Genesis of Christian Nationalism
Wallnau Gets Out the Vote for Trump
Monroeville, Pennsylvania, Sept. 28, 2024
On a hot fall day, a couple hundred evangelical Christians sporting shirts and hats with Trump slogans and Bible verses gathered on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. For hours, they communed inside a cavernous convention center. They worshiped. They sang. They swayed and spoke in tongues. They listened as speakers shared prophecies and conspiracy theories about election integrity. They spoke of the devil and demons and their individual mandate to cast out the forces of evil by voting for Trump. At midday, the Republican nominee for vice president, JD Vance, graced the stage, lending the event the campaign’s imprimatur.
It was the fifth stop of Wallnau’s swing-state Courage Tour, which blended charismatic Christianity, conspiracy theories and conservative politics in an effort to deliver Trump back to the White House.
Years earlier, during the 2016 campaign, Wallnau visited the then-candidate at Trump Tower. He claimed that after he left, God told him to read Isaiah 45: “Thus says the Lord to Cyrus, His anointed, whose right hand I have held — to subdue nations before him.”
Just as God had chosen the heathen Persian emperor Cyrus to restore the Jewish people from exile, Wallnau wrote in an October 2016 op-ed, God had chosen Trump to restore conservative Christians’ cultural power.
“I believe the 45th president is meant to be an Isaiah 45 Cyrus,” he wrote.
Wallnau and others saw it as a prophecy that justified evangelicals’ support for Trump, a twice-divorced man with a history of adultery, who bragged about sexual assault and whom hundreds of people said had cheated them in business dealings. Wallnau’s prophecy played a critical role in coalescing evangelical voters behind Trump.