As my new report, Movement Behind Uganda's "Kill the Gays" Bill Organizing in Newark begins,
Street by street, block by block, organized by city ward, PrayforNewark's squads of church members are walking their city, praying for residents and businesses... its leaders claim their effort now fields enough volunteers to pray for almost every street in the New Jersey city... the effort is directly tied to an international movement that, as detailed in my new video documentary Transforming Uganda, played a significant role in organizing and inspiring Ugandan politicians who have backed the internationally notorious "kill the gays" bill, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill currently before Uganda's parliament.
As a preface, let me start with this:
The movement in question in not synonymous with The Family, as covered by journalist Jeff Sharlet. That entity has played a major role (in both promoting the bill, it would seem, and later opposing it after a world outcry over the proposed legislation) in Uganda's Anti Homosexuality bill, before Uganda's parliament, which would mandate that HIV positive Ugandan citizens convicted for the crime of "aggravated homosexuality" be executed by hanging and would also require Ugandans to turn in to the Ugandan police, or face a three year prison sentence, family, friends, and acquaintances who might be gay.
While The Family is a world association of elites, especially politicians, the Transformation movement organizing in Newark, in many other cities across America as well, in Uganda and around the globe, is organizing populist fronts from the ground level up. The Transformation movement promotes ideology, and an entire worldview - in which gays are possessed by demons. Officially, the idea is that being homosexual can be cured through exorcism, the casting out of those alleged gay demons. But, unofficially, the agenda seems to be to purge all gays from society, through imprisonment and even execution. And, gays would seem to be merely the first, but far from the last, societal on the list slated for elimination.
Welcome to the "Transformation" movement.
As another critical point, most of the people described in my new story, about the Transformation movement in Newark, probably aren't walking Newark's streets with the intent of mapping put enemies, whether the alleged enemies be gays, Buddhists and Hindus, Freemasons, atheists or socialists, etc. (the Transformation movement's list of enemies is long).
But the leaders of PrayforNewark are fully in the global Transformation movement and there is little question, as my story on the Transformation movement in Newark outlines, that they are quite aware of and indeed are promoting the underlying eliminationalist Transformation ideology - which is to say that the leaders of PrayforNewark are inducting their army of prayer walkers into a worldview in which demons, and humans believe to be inhabited by demons, must be purged from society.
Last Thursday, in testimony before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, one of the four experts called to testify, the Reverend Kapya Kaoma, praised the work [a journalist with a Current TV team at the hearing let me know of this. I haven't yet found a transcript] that my research colleague Rachel Tabachnick and I have been doing on the Transformation movement that, as my new 20 minute documentary Transforming Uganda demonstrates, played a major role in organizing and inspiring the Ugandan politicians behind the Anti Homosexuality Bill.
I'd talked with Kaoma a few days earlier, after he'd seen my documentary. Kaoma has recently released a Political Research Associates report, Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia. Kaoma's report charges that conservative American evangelicals are exporting anti-gay hatred to Uganda, and to Africa.
Kapya Kaoma stressed to me (and I fully agreed) that there is no one evangelical entity that can be fully blamed for the "Kill the gays" bill because there are many evangelical ministries that are not officially linked together within the United States but which work closely together in Uganda almost as if they were the same organization.
[below is the first half of my new report, Movement Behind Uganda's "Kill the Gays" Bill Organizing in Newark]
Street by street, block by block, organized by city ward, PrayforNewark's squads of church members are walking their city, praying for residents and businesses. Launched on Martin Luther King Day in 2008, its leaders claim their effort now fields enough volunteers to pray for almost every street in the New Jersey city. Endorsed by Newark's liberal mayor, PrayforNewark would seem a blessing for any city. What could be wrong with prayer ? But the effort is directly tied to an international movement that, as detailed in my new video documentary Transforming Uganda, played a significant role in organizing and inspiring Ugandan politicians who have backed the internationally notorious "kill the gays" bill, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill currently before Uganda's parliament.
[image, bottom, right: Dominion Fellowship Ministries newsletter encourages "enemy identification"]
The ecumenical coalition behind PrayforNewark is led by Rev. Bernard Wilks, whose Dominion Fellowship Ministries newsletters for PrayforNewark have repeatedly called for "enemy identification" and a document on the official PrayforNewark web site touts the "Seven Mountains" program which calls upon born-again, charismatic Christians to take dominion over key societal sectors such as business, government, media and education.
Given the benign-seeming exterior of PrayforNewark, it is likely that many Newark citizens involved in the effort are not fully aware of the ideological roots of PrayforNewark, or of its links to international entities tied to the Uganda bill.
PrayforNewark was founded by Newark suburb resident Lloyd Turner, who in October 2008 spoke at an Argentina conference of the International Transformation Network (ITN), whose CEO Ed Silvoso wrote, in his 2007 book, Transformation: Change the Marketplace and You Change the World, that homosexuality is caused by demon possession and that HIV and AIDS can be cured through faith healing and prayer. According to Silvoso, the entire national police force of the Philippines is being indoctrinated in this ideology.
The International Transformation Network
[image, below right: PrayforNewark document promotes "Seven Mountains" mandate of Bill Bright, Lauren Cunningham, and Francis Schaeffer]
Lloyd Turner and Bernard Wilks are active leaders in the international "Transformation" movement, which holds an eliminationalist agenda and holds up Uganda, close to legislating execution by hanging of an entire segment of Ugandan society, as a shining model of "transformation."
During the 2008 Argentina ITN conference, PrayforNewark founder Turner presented Newark as a developing US prototype for the transformation movement that could spark a wave of similar efforts to sweep across the cities of North America. At a November 2009 Transformations conference held in Hawaii, Lloyd Turner stated that his effort, which was barely a year and a half old, had achieved 97 percent coverage in Newark.
In cities, towns and even nations around the globe, ITN is working to integrate government and police with church efforts to achieve dominion over all sectors of society. In Orlando, Florida, and Peoria, Illinois, church initiatives are coordinating their prayer walking campaigns, billed as reducing crime, with local police departments. Orlando's transformation effort, dubbed "Operation Armor-All," was in fact initiated by the head chaplain of Orlando's police department. As stated in a story by Teri Arndt first posted at the web site of Orlando's First Presbyterian church, describing the birth of Operation Armor-All, "[Police] Chaplain Wade spoke to the Chaplain Corps and together they came up with the plan. The Chaplains contacted up to 22 churches."
Outside of the United States, such police-church efforts take on an ominous and coercive nature.
"Transforming" The Police
At an ITN Transformation conference recently held in San Francisco, Ed Silvoso described a recent decision, by the head of the Philippine National Police Force, to mandate that every member of the Philippine police force take a course on "transformation" principles derived from Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life. As Silvoso told his audience at Transformation San Francisco,
"We just came back from a trip to Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines - I mean, three out of four [of these] nations are deeply, deeply, immersed in anti-Christian social philosophy, and when my time comes to share, I'm going to share testimonies that are going to edify you so much, and it will make the Transformation of San Francisco look like a Sunday School picnic.
...Just to give you one example, 58 high ranking army officers in the Philippines were introduced to a Transformation teaching based on the Purpose Driven... ah.... Purpose Driven Life book. Seventeen generals received the Lord. And one of those generals who received the Lord in April was appointed the National Chief of Police in September. That's just a few months later. And one of the first orders that he signed was that the 184,000 police officers in the Philippines, that's the entire police officer [force] of the nation, should undergo Transformation training within six months or be fired."
As the trailer for "A Force For Change," a new feature-length documentary produced by the Sentinel Group, a "Transformations" video production entity, states, "God wants to use the [Sao Paulo] police force to leverage transformation of our society." According to the producer of the documentary, George Otis, Jr., Sao Paulo's police themselves are engaged in the process of "spiritually mapping" out alleged enemy forces within their city. A newly released December 6, 2009 Human Rights Watch report accuses Sao Paulo police of extra-judicial killings, and the rise in such killings detailed in the report closely tracks the rise of Sao Paulo's Christian police association, founded in 2003 among Sao Paulo's over 100,000-strong police force, that is celebrated in Otis, Jr.'s video.
The Sao Paulo effort and PrayforNewark are both identifiably in the same "transformation" movement. Seeds of the same aggressive church-government integration evident in Sao Paulo seem also evident in the PrayforNewark literature. A PrayforNewark Adopt a Street program brochure features, prominently, a photograph of "Guest speaker Sgt. Leslie Jones, Jr.... a longtime member of the Newark Police Department" who is "Senior Pastor at Charity Baptist Church in Newark. He is also on the leadership team for the Pastors Clergy Council."
PrayforNewark has been showcased in an over ten minute promotional documentary video, in which founder Lloyd Turner touts the roots of his city, founded as a Christian theocracy. Introduced by ITN head Ed Silvoso as depicting "Transformation Newark," in the video Dr. Bernard Wilks uses decidedly militant language to describe the program, stating, "we need what, in the military, they call `air supremacy'. And, with the air supremacy, we can send in the troops. And this city will indeed be transformed."
In the documentary PrayforNewark founder Turner blames Newark's historically high crime rate on alleged sins of Newark's residents - who he claims have deviated from the theocratic vision of Newark's founders leading, claims the video, to a "dark and oppressive spiritual atmosphere" over the city.
Prototypes of "Transformation"
[link to video documentary, "Transforming Newark", produced by PrayforNewark]
The International Transformation Network has prototype cities around the globe and at least one prototype nation which ITN leaders claim is well along in its "transformation" : Uganda. ITN claims to be training a network of "apostles," across Uganda, spanning 14,000 churches. ITN is also training members of the Kampala New Covenant Church, founded by a daughter of Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni, that has been attended by Ugandan parliament member David Bahati - who drafted and introduced the Anti--Homosexuality Bill, now before Uganda's parliament, which would mandate the execution of HIV positive Ugandan citizens. At the 2008 Argentina ITN conference, in place of Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni - who had attended previous conferences but had to cancel at the last minute, the head of Uganda's Tax Revenue Authority, Allen Kagina, spoke as a representative of Uganda's transformation (see Transforming Uganda).
But as gay rights activists such as Jim Burroway and Tim Kincaid, along with Human Rights Watch, have extensively documented, Ugandan government and church officials are deeply implicated in using their positions to attack gay rights in Uganda. According to a 2007 Human Rights Watch report, "[The] Uganda government officials have regularly threatened and harassed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Ugandans."
On December 11, 2009, a United Nations General Assembly panel discussed abuse of gay rights in Africa with Ugandan Victor Mukasa, who fled Uganda following police brutality because of his sexual orientation, stating that "Lack of security, arbitrary arrests and detentions, violence, and killings of LGBT people have become the order of the day in Africa." Also attending the UN panel discussion was the Reverend Kapya Kaoma, author of a new Political Research Associates report, "Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia," that accuses American evangelicals of exporting homophobia to Africa.
Pray For Newark has been enthusiastically endorsed by the administration of Newark's indisputably liberal mayor, Cory Booker, who recently invested political capital in support of gay rights, signing on in support of the effort to legalize gay marriage in New Jersey. But Dominion Fellowship Ministries founder Rev. Bernard Wilks is an "apostle" in the International Coalition of Apostles (ICA), an organization whose apostles promote "transformation" and Christian dominion over ethnic communities, cities, and nations. ICA convening apostle C. Peter Wagner is over a network of several hundred apostles who in turn have in some cases hundreds or even thousands ministries under them. Along with Wagner, ITN head Ed Silvoso sits on the ICA's elite Apostolic Council, which "provides advice and accountability" for the Apostolic organization.
continue reading this story, at www.talk2action.org