A religious undercurrent was present at a rally for former state Rep. Ron Hanks, who is vying with six other Republicans to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. Approximately 35 people attended the June 1 rally, which began at the parking lot of Mesa Mall in Grand Junction. From there, Hanks supporters drove across town with various flags waving from their vehicles, ending up at a Big Lots store on North Ave.
Ballot initiatives. Referenda. Plebiscites. Whatever you want to call them, they play a major role in Colorado’s political life. We vote on tax increases, pet projects, citizens’ initiatives, legislatively referred initiatives, and anything else under the sun for which a determined enough cadre of organizers can collect a sufficient amount of signatures to place on our ballots. Colorado is not unique in this regard – 26 states have ballot initiative processes – but we are exceptional: between 1912, when the first initiative appeared on a Colorado ballot, and 2023, Colorado has voted on 266 initiatives, the third most of any state, behind Oregon and California.
Everyone enjoys being proven right from time to time. It’s validating, it puts a little spring in your step, and it allows you to redouble your efforts, knowing that you are heading down the right path. But the experience of being proven right is rarely so crisp, or so quick, as the version I was fortunate enough to have last week, which was bestowed upon me by an unexpected source: conservative Christian political consultant Ralph Reed.
Taken from the title of the 1944 film Gaslight, the term “gaslighting” has firmly entered the American lexicon over the past several years. The film, an early entrant in the psychological thriller genre, features a husband who works to slowly convince his wife that she is experiencing delusions, convincing her not to trust what she is seeing with her own eyes. It’s from this origin that we arrived at the modern use of the term to describe a form of psychological manipulation in which someone is made to doubt their own senses and sanity. It is a technique most often employed by conmen and abusers. Now, it is being adopted en masse by the Christian nationalist movement in America to defend their political project from hard-earned criticism.
One of the most audacious efforts in the history of American politics is currently being planned, not in smoke-filled rooms, but out in the open. It’s named Project 2025, and, if it succeeds, it promises to remake American government and civic life for decades.
Campaign signs are packed in tight clusters on the roadside as Highway 24 emerges from the mountain pass and levels-out into Woodland Park. It’s a familiar scene by now in the small town which has spent the past three years fighting for its own future. The conflict has well-defined lines by this point, and the campaign signs – which have sprung like Columbines from the snow over the past month as the town’s April 2nd municipal election draws near – are clustered to reflect them.
After Andrew Wommack Ministries International (AWMI) received inquiries last week from the Colorado Times Recorder, a video featuring AWMI president Andrew Wommack and AWMI Senior Vice President Andrew Wertz was removed from the ministry’s YouTube page.
None of them realized they were in a cult until it was too late. It started in late 1993 as a Bible study group composed of students from Messiah College in Pennsylvania. By the time it shattered in February of 1997, most of the group’s members had lost their individual identities and many of their worldly possessions. Some had lost their marriages. The leader, the man who they say slowly wove a web of control around their minds and around their lives, had lost his wife and child: they fled in the night, afraid that he might kill them.
I was raised to take over the world for God. My teachers have been sorely disappointed on that front. It is not something I spend much time talking about because it’s not something I spend much time thinking about. It was the milieu of my childhood, and I had no say in the matter. As a pastor’s kid from Nashville, Tennessee, I was steeped in religious conservatism from birth. The impetus towards a highly political, far-right version of Christianity which seeks to conquer the world for Christ, though, didn’t come from my family so much as it came from my classical Christian school. We were taught that we were special, that the world was fallen and we could redeem it. We were taught that America was a Christian nation which had drifted off course, but that a faithful generation could restore it.
“The church is not more powerful in Colorado than Satan is. I mean, think about what I’m saying. If that was different, wouldn’t we be able to do something about this?”
