Christian Women’s Group All In For Serial Misogynist For President
Many evangelical Christian groups have fled trump like rats off a sinking ship, but not all.
Among the dozens of hypocritical trump enablers is a major right wing, evangelical women’s group that claims to fight sexual exploitation, and has invited the nation’s most famous sexual predator to be the keynote speaker at the group’s national conference.
That would be ex-president trump, the convicted rapist, serial misogynist and accused mastermind of the attack on the Capitol. Trump will be the keynote speaker at the Legislative Action Committee of Concerned Women for America (CWA), annual summit on Friday in Washington, D.C. The right wing, anti-abortion, Christian nationalist group represents evangelical Christian women. It claims it is the largest public policy women’s organization in the U.S. and that it “promotes Biblical values and Constitutional principles through prayer, education, and advocacy.”
Shortly after trump’s scheduled speaking time, he’ll deliver equally hypocritical remarks to the right wing, Family Research Council’s “Pray, Vote, Stand Summit” in Washington. The summit is described as a “national gathering of spiritually active, governance engaged conservatives.” The Family Research Council is an evangelical activist group and think-tank. In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center classified the council as an anti-LGBT hate group due to the group’s “false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science” in an effort to block LGBT civil rights.
“Our leaders are excited to hear from President Trump and honored he has prioritized this gathering to lay out his vision for our country,” said Penny Nance, CWA CEO and president, in a release lauding trump’s “commitment to pro-life and pro-family policies.”
The CWA said trump has signed its “presidential promise to American women, pledging to recognise the unique dignity of women.”
Denise Cappuccio, Chief Financial Officer, Concerned Women for America, offered a prayer with obvious reference to trump’s discreditede lies about a rigged 2020 presidential election.
“If there are any plots being planned to alter the results of the elections in any state, we ask that You uncover that which is hidden in darkness! Shine the light of Your truth into all areas of corruption and bring complete exposure of lies and deceit! We pray and believe that each election taking place will have truthful and accurate counts and results,” Cappucio wote on the website.
The organization claims more than 500,000 members across the country, more than 400 Prayer/Action Chapters and Influencers, more than 130 Young Women for America (YWA) Presidents or Ambassadors and 600 trained leaders.
Leadership includes Nance, with an annual salary of $268,000; Sara Olson, the senior vice president, at $158,846; and CFO Denise Cappuccioi who is paid an annual salary of $149,808.
The organization was founded in 1978 as a counterweight to the liberal, National Organization for Women and in opposition to the growing, national discussion over changing traditional gender roles and rising discussion of the Equal Rights Amendment.
The CWA website notes that the organization “is leading a movement dedicated to impacting the culture for Christ through education and public policy.” It focuses on seven core issues: “the family, the sanctity of human life, religious liberty, education, sexual exploitation, national sovereignty, and support for Israel.”
“Through sound research and education, CWA stands strong in defense of the family, Judeo-Christian values, and those conservative principles that build responsible citizens and cultivate strong families, communities, states, and our nation,” said a CWA statement. “There’s a cultural battle raging across this country, and CWA is on the frontline protecting those values through prayer and action.”
Nance served on trump’s Life Advisory Council and said she was “blessed to frequent the White House in that role and others speaking as a modern-day Esther to both the President, Vice-President, and key staff as the voice of Christian conservative women of faith around this nation.”
Nance was previously President of Nance and Associates and was special advisor for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where she advised the commission on media and social issues centered on the protection of children, including broadcast indecency and the media task force on childhood obesity. She began her career on the Capitol Hill Staff of Rep. Pat Swindall, R-Ga.
Swindall was a member of Congress from 1985–89. In 1988, Swindall was indicted on perjury charges related to a money laundering scheme. During an ensuing investigation into the illegal drug trade, Swindall lied to a federal grand jury about his knowledge that the funds were from a drug trafficking operation. He was sentenced to one year in prison and was fined of $30,450.
Upon his release from prison, Swindall hosted a religious-themed conservative radio show on the Providence Broadcasting Network. His show’s motto was “Where religion and politics converge.”
CWA has called on legislators to join in “Faith Month” each April by flying the Christian flag. Lawmakers singled out for having “proactively declared their faith” include Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., and Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill. Also highlighted for their involvement in “Faith Month” were Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., Rep. Rick Allen, R-Ga., Rep. Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga. and Rep. Bob Good, R-Va.
Hyde-Smith has been a U.S. senator from Mississippi since 2018. She attended Lawrence County Academy in Monticello, a segregation academy established in response to Supreme Court rulings ordering the desegregation of public schools. The school’s team nickname was the Rebels; the mascot was a “Col. Reb” who carried a Confederate flag.
In 2007, Hyde-Smith voted for a resolution that praised a Confederate States Army soldier for his efforts to “defend his homeland.” During her first term in the Mississippi Senate, she unsuccessfully proposed renaming a state highway after Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In 2014, Hyde-Smith posted a photo of herself at Davis’s home, Beauvoir, wearing a Confederate cap and carrying a rifle, with the caption “Mississippi history at its best!”
On Jan. 6, 2021, Hyde-Smith joined four other senators in voting to object to the certification of Arizona’s electoral votes.
Miller, a member of Congress since 2021, is a member of the far right, Freedom Caucus. She has accused President Biden of having a plan to “flood our country with terrorists, fentanyl, child traffickers, and MS-13 gang members” and said that “under President Biden’s leadership the left has weaponized the federal government to go after the American people. We face an unprecedented assault on the American way of life by the radical left.”
In May 2022, Miller was criticized for employing Bradley Graven, “a man convicted of soliciting sex with a minor, to assist with her re-election campaign.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress met to formally count the votes of the Electoral College and certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, Miller objected to the votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Miller has supported efforts to impeach Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Vice President Kamala Harris.
On June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Miller spoke at a rally with trump and called the decision a “historic victory for white life.”
Harshbarger is a pharmacist and businesswoman, and a congresswoman for Tennessee’s 1st congressional district. On the day of the insurrection at the capitol by trump supporters, Harshbarger joined 139 other Republican House members in voting to sustain objections to the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election, based on false claims of voter fraud.
Harshbarger has backed efforts to impeach Biden, Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Mayorkas, and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew M. Graves.
Allen has been in Congress since 2015. He cosponsored a resolution to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. During a closed-door Republican meeting about an amendment that prohibited discrimination against LGBT workers, Allen read a Bible verse that says of homosexuals, “they which commit such things are worthy of death.” He told Republicans that they were “going to Hell” if they voted for the amendment.
In Faith Month comments on the House floor, Fulcher said that “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule, the people mourn,” citing Proverbs 29:2.
Good said during the Faith Month observance that “America had been blessed in large part because of our dependence upon the Lord, our dependence on divine intervention, a dependence on guidance from our Creator.”
Johnson also spoke in light of Faith Month and said the phrase “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the Constitution. Rather, Johnson said, the phrase is from a letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802.
“The Founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around,” Johnson said.
Clyde said that “religious liberties are in danger of being canceled or abandoned because of persecution in government at all levels.”
Hyde-Smith and Guest made a public declaration of faith by posting a Christian flag in front of their congressional offices in Washington, D.C.
“I hope that this flag will serve as a light to all those who visit our nation’s capitol,” Guest said.
The CWA says it represents evangelical women who feel that the national feminist movement does not support their interests. The organization has taken strong stances against abortion, sex education, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, needle exchange programs, cloning, drug abuse, secular education, gambling or any other efforts which “intervene with natural human life.”
In opposing pornography, the CWA “contends that pornography persuades men to demean their wives, to ruin their marriages, and to engage in illicit sexual behaviors.
The CWA lobbies for defunding domestic and international family planning programs, especially those that perform abortions or provide the Norplant contraceptive. The group says it supports crisis pregnancy centers and post-abortion counseling services.
The CWA believes that sex education should not be taught in school, and that parents should be empowered to teach their own children about sex. The group says that if sex education is taught in school, it should be abstinence-only sex education.
CWA supports teaching intelligent design in public schools and advocates school prayer.
Concerned Women of America is one of a number of hypocritical, so-called religious groups. Another far right, white Christian nationalist group, Pastors for Trump, and its leader, Jackson Lahmeyer, have ties to trump loyalists Roger Stone and retired, disgraced Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. The group is planning events with pastors in swing-state churches in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania to spur more evangelical backing for trump.
In 2021, Flynn strongly supported Lahmeyer’s losing primary campaign for the Republican nomination for a Senate seat from Oklahoma. Flynn has worked to overturn trump’s loss to Joe Biden and was pardoned by trump for twice lying to the FBI about contacts he had with Russians before briefly serving as trump’s national security adviser.
Stone, a political “dirty trickster” also was pardoned by trump after he was convicted of lying to Congress.
Lahmeyer is an Oklahoma-based evangelical pastor and businessman who has claimed his group has more than 7,000 pastors as members. The number was not verified and had a similar tone to trump’s false claims of having the largest audience in history to view his 2016 inauguration.
“We’re going down a very evil path in this country,” Lahmeyer said. “Our economy is being destroyed. It’s China, the deep state and globalists. China interfered in our 2020 elections. This is biblical, what’s happening. This is a spiritual battle.”
Lahmeyer has previously labeled former House speaker Nancy Pelosi as a “demon” and former COVID adviser Anthony Fauci “a mass-murdering Luciferian.” The faux pastor has said the attack on the Capitol on January 6 by pro-trump supporters was an “FBI inside job.”
Lahmeyer has helped organize pro-trump rallies and has arranged prayer calls that have included Stone, Flynn and ex-trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Each has promoted trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020.
Giuliani was indicted in August in the prosecution related to the attempt to rig the 2020 election in Georgia, along with 18 other people.
Lahmeyer, lead pastor at Sheridan Church in Tulsa, a “nondenominational charismatic church,” said he embraces Christian nationalism “because… we are at war in this country; it is a spiritual war between good and evil.” Lahmeyer says the 2020 election was rigged, while he has urged that people defy COVID-19 health mandates.
“Here’s what I know: President Trump’s actions bear the fruit,” Lahmeyer told a Rolling Stone reporter. “He’s been the best pro-Christian president we’ve had in my lifetime. In Oklahoma, we are now an abortion-free state — and that is thanks to President Donald Trump.”
And then there is Catholics for Trump whose mission is to “energize and activate the Catholic community in re-electing President Donald J. Trump by sharing the many successes of the Trump administration. Re-electing President Trump will ensure continued victories in pro-life issues, judicial appointments, and religious freedom.”
The group is led by Catherine O’Neill, who has worked in the State Department and is the daughter of major trump donor George O’Neill Jr., the great grandson of John D. Rockefeller Jr. The advisory board includes former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, longtime Republican political consultant Mary Joe Matalin, president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles Alfonso Aguilar, and chairman of the American Conservative Union, Matt Schlapp.
Trump’s reelection campaign has featured on-line comments by Father Frank Pavone, who created Priests for Trump. Also addressing the campaign event was former Kansas GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp who said “you’ve got a non-Catholic in Donald Trump who’s delivering on Catholic social teaching and principles.”
Pavone is the national director of Priests for Life and the chairman and pastoral director of its Rachel’s Vineyard project, a retreat for women who have had abortions. He is president of the National Pro-Life Religious Council, an umbrella group of various anti-abortion Christian denominations, and the pastoral director of the Silent No More campaign.
Pavone was defrocked by the Vatican in November 2022 after he placed an aborted fetus on an altar in his effort to elect trump as president and for posting a video of the aborted fetus on two social media sites in 2016.
Pavone, a member of trump’s 33-member Catholic advisory council, also tweeted that then-Democratic presidential nominee Biden a “[expletive] loser” and the Democratic Party “God-hating” and “America-hating.” In February 2023 Pavone was asked to step down as national director of Priests for Life after allegations were released that he sexually harassed multiple women. Pavone denied the allegations but admitted he may have “unintentionally made someone feel uncomfortable.”