Palin's speech to Women of Joy reveals connection to radical Christian nationalist 'Prayer Warriors'

Steve Benen draws our attention to a speech given by Sarah Palin last Friday in Kentucky to an evangelical women's group called Women of Joy, one in which she appears to deny the existence of church-state separation...

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What was perhaps most noteworthy -- and disturbing -- about Palin's speech, though, was how she publicly called out and thanked the "Prayer Warriors" who were out there on her side:



Thanks largely to the reportage of Max Blumenthal, we've known for some time that Palin was religiously affiliated with the "Prayer Warriors," but this is perhaps her first open public acknowledgment of it.

Who are the "Prayer Warriors"? Funny you should ask that: Bill Berkowitz explored that question for AlterNet:

Let’s Take Dominion Now!
By Dr. Peter Wagner

Let’s Take Dominion Now!

Social transformation, as I have been saying, is one of the strongest words that the Holy Spirit is clearly speaking to the churches today. But before many of us would be prepared to accept that statement at face value, we would need to be assured that what we think we might be hearing from the Holy Spirit is truly biblical. We are sure, for example, that saving souls is biblical, but how about transforming society?

I know this is a crucial question, because for years I would have said that working toward social change should not be considered a part of our Christian duty. I was taught that the world was supposed to get worse and worse, and the more it did, the closer Christ’s second coming would be. I believed that at some low point in history, all true believers would be snatched out of the earth and that those left behind would go through seven of the worst years of all, just prior to the Lord’s glorious appearing. Meanwhile, our job was to spread the gospel and get as many souls saved as possible so that they would be taken up with us in the rapture whenever it might come, and the sooner the better. However, I am now certain that there is a more accurate and a more biblical way of understanding God’s mission for us, which I’ll try to explain as convincingly as I can in this chapter.

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One of the two major columns that support social transformation is the church in the workplace, and workplace apostles help to tie the whole structure together.

A very important role in social transformation is that of territorial apostles. These are apostles to whom God has assigned key apostolic authority over a certain geographical region. I have no doubt that some nuclear-church apostles are also God-ordained territorial apostles. However, this new paradigm of the church in the workplace has brought me to the strong conclusion that the majority of territorial apostles will probably turn out to be extended-church apostles rather than nuclear-church apostles.

This means that we need to get on with the task of identifying workplace apostles, writing their job descriptions, commissioning them and supporting and encouraging them in every way. Until we do, stories contributing to transformation fatigue are likely to increase. We will continue to wonder why it is so difficult to implement the commission that Jesus, the second Adam, has given us—the commission to take dominion.

Let’s decide to move forward. Let’s take dominion now!