#rick joyner

04/22/2025

by 

Peter Montgomery

Religious-right figure Rick Joyner warned in a Facebook post Tuesday that judges who “interfere” with President Donald Trump’s executive orders may be pushing the U.S. toward “another civil war.” It’s just the latest of many examples of right-wing Christian leaders and media amplifying Trump’s complaints about courts that are stepping in to slow and stop Trump administration actions that violate the Constitution or federal law. 

In his Facebook post, Joyner gave lip service to the importance of an independent judiciary but then suggested that judges’ actions to pause Trump’s orders are “an encroachment on the Legislative Branch” and “an end run around the democratic will of the people.” 

“SCOTUS can begin to reduce this and avoid a major Constitutional Crisis, or even another civil war, by how they decide some of the cases before them,” Joyner wrote. “They can begin to bring a desperately needed restraint on the Judicial Branch that has gotten very far outside of its lane.” 

Peter Montgomery at People For The American Way's RWW:

Religious-right figure Rick Joyner warned in a Facebook post Tuesday that judges who “interfere” with President Donald Trump’s executive orders may be pushing the U.S. toward “another civil war.” It’s just the latest of many examples of right-wing Christian leaders and media amplifying Trump’s complaints about courts that are stepping in to slow and stop Trump administration actions that violate the Constitution or federal law.  In his Facebook post, Joyner gave lip service to the importance of an independent judiciary but then suggested that judges’ actions to pause Trump’s orders are “an encroachment on the Legislative Branch” and “an end run around the democratic will of the people.”  “SCOTUS can begin to reduce this and avoid a major Constitutional Crisis, or even another civil war, by how they decide some of the cases before them,” Joyner wrote. “They can begin to bring a desperately needed restraint on the Judicial Branch that has gotten very far outside of its lane.” 

Charlotte About To Be Invaded By Orange Calf Worshipers (VIDEO)

By reality-based standards, Donald Trump’s presidency is very close to the rocks. According to Nate Silver’s model of approval poll averages, Trump only has an approval rating of 42.4 percent as of Wednesday night. Even at this early stage, this would be code-calling territory for any politician. But those approval ratings would be even lower than that if not for the large number of white…

Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian:

A few months ago, one of my Facebook friends—a radical lefty Black Christian like yours truly—mused that right-wing evangelicals believed that Donald Trump would expose the corruption of the left. But in the decade since Trump came down the escalator, it’s elements of the church that are being exposed to the hot lights—and melting under them. It’s not just the large numbers of so-called moral guardians who not only bowed and prayed to the orange god they helped make, but tried to bully the nation into joining them despite knowing he was a boor, a bully, a gangster, a traitor. Nor is it just how many of those same people thumbed their noses at COVID. The latter may come as a shock, even though it’s a major reason why people who are immunocompromised or have chronic illnesses were shut in for four years or more, and why there are parts of the country where in-person church is no longer safe for the immunocompromised and high-risk. [...]

Well, add another to the list—Sean Feucht. For those who don’t know, Feucht got his start as a worship leader at Bethel Church in Redding, California—one of the fountainheads of the New Apostolic Reformation, an overtly fascist offshoot of the religious right that believes it can bring about the Second Coming by taking over the world. He has since struck out on his own, and is better known as the leader of “Let Us Worship,” a series of worship concerts that started out as a protest against COVID restrictions that caused many churches to forgo in-person services for the better part of the spring and summer of 2020. It has since branched out to protests against most of the items on the right’s shit list—wokeness, cancel culture, the lot.

Late Sunday, however, Feucht got a rude awakening when five former staffers from his various ministries—Let Us Worship, his original worship project, Burn 24/7, and outreach ministry Light a Candle—released a report alleging their former boss was guilty of “longstanding and serious” misconduct, including numerous “moral, ethical, financial, organizational and governance failures.” While Feucht stands accused of behavior that is minor league compared to the misdeeds of Bickle, Joyner, and Morris, it’s still pretty staggering. According to the report, Feucht has a longstanding pattern of “manipulation, exaggeration, control, lying, gaslighting, and spiritual and emotional abuse.” He also reportedly has a bad habit of dipping into “ministry resources” for his own personal use. In their own accounts of their dealings with Feucht, they accuse him of coercion, diversion of funds, not paying people for their work, dysfunction, etc. They also claim Feucht’s board members have grossly disregarded their fiduciary duty.

[...] But the most eye-popping anecdote is Feucht’s high living. In the report’s executive summary, the whistleblowers claim that Feucht holds at least ten properties worth “multiple millions of dollars” in California, Montana, and Pennsylvania, even though his only employment over the last decade-plus has been operating his various nonprofits. Additionally, his ministry owns “multi-million-dollar ‘parsonages’” in Washington and San Juan Capistrano. [...]

Hankins herself took to Twitter to express her shock at Feucht’s callousness. A look at her feed provides the cherry on top of this saga. It turns out that Hankins is MAGA—and hardcore MAGA to boot. Her feed is full of retweets from MAGA luminaries, and her cover page touts Alex Jones. In other words, on paper Hankins is the very kind of person who would be receptive to Feucht whining that Soros is out to get him.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that this is the part where Hankins gets warned about “touching God’s anointed,” with the explanation that speaking out against someone supposedly being used by God like Feucht can carry dire consequences in both this world and the next. But I’m not seeing that here. The responses to her on Twitter and on Facebook have been overwhelmingly supportive. I have to confess—I was tempted to harrumph “FAFO!” when I saw Hankins’ profile. But when right-wingers realize that they’ve been swindled—by Trump, Feucht, or any of their other heroes—the last thing they need is smugness. You have to remember, folks, that hardcore Trumpers have spent the better part of a decade, or perhaps longer, in a bubble. They’ve been told for years that when Trump gets called out on his depravities, it’s all just lies ginned up by the deep state and their Democratic, never-Trumper, and FAKE NEWS media handmaidens. Supposedly, they’re so blinded with Trump Derangement Syndrome that they can’t see the good Trump is doing. If we scoff at people like Hankins, it takes the focus off people who really do need to find out—like Feucht. That being said, I’m calling it here and now—Feucht is going to find out, and find out in a very unpleasant way. 

Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian:

Many of my longtime friends and readers know that I’ve seen some pretty outrageous and depraved behavior from pastors in my day. But without a doubt, the most outrageous thing I’ve ever seen from a pastor came last March, when Rick Joyner had the audacity to claim that Mike Bickle, deserved a chance to be restored even though he had been exposed as a serial sexual predator and child molester. While speaking from the pulpit of one of the churches under the “covering” of his MorningStar Ministries, Joyner said—with a straight face—that Bickle had recently endured some “troubles.” However, Joyner claimed that because of Galatians 6:1, he believed in “restoring” people, and we would be “seeing and hearing” from Bickle again. Let’s review what those “troubles” were, shall we? In October 2023, amid multiple reports that Bickle had sexually assaulted several of his adherents, the executive board of the International House of Prayer, the ministry founded by Bickle, forced him to go on sabbatical from all public ministry pending investigation. One of the accusers, “Jane Doe,” claimed Bickle used a bogus prophecy to manipulate and assault her. Bickle subsequently admitted to “bad judgments and bad mistakes” with one accuser, and later confessed that he had engaged in “inappropriate behavior” years earlier—though not the “more intense sexual activities” he’d been accused of. Two days before Christmas, IHOPKC announced that it had unearthed evidence that Bickle had engaged in misconduct of a nature that required it to “immediately, formally, and permanently” cut ties with Bickle. Less than two months later, on Feb. 7, The Kansas City Star published an interview with Tammy Woods, who said Bickle groomed and sexually abused her in the 1980s when she was 14 years old and Bickle was a minister at her St. Louis-area church. In response, IHOPKC released a burning statement condemning Bickle’s “predatory and abusive actions” as a violation of “the Word of God, the marriage covenant, and holiness.”