Over the past 24 hours you’ve likely heard stories about election workers facing pressure to support conspiracy theories, receiving bomb threats, or being intimidated by self-appointed monitors. These things have happened as political and religious leaders have long predicted violence this election season.
This includes threats of violence from leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) which have loomed over the 2024 election since the last presidential election. Many leaders of the NAR participated in the Stop the Steal activities before, during, and since January 6th, and many remain election denialists.
But what’s gone largely unnoticed are efforts, by this, perhaps the most significant religious movement of the 21st century, to train people to infiltrate election offices as election workers.
NAR connected organization Lion of Judah came to national attention last summer at an event in Wisconsin when its leader, Jacob Caleb Standifer, told the crowd that when the polls closed, they wanted Christians to be among those counting the votes:
You are actually going to be a paid election worker. You’re going to be trained by your local municipality. I call this our Trojan Horse in; they don’t see it coming, but we’re going to flood election poll stations across the country with spirit-filled believers.
Standifer’s Fight the Fraud website encourages “Christian Patriots” to get trained in order to influence “the mountain of government,” one of the seven mountains NAR-affiliated Christians must conquer in order to achieve societal dominion. The main articulator of the notion of the seven mountains is NAR political general, Apostle Lance Wallnau.
Standifer first came to public attention with The Courage Tour, a NAR voter mobilization campaign led by Wallnau, that staged events involving hundreds, sometimes thousands of activists. Standifer told scholar Matthew D. Taylor that they’ve been active in all 50 states.
According to Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch Standifer told a Courage Tour audience in July:
We spent months calculating and creating, meeting with experts, something that we felt like could take Christians and put them in a place of influence. Just imagine: It’s election night. Chaos is happening. The polls are closing. The volunteers are getting kicked out, but what if we had Christians across America and in swing states like Wisconsin that were actually the ones counting the votes and making sure what’s happening?
Anne Nelson caught Standifer’s act at the Tour event in Michigan. Reporting for The Washington Spectator she writes that, “[his goal] was to position armies of Christians as actual election officials to oversee the vote-counting process. He shared a QR code for Fight the Fraud, an online training project.”
Nelson continues:
Lance Wallnau interrupted, “And then when they kick everyone else out, you’re a spy in the camp!” Wallnau surveyed the crowd. “God can’t make this any easier,” he said. “Stand up and I’m going to induct you. I’m serious!” Wave upon wave of the Michiganders stood, by the hundreds, pledging to apply for election worker positions, many raising their right arm in an NAR salute.”
Stephanie McCrummen, wrote about the Wisconsin event for The Atlantic.
“I call this our Trojan horse in. They don’t see it coming, but we’re going to flood election poll stations across the country with spiritual believers.”
He flashed on the video screen the photo of Trump raising his fist after the July assassination attempt, blood streaking down his face. “Our enemy is actively taking ground and will do everything they can to win by any means necessary,” he said. “Our hour of action has arrived.” He added that he meant not only November but “what’s coming after that.” He did not elaborate on what that might be.
“The Lord is with you, valiant warrior,” Standifer said at one point. “Everyone say ‘Warrior.’”
“Warrior,” the crowd repeated.
The casting of ordinary election activities as acts of war, involving espionage, warriors, and armies is how the NAR leads its people into political action. Whether their infiltration of election systems leads to the kinds of false allegations of fraud, related conspiracism, and even violence that marked the Stop the Steal campaign, remains to be seen. What the warriors hiding in the Trojan Horse will do when they surprise their adversaries, also remains to be seen.
