Bannon's Threat: An Army of Christian Nationalists
In an Aug. 10 appearance on a World Prayer Network prayer call, Steve Bannon, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump who helped lead Trump’s plan to steal the 2020 election, proclaimed that “what we need is poll workers. … If we want to win, your congregations have to be in the counting rooms and prepared to have those knife fights.”
Bannon summoning Christian Republicans to work the polls is part of a broader strategy to make November’s midterm elections as chaotic as the 2020 election. Evangelical churches and large religio-political rallies have served as ground zero for organizing designed to encourage political contributions and election fervor among conservative Christians. The rallying call is the big lie that not only claims that Trump won in 2020, but that every election is compromised.
With Bannon openly recruiting poll workers, Turning Point USA Faith and the ReAwaken America Tour firing up their faithful and, as Turning Point USA Faith says on its website, "registering voters, and educating the Christian community on the connection between Faith and freedom," there's a comprehensive effort to mobilize conservative Christians this fall.
What Turning Point USA Faith and the ReAwaken America Tour are doing is not new. Christian Coalition, started by Pat Robertson in 1987, was designed to help to identify anti-abortion voters, but under the leadership of Ralph Reed in the 1990s, it became known as a powerhouse that succeeded in sending evangelical voters to the polls with its voting guides. Since that time, all sorts of meetings have arisen during election years to bring out the faithful to vote. The recent spate of these — starting with The Response, a daylong prayer rally held in Houston by then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry — is in the tradition of the Christian Coalition.
No longer is it enough to just get voters out to the polls or to pray. These organizations are designed to steer voters to their specific candidates, encourage them to work the polls and watch out for bogus voting. Republican candidates for office are even showing up at these large events.
Turning Point Action events are being investigated by the Arizona secretary of state over allegations of possible election law violations, The Arizona Republic reported. The allegations include the tax-exempt organization illegally promoting specific Republican candidates at its events, according to the Republic. The head of the Arizona Republican Party, Kelli Ward, showed up at a July rally to tell attendees to vote for David Farnsworth, who was running for a state Senate seat against Rusty Bowers, the so-called RINO (Republican in name only) speaker of the Arizona House, the Republic reported.