Behind closed doors, Wallnau said finding Charlie Kirk’s successor was his job
Lance Wallnau, one of Donald Trump’s earliest and most influential evangelical backers, steered paying supporters away from the midterm elections at a private weekend gathering in the Dallas-Fort Worth area earlier this month, The Guardian reported. Across three sessions at the “As One” weekend for paying “partners,” Wallnau spoke about the virtues of El Salvador’s prison system, school boards and the movement’s future. The midterms, then little more than three weeks away, were not mentioned once, according to the Guardian’s account of the events.
The silence carried into a follow-up “strategic ministry webinar” for As One members last Wednesday, less than two weeks before election day. “We all have a certain responsibility … but you can’t be responsible for the whole nation,” Wallnau said of the elections. “You’ve done your job. Your conscience is clear, and whatever comes out in the midterms is going to be. We’ll sort that out when it happens.” He urged followers to look inward rather than toward politics: “When you’re dealing with something you don’t like, something that isn’t working, something that isn’t clear,” he said, “there’s some seed of a greater benefit that can come out of that … maybe it’s going to be lifestyle, or maybe it’s going to be diet.”
At the weekend’s gala dinner, Wallnau said “Charlie Kirk’s death bothers me,” referring to the slain rightwing activist whose murder at a public event in Utah last year galvanized many on the right. He cast himself as the person to anoint Kirk’s successor. “I got to find that guy. That’s my job,” he said. “I feel more like a Samuel than a David” — a reference to the Old Testament prophet who anointed Israel’s kings.
He promoted El Salvador as a nation with “a president through prophecy,” a reference to the country’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, whom he said was building a “sheep nation” — a term for the godly nations that are separated from the “goat nations” in the end times. He also spoke approvingly of the eastern European nations Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, all of which have experienced hard-right political surges in recent years.
At home, he pointed followers toward local power. He praised churchgoers in Southlake, Texas, for taking over the school board and kicking out “progressive Marxist liberals and demonic ideologies.” He told those upset about a mosque in nearby Irving to “go vote out this city council,” and suggested the movement “infiltrate Islam.”
Wallnau said privacy was necessary because journalists “stalk me.” In a room in which only a handful of people appeared to be under 40, he acknowledged his following as “an ageing demographic.”
Wallnau, 70, is highly revered in evangelical circles, according to the Guardian’s account. He co-wrote the 2013 book “Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate,” which urges Christians to take control of seven spheres of society, from government and media to education and business. Two years later, he became one of Trump’s earliest champions, likening him to King Cyrus, the Persian ruler who was not of the Israelites’ faith but furthered their cause. Trump appeared to allude to that comparison at a recent rally in Kansas, recalling that “a certain pastor from Dallas, Texas” had said of him: “He might not read the Bible as much as us … But one thing about him – he’s the greatest leader.”
Wallnau has long espoused being both “overt and covert” in Christian politics, and helped write the blueprint for Christian nationalists within the Maga movement to turn their faith from personal salvation toward political, social and institutional conquest. He still champions Trump and Republican candidates in public — in the spring he praised Trump as “an actual Old Testament prophet king” whose “enemies are freaking out” because of his political skill. But behind closed doors he conceded that the Maga movement is struggling to appeal to young people, and urged supporters to think about building a post-Trump infrastructure, with leaders who will outlast the president.
During the 2024 election, Wallnau founded the Courage Tour, a traveling festival of faith and politics that toured swing states for Trump. His ministry booked more than a million dollars in income from the tour, but Wallnau has not sought to repeat it in this election cycle. Photographs accompanying the Guardian’s report showed Wallnau with a follower in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, on 28 September, and a “Kingdom to the Capitol” concert in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 5 October 2024.
He is an important cog in Ziklag, a secretive Texas-based Christian dominionist group with a minimum net worth requirement of $25 million for membership, whose operations were highly active and influential in the 2024 presidential election, targeting voter turnout, sex and gender issues and Christian mobilization. In leaked members-only videos addressing the group in 2023, Wallnau laid out ideas for the dark-money group’s electoral strategy: “You almost hate to put it out this clearly, because if somebody else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out,” he said. The group divided its battle plan into three operations for the 2024 election: Checkmate, which funded so-called electoral integrity groups; Steeplechase, which mobilized churches; and Watchtower, which stoked tensions over sexual identity and parental rights.
The political content Wallnau did offer looked past the midterms and, in the Guardian’s account, played on familiar far-right tropes. Repeating Trump’s claim that unrest in France was caused by immigration, he warned that “what’s happening in Europe could be coming here in 18 months.” He described the As One weekend as an exercise in focusing energy on the future: “Thirty-six months from now, a lot can change.” For now, he said, he was “pulling back” from current events toward Bible studies where “I don’t have to deal with anything negative.”
André Gagné, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal who has followed Wallnau for years, reviewed transcripts of the events and said private gatherings like these are a big part of his appeal. “He’s a populist,” Gagné said. “He impresses on Christians the need to get involved in societal transformation.”
In Gagné’s assessment, the silence on the midterms reflected strains in Trump’s coalition, even among some of his earliest and most victorious backers. “There’s fractures in the movement,” Gagné said. “My sense is that Wallnau feels he has to tread very carefully with what he’s going to say in overly defending Trump or overly talking about the midterms.” When Wallnau complains that journalists stalk him, Gagné added, “he’s actually bragging.”
The talk of a Kirk successor was partly about Wallnau himself, Gagné said: “He sees himself as someone that’s going to lead the way after Charlie Kirk.” Gagné said Wallnau’s distancing from Trump is not merely strategic but practical: he has to think about who comes next, one reason he is happy to point to leaders of other nations such as Bukele. “He talks about there are many Cyruses, that there are all these other very strong leaders that God is raising up,” Gagné said. “Trump is not the only one.”
Wallnau’s most recent book, “The Return of the Lion,” sets out the stakes in starker terms. “Revival is personal. Reformation is institutional,” he writes. “Jesus is coming back to execute vengeance on rebellious angels and everyone and everything aligned with them.” At the gala, Wallnau closed the evening by asking attendees to stand and join him in a karate chop, accusing partners of half-measures. “Here’s the problem,” he said. “[If] you don’t break a board, you break your hand.”