Marc Nuttle

A secretive ‘Super PAC’ tied to an Ohio political operative is planning to aid congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign after working to defeat South Carolina congressman John Spratt in the last midterm election. Chris Cillizza writes that “Citizens for a Working America, as the group is known, will be chaired by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Ed Brookover, a longtime political consultant and adviser to Bachmann, will be involved as will conservative lawyer and economist Marc Nuttle.”

Ken Blackwell’s ties to the Religious Right are well known, but Nuttle’s activism has flown below the radar.

Blackwell was Ohio’s Secretary of State from 2002-2006 whom after leaving office, unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006 and chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2009. He is now a senior fellow with the ultraconservative Family Research Council, a senior fellow with the far-right American Civil Rights Union, and a board member the pro-corporate Club for Growth. Columbus-based televangelist Rod Parsley vigorously backed his failed gubernatorial campaign and Religious Right activists endorsed his abortive bid for RNC chair. His staunchly anti-gay views will serve him well in the Bachmann camp, as Blackwell once compared gay people with arsonists and kleptomaniacs and same-sex couples with farm animals.

Nuttle is a Republican adviser and economist with deep ties to an extreme movement within the Religious Right composed of advocates of Seven Mountains Dominionism. Nuttle is in fact Chairman of The Oak Initiative, a far-right organization dedicated to promoting the Seven Mountains ideology. The group claims in its mission statement, “The Oak Institute is being developed to raise up effective leaders for all of the dominant areas of influence in the culture, including: government, business, education, arts and entertainment, family services, media, and the church,” otherwise known as the Seven Mountains of society that Dominionists think should be controlled by fundamentalist Christians.

The Oak Initiative’s president Rick Joyner, the founder of MorningStar Ministries, has claimed that God is planning to destroy California and that God used Hurricane Katrina to punish America for tolerating homosexuality. The Oak Initiative’s board is filled with leading proponents of Seven Mountains Dominionism, including Jerry Boykin, Janet Porter, Lance Wallnau and self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs. Lou Sheldon, the head of the Traditional Values Coalition who described LGBT activism as “the very face of evil,” is also a board member.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (Blackwell’s boss) and 2000 GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes addressed the Oak Initiative’s 2011 Summit alongside Nuttle, where Perkins called gays and lesbians “hateful” people who are “pawns” of Satan and Keyes urged Congress to impeach President Obama before he seizes power with the help of foreign countries. At the Summit, Boykin said that Obama is creating his own Brownshirt army to usher in Marxism and Joyner suggested that a secretive cabal crashed the economy to help Obama win the presidential election.

Nuttle spoke to Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries on how to “apply proper biblical principles to the marketplace and the workforce” and that God “has a plan and a solution for this current world crisis we find ourselves in.” Nuttle said that people “don’t have to figure” out all the economic solutions, “all you have to do is be obedient” to God. He also claimed that the United States is the only country with a government subservient to God: “Every other government in the world is some sort of government authority, it’s a dictatorship, or Islam where government is God, or where the dictator is God, or the Constitution is God, over the constituents.” Nuttle argued that “the fight is against the 30% [of politicians] who don’t care” about the decline of the economy, “because then there’s more room for government. Government’s what they want, socialism is the goal.” He ended his speech by saying, “lock your shields with each other against the enemy.” 

Earlier this year he addressed Liberty University’s Awakening 2011, the Religious Right political event hosted by Mat Staver of the LU-affiliate Liberty Counsel. Nuttle also appeared on God Knows with Jacobs, where he shared with the 'Prophet' his plan to solve the nation’s debt troubles.

As heads of the pro-Bachmann Super PAC, Blackwell and Nuttle will surely help Bachmann link her far-right economic views with her deep-seated social conservative activism.

One of the things I quickly discovered when I started reading up on the whole Dominionism and New Apostolic Reformation movements was just how quickly you could slide into "Six Degrees of Separation" talk when covering those involved in these movements. 

Obviously, not every person who shares a stage with someone like Cindy Jacobs or Lou Engle shares their views, though it is harder for organizers who include activists of this type in their events to make such arguments.

That is what got Janet Porter in trouble and that is why the Freedom Federation, the right-wing supergroup that includes groups like the Family Research Council, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, Liberty Counsel, Traditional Values Coalition, Wallbuilders and dozens of others, has to take responsibility for the decision to include groups like Generals International, Lou Engle and The Call, and Morning Star Ministries among the coalition members.

We haven't written much about Rick Joyner of Morning Star Ministries, but he runs a distinctly political organization called "The Oak Initiative," which is also a member of the Freedom Federation, and which has a mission to "find and help develop principled and effective Christian leaders who can mobilize and organize a cohesive force of activated Christians" and place them "on every level where government is found, from the most local to state and national levels."

The Oak Initiative has a distinctly Dominionist/7 Mountains agenda "to raise up effective leaders for all of the dominant areas of influence in the culture, including: government, business, education, arts and entertainment, family services, media, and the church."  And it also has a Board full of Religious Right activists including Janet Porter, Lou Sheldon, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Cindy Jacobs, Lt.Gen. W.G. "Jerry" Boykin, and Marc Nuttle:

Mr. Nuttle has represented as legal counsel and political counsel, numerous United States House of Representative campaigns, United States Senate campaigns, gubernatorial campaigns, and state House and state Senate campaigns encompassing all states in the continental U.S. He served on Senator Dewey Bartlett’s staff and on Governor Henry Bellmon’s senatorial campaign staff. He has served as counselor to Senator Don Nickles and as advisor to Senator Jim Inhofe. Mr. Nuttle served as field counsel for the 1984 Reagan-Bush Reelect Campaign. In the early 1988 presidential election cycle, he was National Campaign Manager for Pat Robertson's presidential campaign. He was a senior advisor to George Bush's presidential campaigns in 1988 and 1992. From 1989 to 1991, he was Executive Director of the National Republican Congressional Committee in Washington, DC. He was a legal advisor in the Bush-Gore re-count effort in Florida in 2000.

Starting next week, Joyner's Morning Star Ministries is hosting an event called "The Great Awakening Conference" in South Carolina that includes, among others, Todd Bentley, the founder of Joel's Army:

Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous "supernatural healing revival" in central Florida. To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don't bat an eye when he tells them he's seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. "He was looking very Jewish," Bentley notes.

Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read "Joel's Army." They're evidence of Bentley's generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that's gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other "hyper-charismatic" preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel's Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers.

Back in 2008, Bentley became a superstar hosting these massive rallies that often featured violent acts of "healing": 

He was known to boast about healing through violence. He had been videotaped telling stories about kicking a woman in the face, slamming a crippled woman's legs against the stage and knocking out a man's tooth. This was done, he claimed, on behalf of the Holy Spirit.

Around that time, Bentley was welcomed into C. Peter Wagner's sphere of "apostles" and "prophets" in a ceremony featuring fellow leaders, including Rick Joyner and Stacey Campbell:

Bentley's credibility suffered badly when it was announced that he was divorcing his wife, but Joyner has been steadfastly working on "restoring" Bentley and Bentley even relocated his ministry to operate directly out of Joyner's Morning Fellowship Church.

As I said earlier, there is a danger in playing "six degrees" with some of these connections ... but in this case it seems entire fair to wonder just how extensive the Dominionism/NAR influence is becoming within the contemporary Religious Right movement when groups like Morning Star, Oak Initiative, Generals International, and The Call are being openly welcomed into their political coalitions.