In the middle of October, with the economy in free fall and the McCain-Palin campaign not far behind, Lou Engle, founder of The Call, which organizes stadium-sized fasting and prayer rallies, sent out an urgent e-mail to supporters. “We are in a moment of extraordinary crisis in America,” was his ominous warning. “These elections will shape the future of our nation for decades.”
With many Americans wondering whether the global financial system was about to implode, Engle’s mind was elsewhere. He was summoning his followers to what he termed “the most significant Call ever,” which will be held at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium just three days before the election.Organizing his California rally, Engle has deployed the same rhetorical weapon used by Protect Marriage, the main organizational supporter of Proposition 8 (the gay marriage ban on the state’s ballot on November 4.) Turning San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s words, “as California goes, so goes the nation,” on their head, Engle and his allies are portraying California as the bellwether of a national, apocalyptic slide into an irredeemable moral abyss of sexual immorality.
The same tactic, more broadly drawn, is driving all sectors of the fundamentalist right as the election draws near and polls show Obama ahead: one vote can make a difference in this Esther moment, and every Christian’s vote counts in the quest to save America from Jezebel’s designs.
While stirring up fears that Satan is taking over America hasn’t helped McCain in recent polls, surveys in California show a tight battle over Proposition 8, with some polls showing support for the ban running slightly ahead of opposition. Engle is a key part of a formidable and well-funded strategy, run by religious right political organizations and churches, to amend the state’s constitution to prohibit gay marriage, overturning the decision of the “activist judges” of the California Supreme Court.
Engle, a leading figure in the Third Wave Charismatic movement, praised by many cohorts for his raising up of an army of spiritual warriors for revival, has now emerged as a key political mobilizer of young Pentecostals and Charismatics for the religious right. But Engle, whose previous forays into politics focused on anti-abortion protests, is entering new territory by injecting himself into electoral politics, says Margaret Poloma, a sociologist at the University of Akron and an expert on Pentecostals and Charismatics, who first met Engle in the 1990s. “I never thought he was going to launch on his own that way.”
Engle has intertwined his longtime core issue, abortion, with his opposition to gay marriage by pinning both issues to the necessity of appointing judges who won’t allow what Engle calls “Antichrist legislation” to stand. He maintains that the prayers of his young spiritual warriors, who pray and fast at a Capitol Hill location known as the Justice House of Prayer, were responsible for the current, more conservative composition of the Supreme Court. Engle’s protegés regularly demonstrate silently in front of the Supreme Court, their lips sealed—symbolic of the silence of what they believe are murdered unborn children—by red “LIFE” stickers. As shown in the documentary Jesus Camp, Engle recruits warriors as early as elementary school for his cause.
The Call’s advisory board is stacked with prominent Pentecostal and Charismatic preachers, leading figures in the controversial Apostolic movement, which is elevating a new generation of self-appointed prophets and apostles, African-American and Latino religious leaders, Charismatic publishing giant Stephen Strang, and religious right leaders like Perkins, Harry Jackson, and Gary Bauer.
The religious right political leadership’s keen interest in Engle was evident at The Call held on the National Mall in August. The day before the event, the public relations firm Shirley Bannister introduced Engle—flanked by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee—at a press conference just a few blocks from the White House. Perkins, one of the most visible political leaders on the religious right, noted Engle’s influence on young evangelicals, who he claimed were even more conservative on abortion than their parents, though he cited no surveys or polls to support the claim. 
At the time, Engle claimed that The Call was not interjecting itself into presidential politics, but he was clearly opposed to Obama. “We’re not endorsing a candidate but challenging language of those who would say we’re Christian politicians who say that we want abortion to be rare but have voted 100% for live-birth abortion, partial-birth abortion,” Engle told reporters. “America is looking for a king, but what we need is a return to God.” Engle was lukewarm about McCain, but a few weeks later, after McCain tapped Sarah Palin as his running mate, Engle ramped up his support for the Republican ticket, likening Palin to the biblical Queen Esther who saved her people from destruction.
When he was in Washington, I asked Engle whether young evangelicals were looking for the kind of revival he was preaching about, in light of heightened interest in issues beyond abortion and gay marriage. “I don’t mean the old time Pentecostal [revival],” Engle replied, “but real returning to God with wholehearted love. [Young evangelicals] return to scriptures as the foundation. And when that scripture is revealed, and when they read Psalm 139, ‘you formed me in my mother’s womb’, ‘before I was born you knew me,’ this becomes more than doctrine, it becomes experience. It becomes knowing the love of God for the individual from the beginning of his life, he’s not an accident, they’re not a piece of protoplasm. They become fervent and vote on that issue.”
That fervency was evident on The Mall the next day in a racially diverse crowd estimated by organizers at 50,000 or more. The Call events, which Engle says are based on the solemn assemblies and fasts of Joel 2, demand repentance, prayer, and fasting in preparation for Christ’s return. “I am an end-time warrior!” attendees were commanded to declare. End-times prophecy mingled with Christian rock music, and the day saw a parade of well-known activist speakers, including Huckabee and Perkins, Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney, and Teen Mania founder Ron Luce.
Tags: abortion, evangelicals, gay marriage, lou engle, obama, palin, proposition 8, satan, supreme prayer, the call
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