Doug Mastriano: religion and politics
A man is entitled to worship as he pleases. What Doug Mastriano does to get right with the Lord is his business. Individual religious preferences are sacrosanct. It’s in the Constitution.
But it’s fair to make a judgment when a man — in this case, Mastriano — drags those preferences into the spotlight of politics. The suspicion is that’s exactly what Mastriano, the Republican running for governor, wants. His religion is his politics, it appears.
The Mastriano campaign has embraced Julie Green, an Iowa-based Christian “prophet.” Green claims God speaks to her. Not infrequently, it seems, God has spoken to Green about Mastriano and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
On Feb. 28, for instance, during a Julie Green International Ministries broadcast, Green prophesied, “Doug Mastriano, I have you here for such a time as this, saith the Lord…. Yes, Doug, I am here with you. I will not forsake you. The time has come for the great fall and the great steal to be overturned.”
The “great steal” reference goes to the Trumpian belief the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the then-president. Green is one of the many “prophets” of God siding with the man from Mar-a-Lago and against American democracy.
The “great fall” evidently refers to the Godly comeuppance due all of those — Democrats and Republicans alike — who had a hand in denying Donald Trump another four years in the White House.
According to Eric Hananoki of Media Matters, soon after Green’s February prophesy, “Mastriano invited [Green] to pray at a campaign event.” “[A] campaign aide introduced Green [at the rally] as ‘a representative of God.'”
For her part, Green “prophesied that Mastriano would be governor and ‘everything that has been stolen will be overturned by your hand.'”
(Like Green, Mastriano is a democracy denier. Just this week, Rolling Stone surfaced a pre-Jan. 6 Zoom-meeting prayer offered by Mastriano in which he said, “We will seize the power that has been given us by the Constitution as well [as] by You.”
In the Rolling Stone-provided video, Mastriano also prays on behalf of a letter signed by fellow Republican state lawmakers to U.S. House and Senate leaders that the Jan. 6 electoral college ratification vote be postponed, pending an investigation of the Pennsylvania election.
State Sen. Mastriano was on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, during the storming of the House and Senate chambers, though he says he didn’t go inside the Capitol himself. He has appeared before the House committee investigating the matter, but has largely refused to cooperate with the panel.
Back to Green. On a March 24 broadcast, she made a reference to the Appalachian mountains in Pennsylvania that seemed to portend a calamity of some sort. She also prophesied “triple rainbows” over the state, perhaps as a sign of God’s benevolent intentions.
On another occasion, she indicated that God had relayed to her the fact that Gov. Tom Wolf would soon be engulfed in scandal.
A lot of bad things were happening in Pennsylvania, she said. But residents shouldn’t lose heart. Hearing from the Lord himself, she said, “Know God is setting your state free…. Truth is coming out. Don’t lose hope now.”
In April, Green and Mastriano were together on the Gettysburg battlefield for a photograph. “A great day at Gettysburg,” Mastriano posted online.
In May, Green posted a prayer for the campaign at the request of a Mastriano campaign aide. She declared, “Those people who have been against the campaign … Father God, will fall and be exposed, in Jesus’s mighty name.”
In July, Mastriano was part of a group at Gettysburg. The battlefield gathering was caught on video. Wrapped in a prayer shawl and blowing on an hollowed out ram’s horn, the group leader, a man by the name of Earl Hixson, offered a prayer during which he said, “Father God, I am looking to our new general [Mastriano] here that you have appointed.” Hixson called Mastriano the “new Joshua.”
The video appears to show Mastriano accepting the summons.
It’s one thing to bring religion and politics into the political arena; it’s another thing for a candidate for high public office to be a participant in such unconventional practices and beliefs.
It’s fair to ask: Given this messianic background, what are the chances that Mastriano will accept the results of the secular November election, in the event he loses?
Richard Robbins is the author, most recently, of “Troubled Times: The Struggle for Wages, Recognition, and Power in the Age of Coal and Coke.” He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.