When Evangelicals Talk About the Election as "Spiritual Warfare"

Whenever I hear evangelicals talk about “spiritual warfare,” my brain starts playing “Onward Christian Soldiers” in my head. Sometimes my legs will almost start marching in place. This muscle memory is a reflection of how indoctrinated I was as a kid and of how much that Christian warfare music was a part of my life.

I paid a heavy price for that indoctrination — for being a girl who would do anything for God. And nowadays, when I see the conflation of religious rationalizations with political ends, I wonder how many other people will eventually look back and regret how they were taken in by the religious rhetoric.

When evangelicals cast the election as “spiritual warfare” against “satanic forces,” I remember how evangelicals cast me as satanic.

As a kid, I was repeatedly raped by a Southern Baptist pastor who then blamed me for having been a satanic temptress. He said I harbored Satan and cast the fault on me.

Other church leaders knew and apparently bought into his “she’s satanic” narrative. They told me to never again speak of it.

The pastor even conducted a sort of exorcism — making me kneel while he stood over me praying aloud to cast Satan from me. I slithered out of his office feeling all the more ashamed and all the more determined to never talk about it. Why would I want anyone to know that I had harbored Satan?

So, Satan was an effective tool for silencing me, for controlling me.

Satan was exploited for the institutional self-serving ends of covering up the pastor’s sexual abuse of a child and preserving his career.

And sure, all of that was terribly wrong, but here’s the thing… The wrong wasn’t only in the individuals who did it to me; the wrong was also in the complicity of countless others and indeed of the whole Southern Baptist system — the largest evangelical faith group in the country.

Decades later, when I began speaking out about what that pastor had done — and about many other Southern Baptist pastors — a top Southern Baptist official said I was part of a “satanic scheme.” And a Southern Baptist seminary president called me an “evil-doer.”

Yet again, using the power of Satan as a religious construct, evangelical leaders tried to discredit me, so that others would not believe what I was revealing about widespread clergy sex abuse within evangelicalism.

So, I’d say their “what’s satanic” meter is way out of whack. It’s not trustworthy.

Why should anyone put any credence in evangelical leaders to say what’s “satanic” when they “satanize” a child rape survivor while elevating a child rapist?

When evangelicals describe Trump as “anointed by God,” I remember how evangelicals defended my pastor-rapist as an “anointed” one.

Despite months of sexually abusing a kid — me — the pastor was cast with divine entitlement while I was cast aside and told to keep quiet.

He was praised from the pulpit as a great man of God. How blessed we all were to have had him as our youth pastor!

He was given a send-off in the church reception hall. Everyone hugged him. Then he was sent on his way to a bigger church and a higher salary.

Meanwhile, as a kid, I was left to sit with the shame.

Years later, as an adult, when I began documenting hundreds of other clergy sex abuse cases, again and again, evangelicals chastised me, saying: “Touch not mine anointed” – as if I were the one violating scripture by exposing pastors’ evil deeds.

“Anointed by God”: It’s a rationalization evangelicals use to turn a blind eye to all manner of men’s unholy awfulness. It’s a way of saying that someone is specially equipped by God for a holy task.

And now it’s being used in the political arena to lend the endorsement of God to authoritarian political ends.

Evangelical pastors lay hands on Donald Trump. (White House photo 2019)

When evangelicals describe Trump as “chosen by God” and “fulfilling a calling,” I remember how a pastor said that I was “called” and “chosen.”

I was a girl who wanted always and only to know God’s will and do God’s will.

So, when a pastor insisted that I had been “chosen by God” to be the pastor’s “helpmeet” in his holy work, those were powerful words. It was “God’s will,” he said, and I would be disobedient to God if I did not fulfill my calling.

As a child of whole-hearted faith, I fell for that. Faith demanded I follow God’s calling on my life, and what that actually meant was being a sexual service provider to the pastor.

Yeah. It was twisted. But that’s how ugly it can get when men claim to know “God’s will” and then use that claim to prod others into conformity with their own human ends.

Nowadays, I see how many are attempting to use this religious language of being “chosen” and “called” in the political arena, and it reminds me in my very bones of just how powerful religion can be as a manipulative tool for welding control over others. If you oppose those who claim God’s “calling,” then you get cast as opposing God.

When evangelicals label Kamala Harris a “Jezebel,” I remember how evangelicals called me a “Jezebel.”

She was thrown from a window, trampled by horses, left for dead, and devoured by dogs. You know they don’t mean you well when they call you Jezebel.

It’s an insult with deeply misogynistic roots. It suggests that the woman is “under the influence of demonic forces in a spiritual battle between good and evil.”

It’s biblical rhetoric that’s used as a justification for inciting hate.

“Any woman who is stepping into her power in any kind of way is going to be seen as this Jezebel who is deserving of violence.”

Why was I called a Jezebel?

Because I refused to be submissive and deferential, as their patriarchal system requires. Because I refused to keep quiet about clergy sex abuse. Because I didn’t simply take evangelical men at their word when they said “We’ll handle it,” when I could readily see that, in reality, time and again, their way of “handling it” meant keeping things quiet.

Calling me “Jezebel” was their way of trying to muster the power of religion to discredit and silence me.

Conclusion

When evangelicals muster the lexicon of “spiritual warfare” and cast political opponents as demonic, they exploit the power of God—and it’s a very authoritarian god—for their own human ends. Many people buy into the “godly” language because it resonates with their core self-identity as good people in the service of a righteous cause. It resonates with them almost by habit, like my reflexive muscle memory of marching to “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

And if opponents are cast as demonic, then there’s no compromise. Rather, the demons must be expelled—or exorcised—just as the pastor tried to do with me when I was a kid.

I’ve seen the power of that kind of “spiritual warfare” language. I’ve experienced first-hand how it can be weaponized for domination and control.

I lived the horror of that hell.

I do not want it for the nation.

I talk about this a bit in the new documentary short film, For Our Daughters. I hope you’ll watch it. Also, my book, Baptistland, is now available!