long after he makes this connection, members of Don’s church show up to a different kind of political meeting that’s not in Pennsylvania, but in Washington D.C. In January on the 6th. |
| Speaker 2: | In the crowds at the nation’s capital, yesterday was a group of close to 200 people who left from Elizabethtown yesterday morning to show their support for President Trump. |
| Don Lamb: | We went there and stood up for our own sense of injustice. |
| Najib Aminy: | Don made the local news. He says that no one from the church went inside the capitol that day. But they were outside the building after attending Trump’s speech. His brother Doug, led the sermon at LifeGate the Sunday after the 6th. |
| Doug Lamb: | Lord, our hearts are broken. Lord, we weep over the brokenness of our nation and where we stand today. |
| Najib Aminy: | January 6th did not turn out the way Don thought it would. |
| Don Lamb: | I questioned myself like, are we hearing from God or not? So of course you go back and you say, “Lord, fine tune my receiver because there could be some static here.” |
| Najib Aminy: | While 2020 was a big political loss for Don, he kept fiddling with his own spiritual dial, hoping for a clear reception with God, and he kept asking himself, how does the church meet this moment? How can it stay involved? |
| Don Lamb: | So he said, how do we keep the gospel center but tune into what’s really taking place in the country and not just be head in the sand, Jesus loves you kind of Christians? |
| Najib Aminy: | Don doesn’t want his congregation to worship in silence. He wants them out in the world and engaging in the so-called culture wars. |
| Don Lamb: | This is not a monastery. This is a mission station. We send people out. |
| Najib Aminy: | So he uses a Sunday pulpit to rally the troops. In 2020, they had already tried to engage at the national level and lost. But what if this time they went hyperlocal and started with what was happening in their own backyards. Enter the school board. |
| Don Lamb: | Steve and Danielle have gotten on fire. We need to pray for them. These guys are going to need warfare prayer to get on the Elizabethtown area school board. They’re not going to get on there without us praying. There’s this fun of people that don’t want them there. |
| Najib Aminy: | For a long time, the schools here brought people together and gave them commonality, but the election for school board quickly became a source of conflict and suddenly mundane meetings became politicized and intense. |
| Kristy Moore: | People will say, I won’t vote for you because you’re a Democrat and so you’re for abortion. |
| Najib Aminy: | Kristy Moore is a public school teacher and she’s a Democrat and a Republican stronghold. |
| Kristy Moore: | And I will say, I promise you, I will never perform an abortion in our school district. |
| Najib Aminy: | She’s run for the Elizabethtown school board three times and is 0-3. But in 2021, she started to notice that this wasn’t your typical Democrat losing in a red county race. The people she ran against all had something in common. All but one of them were members of Don’s church, LifeGate. |
| Kristy Moore: | This was a takeover to me. The line between them as candidates and them as people that belong to this church was very blurred. |
| Najib Aminy: | And they were blurring the line in other political offices too. Members of Don’s church won seats on the local Republican Party committee, including his wife and son. That committee has the ultimate say in who gets to run for town board, school board, and all the way on up on the Republican ticket, and of the local Republican committee seats nearly a quarter have ties that go back to Don’s church and to Kristy, this all had Steve Bannon written all over it. |
| Steve Bannon: | There are no whining and no tears in the war room. |
| Najib Aminy: | Yes, that Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist who’s serving a four-month term in federal prison for ignoring a subpoena related to the January 6th insurrection. |
| Steve Bannon: | We’re taking action and that action is we’re taking over school boards, we’re taking over the Republican Party through the precinct committee strategy. We’re taking over all the elections. Suck on this. |
| Kristy Moore: | We see them following that playbook. |
| Najib Aminy: | For being such a small church, LifeGate is having a profound impact in political reach in its surrounding community. So what does Don make of the allegations that his church is blurring the line between church and state? |
| Don Lamb: | We don’t live in a Christian nation. We live in this Republic that allows all faiths to thrive in their own pursuit. To the Christians that are very conservative that say there is no separation of church and state are wrong. Okay, that’s my humble opinion. |
| Najib Aminy: | Say that one more time. |
| Don Lamb: | There’s very conservative Christians in America that say that there is no separation of church and state. There is a separation of church and state. |
| Najib Aminy: | But Don’s not finished. |
| Don Lamb: | They were not saying the church wasn’t supposed to be involved in this state, but there is no laws that can be made to perpetuate Christianity, make people get saved, make people become Christians. However, every law has a moral implication and that’s where everything gets gray. |
| Najib Aminy: | Don says he can’t help that members of his church run for office. |
| Don Lamb: | Those are people who are called to the political mountain. So they ran for school board and lo and behold, LifeGate has four school board members from our church, and that made us a target, like “You’re coming to take over E-Town.” No, we’re sowing our value system into the school district, but we can’t take over the school district. |
| Najib Aminy: | The political mountain, it turns out, is more than just a metaphor. It’s a landmark on a much larger spiritual map. |
| Al Letson: | That story was Reveal’s Najib Aminy. Coming up, where does that spiritual map lead? |
| Speaker 3: | The return of Christ, the apocalypse, the end of times. |
| Al Letson: | That’s next on Reveal. |
| Al Letson: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. At Don Lamb’s LifeGate church in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, there’s one name that you’ll hear over and over again. |
| Don Lamb: | And so Dutch Sheets shared this post this week about who Jesus is. |
| Al Letson: | Dutch Sheets. Don’s met him a few times and knows his teachings. |
| Don Lamb: | So let me go back to this quote from Dutch Sheets. This is a powerful quote, just came out last week. “We live in a time of-” |
| Al Letson: | Don is pretty fond of Dutch and so are a lot of other people. Dutch has a following. He used to be a pastor, but today he’s the CEO of his own ministry and preaches online on YouTube. |
| Dutch Sheets: | Hello. Thank you for joining me today for Give Him 15. |
| Al Letson: | Give Him 15 has more than 340,000 subscribers and it’s Dutch’s brand. There’s a Give Him 15 app, a podcast, a blog. He even has merch. And if you watch Dutch’s videos, you’ll start to notice something that he doesn’t so much pray as he does preach about politics. |
| Dutch Sheets: | Attend a church that isn’t afraid to preach truth, including the truth regarding America’s birth by God and by all means attend one which teaches and encourages its congregants to vote biblical values. |
| Al Letson: | Dutch is like an influencer only in conservative Christian circles, and he isn’t alone in this. He’s a part of a growing global charismatic movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. Now, this is not Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority of the 1980s. |
| Jerry Falwell: | We are in imminent peril as a nation. We are rotting from within. Our families are falling apart. |
| Al Letson: | Yes, Falwell painted a grim picture of American society. And yes, he gave some fiery, divisive speeches that ignited the culture wars. But NAR is still different because it’s led by a loose network of people who call themselves modern-day apostles and prophets. |
| Paula White-Cai…: | That is my main call to be a prophet to the nation. |
| Al Letson: | People who have prophecies. |
| Speaker 4: | God is going to do something supernatural in these elections. I believe- |
| Al Letson: | And believe that Christians are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of society from public schools to the arts and politics. |
| Speaker 5: | Supreme Court justices, if we get two more, come on, if we get two more, we will be able to overturn demonic laws and decrees that has held this nation in captivity. Please pray for me because I am stirring up- |
| Al Letson: | NAR has millions of followers. Some experts say it’s the biggest Christian movement in centuries, and its ideology has seeped into evangelical churches across the country churches like Don Lamb’s. Mother Jones senior reporter Kiera Butler explains how this movement has become a force in American politics. |
| Kiera Butler: | When I first learned about the New Apostolic Reformation, I assumed it was a Protestant denomination like Baptists or Presbyterians. So I googled NAR church near me. I thought I could just pop into a service and see what it was all about, but nothing came up. Then I thought it must be non-denominational, maybe its own independent evangelical church. So I searched again and still nothing. And what I quickly discovered was that NAR isn’t so much a church as it is a network of people all over the country, the world really that spreads a particular type of charismatic Christianity. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | The movement is sort of decentralized. It’s hard to pin down, it’s hard to concretely define, and that’s what makes it so elusive to describe. |
| Kiera Butler: | This is Reverend Naomi Washington-Leapheart. She works for Political Research Associates, which is a watchdog group that monitors extremist activity. And NAR has been on her radar because her organization believes that this brand of Christianity is trying to get rid of the separation between church and state. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | Part of what we’re trying to do is expose these threats that are coming from places that have been ignored before. |
| Kiera Butler: | She says the current version of NAR began back in the 90s with a man named C. Peter Wagner. |
| C. Peter Wagner: | We will not see sustained transformation of cities or nations without controlling vast amounts of kingdom wealth. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | He was a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, and he noticed that churches outside of denominational structures were the fastest growing churches, not only here in the US but around the world. |
| Kiera Butler: | In other words, all these little churches like Don’s were growing fast. And Wagner was taking note of this trend. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | And he saw in that a paradigm that could be shaped and organized and led. |
| Kiera Butler: | Not by him or by traditional leaders like say church elders or ministers, but by modern-day apostles and prophets. |
| Speaker 6: | Apostles have a tremendous authority in the churches of the New Apostolic Reformation. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | Think of apostles as spiritual CEOs. They’re charged with strategizing and executing the word of God as revealed to the prophets. |
| Speaker 7: | And at 3:30 in the morning, the Lord showed me a broom going up and down the pillars of the Supreme Court building. |
| Kiera Butler: | Who are interpreting the word of God, interpreting the Bible. |
| Speaker 8: | I believe that God is actually bringing America to a day of reckoning on the shedding of innocent blood. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | Hearing from God, hearing from the spirit of God. |
| Speaker 7: | That I’m going to sweep and clean the entire federal court structure of the United States. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | What will happen, what is God’s vision for the future? |
| Speaker 8: | I believe God has shifted the whole conversation from the coronavirus to the courts. |
| Kiera Butler: | These are just two of the prominent apostles and prophets in this movement. To people who aren’t part of a charismatic religion, the idea of God speaking about politics through dreams might sound strange or outlandish, but it’s not to people in the NAR movement including pastors. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | So pastors are, for lack of a better way to say kind of the foot soldiers right? Pastors have incredible influence still in many Christian contexts, and they’re in charge of distributing the message to the masses. |
| Kiera Butler: | They’re like maybe in the company analogy, the salesmen. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. |
| Kiera Butler: | Don Lamb doesn’t think of himself as a salesman for the movement, but he does believe in one of NAR’s central tenets. |
| Don Lamb: | We seek the face of God. The remnant seeks the face of God, engages in the culture, gets involved in the messy. You got to get involved in the messy, the mountains of influence and cries out for revival. |
| Kiera Butler: | So when Don says mountains of influence, he means the many parts that make up a society. Some people call them spheres or pillars. And you’ll also hear NAR followers talk about taking dominion over these mountains. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | The idea is that Christians and specific Christians should take complete control over these seven pillars for the good of the whole society. So we want all of our business leaders to believe in Dominionist ideologies. We want our political leaders, we want our school board, our education leaders. |
| Kiera Butler: | There are actual seven mountains, business, government, education, religion, family, arts and entertainment, and media. And the idea is to have Christian leaders at the top of these mountains so that their influence can trickle down. And there is an end game here. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | To bring about the end times. If Christians can fulfill this seven mountain mandate of exercising dominion in each of these pillars, then we will hasten the return of Christ and catalyze sort of the apocalypse, the end of times. So that’s the end game to bring about the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. |
| Kiera Butler: | Ushering in the end times may seem radical, but idea is spreading in part because NAR has no official structure. There’s no one making rules about who can teach which concepts. And even pastors who don’t identify as being part of this movement are beginning to adopt these doctrines. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | You won’t really find people with a card-carrying NAR membership card in their wallets. |
| Kiera Butler: | Sometimes that’s because they know NAR is being scrutinized and they don’t want to be associated with the movement. But many times congregants don’t realize that the ideas they’re hearing are connected to this movement or its political agenda. Reverend Naomi had this experience herself. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | I actually think that I grew up in a school community that had loose connections to Dominionist theology. |
| Kiera Butler: | Growing up, Reverend Naomi was a conservative Christian Baptist. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | We would not have called ourselves members of the New Apostolic Reformation movement. We would not even have called ourselves Dominionists. But I remember being taught in my black private Christian school on the west side of Detroit that God’s enemies needed to be defeated on a spiritual level. |
| Kiera Butler: | Spiritual warfare and casting out demons are nothing new to evangelical churches. But what is new is the way many NAR followers believe demons are controlling people whose politics they don’t agree with. And right now, that means anyone who isn’t rooting for Trump. |
| Speaker 9: | So right now, let every demonic network that is aligned itself against the purpose, against the calling of President Trump, let it be broken. Let it be torn down in the name of Jesus. |
| Kiera Butler: | NAR prophets and apostles claim Donald Trump has been divinely chosen to run the country. In the days leading up to the 2020 election, Paula White-Cain, a televangelist NAR leader who considers herself Trump’s personal minister, put out this warning. |
| Paula White-Cai…: | Any person’s entities that are aligned against the president will be exposed and dealt with and overturned by the superior blood of Jesus. |
| Kiera Butler: | And shortly after Trump’s defeat, Dutch Sheets and a group of apostles traveled to several swing states including Pennsylvania and held large prayer rallies to claim the election was stolen. |
| Dutch Sheets: | We demand legal votes to be counted and illegal votes not to be counted. In the name of Jesus, I ask you to go to the White House and visit that man. |
| Kiera Butler: | Around the same time, Paula was out rallying people to fight, |
| Paula White-Cai…: | Strike and strike and strike and strike and strike until you have victory for every enemy that is aligned against you- |
| Kiera Butler: | Then shortly before January 6th, Dutch shared a dream from another prophet. |
| Dutch Sheets: | We then heard a cavalry bugle playing the signal to charge, and we began moving toward the Capitol. Not at a full gallop, but at a steady, determined, fast trot. |
| Kiera Butler: | And on January 6th, standing on a stage outside the White House, Paula gave the opening prayer. |
| Paula White-Cai…: | I secure POTUS. I thank you for President Trump. I secure his purpose. I secure his destiny. I secure his life God and I thank you- |
| Kiera Butler: | Paula and many other NAR leaders would go on to continue to spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. NAR hasn’t backed down. They still believe Trump has been anointed by God and they’re still trying to get him elected. And while the race for President is very high stakes, Reverend Naomi points out that NAR’s influence in people’s own backyards is equally important. |
| Naomi Washingto…: | I just want to say, don’t forget that we’re seeing this play out on the local level. We have rank-and-file NAR Christians who are pursuing office locally, who are raising money for campaigns locally who are throwing their weight behind local and state races that will be abundantly more consequential to everyday Americans. |
| Kiera Butler: | From the highest ranks of national leadership all the way down to hyper local campaigns, it’s all part of the seven mountains taking dominion over society, including that one essential mountain of politics. |
| Al Letson: | That story was reported by Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler and produced by Reveal’s Steven Rascón. We reached out to both Dutch Sheets and Paula White-Cain to ask about their part in the insurrection and about whether they believe Christians should control society. They never responded. When we come back, a crucial part of scaling those seven mountains, a legal team. |
| Speaker 10: | In Lancaster County, the Hempfield School District voted seven to one in favor of allowing a Harrisburg law firm to help form its policy on transgender athletes. |
| Al Letson: | That’s next on Reveal. |
| Al Letson: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. We just heard about the New Apostolic Reformation or NAR for short, and how this movement is hard to track because it has no official structure. It’s more like a loose network of people who a lot of times either don’t want to admit they follow NAR or don’t know that their beliefs align with the movement. That made us wonder about Don Lamb, the co-pastor of LifeGate. Is he a member of this movement? |
| Don Lamb: | Not only am I not a part of NAR, I don’t believe NAR truly exists in the framework that people think it exists. |
| Al Letson: | Don says this so-called movement is all just an attempt by liberals and progressives to stigmatize Christianity because they’re uncomfortable with it. |
| Don Lamb: | So NAR to me is overhyped. It is not a danger. It’s not this conspiracy movement that a lot of people make it out to be. And so it becomes like this bully pulpit or it becomes this pejorative term where, “Oh, you’re part of NAR, so you must be trying to take over America.” That’s ridiculous. |
| Al Letson: | Ridiculous or reality? Because in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, Don’s been trying to, as he puts it, influence one of those seven mountains, education, mostly through the school board where several of his congregants now sit. |
| Don Lamb: | It just so happens that these openings opened and we had people that were willing to run and we won the election. |
| Al Letson: | But getting on the school board was just the first step because what can the school board actually do? For starters, seek legal counsel. |
| Speaker 11: | The Elizabethtown School Board in Lancaster County voted eight to one to work with the Independence Law Center. |
| Al Letson: | It turns out school boards across the county have signed up with a legal dream team that has a reputation for taking controversial cases, the kind of cases that have the potential to change not just federal law, but cultural norms. Reveal’s Najib Aminy tells us how three letters are so important in the larger spiritual war, and just a heads-up, this story includes mentions of suicide. |
| Najib Aminy: | The three letters, it’s I as in India, L as in Lima, and C as in Charlie, I-L-C, Short for the Independence Law Center. The ILC focuses on religious liberty cases, the kind of cases that involve clients like the postal worker who didn’t want to work on Sundays, or the high school football coach who wanted to pray after games, but probably their most famous case, the one that made headlines is this one. |
| Speaker 12: | It’s a narrow victory for Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Wood and dozens of other companies that sued arguing they cannot be forced to provide contraceptives that violate the company’s religious beliefs. |
| Najib Aminy: | It was a landmark case that went all the way up to the Supreme Court. The ILC represented Conestoga Wood, a Pennsylvania-based furniture company, owned by a Christian Mennonite family. The family believed that because contraception prevented the creation of a human life, it was immoral and they didn’t want their employee health plan to cover it. They won the case and the rules changed for all private companies. It was a blow to millions of women seeking contraceptives. |
| Now, this is no small legal team working miracles. It’s part of a broader Christian right network that advocates for what they call pro-life, pro-family and pro-Christian values at all levels of government. And critics say the law firm is trying to get back in front of the Supreme Court by focusing on, you guessed it, school boards. | |
| Speaker 13: | In Lancaster County, the Hempfield School District voted seven to one in favor of allowing a Harrisburg law firm to help form its policy on transgender athletes. |
| Najib Aminy: | The Hempfield School Board sought the advice of the ILC after a controversy erupted around a sophomore transgender student who is allowed to participate on the girls track and field team. After the law firm got involved, it introduced a new policy requiring transgender athletes to only participate in sports that align with their gender at birth. |
| Speaker 13: | The Hempfield School District becomes the first district in Pennsylvania to pass a policy of this kind. |
| Najib Aminy: | It was one of the law firm’s first victories in Lancaster County, and since then, it’s been racking up more clients, albeit pro bono. |
| Speaker 14: | Another central Pennsylvania school district is looking at using the Independence Law Center, specifically Warwick school district will be- |
| April Hersh…: | There’s three policies that the Independence Law Center wants to pass. |
| Najib Aminy: | Dr. April Hershey was the superintendent of the Warwick School district for 15 years. |
| April Hersh…: | One is on pronoun use, one is on private spaces, bathrooms and locker rooms, and one is on participation in sports. I don’t know of anyone in our school district, but for most of my colleagues, where this has ever been a concern. |
| Najib Aminy: | As Superintendent, Dr. Hershey met with the leader of the ILC to go over the organization’s proposed policies. |
| April Hersh…: | He tried to explain to me how he cares about all students, and this is just protection for students, et cetera. And at the end of that meeting, I said, “With all due respect, I believe this flies in the face of Title IX.” |
| Najib Aminy: | Title IX laws are federal laws meant to protect students from discrimination at school. The Biden administration recently updated them to make the protections stronger around gender identity. A group of conservative attorneys general challenged those protections and the whole thing is now tied up in court. Should the Biden administration win, Dr. Hershey believes the ILC’s policies would violate the new federal mandate, and she’s not the only one. |
| April Hersh…: | The district’s insurance carrier sent a letter to our board saying, “If you try to adopt these policies, you may not be covered in the event of a federal lawsuit because you’re putting something out there that puts you at risk.” So all these warning signs were flashing, and I kept saying to them, “Please don’t do this. I think you’re putting the district at risk,” but the board wouldn’t have it. And so they took a vote in May, and then the board voted nine to zero to move forward with that recommendation. So at that time, I knew it was time for me to find an exit. |
| Najib Aminy: | After 15 years as Superintendent, Dr. Hershey resigned. At first glance, you could chalk up what has been happening to school boards across Lancaster County to that ongoing and never-ending cultural war, but it turns out it’s part of the spiritual war too. It is a threat to a democratic society and it needs to be called out as such. |
| Mark Clatterbuck is an associate professor of religion at Montclair State University, and lives in Lancaster County, and when we spoke, a school district near him, Penn Manor, was considering working with the ILC. | |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | This is not a Penn Manor issue. This isn’t even a Lancaster County issue. It affects all of us. |
| Najib Aminy: | Mark is alarmed because he spent time as an evangelical pastor in Montana. He’s familiar with the so-called Mountains of Influence and taking dominion or control over different facets of society, and he’s connecting it all to what’s happening here. |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | They’re not just talking about how can we plan better youth events for our kids? They’re saying, how can we get in positions of policymaking power to impose this ideologically religiously driven view of how America should work? |
| Najib Aminy: | Mark is no longer evangelical and he doesn’t want to see the ILC come to Penn Manor. He’s been getting involved, but for more personal reasons. |
| Ashton Clatterb…: | I want teens to make the changes that they wish to see in the world. |
| Najib Aminy: | This is Mark’s son, Ashton Clatterbuck, or Ash for short. He’s speaking to a local TV news crew about the need for lawmakers to pass tougher gun laws. |
| Ashton Clatterb…: | The youth of this country watch their every move and will be voting in a couple of years, and that their policies do affect us and do impact our lives or lack thereof. |
| Najib Aminy: | This was in the wake of the Parkland High School mass shooting in Florida in 2018. Ash spent a lot of time as an activist for many causes, environmental issues, social justice, LGBTQ rights. He was always out protesting, but one day Ash wanted to show up to the ReAwaken Tour, an event that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had organized, that has strong ties to Christian nationalism. He asked his dad for permission to go. Mark said yes and went with his son. |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | I don’t know if anyone stood up there and then sat back down without making some sort of hostile, dehumanizing comment about trans youth. |
| Najib Aminy: | It’s probably worth sharing here that Ash transitioned when he was in high school, and part of the reason why Ash wanted to attend that ReAwaken Tour was to make a point, a silent act of protest. |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | So General Michael Flynn was there, and next thing I know, Ash is over talking with Michael Flynn and- |
| Najib Aminy: | I’m sorry, what? |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | Ash is talking to General Michael Flynn at the ReAwaken America rally in Lancaster County, and afterwards I’m like, “Ash, what was that about?” He’s like, “I don’t know. I thought, hey, it’d be cool to talk to him and just see what he’s about.” And I think Flynn thought, “What a great photo op.” He’s this young man, crew-cut hair. He’s an ultramarathon runner, ideal military candidate and grabs this kid and has him in his arm and gives him a handshake, having no idea that Ash is the person that he’s been blasting and dehumanizing. |
| But for Ash, it’s like he came back. He’s like, “Michael Flynn had no idea who I am,” and that was the point. “I’m not a monster. I am who I look like I am to you. You shook my hand as a young, vibrant, bright-eyed, articulate, bold kid who wants to make this country a better place and a more livable place.” | |
| Najib Aminy: | But earlier this year, Ash read about Nex Benedict, a nonbinary student who was bullied and beaten unconscious while at school in Oklahoma. One day later, Nex took their life. Ash was shaken by Nex’s story and was working on writing a piece for the local paper, connecting how anti-trans policies contributed to the violence Nex experienced. |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | He and I, we talked about that. We were in constant conversation about things and he did not have a chance to write that article before he took his own life. |
| Najib Aminy: | For Mark and his family, showing up at Penn Manor to voice their opposition to the district, bringing in the ILC feels like the best way to honor Ash’s legacy. |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | We don’t know how not to be in this fight. |
| Najib Aminy: | This August, Mark showed up to fight that fight and attended the Penn Manor School Board meeting where the vote over the ILC was taking place. |
| Speaker 15: | And we’ll call to order the Monday, August 19th Penn Manor School District School Board Director’s School Board meeting. |
| Najib Aminy: | And after an hour or so, the floor is open for public comment, and people on both sides of the debate speak their mind. |
| Speaker 16: | Why are these Christian nationalists and political activists offering you free services? Think about it. Think about all you had to lose should you partner with the ILC. Your reputations, your credibility- |
| Speaker 15: | Thank you. |
| Speaker 16: | Your ability to say you engage in critical and community building. |
| Speaker 15: | Thank you. |
| Speaker 17: | The ILC has been misaligned, misidentified, and demonized by the transgender movement to be perceived as the villain. |
| Najib Aminy: | And then Mark steps up to the mic. |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | These actions do not protect children. They kill children. If our son, Ashton, were still alive today, if he had come home to live with us this summer as he planned to do, I guarantee he would be here tonight, and I wish to God he was standing here in my place. I’m guessing that every one of you board members either have kids of your own or have kids in your life that you love like your own. Please, please stop playing politics with the lives of kids like mine. Stop playing politics with families like ours and start fighting instead for their safety, well-being and flourishing. That is your mandate as school board members. Thank you. |
| Speaker 15: | Thank you. |
| Najib Aminy: | The meeting continues without a hitch, as if all of that is normal. And then the board votes. |
| Speaker 15: | Do we have a motion? |
| Speaker 18: | So moved. |
| Speaker 15: | Do we have a second? |
| Speaker 19: | Second. |
| Speaker 15: | Any further comment or question? All those in favor? |
| Speaker 20: | Five affirmative votes. |
| Speaker 15: | All those opposed? |
| Speaker 21: | Four opposed. |
| Speaker 15: | Motion carries. |
| Najib Aminy: | The measure passes, five to four. The ILC is now special counsel to Penn Manor. And then Mark shouts from the back of the auditorium one last message to the school board. |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | And you’ve just declared war on our trans kids. We won’t forget that. You won’t get that goodwill back. |
| Najib Aminy: | I follow him as he walks out. |
| Mark Clatterbuc…: | After all the comments that said exactly what we knew, they want a Christian nation and they’re cool with that. Just raw and wrung out. That’s how I feel right now, and betrayed by members of the community. |
| Najib Aminy: | The ILC is now in more than a quarter of school districts in Lancaster County and has branched out its services to school districts in other parts of the state. The law firm did not respond to multiple requests for comment. An early proponent for the ILC was none other than Don Lamb, the co-pastor at LifeGate. He’s happy to see the law firm expand its reach across the county, even if it makes him unpopular with some people, but he doesn’t care and he tells his flock, neither should they. |
| Don Lamb: | When someone comes up to you and goes, “I am tired of Christian nationalism,” they’re ignoring the fact that the right that they have to argue with you came from Christians. |
| Najib Aminy: | In this case, he’s talking about the Founding Fathers. |
| Don Lamb: | It didn’t come from atheists, Hindus, Muslims, you name any other religion. It came from people who said, “You have the right to free speech, all the rights that you have.” |
| Najib Aminy: | And Don believes that freedom of speech does not exclude politics from being discussed at church on Sundays. |
| Speaker 22: | But we do have election processes taking place, school boards being changed. |
| Speaker 23: | We celebrate the victory of this past school board election, and we do. |
| Speaker 24: | Please pray for our E-Town school board folks. All right? I know that we have victories there, but we have a long way to go. |
| Najib Aminy: | These were some of the excerpts, and there were more, that I played for Don the last time we talked. |
| Don Lamb: | You did good, man. You listen to a lot of sermons there. My brother gives you a lot of fodder. So do I. What’s the percentage of the sermon material that that is? It’s probably 2 percent. |
| Najib Aminy: | But to hear this in any church, forget percentages, to hear that kind of message alone from the pulpit- |
| Don Lamb: | Right. |
| Najib Aminy: | Does that not feel like the church crossing that line or erasing or breaking down that division of church and state? |
| Don Lamb: | No, it’s not crossing the line because we did not tell anybody they had to vote for a candidate, this is the candidate that you must vote for. We are a congregation that our own members are involved in that process. |
| Najib Aminy: | It sounded pretty close though. No? |
| Don Lamb: | It said that you have to pray for them is what I said. I didn’t say you have to vote for them. |
| Najib Aminy: | But you bring up these school board races time and time and again. So respectfully, it feels a little bit different. |
| Don Lamb: | Respectfully, it isn’t different in this realm, is that that person is a member of my congregation and I’m supporting them. |
| Najib Aminy: | We talked respectfully for nearly three hours and Don did not budge. He is a believer in his cause. It’s no hidden secret that he’s hoping Donald Trump wins in November, but if he loses again, Don doesn’t believe that fire and brimstone will fall from the sky. Win or lose, this election, Don says, is not going to put an end to the spiritual war. When does the spiritual war come to an end? When does the treaty get signed? Who signs the treaty? |
| Don Lamb: | So if you look at biblical evangelical view of the gospel, it only ends when Jesus shows up as the prince of peace. Until then, there is going to be conflict. Until then, there’s going to be disagreement. Until then, there’s going to be a spiritual battle that’s going on and we do not believe everyone gets saved. That’s disappointing to people. It’s the gospel. We can’t throw that part of it away. God invites everybody into it, but many will reject it. |
| Najib Aminy: | So it might be a while. |
| Don Lamb: | It could be a while. |
| Najib Aminy: | And until then, the spiritual war will rage on. |
| Al Letson: | Don will be giving the final sermon before Election Day at LifeGate. He says the sermon has yet to be written. Our lead producer for this week’s show is Najib Aminy. Cynthia Rodriguez edited the show, with help from Marianne Szegedy-Maszak. You can read more of Kiera Butler’s reporting on Christian nationalism at motherjones.com. In addition to our election coverage here on the show, we’ll be releasing bonus interviews over the next few weeks, including a fascinating conversation I had with a Christian nationalist who decided to abandon the movement. That comes out October 16th, and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts. |
| Fact checking by Siri Chilukuri, Alex Nguyen and Ruth Murai. Legal review by James Chadwick. Our production managers are the Wonder Twins, Steven Rascon and Zulema Cobb. Score and sound design by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs and Fernando, my man, yo, Arruda. Our theme music is by Comarado Lightning. Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. Support for Reveal is also provided by you, our listeners. We are a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Al Letson, and remember, there is always more to the story. |