The Call

Transformation Michigan, the state affiliate of Rick Joyner’s The Oak Initiative that organized The Call: Detroit, sent a message to its members yesterday attacking Right Wing Watch, insisting that this blog “put out statements that were picked out of conference calls we posted that were twisted and turned and took what we were doing out of context.” Of course, Transformation Michigan doesn’t note which statements they found so controversial, and it appears the group is merely upset that they faced intense media scrutiny over claims made by The Call’s leadership that Muslims are demonic and should not be protected by the First Amendment.

Even more pathetic was Transformation Michigan’s assertion that The Call founder Lou Engle “did not” succumb to the pressure “to back down on his message.” In fact, Transformation Michigan pulled down their video, “Impacting Islam Through Prayer,” and Engle removed the reference to “the rising tide of the Islamic movement” from his website. One pastor who was involved in rallying support for The Call even said that organizers were “not visiting” mosques, although organizers, in conference calls posted by Rachel Tabachnick, had bragged about visiting mosques to dispel their supposed demonic influences.

In The Call's "Dearborn Awakening" section, fake “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem, whose fictitious backstory was exposed well before the rally, urged attendees to pray for Muslims to convert to Christianity. “Love and freedom were convenient catchphrases justifying the identification of nearly one-quarter of humanity with the demonic,” writes Haroon Moghul, a Muslim journalist who attended the prayer rally for Religion Dispatches. “Conflicts in the past could be safely broached, but when it came to today’s war on terror, the disingenuousness and ill-spiritedness of choosing a former Muslim with the worst possible perspective on Islam revealed Engle’s agenda and its overlap with fearmongering Islamophobes.” Rachel Tabachnick also points out that Saleem “has been producing anti-Islamic videos for the Oak Initiative.”

Another major feature of The Call: Detroit was its emphasis on recruiting African Americans to join Religious Right campaigns to outlaw abortion, combat gay rights and elect right-wing politicians.

Transformation Michigan emphasized in its message that not only will they continue to “tackle the threat of Islam” by starting a house of prayer in Dearborn but will also continue efforts to bring black voters into the conservative fold by building an “818 team” to “bring Biblical Worldview awareness to urban areas in Michigan” and distributing the discredited film Maafa 21, which claims that abortion is a plot to exterminate African Americans, to black churches. In addition, Transformation Michigan said they will work with anti-gay activist Frank Turek:

We all must realize that we just collided with Racism, Abortion, Islam, disunity in the church, false accusations, bowing to political pressures, seeker friendly attitudes, power and position in cities, lack of understanding regarding repentance and prayer, liberal theology - as well as doubt. What happened behind the scenes as TheCall at Ford Field on 11.11.11 was being organized over the months prior was very revealing.

I experienced the church accusing its own body as well as pressures for Lou Engle to back down on his message (he did not). I saw false accusations in the press that were swallowed by gullible people. One Black leader indicated to me that the seculaur media is Gospel to many in the city of Detroit. Right Wing Watch put out statements that were picked out of conference calls we posted that were twisted and turned and took what we were doing out of context. CAIR a terrorist organization (according to the Holy Land Foundation trial) made statements that were so false and almost amusing. When these things happen it makes us dig in and run harder. I give thanks for all things because [sic] we know they will work together for the good of God's eternal purpose.
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10,000 Intercessors in Michigan...and we will work on a statewide and national basis to facilitate them.

Breast Plate Prayer...Bishop Larry Jackson will be partnering with Transformation Michigan to help build the prayer movement in Michigan and see the goal of having every unsaved person being prayed for in Michigan.

Oak Intiative...and Transformation Michigan will partner in a greater way as we tackle the threat of Islam, the economy, and issues of the day.
Return to Conference Call Series...as we will have many guests and national leaders on to define, encourage, and exhort members of the body of Christ.

Maafa 21 (View Trailer on You Tube)... will be distributed in every city in Michigan as Transformation Michigan will work with national Black Pro-Life leaders. We will turn abortion in the cities and put an end to Planned Parenthood. Can we impact the next election? Yes!
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818 Team...will return and work with Transformation Michigan to bring Biblical Worldview awareness to urban areas in Michigan.
Dearborn House of Prayer...will continue to grow as Transformation Michigan will encourage participation to pray that the love of Christ will impact the Muslim communities in Michigan.
Establishing Truth on our Universities...will continue as we work with Dr. Frank Turek - Crossexamined.org - in establishing the truth of Gods Word and the existence of God.
 

An interfaith group of Detroit clergy have made tremendous headway in their work exposing the radical anti-Muslim and anti-gay agenda of Lou Engle and The Call: Detroit. However, it looks like Engle has misrepresented his prayer rally to many of the local pastors who have signed up to participate in his Ford Field prayer rally on Friday and Saturday.

Engle and other leaders of The Call, such as Rick Joyner and Jerry Boykin, have repeatedly discussed their plans to use the rally to convert Muslims. In the past, Engle has claimed that Muslims have been “fueling the demonic realm” and are beholden to “spiritual dark powers,” and has pledged “to expose the dark under-belly of Islam.”

Now that their vicious anti-Muslim views are under scrutiny by the media, organizers of The Call pulled from their website a video entitled “impacting Islam through prayer,” clips from which can still be seen here. They have also edited their website to remove Engle’s warning of “the rising tide of the Islamic movement,” reports the Dearborn Press & Guide (you can still find Engle’s original letter here):

Billed as a 24-hour gathering to “fast, pray and cry out to God,” TheCall organizers chose Detroit for specific reasons. According to the event’s Website, Detroit “has become a microcosm of our national crisis, economic collapse, racial tension, the rising tide of the Islamic movement and the shedding of blood of our children in the streets and of the unborn.”

“Christians of all denominations will be praying for the city of Detroit,” Weinzierl said.

But the reference to the “rising tide of the Islamic movement” caught the attention of the southeastern Michigan Muslim community. Although the phrase has been removed from the Website, local Muslim leaders are concerned the event is a thinly disguised rally against Islam.

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“It has nothing to do with any individual group whatsoever,” the Sterling Heights pastor said. “It’s not a prayer against anybody. It’s to pray for our area … It certainly isn’t an anti-Muslim thing.”

While Weinzierl says The Call: Detroit  “certainly isn’t an anti-Muslim thing,” someone apparently forgot to tell Engle, the founder and principal organizer of The Call, who said that the main reason he is in Detroit is to combat the “rising tide of the Islamic movement” and to pray for Muslim conversions.

Weinzierl is not the only pastor who seems to be mistaken:

Pastor Marvin Winans of Perfecting Church in Detroit, said he will be supporting Engle and TheCall. He said the summit is open to everyone.

"Jews can come, Islamics can come, Buddhists can come, but we're only going to be praying to Jesus," he said. "It is not anti-Islam."

Despite Winan’s claim that The Call is “not anti-Islam,” the chief organizers of the prayer rally have asserted that they are using The Call to “to pull down the spirit of Islam over our nation” and “bring down that strongman behind Islam.”

Another one of Engle’s allies appears to be misinformed about the works of The Call organizers:

Fears of TheCall taking on an anti-Muslim tone are uncalled for, said Apostle Ellis Smith, of Detroit's Jubilee City Church in Detroit, which is promoting the event on its website.

"Our focus will be on Ford Field, not visiting a mosque," Smith told The Associated Press Wednesday. "We're not praying against Muslims. We are going to be praying against terrorism that has its roots in Islam. We're dealing with extremism. We're against extremism when it comes to Christians."

Actually, visiting mosques and praying against Muslims is exactly what leaders of The Call have been doing throughout Michigan. Organizers of The Call have admitted to going to mosques in order to cast out demons:

The question must be asked, is Lou Engle hiding or misrepresenting his radical views to Detroit pastors?

In our reporting on Rick Perry’s The Response prayer rally, we highlighted the work of John Benefiel of the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, who gained notoriety for his claims that the Statue of Liberty is a “demonic idol” and that the District of Columbia is under a curse because of its name, which Benefiel says honors the goddess Columbia. He claimed that his group succeeded in divorcing the city from the control of the pagan god Baal and renamed it the District of Christ.

Benefiel uses what he calls the “Baal Decree of Divorce” [PDF] to cast out the demonic structures that he believes control and corrupt geographic areas. He claims that the divorce decrees are a vital part of spiritual warfare that will reduce a locality’s social, environmental, economic and spiritual ills by ending Baal’s jurisdiction over that area and inviting in God to rule instead. Now, Benefiel has taken his Baal divorce decrees to Michigan in preparation for The Call: Detroit.

Rachel Tabachnick and Bruce Wilson of Talk to Action posted audio clips today of organizers from The Call and Transformation Michigan, the state affiliate of the Oak Initiative, talking about how they are using spiritual warfare to combat the supposed demonic powers over the state. Organizer Anita Christopher discussed how she works on casting demons out of mosques, saying, “We do believe as do many of the prophetic and apostolic people that Baal is the strongman over our country and directly the strongman over Islam and freemasonry.” She added that we need to “set free ourselves from freemasonry and from Islamic influence.”

Benefiel and Christopher discussed with Transformation Michigan leader Rich Warzywak their efforts to “divorce Baal” from mosques, Masonic temples and even the Michigan Senate. Benefiel said, “We are for Free Masons and Mormons and Muslims getting free from the bondage that they’ve been under to know the Lord Jesus Christ.” “In your state in the Dearborn area in particular, that’s probably the biggest stronghold of Islam in our nation, well, in going to the Masonic lodges I believe that we are earning authority from God,” claimed Benefiel. He went on to say, “I believe we are earning authority to pull down the spirit of Islam over our nation.”

Our compilation video highlights the anti-Muslim of Engle, along with the other The Call and Oak Initiative leaders Rick Joyner and Jerry Boykin:

Last week, Brian noted that several of the leaders involved in Lou Engle's upcoming "The Call" rally in Detroit have been pleading ignorance about the anti-Islam agenda that is driving the event.

"The Call" founder Lou Engle has made it abundantly clear that he chose to hold the event in Detroit in order to target the state's Muslim population for conversion, especially in the nearby city of Dearborn.  

But Engle is not alone in organizing this event and several of the other organizers of the prayer rally are professional anti-Muslim activists. 

In fact, Rick Warzywak of Transformation Michigan was tasked by Lou Engle to take the lead in organizing the Detroit event and, as part of that process, Warzywak put together a leadership team that featured Rick Joyner and Gen. Jerry Boykin, both of The Oak Initiative:

Joyner is an anti-Muslim activist who declares that Muslims are enslaved by Islam and the only reason he doesn't want to see the Quran burned is so that people will read it just to see how bizarre it is:

Boykin, for his part, was the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under Donald Rumsfeld until he resigned after video emerged of him proclaiming that that US was engaged in a spiritual war against Islam.

Since then, he has become a full-time anti-Islam activist, serving as team leader for the "Shariah: The Threat To America" report while constantly attacking Islam and telling anyone who will listen to Islam does not deserve First Amendment protections and Muslims should be prohibited from building mosques in America, while warning that the Muslim Brotherhood is on the verge of taking over the United States, so much so that he fears that his granddaughters will be forced to wear burkas.

As Boykin sees it, there can be no interfaith dialogue among Christians and Muslims because the two faiths are at war ... and, as Boykin explained to Transformation Michigan, it is time for Christians to "go on the offensive" and take the fight to the enemy by claiming vacant lots in the name of Jesus so that Muslims cannot use them to build mosques: