Lou Engle

Republican presidential candidiates Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have signed on for a “Presidential Pro-Life Forum” hosted by Personhood USA and moderated by Iowa conservative radio personality Steve Deace. The three candidates along with Rick Perry have already announced their support for personhood laws.

Personhood USA wants abortion and even common forms of birth control banned without exception, and personhood laws may even outlaw in-vitro fertilization and the treatment of problem pregnancies. The group launched unsuccessful referendums in Colorado and Mississippi, and has characterized President Obama as the “Angel of Death” and likened opponents to Nazis.

The other organizations listed as hosts of the forum are just as radical, if not more so.

The Call is led by Lou Engle, who has claimed that legal abortion may lead to civil war and is responsible for the Joplin tornado. Engle has also used his The Call prayer rally to bolster Ugandan legislation that would criminalize and in some cases give the death penalty for homosexuals. Moreover, Engle has compared gay rights to Nazism, advocated for Seven Mountains dominionism, and said that both gays and Muslims are demonic.

Another organization hosting the forum is the Oak Initiative, a project of South Carolina pastor Rick Joyner, who has argued that God will imminently destroy California, Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment for homosexuality, “extremist Islam” is God’s judgment for “perversions” and “abortions,” and that very soon “God’s judgment is going to come upon Hollywood.” Joyner also believes that President Obama may be a Muslim and that Muslims are trying to take control of Michigan, school textbooks and Christianity. Like Engle, Joyner is a proponent of Seven Mountains dominionism.

Both Engle and Joyner are closely affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation, which believes that God is raising up modern day apostles and prophets, and another cosponsor, the Freedom Federation, includes the NAR groups Generals International, led by the self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs, and Harvest International Ministries of self-proclaimed apostle Che Ahn.

Three Republican candidates for the nation’s high office including Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Senator Rick Santorum, and Speaker Newt Gingrich have confirmed their participation in the Presidential Pro-Life Forum on Tuesday, December 27, from 8:00 to 9:30 pm CST. The national tele-town hall and radio simulcast will be hosted by Personhood USA and their partner organizations: National Hispanic Christian Leadership Coalition, Liberty Counsel, Bott Radio Network, Freedom Federation, Frederick Douglass Foundation, Champion the Vote, Oak Initiative, The Call, Georgia Right to Life, Rock for Life, and Iowa Right to Life. An invitation has been extended to the remaining GOP presidential candidates.

The 90-minute pro-life tele-town hall will feature the candidates discussing their views on the rights of the preborn and other issues of great importance to pro-life voters. Pro-life groups around the nation are inviting their members to attend. Callers will have an opportunity to ask questions via email and give instant feedback to thoughts and ideas shared.

Nationally-syndicated radio host Steve Deace, whose influence in the Iowa Caucuses has been highlighted by numerous national media outlets, will broadcast the event live on his Salem Network program. Last week, four candidates, Bachmann, Santorum, Gingrich, and Gov. Rick Perry, signed Personhood USA’s Personhood Republican Candidate Pledge, declaring their intentions to stand with President Ronald Reagan in supporting “the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death.”

“We’re pleased to see the candidates standing for the rights of every person to live, love, and be loved. The time has come to end the 40-year reign of the abortion industry, once and for all,” said Keith Mason, President of Personhood USA. “This is an opportunity for everyone who understands that ‘all men are created equal’ to hear from the candidates their plans to recognize the most fundamental rights of every human being, no matter their age. Come, take advantage of this interactive and important event, and be a voice for the voiceless.”

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: