As goes Uganda, so goes Hawaii ?

ITN operatives have played a significant role organizing and inspiring Ugandan legislators who have drafted, cosponsored, and backed the draconian and internationally denounced Anti Homosexuality Bill before Uganda's parliament which would mandate the execution of many HIV positive Ugandans and also require, on pain of three years in prison, that citizens report to the police anyone suspected of being gay. The penalty for being homosexual in Uganda is imprisonment for life.

International Transformation Network leaders such as Ed Silvoso claim homosexuals are possessed by demons, assert that HIV and AIDS can be cured through faith healing and prayer, and decry basic birth control methods. They oppose labor unions and secular public education. ITN ideology targets mainstream Christianity with the charge that Catholics and Protestants who are not "born again" and charismatic are not saved and so will not go to heaven.

The International Transformation Network is part of a global charismatic evangelical movement that seeks to "transform" cities, nations, even whole continents, by purifying the world of perceived evil. As ITN Founder and CEO Ed. Silvoso states in a promotional video, "Jesus designed the church to be his agency on Earth to destroy Satan's empire."

Introducing  Duke Aiona's speech, at the 2009 International Transformation Network conference, ITN Chairman and noted Hawaii architect Francis Oda declared, "God is transforming Hawaii... we are the tip of his spear."

After Aiona's speech Francis Oda, his wife Caroline, and ITN Council member Cal Chinen, laid hands on Duke Aiona while Ed Silvoso pronounced, "We are breaking every weapon of the enemy, we are canceling every curse... we are declaring there is an even greater future for the Lt. Governor and his wife."

Then Silvoso called upon God to bless Lt. Governor Aiona while the audience of over 500 delegates from six continents, arms upraised, hands outstretched, swaying back and forth, echoed, in unison, Ed Silvoso's words.

The ITN has concerted "transformation" projects underway across the globe, in Argentina, the Philippines, Uganda, Hawaii, and elsewhere.

Duke Aiona, Mufi Hannemann, Transformation Hawaii, and the ITN

The International Transformation Network's efforts in Hawaii are being coordinated by a 501(c)(3) entity called Transformation Hawaii. For at least three years (from 2005 through 2008) Duke Aiona has been listed as Transformation Hawaii's honorary chairman and since 2007 Transformation Hawaii has been an official chapter of the International Transformation Network making Aiona, in effect, an honorary member of the ITN as well.

Transformation Hawaii is developing the ability to mobilize large numbers of Hawaiian voters and, because Hawaii has historically had a low rate of voter turnout, the organization's ongoing church-based voter registration drive has the potential to significantly impact upcoming elections such as the 2010 Hawaii gubernatorial race.  

ITN CEO Ed Silvoso's claim at the Dallas Convergence 2010 conference, that both the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor are "already in the kingdom" is suggestive given Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann's association with Transformation Hawaii.

Hannemann has not yet announced his candidacy but the general assumption is that he will, and the Honolulu Mayor has raised over 2 million dollars - far more than Hannemann's Democratic rival Neal Abercrombie or GOP candidate Duke Aiona.

Even if Abercrombie runs against Hannemann and prevails in a Democratic Party gubernatorial primary battle that will nonetheless take valuable cash resources away from the Abercrombie campaign in the general election. But the odds may well lie with Hannemann. Besides having substantial cash reserves and a bully pulpit as Honolulu's mayor, Hannemann holds at least one major hot button position in common with the Transformation Hawaii movement - opposition to civil unions and gay marriage (Hannemann has so far refused to state his position on abortion). Hannemann's potential Democratic Party adversary Neal Abercrombie supports civil unions.

Because Hawaii's primaries are open, Transformation Hawaii-associated voters who are registered as Republicans or independents can nonetheless vote for Hannemann in the Democratic primary.

If Abercrombie loses in the primary, Hawaiians will have to choose between two candidates both of whom are associated with a religio-political movement that, beyond US shores, is brutally eliminationist.

According to Richard Borreca of the Honolulu Star Bulletin, Mufi Hannemann attended, along with Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona, a May 20-21, 2005 Transformation Hawaii event at the Waikiki Shell of the Neal Blaisdell Center near Honolulu. Leading the event was International Transformation Network CEO Ed Silvoso.

As a 24 minute mini-documentary video produced by the ITN described the event, "In May of 2005, Transformation Hawaii, in partnership with Harvest Evangelism (Ed Silvoso's Argentina ministry) held a statewide conference in Honolulu to train, connect, and commission marketplace ministers."

Silvoso defines the "marketplace" as all sectors of society outside of the church. So the role of "marketplace ministers" is to bring the ITN's version of Christianity into all areas of society including business, government, media, and education.

Towards the close of the event, Silvoso declared, "Let the Lord reveal, supernaturally, that as we leave this arena today, and we begin to speak peace and bless people all over Hawaii, Satan will fall down and his empire will be destroyed."

Duke Aiona starred in a Transformation Hawaii-produced video ad for the event in which Aiona, clearly identified as Hawaii's Lt. Governor, declared,

"On May 20th and 21st, people of Hawaii, I invite all of you to come to the Neal Blaisdell Center to experience God's, God's movement here in Hawaii. Transformation Hawaii is truly an experience that you'll never forget. A movement is happening, a movement is going, and we all need to be a part of it."

It was not the last of Ed Silvoso's events that Aiona and Hannemann have attended together.

On 9:00 AM on January 21, 2008 Duke Aiona and Mufi Hannemann shared a stage at the opening ceremonies for a Transformation Hawaii / International Transformation Network "Catch the Wave" two-day conference at the Hawaii Convention Center. At 9:30 AM that morning, in session one, Aiona and Honolulu Councilman Gary Okino shared the stage with top leaders of Transformation Hawaii and the ITN: Ed Silvoso, Cal Chinen, and Francis Oda.

E Pule Kakou & Hawai'i He'e Nalu

One of Transformation Hawaii's spinoff initiatives is E Pule Kakou ("Let us pray"), a Hawaii prayer effort started by Transformation Hawaii's Cofounder and Chairman of the Board of Directors Cal Chinen. E Pule Kakou reports that its 2009 Thanksgiving day prayer event was televised over nine cable networks, and on all major networks in the state of Hawaii, and watched, according to Nielson ratings, by 400,000 people.

Duke Aiona delivered a televised prayer for E Pule Kakou's 2008 Thanksgiving prayer event, in which he proclaimed, speaking as an individual (not in his capacity as Lt. Governor), that "my island is God's island, my state is God's state, and we declare in prayer as God's Ohana that our Hawai'i is God's Hawai'i. In Jesus name we pray, amen."

Ed Silvoso is listed as the featured guest speaker for upcoming April 17 and 24, 2010 E Pule Kakou breakfast meetings and, over the course of the decade, Silvoso has traveled to Hawaii for numerous ITN/Transformation Hawaii events.

Transformation Hawaii has recently been cobranded as Hawai'i He'e Nalu ("Hawai'i Catch the Wave"), whose web site states the effort "doesn't seek to benefit any one religious group or denomination for dominance" and works to address social and economic problems in Hawaii as well as "cultural malaise and social degradation affecting the people and communities within the State."

Hawai'i He'e Nalu's stated vision and purpose is sweepingly grandiose. Besides "embracing and upholding traditional family values" and working to "restore godly principles in our families, to the Islands and to the nations of the world," Hawai'i He'e Nalu "is in such a unique position to change the course of history that it could possibly alter a new reformation" and the effort "could serve as a catalyst for a monumental paradigm shift for the nations of the world."

One of the Transformation Hawaii / Hawai'i He'e Nalu projects has been the so-called "Aloha Card." Lt. Governor Duke Aiona has handed out, with the approval of Hawaii's Department of Education, tens of thousands of the plastic business-card sized cards to students in Hawaii's schools. The cards feature spare aphorisms created by placing attribute words under three header categories - "seed planted," "fruit of seed," and "harvest."

Most of the Aloha card's aphorisms (such as "the seed of forgiveness leads to the fruit of unity and a harvest of joy") might not be controversial anywhere in the United States. Brainchild of Transformation Hawaii President Allen Cardines of Hope Chapel Nanakuli, the Aloha Card project is probably the least controversial of Hawai'i He'e Nalu's spinoff projects.

It is also officially a sub-ministry of Cardines' church operating in partnership with Transformation Hawaii, the Office of the Lt. Governor, elements of the Hawaii National Guard and the Honolulu Police Department, and Cal Chinen's Moanalua Gardens Missionary Church.

That cobranding and co-endorsement is characteristic of Transformation Hawaii's numerous efforts. Although Allen Cardines' and Cal Chinen's sectarian tendency is portrayed as ecumenical and broadly representative of all Christianity, it is anything but and Christianity, in turn, is hardly representative of the beliefs of all Hawaiians.  

Church and state, or state church ?

While the Aloha Card project probably does not violate the Establishment Clause provision of the US Constitution (or an identical provision in Hawaii's constitution), Duke Aoina's December 2004 speech, at a Transformation Hawaii-organized event, dedicating Hawaii and its schools to Jesus Christ likely crossed the line.

On December 8th, 2004, at a statewide, telecast Transformation Hawaii prayer event Lt. Gov. Aiona dedicated Hawaii to Jesus declaring, "our school will become God's school, our community will become God's community, our city will become God's city, our Island will become God's island, our state will become God's state, our Hawai'i will become God's Hawai'i. Lord Jesus Christ, as it is in heaven so also in Hawai'i. Let your kingdom come, let your will be done. Amen!"

As Ed Silvoso exulted in the February 2005 report of his Harvest Evangelism ministry,

"One of the most significant spiritual acts in modern times took place in Hawaii when on December 8, 2004, Lt. Governor Duke Aiona issued a proclamation... dedicating Hawaii to the Lord Jesus Christ... Never before has such a high official publicly and without reservations turned an entire state over to Jesus !"

Interviewed in early 2010, by David Brody for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network about his participation in the Transformation Hawaii ceremony dedicating Hawaii to Jesus , Lt. Governor Duke Aiona stated,

"It wasn't in a speech, it wasn't, ah, it wasn't in a cabinet meeting, it had nothing to do [with] when I was the Lt. Governor convening a meeting or making a speech to some rotary club or anything like that - it was in prayer."

But Kathleen M. Sands, Associate Professor at the University of Hawaii whose academic specialties include religion and law and who serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Law and Religion, takes constitutional issue with Aiona's claims.

Reacting to a 24 minute documentary video, commissioned by International Transformation Network CEO Ed Silvoso and produced by Transformation Hawaii Cofounder Cal Chinen, that depicts the history of the Transformation Hawaii effort,  Sands states, "if the facts presented in the video are true, Aiona... was acting in his capacity as Lt. Gov." when Aiona proclaimed "Christ as the Light of Hawaii" and invited "the Light of Christ" into Hawaii's public schools.

"This is something that is constitutionally prohibited," according to Sands, "Like all elected officials Aiona took an oath to uphold the constitution. Whether he simply does not understand the constitutional provisions about religion, or willfully defies them, this should be of very serious concerns to voters."

Professor Sands stresses that what's particularly constitutionally problematic is that Transformation Hawaii and the ITN promote a form of Christianity that is anything but generic or representative of religion in general.

"A public official is definitely NOT free to use his elected office to throw government power behind any particular religious viewpoint. There is debate in the judiciary about whether government may support "religion as such" as distinct from particular religious groups or beliefs. However, there is no debate about the fact that government may never support one religion or religious belief over another," Sands states.

Duke Aiona's endorsement of Transformation Hawaii (and by extension the International Transformation Network) would seem to disenfranchise up to one half of Hawaii's entire population according to Sands, who notes that the Transformation Hawaii/ITN religious network "excludes non-Christians [over 30% of Hawaii's population according to one survey]. It even excludes mainline and Protestant orthodox Christians, who do NOT support the establishment of Christianity. [up to 20% of Hawaii's population]"

The most politically controversial aspect, observes Sands, is that,

"Transformation Hawaii attempts to "establish" not only particular religious beliefs (e.g. the divinity of Jesus) but also political views about which the country and the state are profoundly torn - for example, their opposition to abortion and gay rights. They are attempting, in short, to commandeer religion for sectarian and partisan purposes. This is, very precisely, what the religion clauses of the constitution were meant to prevent."

"Transformation" = opposing gay rights and abortion ?

As Cal Chinen's son Daniel remarked, in the February 20 and 22, 2009 MGMC church newsletter, on the growing politicization of his Maonalua Gardens Missionary Church, "In the last several weeks, here at MGMC, we have been talking a lot about politics, which is unusual for our congregation." The newsletter contained a notice encouraging members of the church to turn out for a February 2009 rally at the Hawaii state capital against the pending civil unions bill before the Hawaii state legislature:

"Please come out to the State Capital to show your support of Traditional Marriage. We want to oppose the Civil Unions HB 444 by showing them God's love and peace. Please wear red clothing." In a subsequent church newsletter Chinen suggested that over 8,000 had turned out for the anti- HB 444 rally in February 2009.

A year later, another anti-HB 444 rally on January 18, 2010, Martin Luther King Day, drew perhaps twice as many protesters.

The January 18th rally at the Hawaii state capital building  was attended by Transformation Hawaii president Allen Cardines, Lt. Governor Aiona, and Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann - who spoke at the rally, attacking "attempts to distort my message in support of traditional marriage....I believe in the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman."

As Cal Chinen's church newsletter shows, his church has taken up the project of indoctrinating teenage members of his church in antiabortion politics. As Chinen wrote in the January 30 / February 1, 2009 MGMC newsletter,

` "I'm still struggling with signing that card against furthering abortion rights (the Freedom of Choice Act) that we did in church," some of our young people thought as we passed them out in last week's services. "Isn't it the right of every person to choose whether or not they want to have a baby ?" many asked Pastor Charis as they gathered in their High School Sunday School Class....

Pastor Charis lovingly and patiently explained to the young people what abortion really is... in actuality, many are not educated about partial birth abortions and when they understand what it is they are shocked. For example by the end of Charis' explanation the girls were all in tears of repentance and love."

The life-or-death decisions that force many women to opt for the rare procedure of late-term abortion would not seem, based on Cal Chinen's description, to have been a part of Pastor Charis' antiabortion curriculum.  

Opposition to gay rights and abortion might well be the lesser part of what's notably sectarian about Transformation Hawaii/ITN ideology.

`Spiritual Mapping' the enemies

In urging  attendees of the Dallas Convergence 2010 conference to go to the upcoming International Transformation Network conference in Hawaii next November 2010, ITN CEO Ed Silvoso told attendees, "You're going to come to a state where every school has been prayer-walked, every teacher adopted, every student been interceded for..."

Transformation Hawaii's first incarnation, a student effort called United in Prayer in which students formed prayer groups in schools, seemed finely calibrated to walk up to, but not over, the line drawn by the constitution's establishment clause. Nominally student-led, parents and pastors would coach United in Prayer students, right up to school doors. The students themselves would then conduct prayer services in their schools.

That effort, spread statewide, was the backdrop for Duke Aiona's 2004 dedication of Hawaii to Jesus. But what is "prayer walking" ?

Prayer Walking is part of an elaborate new evangelizing paradigm Ed Silvoso helped to create during the late 1980's through the early 1990's. In prayer walking, believers methodically walk cities, towns, and geographical areas, praying for unbelievers but also mapping out areas allegedly infested by demon powers.

The practice was exported globally from Colorado Springs during the 1990's and into the following decade, by Ted Haggard and his close working colleague C. Peter Wagner, a church growth specialist. In 2003 Haggard became head of the 27 million or more strong National Association of Evangelicals and during his brief tenure at the position, before falling from power due to a sex and drugs scandal, claimed to be having weekly conversations with the White House.

Colorado Springs may have been the first US city of any size to be "prayer walked," a practice Ted Haggard referred to a "grid praying." Public radio reporter Alix Spiegel covered the prayer walking and spiritual mapping efforts of Haggard's New Life Church in Colorado Springs, in a 1997 radio segment for This American Life (segment #77, "Pray").

Initially exposed to the benign face of Spiritual Mapping, in which believers "prayer walk" city streets praying for residents and businesses, Alix Spiegel was sympathetic at first until she went out with a New Life Church team that sought to expel demons, from a high school playground, which allegedly had been attracted by the freethinking ways of high school drama students.

The rise of the Spiritual Mapping movement was also noted in a prescient 1999 article by Jane Lampmann of the Christian Science Monitor, "Targeting cities with 'spiritual mapping,' prayer." As Lampmann wrote,

` Through "spiritual warfare" and an in-depth research effort called "spiritual mapping," they aim to bring people to Christ and, in their words, "break spiritual strongholds" holding communities in their grip, whether they be vices, "false religions," or "territorial spirits." `

Exporting demons to Africa

During the 1990's Spiritual Mapping was exported most aggressively from the United States to Africa. In Mali, Dutch missionary Rene Holvast was perplexed and disturbed by the new evangelical paradigm to the point of taking a break from missions work to study and then write a doctoral dissertation [PDF file of dissertation] on Spiritual Mapping, which was updated and published as a book, in November 2008, by Brill: Spiritual Mapping in the United States and Argentina, 1989-2005: A Geography of Fear.

C. Peter Wagner and Cindy Jacobs were, along with Ed Silvoso, two key figures who helped develop the practice of spiritual mapping which Silvoso has since repackaged through the benign-sounding term "prayer evangelism." But the dark side of the practice comes out starkly in a 2003 book by Ed Silvoso's colleague C. Peter Wagner, Breaking strongholds in your city: How to use spiritual mapping to make your prayers more strategic, effective, and targeted.

On page 177 Wagner defines Spiritual Mapping as a practice which "combines research, divine revelation, and confirmatory evidence in order to provide complete and exact data concerning the identity, strategies and methods employed by spiritual forces of darkness to influence the people and the churches of a given region."  

On page 229 Wagner details "Non-Christian" influences spiritual mappers (prayer walkers, that is) should make note of: "high places, altars, temples, monuments or buildings associated with witchcraft, occult, fortune-telling, satanism, Freemasonry, Mormonism, Eastern religions, Jehovah's Witnesses and the like."  

Wagner also instructs mappers to note, among "Christian" influences, `Where are the churches located ? Which of them would you see as "life giving" churches ?' Typically within Wagner's, Jacobs', and Silvoso's movement mainline Protestant and non-charismatic Catholic churches are defined as non-"life giving."

Wagner's list indicates that he considers non-charismatic Christian churches to be suspect and  Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses not to be Christian at all. Given Peter Wagner's close working relationship with Ed Silvoso, it is unlikely the two men differ on this issue. Like Cindy Jacobs, Ed Silvoso is an apostle in Wagner's International Coalition of Apostles, founded in 2001, and serves with Wagner on that organization's elite Apostolic Council which "provides advice and accountability" for the ICA.

Spiritual Mapping recently came to media notice because of a charismatic evangelical group's "spiritual mapping" activities in Amarillo, Texas. Members of Repent Amarillo have created, using Google Maps, an online "spiritual map" of allegedly demonic institutions in the city of Amarillo. These include Methodist and Episcopal churches that are "gay friendly" and accept homosexuality, Christian Scientist and Unitarian churches, Mosques, Buddhist and Hindu temples, New Age centers, centers where pagans gather, a nature center, porn shops, gay bars, a palm-reading business, and a swinger's club.

As reported in a February 24, 2010 story in the Texas Observer, members of Repent Amarillo have targeted the Amarillo swinger's club with special zeal; "[Repent Amarillo members] have been a near-constant presence. Jobs have been lost, families estranged, assault charges filed and businesses shuttered. So far, no public official has stood up to defend these businesses, which operate legally."

Repent Amarillo's spirit mapping effort is not an anomaly. Based in Austin, Texas, Campus Renewal Ministries is a college and university based ministry which claims to have had spiritual mapping efforts underway on campuses across the US for fourteen years.

"Spiritual mapping is the systematic gathering and evaluation of data through surveys, research, and spiritual perceptions in order to discover the factors, influences and trends that deter or advance God's Kingdom at a particular campus. (Joshua 18; Numbers 13; Nehemiah 2)

This data can be used to guide our prayers and and to move us toward practical action. Information helps link our prayers with action.

Discovering tangible and intangible information about what God is doing and what Satan is doing on a campus is crucial to guide our prayers and actions...

We have pioneered spiritual mapping on college campuses in America over the past 14 years.... We would love to consult with you to develop a spiritual mapping survey or other effort for your campus."

Outside the United States the Spiritual Mapping movement's campaign against demonic powers and allegedly evil societal influences often picks up violent and even eliminationist overtones. One of the charismatic streams which has fed into Ed Silvoso's ITN, and the wider movement it belongs to, is associated with to some of the worst political violence of the 20th Century.

As noted author and researcher of conservative Christianity Sarah Diamond described in her 1995 book Roads To Dominion: right-wing movements and political power in the United States, Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt was converted to charismatic evangelical Christianity when `a group of young California "Jesus freaks" brought their Gospel Outreach church to earthquake-ravaged Guatemala in 1976.'

Demons in human form

During the counterinsurgency campaign in Guatemala in the 1980's thousands of Guatemalan civilians, mostly indigenous Maya, were slaughtered. As Diamond writes,

`some Gospel Outreach members reportedly took part in the regime's espionage and torture-interrogation operations. Entire villages were annihilated, while Rios Montt's U.S. backers justified the "scorched Earth" campaign in religious terms. In one interview a Gospel Outreach pastor defended the killings:

"The army doesn't massacre the Indians. It massacres demons, and the Indians are demon-possessed; they are communists. We hold brother Efrain Rios Montt like King David of the Old Testament. He is the king of the New Testament." ` (page 238)

Along with Silvoso, Jacobs, and Wagner, another of the originators of Spiritual Mapping ideology and practices is Guatemalan lawyer and megachurch founder Harold Caballeros, who ran in 2007 for the Guatemalan presidency and has been credited, probably more than any other evangelist, with the rapid spread of charismatic evangelicalism in Guatemala.

One of the notable members of Caballeros' affluent El Shaddai megachurch has been Erwin Sperisen, former director of Guatemala's Policia Nacional Civil (National Civilian Police) which has been accused by the press and human rights groups of extrajudical executions of gang members and criminals, a practice known as limpienza social (social cleansing.)

As described by Dennis A. Smith in a paper written for the Latin American Studies Association, in April 2007 Sperisen and Caballeros appeared together on Canal 27, a local Guatemalan television program on a show created by Sperisen to, according to Smith, "provide police officers with the spiritual resources they needed to combat the forces of evil."

As Smith recounts, during the segment Sperisen addressed Caballeros as "The Prophet and Apostle Brother Harold Caballeros," and Caballeros went on to state,

` The death squads that still function within the PNC and the Ministry of Government are a holy enterprise that is organized by agents and personnel from Evangelical churches that know our obligations to society. . . I must recognize that the story published in the New York Times on March 5 of this year is true; the "social cleansing" that, together with Carlos Vielman as Minister of Government we carried out in the institution, had to be done and must continue, as I understand has been ordered to the new authorities. . . `

Smith observes in his paper,

"Spiritual warriors understand that the worlds we inhabit, both physical and spiritual, are fraught with real danger. Who can deny the demonic character of the social devastation wrought by drug traffickers and youth gangs? Confronted by a culture of violence and impunity, some spiritual warriors have come to the conclusion that extreme measures are justified."

But Caballeros' concerns extend far beyond the criminal realm. As Dennis Smith and Rudy Nelson wrote in a February 4, 2004 article in The Globalist, "Harold Caballeros, the popular pastor of an upscale neo-Pentecostal church, insists that Guatemala's problems can be traced back to Mayan pacts with the devil. He has retaliated with a campaign of "spiritual warfare" to defeat this evil."

Along with Cindy Jacobs and Ed Silvoso, Harold Caballeros is also a listed member of the International Coalition of Apostles and has also served with Wagner and Jacobs on Peter Wagner's elite Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders.

Caballeros was listed, along with Cindy Jacobs, as being on the faculty of Silvoso's 2004 ITN conference in Argentina, and in his book Transformation Ed Silvoso lauds Harold Caballeros' enterprise and daring, "His willingness and courage to sail on totally uncharted waters is admirable."

Harold Caballeros sits on an advisory board for a grant from the Templeton Foundation to Harvard and Tufts, and he has spoken at a Templeton-funded academic conference held by the University of Southern California.

Prayer, and "enemy identification," in Newark, NJ

Spiritual Mapping was first applied on a mass scale, by Ed Silvoso, Cindy Jacobs, Peter Wagner and other pioneers of the practice, during the late 1980's in the Argentine city of Resistencia. Along with Cal Chinen's Transformation Hawaii, another ITN initiative showcased at the International Transformation Network's 2008 Argentina conference was PrayforNewark, an effort led in Newark, New Jersey by International Coalition of Apostles member Rev. Bernard Wilks.

PrayforNewark was founded in early 2008, on Martin Luther King Day, by New Jersey resident Lloyd Turner who at the October 2008 Argentina conference told attendees that PrayforNewark could North America's "Resistencia,"  a prototype for similar efforts that would sweep across the cities and towns of the continent.

PrayforNewark has an ambitious prayer walking / spiritual mapping program that, now claims to have one volunteer covering nearly every single street in Newark, New Jersey's largest city. As if they were working in a political campaign, PrayforNewark's volunteers are organized by Newark city ward.

Literature on the PrayforNewark web site states the effort is working to "transform" Newark according to Ed Silvoso's teachings, and church newsletters from Bernard Wilks ministry have stated, as part of the PrayforNewark effort, the need for "enemy identification."  [ PDF file of PrayforNewark's "Benchmarks and Visions ]

PrayforNewark, and the ongoing efforts in Uganda and Hawaii, were all showcased prominently at the 2008 Argentina ITN conference, as "transformation" prototypes.

The personal sway ITN representatives have over national and state leaders came to the fore in a speech, at the 2008 Argentina conference, by the wife of ITN's Africa head Verner Swart, Adele Swart, who described to her audience what seemed to be a close personal relationship with Janet Museveni. As Adele Swart stressed, the relationship with Museveni had the potential of opening the whole continent of Africa to ITN's evangelizing efforts:

"So I want to tell you, we are not just here for a nation. We are not talking about Uganda. We are talking about a continent. You don't understand. God has given us the key in Mama Janet and opened the doors of Africa as a continent."

"Ed Silvoso, my spiritual daddy"

In the state of Hawaii, Cal Chinen, who calls Ed Silvoso a spiritual father, may be playing a roughly analogous role, pastoring powerful politicians in the state.

In the November 15, 2008 newsletter for his Moanalua Gardens Missionary Church, Chinen recounted a conversation with Silvoso. ` "Cal, you will see Satan fall (down) over Hawai'i after E Pule Kakou," Ed Silvoso, my spiritual daddy, encouraged me. But then he became very serious and said, "But the big question is what will you do after he falls down so that he stays down ?" `

While Chinen appears to consider himself to be under Ed Silvoso's spiritual authority, that chain of spiritual command may extend down to Duke Aiona. In several Internet notices advertising International Transformation conferences, one under Ed Silvoso's name, Cal Chinen is described as "shepherding" Lt. Governor Aiona, Honolulu's mayor Mufi Hannemann, and several members of the Hawaiian Congress.

As Chinen described in his November 15th newsletter, Silvoso went on to offer advice for keeping Satan down and then assured Chinen, ` "If you will do that," Daddy Ed Silvoso went on to tell me, then you will see Cindy Jacobs' word of prophecy about Hawai'i fulfilled in 2 years." Cindy Jacobs prophecy was the Hawai'i would become the first Christian state in the Union. It CAN HAPPEN! `

In an October 18-19, 2008 Maonalua Gardens Missionary Church newsletter written immediately after Cal Chinen and his wife Joy returned from the International Transformation Network's 2008 Argentina conference, Joy Chinen wrote,  

"The whole conference was attended by 300 people from 20 nations of the world! Some of them were from Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa, Uganda, Japan, Okinawa, Philippines, Germany, England, Spain, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the USA... On the first night the Hawaii team was called forward to receive a blessing and a confirmation that Hawaii will be the first Christian state."

Of `Demons' and `Biblical Marriage'

On Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at the Argentina conference apostle and prophet Cindy Jacobs called for the burning of "idols" and "witchcraft items" and held a mass exorcism to drive out demons of sexual impurity including "homosexual spirits."

Cindy Jacobs describes Jim Garlow, pastor of San Diego's Skyline Wesleyan Church, as a "good friend." By some accounts Garlow led the successful church-based get out the vote effort to pass the anti-same sex marriage Proposition Eight in California in the months leading up to the 2008 election.

Introducing Garlow's talk at the Convergence 2010 conference in Dallas, Cindy Jacobs stated, He's a strong advocate for Biblical marriage. He's probably networked as many pastors for Biblical marriage, to fight for Biblical marriage, marriage between one man and one woman in America, than any person... I know."

Another major force in that effort was Lou Engle's TheCall, which set up eight field offices in California to organize the pro-Prop Eight push and staged the campaign's capstone rally on November 1st, 2008 at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium. Engle has called San Francisco's Castro district a place where "the homosexuals boast the dominion of darkness." According to Lou Engle, his son Jesse specializes in casting out "homosexual spirits," a practice Engle calls "scary."

Both Cindy Jacobs, Ed Silvoso, Peter Wagner, and Harold Caballeros were listed on the Board of Directors for TheCall's first major event, held in Washington DC in 2000 and the four are also currently listed on the Board of TheCall International, which plans to hold a mass rally May 10, 2010 at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

"It's taken me 9,000 miles... to understand what is happening in Uganda"

Duke Aiona has been deeply involved with ITN's efforts in Hawaii for at least five years and in November 2006 the Lt. Gov. took time off from his reelection campaign and traveled thousands of miles to the ITN's 16th world conference on nation transformation held November 10-17, 2006 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Featured prominently at the 2006 conference was First Lady of Uganda Janet Museveni.

Also making the journey from Hawaii to Argentina for the 2006 ITN event were Cal Chinen and Francis Oda. Both men serve as leaders of Transformation Hawaii and also its parent organization, the International Transformation Network. Chinen, pastor of the Maonalua Garden Missionary Church, hosted the pastor's track at the conference. Under his photo on an ITN brochure for the event is the statement, "Transformation Hawai'i is founded upon principles first pioneered in Argentina. My life, family and ministry have been completely changed by what I experienced in Argentina."

As Ed Silvoso describes in the same brochure, "this year at our International Institute you will be exposed to the phenomenon of cities being transformed and nations being discipled. And more important yet, you will learn why and how it is happening."

In promotional footage taken at the 2006 conference, for a video advertising ITN's upcoming 2007 conference, Duke Aiona gushed, "It's taken me 9,000 miles, approximately, away from home to understand what is happening in Uganda, what is happening in Argentina." The footage also showed Aiona leading a group prayer, holding hands with Janet Museveni. The previous year, in a 2005 interview with the BBC World Service, Museveni had compared condom use to "theft" and "murder."

In 2008, unable to attend the 18th ITN conference in Argentina, First Lady Janet Museveni sent Allen Kagina, head of Uganda's Tax Authority, in her place as Museveni's spokesperson and  Kagina read a speech that Janet Museveni had written to deliver at the conference.

It is not clear what Duke Aiona understands about Uganda but at the start of the year 2000, Janet Museveni and her husband, like Lt. Governor Aiona, publicly dedicated the nation of Uganda to Jesus Christ.

A year before that dedication, President Museveni had declared that all of Uganda's homosexuals must be arrested and prosecuted. Not only gay rights but human rights protections have been under siege during Yowerie Museveni's rule. As noted by the Uganda Daily Monitor, on March 11, 2010 the United States released a report faulting Uganda's government for a wide range of human rights abuses including,

"arbitrary and politically motivated killings, abductions; electoral irregularities; official corruption; mob and ethnic violence and official impunity....

...politically motivated abductions; torture and abuse of suspects and detainees and harsh prison conditions; arbitrary and politically motivated arrest and detention; the holding of suspects incommunicado and lengthy pretrial detention; restrictions on the right to a fair trial and on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association, and religion; restrictions on opposition parties.

...violence and discrimination against women and children... violence and discrimination against persons with disabilities and homosexuals; restrictions on labour rights; and forced labour, including child labour."

Along with Hawaii, Uganda is one of the celebrated prototypes of national "transformation" in Ed Silvoso's movement and has been enshrined in a series of pseudo-documentary videos by George Otis, Jr., another architect of transformation ideology who some credit with coining the term "spiritual mapping" and who has played a key role in popularizing the practice.

Otis Jr.'s "Transformation II : The Glory Spreads" contains footage from the elaborate December 31, 1999 / January 1, 2000 stadium event, with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni presiding, during which Uganda was dedicated and covenanted for 1,000 years to Jesus Christ. Otis Jr.'s "An Unconventional War" features evangelist Julius Oyet and lionizes an alleged miraculous campaign by Oyet against the Lord's Reformation Army, a cultic Christian insurgent group widely credited with committing wholesale atrocities against the Acholi tribes people of Northern Uganda.

"An Unconventional War" depicts Julius Oyet and Ugandan government troops miraculously liberating Northern Uganda's one to two million Acholi who have been confined for the better part of a decade, by the government, to squalid concentration camps allegedly for "protection" against the Lord's Reformation Army. But numerous reports jarringly contradict the glowing, triumphant account and implicate the Ugandan government in wholesale atrocities against the Acholi. (see footnote)

Burning the idols, Killing the `rats'

Among the international faculty listed for the 2006 ITN Argentina conference was evangelist Cindy Jacobs. During an impassioned speech at the week-long 2008 18th International Transformation Network conference, Jacobs exhorted her audience to bring "idols" and "witchcraft" items to a following Sunday church service declaring, "If you have any idols in your home we're going to burn them ! If you have any witchcraft items in your home, you bring them Sunday and we're going to burn them !"

Ed Silvoso was not to be outdone. In an October 6th afternoon session at the 2008 Argentina conference, during which Cal Chinen described Transformation Hawaii's E Pule Kakou initiative, Silvoso suggested their religious movement was like a 747 with rats infesting the non-pressurized parts of the plane. Leaders of their movement needed to "discern," explained Silvoso, when they should bring their plane to cruising altitude where the rats would die for lack of oxygen.

The same afternoon, in the following session, Hawaii middle school principal Susan Mulcahy made the point even more bluntly. Recounting a 40 point complaint filed in reaction to her her efforts to "transform" her school, Mulcahy explained, "This is the important thing folks - when you step out in the education system and you begin to do something the rats start acting up, okay ?"

An "extensive, intimate association"

A March 16, 2010 Christian Broadcast Network story from correspondent David Brody acknowledged Duke Aiona's association with the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Transformation Hawaii. But while Brody characterized the relationship as  "occasional," that was wildly inaccurate, and directly contradicting Brody, Ed Silvoso's Harvest Evangelism web site itself has characterized Aiona as an "active participant" of Transformation Hawaii. Even that is an understatement.

Aiona's 2004 dedication of Hawaii to Jesus, the Lt. Governor's use of his official office stationary to recruit churches for Transformation Hawaii events, and the monthly prayer meetings for Transformation Hawaii members that Aiona has for years held in his Lt. Governor's conference room at the Hawaii state capital building, have raised alarm among advocates for church-state separation, led to minor scrutiny and controversy within the state.

But Aiona's extensive and intimate association with Transformation Hawaii and the International Transformation Network, and the radical nature of the ideology held by leaders of those organizations, have so far escaped public notice.

Besides being listed as the honorary chairman of Transformation Hawaii, Lt Governor Aiona has attended ITN events in Hawaii, Argentina and probably California as well. The Lt. Governor contributed a chapter to a book, edited by Caroline Oda, Catch the wave, which chronicles the "transformation" of Hawaii based on methods, as Transformation Hawaii's leaders openly acknowledge, taught by Ed Silvoso and his ITN.  Silvoso wrote the book's forward.

In 2005 Lt. Gov. Aiona was listed as a scheduled speaker, and along with Francis Oda and Cal Chinen a listed faculty member, at the International Transformation Network's August 6 and August 11-13 "Light the Bay II" event held in California's San Francisco Bay area.

According a September 5th, 2005 newsletter [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ] from Harvest Evangelism West Coast Regional Director Ted Hahs, Light the Bay II featured an impressive level of strategic mobilization. "[C]lose to 20 [airplane] flights with over 40 intercessors" circled the Bay Area while "Christian motorcycle and car clubs caravanned on the roadways around the Bay" and " `Spiritual warfare specialists' visited the four highest peaks surrounding the Bay Area to declare the dominion of God in the high places." The "command center" was "a cruise [ship] packed with 600 prayer warriors cruising the Bay in prayer for four hours."

Hahs wrote, "Our best estimate is that over 2,000 people participated in the prayer exercises on August 6th, praying on LAND, in the AIR, and at SEA."

As reported in the June-July 2005  issue of Cityflight Newsmagazine,

"On August 6th, Harvest will celebrate 25 years of evangelizing by inviting and supporting those kingdom minded churches to lift a "canopy of prayer" over the entire Bay Area, via Air, Land & Sea.

Christian pilots will fly over the entire Bay Area with intercessors, praying and anointing the skies, while land caravans and relays will drive around the Bay Area praying in high places and blessing our land. Finally, a large ship, holding over 1,000 people will sail out to bless the Bay while radio sponsor KFAX broadcasts and interview those attending."

Unlike Duke Aiona, Ugandan evangelist Julius Oyet was not officially listed as a speaker for the several day Light The Bay II extravaganza but as Ted Hahs described in his September 2005 newsletter [ 1, ], in a section titled "Anchoring the Canopy - a Lesson on Prayer from Uganda,"

"After raising the canopy and dedicating the 24/7 Prayer Center, on Thursday evening, Aug. 11th we ANCHORED the canopy of prayer at a united prayer rally. 600 to 800 people attended; more importantly, God showed up. Two leaders of the Ugandan transformation movement, Pastors Julius Oyet and Jackson Senyonga, were the keynote speakers. Honestly it was one of the most powerful meetings I ever attended. They walked right out of the throne room of God to deliver His word. When they taught what Biblical prayer really is, we were cut to the core with conviction."

A shining model of transformation

As the video documentary Transforming Uganda [ high resolution, medium resolution, low resolution ] details, in 2009 Julius Peter Oyet played a major role organizing and inspiring legislators who drafted, submitted, and have backed Uganda's internationally controversial Anti Homosexuality Bill, also known as Bill #18. In January 2010 Transforming Uganda was cited in Congressional testimony by the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, concerning the Uganda Anti Homosexuality Bill.

Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia, is author of a recent report from the Boston-based nonprofit Political Research Associates, "Globalizing the Culture Wars : U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, & Homophobia" which, according to a PRA press release,

"exposes the U.S. Right's promotion of an agenda in Africa that aims to criminalize homosexuality and otherwise infringe upon the human rights of LGBT people while also mobilizing African clerics in U.S. culture war battles. U.S. social conservatives, who are in the minority in mainline churches, depend on African religious leaders to legitimize their positions as their growing numbers makes African Christians more influential globally."

According to Rev. Kaoma, while many American evangelicals such as Purpose Driven Life author and evangelist Rick Warren have denounced Uganda's eliminationist Anti Homosexuality Bill, Bishop Julius Oyet, who until recently presided over an association of independent, born again,  charismatic churches in Uganda that represents as much as 1/5 of more of the country's population and which has served as Yowerie Museveni's staunchest base of electoral support, still publicly supports the Anti Homosexuality Bill. Other ITN members are not currently on record denouncing the bill.

Newsletters from Ed Silvoso's Harvest Evangelism ministry indicate that Julius Oyet has been one of the ITN's key operatives in Uganda. Oyet has had personal contact with Janet and Yowerie Museveni at least since the making of the video An Unconventional War, from the Sentinel Group, released in 2005, which depicts Oyet's role in a spiritual warfare campaign against the cultic rebel Christian group the Lord's Reformation Army, that has widely been accused of extensive atrocities and massacres in Northern Uganda and the People's Republic of the Congo.

As shown in the video documentary Transforming Uganda, Julius Oyet and the makers of An Unconventional War had direct personal access to Yowerie Museveni, who put elements of Uganda's army at Oyet's disposal for his Northern Uganda campaign depicted in the Sentinel Group video. Shown in the video, Yowerie Museveni states,

"These rural folks have beliefs in those ancestral spirits and so on. So it is important that that angle is addressed." Another Ugandan appearing in the video, World Trumpet Mission ministry Founder John Mulinde, describes the situation Oyet allegedly confronted in combatting alleged pagan practices of the Lord's Reformation Army,

"The Lord gave us a word - declare war on witchcraft and idolatry... it became evident that there was very strong witchcraft involved."

Transforming Orlando, Sao Paulo, and Baltimore

John Mulinde is a "Transformation Associate" in another world-spanning transformation franchise running parallel to Ed Silvoso's ITN, under Sentinel Group Founder George Otis, Jr., who has played a key role in popularizing the Spiritual Mapping paradigm through a series of videos, under the brand name "Transformations," first released in 1999.

The Transformations pseudo-documentary video series purports to show how Christians can redeem cities, towns, geographic areas, and nations, and so bring about earthly utopias, by hunting accused witches, driving out demon spirits, and achieving Christian unity across denominational lines.

As shown in Otis, Jr.'s videos, the result of such expulsion of demons, and humans deemed to be on the side of evil, is mass conversion to charismatic evangelical Christianity, precipitous drops in crime and addiction, miraculous healing of environment degradation, and the growth of enormous vegetable crops.

John Mulinde's World Trumpet Mission is helping launch transformation efforts in at least several cities across the United States. One recent World Trumpet Ministry video shows the rise of a Baltimore-based effort that is forging relationships with Baltimore government and police. In Orlando, Florida, World Trumpet Mission has helped nurture an Orlando church-based effort, initiated by the head Chaplain of Orlando's police department, in which church members, backed by police units, walk the streets of crime ridden areas of Orlando attempting to pray down crime rates.

Such efforts might seem benign, but another effort under the Sentinel Group aegis, shown in a new video from George Otis Jr.'s video production company, "A Force For Change," depicts the rise of a Christian police member association within Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo. As a narrator states in the video, "God wants to use the police force, as an institution, to leverage the transformation of our society."

According to George Otis, Jr., Sao Paulo's Christian police association is "spiritually mapping"  Sao Paulo. The video suggests the organization is helping to clean up corruption and reduce crime in the city. But during the summer of 2009, Sao Paulo police violently evicted 3,000 slum residents from their homes and the rise of Sao Paulo's Christian police association correlates with a pattern of  extrajudicial killings that a December 8, 2009 report from Human Rights Watch attributes to Sao Paulo's police

War on Santa Claus, condoms, and witchcraft

Another member of Silvoso's ITN team is Atlanta-based evangelist Os Hillman, who befriended Julius Oyet at the International Transformation Network's November 2005 Conference in Argentina, "Nation Transformation Through Marketplace Redemption."

In April 2006 Os Hillman went to Africa and spoke together with Oyet at a mass revival event during  which Julius Oyet, according to Hillman [ PDF file ], "called for people to lay down their witchcraft tools and condoms. These things were thrown onto the stage. This was an amazing spectacle."

It was probably not an isolated incident. According to one report [ PDF file ] in early 2004 Oyet held a revival "crusade" in Northern Uganda at which the evangelist "called on all attendants to forward their rosary beads together with condoms they carried in their pockets, to be burnt off since they belong to the same category of deviation from the way of God."

The ITN held its first Uganda conference, attended by Janet Museveni, in Kampala in 2004. The same year President Yowerie Museveni gave a speech that signaled a dramatic reversal in Ugandan health policy by inveighing against alleged evils of "condom culture."  Beginning in 2004 the availability of condoms in Uganda dramatically declined and the nation's HIV/AIDS rate, down from as high as twenty nine percent of the population in urban areas at the height of the epidemic to six percent nationally, began to rise again.

In his book Transformation: Change the Marketplace and You Change the World  (Regal, 2007) Ed Silvoso writes that "the Babylonian systems intentionally prefer to push a futile non-God approach that benefits no one but the manufacturers of condoms, as a Ugandan leader confided to me." (page 214)

In the same book Silvoso suggests non-charismatic Catholics are damned, writing that roughly fifty percent of Guatemalans are evangelical Christians so that, together with born-again (charismatic) Catholics, "three out of four Guatemalans are saved."  Silvoso's sectarian tendency views Christians who are not "spirit filled" and born-again as holding invalid or corrupt expressions of the faith. (page 62)

The radical nature of transformation movement ideology comes out starkly in a recent video interview pastor Cal Chinen did with two pastors from a Hawaii charismatic church, Hope Chapel Mountainside.

During the July 2009 interview Chinen described talking with former director of the Argentine division of  Ed Silvoso's Harvest Evangelism ministry, and Silvoso's "good friend," Eduardo Lorenzo, who visited Chinen's church in that month. In late March 2009, Ed Silvoso also visited Chinen's church.

As Cal Chinen admiringly described, Eduardo Lorenzo is leading a campaign that has banished Santa Claus and Christmas trees from Christmas, and the observance of Halloween altogether from the Buenos Aires suburb of Adrogue. According to Chinen's account, Lorenzo's effort has also chased away or else converted every one of Adrogue's "witches.

Discipling nations, excising `ideological tumors'

Along with homosexuality, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Halloween, and "witches," incorrect ideology in general is a corrupting influence to be surgically excised, it would seem. On page 259 of Transformation Ed Silvoso writes,

"Instead of bayonets and machetes, we have been outfitted with scalpels to remove malignant ideological tumors in the minds of people made sick by the Babylonian system and to do heart transplants, the kind that turns rebels into revolutionaries to make the world a better place by causing the will of God to be done on Earth as it is already done in heaven."

Ed Silvoso represents a fast rising tendency within evangelical Christianity that rejects "rapture" theology and instead stresses that believers should achieve dominion over all the Earth.

In his  2007 book Transformation, Silvoso criticizes the "rapture mentality" and writes,

"By "rapture mentality" I mean that believers did not have a working theology for discipling nations, nor did they pursue one, for two reasons: 1) They considered them beyond redemption, and 2) they erroneously looked at the rapture as the way of escape from a world that they perceived was rapidly being taken over by the Antichrist." (page 177)

Silvoso goes on to provide examples of such nation-discipling  such as the Roman Empire, efforts of militant Islam, the former Soviet Union under Lenin, and Communist China under Mao Zedong and he proclaims, "Now we are going for entire nations-in fact, for all the nations of the World."

Those are not idle words. In Uganda Silvoso's ITN has achieved such a level of influence in Uganda that, according to Uganda's state house web site, in 2007 Ugandan President Yowerie Museveni and Uganda's First Lady Janet Museveni held an official state dinner for visiting ITN representatives. According to its newsletters in 2006 the ITN launched, in partnership with the government of Uganda, an effort, working through born-again churches in the country, to "transform" the nation.

As ITN Africa representative Werner Swart stated at the 2008 ITN Argentina conference, in  Uganda ITN members are training members of Kampala's upscale Covenant Nations Church, founded by Patience Museveni - daughter of Uganda's First Lady, to "transform" Kampala. Attendees of the church have included Yowerie and Janet Museveni and also Ugandan parliament member David Bahati. During the conference Werner Swart also described an ITN program to bring "transformation" principles to leaders of the 12,000 to 14,000 independent, born-again charismatic churches in Uganda.

Along with Uganda, Hawaii is billed as one of ITN's leading "prototypes." The International Transformation Network is partnering with government leaders of nations, such as Uganda, Argentina and the Philippines, US states such as Hawaii, and US cities including Newark, New Jersey], in "transformation" efforts aimed at achieving Christian dominance over key societal sectors such as government, business, media, and education.