Julie Green went 0-for-2 on Tuesday. The self-proclaimed \u201cprophet\u201d was last seen dancing at Republican candidate Doug Mastriano\u2019s election-night watch party<\/a>. Green had prophesied that Mastriano was anointed by God and would be elected Pennsylvania\u2019s next governor. God had told her this, she said.<\/p>\n But Mastriano didn\u2019t win. He lost the election by a lot. So either God lied to Julie Green, or else Julie Green lied to everybody else. (Or maybe God was telling the truth, but God was honestly mistaken. Or \u2026)<\/p>\n Dan Cox, the Republican candidate for governor of Maryland, also lost by a large enough margin that networks were reporting his defeat shortly after the polls closed. Green had been a speaker at Cox\u2019s campaign rallies, telling his supporters the same thing that she had told Mastriano\u2019s \u2014 that God had assured her that Cox was going to win.<\/p>\n Julie Green\u2019s \u201cprophecies\u201d cannot be trusted. The things she says are certain to happen do not happen. The things she claims God told her would happen do not come to pass.<\/p>\n Will this have any effect on Julie Green\u2019s standing in the \u201cprophetic community\u201d of Pentecostal<\/a> and charismatic Christians who have previously regarded her as a respectable prophet?<\/p>\n Probably not. Failed prophecies are the norm in that community. If those folks were to stop listening to their prophets every time one of them said God told them something that proved to be false then they\u2019d have no prophets left to listen to. A track record of dismal failure and false prophecy doesn\u2019t appear to be detrimental to one\u2019s career as a \u201cprophet.<\/p>\n That means that the post below \u2014 about the utterly false prophecies and failures of the \u201cprophets\u201d Mark Taylor and Hank Kunneman \u2014 isn\u2019t going to diminish their lucrative ministry or cause any of their devoted followers to re-evaluate their prophetic legitimacy.<\/p>\n Both Taylor and Kunneman claimed that God had told them that President Trump would release cures for cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimers \u2014 magical cures long hidden and suppressed by the evil cabal of deep state globalists (wink, wink). That didn\u2019t happen but that doesn\u2019t matter to Taylor or to Kunneman or to any of the millions of people who \u2014 still \u2014 regard them as \u201cprophets.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year we looked at Liberty University\u2019s production of a low-budget biopic of \u201cfirefighter prophet\u201d Mark Taylor. See: \u201cLiberty U promoting biopic of Trump-idolizing conspiracy theorist<\/a>\u201d and \u201cLiberty University\u2019s hero \u2018prophet\u2019 eager for Trump to declare martial law<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n I was, at the time this first was announced, too gobsmacked by Taylor\u2019s sheer crackpottery and by the clumsy awfulness of Liberty\u2019s propaganda effort to notice how this collaboration represents a big generational shift within the religious-right faction of the Republican Party. But let\u2019s step back and notice what we have here.<\/p>\n The Trump Prophecy<\/em>\u00a0is explicitly a story from within the Pentecostal\/charismatic wing of \u201cINC\u201d Christianity. It\u2019s right there in the name: \u201cprophecy.\u201d Mark Taylor claims to have the spiritual gift of\u00a0prophecy<\/em>, which in that tradition means he believes that God speaks to him directly in visions that foretell the future. His story is being affirmed, endorsed, and promoted by Liberty University and by the school\u2019s leader, Jerry Falwell Jr.<\/p>\n Look back a generation and you wouldn\u2019t see this kind of comfortable collaboration between charismatic \u201cprophets\u201d and fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell Sr. In the 1980s and well into the 1990s, Falwell and other fundie preachers denounced such spiritual gifts and their claims of new and special revelation from God. Falwell et. al. argued that such claims were not merely unbiblical, but\u00a0anti-<\/em>biblical \u2014 an attack on and an affront to \u201cthe authority of the scriptures.\u201d The revelation provided by the \u201cliteral\u201d words of our inspired, infallible, inerrant Bibles (translated into English and interpreted exclusively by American men like them) were sufficient. That was the central message of these fundie preachers, and the purported \u201cprophecies\u201d of the self-proclaimed charismatic \u201cprophets\u201d challenged that, undermining the Bible\u2019s monopoly on revelation and thus, in their view, undermining the Bible itself.<\/p>\n This anti-Pentecostal strain of fundamentalism can still be found in fundie preachers like mega-church pastor John MacArthur \u2014 guys whose quest for power is channeled mainly within their religious fiefdoms. But fundamentalist leaders who have abandoned separatism in exchange for a quest for political power and cultural influence have become more cautious these days about potentially offending the charismatic\/Pentecostal white evangelicals they rely on as political allies.<\/p>\n This shift was gradual \u2014 a slow dance that began between Jerry Sr.\u2019s fundamentalist Moral Majority and Pat Robertson\u2019s charismatic Christian Coalition. Falwell and Robertson never saw eye to eye on charismatic gifts or the sufficiency of biblical revelation, but they developed a warm friendship based on their shared devotion to what both saw as the most essential component of their faith: Republican politics. (Blest be-ee the tie-ie that biiinds \u2026<\/em>)<\/p>\n Still, though, you\u2019d never have seen a fundamentalist from Jerry Sr.\u2019s time promoting the \u201cprophecy\u201d and special revelation of a guy like Mark Taylor. The fact that Jerry Jr. has no hesitation about doing so suggests to me that he\u2019s inherited all of his father\u2019s partisan politics, but little of his father\u2019s religious beliefs.<\/p>\n Back in June, when Liberty first began promoting its \u201cmajor motion picture,\u201d\u00a0Fox News ran a story about it.<\/a>\u00a0The Fox hook was that persecuted Christians were being denied their God-given right to run political ads on Facebook \u2014 a spin provided and suggested by the film\u2019s main money-man, right-wing Christian nationalist producer Rick Eldridge. \u201cWe think it\u2019s going to help unite this world but that\u2019s a message Facebook doesn\u2019t want us to tell,\u201d Eldridge told Fox.<\/p>\n Fox reporter Caleb Parke generally seems to agree that helping \u201cunite this world\u201d behind the divine right of Trump\u2019s authoritarian leadership is not an inherently \u201cpolitical\u201d or \u201ccontroversial\u201d proposition. But at least Parke does acknowledge that some of Mark Taylor\u2019s\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0\u201cprophecies\u201d might seem that way:<\/p>\n One of the more controversial claims Taylor has made, that is not included in the movie, is that President Barack Obama will be charged with treason and that Trump will release cures for cancer and Alzheimer\u2019s disease that the pharmaceutical industry has kept secret.<\/p>\n The word \u201ccontroversial\u201d is doing a great deal of work in that sentence. Whether or not the government and the pharmaceutical industry have been keeping secret cures for cancer and Alzheimer\u2019s disease is, according to Fox News, a matter of some \u201ccontroversy.\u201d<\/p>\n What we have here is a variation of a very old urban legend\/conspiracy theory. It was already an old trope back in 1951, when Ealing Studios made a delightful comedy romp based on the idea.\u00a0The Man in the White Suit<\/em><\/a>\u00a0stars a young Alec Guinness as a quixotic scientist who stumbles across a formula for creating a brilliant white fabric that repels dirt, never tears, and never wears out. His invention puts him at odds with the textile industry, which fears it will put them all out of business. So poor Alec Guinness winds up on the run, chased by crooked capitalists and angry mill workers alike. Hilarity ensues.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve surely encountered some version of this idea. The claim may be that \u201cthey\u201d already have a light bulb or a battery that never dies out, but we can\u2019t buy one because the invention has been suppressed by greedy industrialists whose fortune is based on planned obsolescence. Or perhaps \u201cthey\u201d already have invented a car that gets a thousand miles to the gallon, or cold fusion in a jar, or perpetual motion. But they\u2019re keeping it secret, suppressing it to protect their profits from selling us the inferior products they\u2019ve allowed us to have instead.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an odd idea, based in both a cynical critique of capitalism (the game is rigged by greedy rich people) and also in a credulous embrace of the most starry-eyed aspects of capitalist ideology (supply will always be created to meet demand, even if the thing demanded is impossible).<\/p>\n Mark Taylor\u2019s version of this conspiratorial legend is more sinister than\u00a0The Man in the White Suit.<\/em>\u00a0In his version,\u00a0\u201cthey\u201d have a cure for cancer and a cure for Alzheimer\u2019s, but \u201cthey\u201d refuse to share it with us common people. In Taylor\u2019s \u201cprophetic\u201d visions, Donald Trump \u2014 God\u2019s ordained champion of all that is good \u2014 will liberate these secret cures, the blind will see, the lame will walk, and good news will be preached to \u2026 um, white Christians.<\/p>\n I wish I could tell you that the prompt for this rambling post was something pleasant \u2014 that TMC was replaying old Alec Guinness comedies this month or something. But I\u2019m afraid that\u2019s not what spurred this discussion.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2022\/11\/WhiteSuit.jpeg\")
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