Right-wing author and pundit Eric Metaxas announced on his radio show Tuesday that he will emcee “Let the Church ROAR,” the Dec. 12 prayer rally on the National Mall that is bringing together religious-right leaders, “Stop the Steal” activists, and right-wing public officials.
Metaxas is an author who postures as a public intellectual; he has gone fully down the right-wing conspiracy theory rabbit hole this year. Metaxas made news in August when he punched a protester after attending an RNC event at the White House. Metaxas has taken part in some of the many prayer calls held by religious-right activists since the election to ask God to intervene to give President Donald Trump a second term.
Rob Weaver, a Pentecostal organizer of the so-called Jericho Marches that have been taking place at state capitols, was a guest on Metaxas’ show along with his organizing partner Arina Grossu, who is Catholic. Weaver described himself as someone who ran small businesses before joining the Trump administration earlier this year. Grossu vaguely described herself as on leave from her job; Grossu has served as “outreach advisor” in Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services, ground zero for the religious right’s use of the executive branch to turn its agenda into federal policy.
Weaver told Metaxas that God communicated with him a few days after the election via an “open vision” of Christians praying and marching in the contested states. “It’s not over,” he said God told him. He said Jericho marches are “about truth and election integrity and for the walls of corruption to fall in Washington, D.C. and the contested states.”
Grossu said she had also had a vision of people praying in the streets and that the two of them were put in touch with each other by a mutual contact from the Trump campaign. “God brought us together,” she said.
“This is real,” Metaxas agreed. “This is God.”
“We’re going to have nuns in habits. We’re going to have crazy Pentecostals blowing shofar. This is my kind of event,” said Metaxas, who identified himself as a Pentecostal Christian.
Also joining the conversation was Alice Butler-Short, a Women for Trump activist who is organizing a “One Nation Under God” event at the Supreme Court at 10 a.m. Saturday; the larger rally on the National Mall starts at noon. She said that former Rep. Bob McEwen, executive director of the secretive and influential right-wing Council for National Policy, will be speaking at the Supreme Court event.
According to Butler-Short and Metaxas, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has called on Trump to declare martial law rather than admit defeat, will be speaking at both events.
Saturday’s events are being heavily promoted by religious-right media, including Kenneth Copeland Ministries, which hosted Arina Grossu this week, and the Christian Broadcasting Network, which reported that organizers are also getting help from “planners of The Return”—a pro-Trump rally held on the National Mall Sept. 26—“Jim Garlow and Michelle Bachmann’s Well Versed World ministry and groups like Eagle Forum.” Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, a group led by Ed Martin, is one of the sponsors included on a press release promoting the Dec. 12 rally.
Weaver told CBN that the marches are meant to appeal to the courts of Heaven as well as the court of public opinion. Grossu added that Jericho March is asking people to contact state officials to “demand full audits, that any and all fraudulent and illegal activities are exposed, and that only legal votes are counted to reveal what the true will of the American people is in this election.”
