This episode covers strategic-level spiritual warfare and spiritual mapping as practiced by C. Peter Wagner, George Otis Jr., and the New Apostolic Reformation. What sounds like goofy DnD Christianity soon devolves into viscous Christian theocracy when spiritual warfare visits Kenya, Guatemala, Uganda, and Fiji.

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Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare

The vanguard of the spiritual mapping movement, according to Christian Science Monitor, is C. Peter Wagner, who runs Global Harvest Ministries in Colorado Springs, CO. Just as there are three heavens, Wagner explains that there are three levels of spiritual warfare.

• “Ground level”: This is combating demons possessing individuals. Think exorcisms. 

• “Occult-level”: This is combating demonic organizations. According to Wagner, prominent organized “powers of darkness” include “New Age thought, Tibetan Buddhism, [and] Freemasonry.” 

• “Strategic-level: This is combatting the “territorial spirits” that directly control a certain geographical area. 

Jonathan Graf, editor of Pray! Magazine, notes that strategic-level spiritual warfare is controversial in the evangelical community,

A lot of people in the conservative camp say Scripture is fairly unclear about how aggressive one is to be, particularly in praying directly against demons or territorial spirits. They say, ‘Just pray to God.’ But more charismatic believers say, ‘Scripture says we have all authority in Christ and can come against principalities and spirits, and we need to do that.’

Russell Spittler, provost at Fuller Theological Seminary, says that spiritual warfare, especially the spiritual mapping component, is popular with Pentecostals,

Pentecostals approach Scripture literally, so they see the world populated with demons. It is not a far step to start naming them, assigning them territories, devising prayer strategies. For Pentecostals, ‘spiritual warfare’ is not a metaphor – it’s reality.” Honestly I can see this being sort of confusing. 

Spiritual mapping

Intro

George Otis Jr, who coined the term, defines spiritual mapping as, 

The discipline of diagnosing the obstacles to revival in a given community. Through fervent prayer and diligent research, practitioners are able to measure the landscape of the spiritual dimension, and discern moral gateways between it and the material world. [It answers the questions:] What is wrong with my community? Where did the problem come from? What can be done to change things?

In case you thought this might be about poverty or racial injustice or other structural problems where you live, relax; it’s just about demons. Spiritual mapping involves searching for individuals or groups or even locations under demonic possession, which can then be tackled via spiritual warfare. As Otis puts more concretely,

[Spiritual mapping] is nothing more ethereal than creating a spiritual profile of a community based on careful research. It is a tool, he says, for intelligent prayer aimed at opening spiritually blind eyes to the gospel.

Otis even has a 28 point scale to measure the progress of communities targeted by spiritual mapping. Phases on the scale include the progression from “spiritual beachhead” to “spiritual breakthrough” to “spiritual transformation”. Spiritual mapping doesn’t even show up until stage nine!

It is a recent phenomenon; Wagner claims that spiritual mapping was “virtually unknown to the majority of Christians before the 1990s”. One determines the demonic hotspots by the presence of,

anti-christian” behavior, including “opposing religious views, liberal philosophies, atheism, drugs, secually provocative influences, and/or crime

Demographic data is used to aid in identifying such hotspots. C. Peter Wagner specifically mentions witches, Freemasons, or “occult idol objects” like statues of Catholic saints. Once identified, the spiritual warrior can use anything in their toolkit, from prayer to burning with fire.

[T]hey must burn the idols… the kinds of material things that might be bringing honor to the spirits of darkness: pictures, statues, Catholic saints, Books of Mormon… [T]he witches and warlocks had surrounded the area… When the flames shot up, a woman right behind Doris [Wagner’s wife] screamed and manifested a demon, which Doris immediately cast out!

“Success” Stories

Christian Science Monitor details Otis’s work as a global demonic consultant,

He has visited cities worldwide and offers pastors a road map, including questions on the spiritual history and dynamics of their cities. They should gather, for example, detailed information on the status of Christianity, prevailing “social bondages,” historical events that caused trauma, predominant philosophies and religions, and human groups and demonic powers that pose spiritual opposition.

One successful use of spiritual mapping according to Otis was in Hemet, CA. Bob Beckett, a new pastor, used a map to mark places in the city where potential demonic activity was taking place, including,

controversial religious centers, cults, youth gangs, and the West Coast’s largest methamphetamine manufacturing facilities.

Beckett’s spiritual mapping endeavor started with a property he himself was going to buy. Once he discovered that it used to be a, 

transcendental meditation hot zone, he pulled out an area map and marked the spot.

After prayer targeted specifically at these locations, the pastor and his congregants noted a dramatic improvement. Drug production has decreased, corrupt cops have been fired, gang members have become Christians, cults were broken up, and Christians are now hold key political positions. Otis holds Hemet as an incredible success story, and notes that it was Beckett’s perseverance that won the day,

God didn’t move in Hemet until Bob bought a burial plot in the city.

Another case study is Cali, Colombia, “home of the infamous drug cartel”. The pastors first started by gathering intelligence from the 22 administrative zones in the area, including political, social, and spiritual strongholds. Then they gathered thousands into the soccer stadium for all-night prayer vigils. These vigils lead do fewer homicides, cartel leaders being arrested, and more people going to church.

A less rigorous approach is followed by Ruggles Baptist Church in Boston. Larry Showalter, a pastor at the church, explains that their focus is the universities, which harbor a “rampant spirit of unbelief.” 

We would pray against that spirit, in the opposite way, for faith to rise up and to dominate.

Thomas Muthee

Muthee is a member of the New Apostolic Reformation and buddies with Sarah Palin. He anointed her with oil on October 16, 2005, about a year before she was elected as Governor of Alaska. Muthee even came to the US in to pray over the 2008 election. Right before Muthee anoints Palin, he says,

When we talk about transformation of a community, we are talking about God invading seven areas of society.

This is a reference to the “Seven Mountain Strategy” or Mandate of the New Apostolic Reformation. The seven mountains are education, religion, family, business, government/military, arts/entertainment, and media. Oh, and he is also a witch-hunter and pentecostal preacher. 

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Muthee claims he was “called by God to Kiambu”, a suburb of Nairobi. A “ministry graveyard” for years, Muthee finally figured out what the problem was after months of prayer and research: the spirit of witchcraft. Specifically, it was a woman named “Mama Jane” who ran a “divination clinic”.

Muthee thought he could succeed where others failed. He set up a church in the basement of a grocery store called “The Prayer Cave”, where parishioners prayed 24/7 to break the demonic hold over Kiambu. Mama Jane counterattacked, according to Muthee, but eventually, they were successful. 

The demonic influence – the ‘principality’ over Kiambu – was broken.

Mama Jane left shortly thereafter, and the whole community improved,

The atmosphere changed dramatically: Bars closed, the crime rate dropped, people began to move to the area, and the economy took an upturn. The church now has 5,000 members, he says, and 400 members meet to pray daily at 6 a.m.

Criticism

Not everyone is on board with spiritual warfare or spiritual mapping, including some evangelicals. According to Derrick Trimble, who runs the World Prayer Center, there are two views about a city in trouble,

When you move into the area of why things occur in a city, some will say it’s just social or economic or cultural trends. Others will say that it has to do with demonic influences over an area.

Phyllis Tickle, contributing editor at Publishers Weekly, suggests that there is more bark than bite when evangelicals start talking about “spiritual warfare”,

Within the evangelical Christian community, there is a good deal of looking askance when somebody says ‘spiritual warfare,’ though there is much lip service to it. There certainly is a hard core who … think that way, but the bulk do not.

Even among the strongest components of spiritual mapping are criticisms that some misinterpret what spiritual warfare is meant to accomplish. Otis himself says,

We are not asking God to ‘make’ people Christians…. Such requests violate human free will…. What we are appealing for is a level playing field, a temporary lifting of the spiritual blindness that prevents [people] from processing truth….

Another proponent of spiritual mapping, Clinton Arnold, professor at Biola University Talbot Theological Seminary, thinks it can serve as a guide for intercessors, but thinks it sometimes goes to far,

[Arnold]  finds no biblical basis for taking an aggressive posture against high ranking evil powers, and he is cautious about a leader repenting for sins in which he did not participate.

Greg Boyd, author of God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, thinks spiritual mapping and strategic-level spiritual warfare can go too far,

That doesn’t mean you need to rule it out, but it does mean you’ve got to be careful about excesses. I’ve seen this get real wacko, where people are rebuking a demon over Minnesota. It’s better to spend more time on things that have clear precedent.

One group that has been especially critical of spiritual mapping is the Anti-Defamation League. Their specific complaint was over the Southern Baptist Convention, which urged for its members, during the Jewish High Holy Days, to pray that Jews would convert to Christianity. ADL national director Abraham Foxman put it this way,

We are deeply offended that it’s done on the eve of the most holy period on the Jewish calendar – and then to track and identify Jews by name! That means you target somebody by research.

It’s this last bit that Martin Marty, who works for the Public Religion Project, thinks is most egregious,

The offense comes in what looks like the breaking of the rules of the game when you begin to target…. It’s when you name a proper name of someone devoted to God in a different way or even, you might say, to a different god, that people get their backs up. In a sense, you’re saying, ‘We’re not really at home with American pluralism’ – that sense that if we don’t want holy wars, we do well to be respectful of each other.” yeah exactly!

Outside the US? The Transformation Videos

Muthee’s story sounds kinda sorta wholesome if any of this is something you are into. But on closer inspection, things get a little sordid. While the United States is blessed with a “kinder, gentler” approach to spiritual mapping, but this isn’t the case outside the United States.

Certain cities are “character cities”, where the government itself seeks to eliminate demonic hotspots within its borders. This is achieved by “tak[ing] efforts to bring members of the city into alignment with theocratic rules and to expel dissidents and other undesirables.” This is even briefly mentioned above when we talked about the “success” story of Hemet. One of the signs of success was that “Christians now hold key political positions.” South American and African countries take this to a whole other level, promoting,

witch hunts in Africa, endorsing death squads in Guatemala, the de-Catholicizing of Brazil, and the mythology of miraculous curing of AIDS in Uganda.

There is also a “Seven Mountains Mandate” where spiritual warriors coordinate to ensure their members take positions of power in business, media, schools, and government to subordinate these institutions to their agenda.

Rachel Tabachnick, writing for Talk To Action, argues that this is the real end goal of the spiritual mapping movement: a global, Christian theocracy. Her argument starts with the Transformation series, a series of videos featuring the spiritual mapping success stories described above. She delves into detail what these videos suggest will happen after the demonic stronghold is broken through intensive prayer,

This allows the “Spirit-filled” Christians to take control of government and societal leadership, and bring about miraculous transformations to the community. These communities are then filled with smiling people celebrating their freedom from the bondage of the previous social ills. The message is clear — a world controlled by “Spirit-filled” Christians and purged of everything else will be transformed; a utopia, free of sickness, poverty, and crime. It is the ultimate faith-based program.

Transformations I

The first video in the Transformations series covers the above mentioned Thomas Muthee, whose diligent work drove out the occultist Mama Jane and lead to the Christian rebirth in Kiambu. But, believe it or not, things are not as they seem in Kiambu. First of all, Mama Jane is totally still there (at least as of the release of the video in 1999). Also, Tabachnick reports that the spiritual mapping movement has taken a violent turn in Kenya,

However, in Kenya mobs recently have killed elderly people accused of witchcraft and, this past May, eleven elderly Kenyan men and women were burned and lynched in Kisii, a provincial town in Kenya.”The Raiders” according to one news account, “claimed the burning of the suspects would bring peace to the area.

Another success story mentioned in Transformations I is Guatemala in the form of Harold Caballeros, a former presidential candidate and founder of El Shaddai, a 9000 member church in Guatemala City. So who belonged to El Shaddai? One congregant was Erwin Sperisen, former Director of Guatemala’s Policia Nacional Civil (PNC). The New York Times sheds some light on what fun activities the PNC were up to,

The officers in these squads belong to evangelical churches, the official said, and see the extrajudicial killings of gang members, known here as ‘social cleansing,’ as holy work. But they also have begun to commit crimes for their own profit.

Perhaps you think it is unfair to blame Caballeros himself for the actions of one of his congregants, even if he is a rather powerful congregant. Well, when Caballeros speaks for himself, this is no longer believable,

The death squads that still function within the PNC and the Ministry of Government, are a holy enterprise that is organized by agents and personnel from Evangelical churches that know our obligations to society…I must recognize that the story published in the New York Times on March 5 of this year is true; the “social cleansing” that, together with Carlos Vielman as Minister of Government we carried out in the institution, had to be done and must continue, as I understand has been ordered to the new authorities…

And as a cherry on top, C. Peter Wagner himself thinks that Caballero, who ran for president in Guatemala in 2007, is just a wonderful guy,

Christians in the global South are way ahead of us in this area. The values of the kingdom of God should penetrate every level of society, and they understand that….[Caballeros is] doing it right, going right to the top and taking dominion.

Transformations II

The second video in the Transformation series has some, shall we say, interesting takes on recent Ugandan history,

The last segment of this video is a rewriting of Ugandan history as a Manichean battle between “born again” Christianity and devil worship. Again, the story includes a witch doctor, and this one dies after the prayers of the intercessors. The battle ends in the triumphant New Year’s event on December 31, 1999, at which a covenant, signed by President and First Lady Museveni, dedicated the nation to God for 1000 years. The revival portrayed in the movie is claimed to have resulted in instantaneous healing of thousand of AIDS patients. Narrator George Otis claims these miracles were confirmed by astounded doctors.

Transformations II also promotes the idea that Uganda’s move towards abstinence-only sex education has greatly reduced the AIDS epidemic when it has in fact done the opposite. 

Transformations IV

The fourth installment of the Transformations series is the most blatant so far in promoting straight-up Christian theocracy, approving of the Christian coup in Fiji in 2000. As Tabachnick reports it,

In 2000 the democratically elected Indo-Fijian Prime Minister and members of his multi-ethnic cabinet were overthrown and kidnapped in coup by ethnic Fijians. After the military restored order, an ethnic Fijian government regained power with support of a unity effort by the Christian population.

But Transformations IV has a slightly different take on the situation,

In one of the most remarkable success stories of the modern era, the Fijian experience offers a potent reminder of what is possible when church and state come together for the well-being of society.This 79-minute documentary covers the astonishing revival that is currently sweeping through the nation of Fiji. It is a moving and instructive testament of unprecedented Christian unity, contemporary signs and wonders, rapid church growth and genuine socio-political transformation. The breath of God has revived even the land and the sea.

After the coup, the video reports the widespread physical healing of both people and the economy. Even the coral reefs improved and unprecedented numbers of fish were caught. But there was one island that still suffered. The reason? The indigenous population killed a missionary way back in 1857, and so the island suffered from a generational curse. But don’t worry; after hosting their own revival, and of course pitching carved masks and native artifacts into a bonfire, even this island was able to experience the glory of Christ in the form of the “immediate cleansing of a poisonous polluted stream.” 

One person praised by the video is Asenaca Caucau, who is praised for her work as the Minister for Social Welfare and Poverty Alleviation. The video says that she and her colleagues have formed a nation,

where God is glorified on the floor of Parliament”

and where the,

national government has declared a year of forgiveness and reconciliation, even forming a new government department focused on reconciliation…. Where government officials travel to other nations not in their official capacity but as “missionaries” carrying the torch of revival and sharing what God has done in their land.

Somehow, there are people who have a slightly different take on Caucau,

Others have described this supposedly utopian period between the 2000 and 2006 coups as a time of growth in poverty, squatters, and religious-based attacks on Hindu temples. Aseneca Caucau is quoted as likening the non-Christian Indo-Fijians to “wild weeds which take up too much space in the country.”

The NGO Submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Concerning Fiji also notes some disturbing ideas espoused by Caucau,

Adi Asenaca Caucau likened squatters to “thieves because they lived illegally on someone else’s land.” Caucau, who was the State Minister for Housing at the time, said that police should make “every effort to round up and remove squatters.”

And to top it off, Caucau was arrested in the San Francisco Airport for attacking a woman with her shoe. 

Back to the USA

Whereas spiritual mapping at the extreme end involves instituting a theocratic government for the purposes of spiritual warfare, others interpret spiritual warfare as requiring taking over the government; a theocratic government isn’t the means for spiritual warfare but its end. For such groups, fighting Satan and promoting the Republic part and social conservatism are one and the same Promise Keepers are such an organization, who use the rhetoric of “stand in the gap for our nation” or “stand in the gap for godly government” 

There are also Dominionist publishers that take direction from the spiritual warfare bible passages. WallBuilders takes their name from Ezekiel 22:30, and publish books about conservative politics in the name of spiritual warfare. 

The Presidential Prayer Team promoted prayer as a form of spiritual warfare to support George W Bush and his foreign policy. 

Pro-life groups often intermingle with spiritual warfare lingo, seeing abortion itself as resulting from demonic influence.

Tim LaHaye and many in the Moral Majority supported GOP candidates, including both Bushs and Reagan.