Faith, Fear, and the Free Gift of Propaganda
Intercessors for America packages conspiracy and prayer as civic education, offering it as a “free gift.”
Intercessors for America promises a “library of free resources” to everyone who joins its prayer network. The welcome email arrives within minutes of signing up, written in the bright, earnest tone familiar to Christian nonprofits. “Here’s the resource you requested!” it announces, offering a glossy download titled Propaganda: The Dangers of the Information Age (Intercessors for America). The language of generosity does double work. It signals benevolence and creates instant reciprocity. You get a gift, therefore you owe attention.
At first glance, the twelve-page report looks like a civics handout. It defines propaganda, traces its Latin roots, and quotes George Orwell on the dangers of state-controlled truth (Intercessors for America). The design borrows the aesthetic of a media literacy guide, with red and black typography, vintage propaganda posters, and bold subheads that suggest analytical rigor. Readers learn to identify techniques such as “name-calling,” “glittering generalities,” and “bandwagon appeals.” One page lists examples of negative labeling that range from “libtard” to “demoncrat,” warning that such language deters people from examining evidence.
The appearance of neutrality lasts about three pages. By the midpoint, the examples shift from broad principles to explicitly partisan grievances. Propaganda, readers are told, includes claims about “the unvaccinated spreading COVID,” “climate emergency warnings,” and “government officials declaring domestic terrorism threats tied to misinformation.” The report introduces legitimate historical figures such as Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels, then moves without transition to twenty-first-century political controversies. Bill Gates is accused of manipulating the news through philanthropic grants. Fact-checkers are described as “co-opted” agents of censorship. Vaccine statistics are presented without sources, attributed instead to “studies estimating more than 100,000 deaths.” The structure of academic exposition remains, but the evidentiary standard collapses.
By the final section, civics has given way to prayer. “Pray Psalm 91 over those who expose propaganda,” the report urges, “as they battle invisible principalities which seek to hinder or destroy their mission.” Propaganda is no longer a civic or media problem; it is a demonic one. The act of discernment becomes a form of warfare. To recognize propaganda is to join the battle against it, armed with Scripture rather than skepticism.
This move, from intellectual critique to spiritual mobilization, is not accidental. It is a rhetorical pattern visible across Christian nationalist and spiritual warfare networks. As religious-political movements adapt to the digital age, they borrow the language of scholarship to legitimize theological combat. The result is what communication scholar Barry Brummett (1988) called “transfer rhetoric,” appeals that exploit reverence for sacred texts or intellectual authority to motivate secular commitments. The Intercessors report looks like a textbook example.
Scholars have documented how such movements frame their missions as divine mandates. Ernest Chitando (2005) and Dana Matar (2008) both describe religious leaders who appropriate sacred narratives to justify political action, turning faith into national duty. Ruth Marshall (2016) shows how charismatic movements use prayer as political praxis, blending apocalyptic visions with calls for direct action. David Domke and Kevin Coe (2008) trace how American politicians deploy religious language strategically, sanctifying partisan goals. And as Susan Diamond (1989) argued decades ago, the Christian Right’s “spiritual warfare” rhetoric blurs the line between inner faith and public struggle, inviting believers to see politics itself as a cosmic confrontation.
The Propaganda Special Report sits squarely in that lineage. It opens with definitions that signal objectivity but quietly primes readers for a battle between truth and deception, light and darkness. Once that dualism is in place, the document does not need to persuade; it only needs to identify enemies. By calling its distribution a “prayer resource,” Intercessors for America fuses civic participation with spiritual obligation. To doubt the report’s claims is to risk siding with the deceiver.
The report even directs readers to The Stream for “further understanding,” citing Sharyl Attkisson’s “Ten Principles of Propaganda.” The site, founded by televangelist James Robison, is a Christian commentary outlet that describes itself as promoting a “biblical worldview.” Its content functions less as journalism and more as advocacy, echoing the same themes of media deception and spiritual discernment that define the IFA report. Attkisson’s program Full Measure airs through the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative media company known for inserting partisan editorials into local newscasts. Media analysts at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting note that Sinclair “sneaks right-wing spin into millions of households” through mandated commentaries (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 2024). The link from IFA to The Stream to Sinclair reveals a closed circuit of messaging in which each outlet validates the others while warning readers to distrust all competing sources. For more watch this 2017 segment from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about Sinclair.
The organization’s emails reinforce this logic. In one message, subscribers are told that propaganda is “a coordinated attempt to influence people so they will adhere to a certain agenda or belief system.” Another promises “tools to help Christians pray for the nation” and “apply God’s Word” to current events (Intercessors for America). The pairing of political analysis and prayer instruction eliminates any boundary between public reasoning and private devotion. The believer becomes both citizen and soldier.
This rhetorical hybrid, scholarship plus scripture, performs what might be called faux-intellectualism. It mimics the texture of critical thought while directing all conclusions toward a predetermined worldview. The report’s citations to Orwell, Bernays, and history lend it the credibility of research, but its argumentative method relies on omission, insinuation, and repetition, the very traits it warns against. By condemning propaganda, the organization models it.
Such inversion is effective because it flatters the reader. It suggests that true believers are the only ones capable of discernment, that mainstream media audiences are “hypnotized” while the faithful see through the lies. IFA’s president, Dave Kubal, is quoted describing “isolation, daily bombardment of fear, and the presentation of only the endorsed truth,” a process that supposedly produces “zealous individual propagandists in every corner.” The implication is clear: others are the hypnotized masses; IFA readers are the awakened minority.
The educational tone conceals a recruitment mechanism. Every definition of propaganda is mirrored by a demonstration of it. “Name-calling” is illustrated by the word “demoncrat,” and later the report portrays journalists, scientists, and political opponents as demonic actors. “Card stacking,” the selective presentation of information, appears as the report cites only evidence aligning with its worldview. “Fear appeals” are embodied in warnings that censorship, technocracy, and globalism threaten Christian survival.
This is what makes the piece more than a curiosity. It is an example of how spiritual warfare networks operationalize media literacy language to fortify ideological boundaries. The guide does not teach critical thinking; it teaches mistrust of all external sources except those sanctified by the movement. In doing so, it performs what Graham and Svolik (2020) call the erosion of democratic accountability, the substitution of partisan loyalty for empirical judgment.
What Intercessors for America offers new subscribers is not simply a PDF. It is an interpretive lens. Through it, every political disagreement becomes a contest between divine truth and satanic deceit. Every press release becomes suspect, every scientific study a potential trap. The faithful reader is encouraged to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears, the very warning Orwell once wrote into fiction, but now rebranded as spiritual discernment.
This fusion of scholarship and scripture is the movement’s most durable innovation. It allows leaders to condemn propaganda while deploying it, to quote Bernays while echoing Goebbels, to dismiss secular manipulation while practicing theological spin. It is propaganda baptized as prayer.
For outsiders, the pamphlet might look absurd, an overwrought mash-up of civics and apocalypse. But for those inside the network, it functions as a catechism of suspicion. It assures readers that their vigilance is righteousness, that rejecting mainstream information is an act of faith. The “free gift” language conceals its true cost: the surrender of critical trust to spiritual authority.
The irony holds. Intercessors for America warns believers not to be deceived by emotional appeals, then closes by commanding them to pray against the deceiver himself. It promises education and delivers indoctrination. The group does not merely critique propaganda. It perfects it.
Further Reading & Sources
For readers tracking how faith, propaganda, and political power intertwine, the works below map the architecture behind movements like Intercessors for America. Each shows how spiritual language and civic authority blend to create a theology of control dressed as devotion.
Bjaiya al-mas’ud, H. H., & Naif, A. M. (2020). Deception in American propaganda: A pragma-rhetorical perspective. Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities, 27(10), 34–54. https://doi.org/10.25130/jtuh.27.10.2020.25
Brummett, B. (1988). Using apocalyptic discourse to exploit audience commitments through “transfer.” Southern Communication Journal, 54(1), 58–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/10417948809372746
Chitando, E. (2005). “In the beginning was the land”: The appropriation of religious themes in political discourses in Zimbabwe. Africa, 75(2), 220–239. https://doi.org/10.3366/afr.2005.75.2.220
Diamond, S. (1989). Spiritual warfare: The politics of the Christian Right. South End Press.
Domke, D., & Coe, K. (2008). The God strategy: How religion became a political weapon in America. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326413.001.0001
Graham, M. H., & Svolik, M. W. (2020). Democracy in America? Partisanship, polarization, and the robustness of support for democracy in the United States. American Political Science Review, 114(2), 392–409. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000052
Intercessors for America. Propaganda: The dangers of the information age. Intercessors for America.
Marshall, R. (2016). Destroying arguments and captivating thoughts: Spiritual warfare prayer as global praxis. Journal of Religious and Political Practice, 2(1), 92–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/20566093.2016.1085243
Matar, D. (2008). The power of conviction: Nassrallah’s rhetoric and mediated charisma in the context of the 2006 July war. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 1(2), 122–137. https://doi.org/10.1163/187398608x335793
Mor, B. D. (2007). The rhetoric of public diplomacy and propaganda wars: A view from self-presentation theory. European Journal of Political Research, 46(5), 661–683. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2007.00707.x