At a Los Angeles church in October 2023, Jenny Donnelly, a Christian entrepreneur and charismatic preacher, addressed a room full of girls with a lofty thought.
“Why don’t we ship one million ladies into the varsity boards?”
The viewers had convened to listen to Donnelly, a multi-level marketer turned rising star on the Christian proper, supply her imaginative and prescient for a conservative motion of mothers decided to push again in opposition to insurance policies similar to LGBTQ+ inclusion and abortion rights.
Such a motion, Donnelly proclaimed, could be rooted within the “billion soul harvest”, referring to a prophetic, end-times imaginative and prescient of mass revival launched by US evangelists within the early 2000s.
Within the yr since, Donnelly has developed a sprawling community of mothers via a strategic however largely under-the-radar organizing infrastructure made up of small teams throughout the nation referred to as “prayer hubs”. She has secured the backing of heavy-hitting rightwing Christian activists and donors and says her aim is to coach ladies to run for workplace domestically whereas establishing a nationwide mass of oldsters able to mobilize within the streets in opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion.
Donnelly has discovered a political and spiritual house among the many leaders and church networks related to the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a motion that seeks to put in conservative Christians as leaders in governmental and cultural establishments.
NAR leaders similar to Donnelly are “superb at what they do, and so they have mastered the artwork of gaining mass followings that aren’t extremely geographically concentrated”, stated Matthew Taylor, a fellow on the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Research whose analysis focuses on charismatic Christian networks. “That offers them an excessive amount of political energy – if, when and the place they determine to deploy it.”
In line with footage of Her Voice Motion conferences reviewed by the Guardian and Documented, Donnelly’s group has within the final three years established greater than 7,000 organizing hubs throughout the nation. The group grew dramatically within the months earlier than the election with the assist of financing from the secretive Christian donor community Ziklag – which sought to develop the Her Voice Motion in key battleground states to assist elect Donald Trump, in line with inside Ziklag movies obtained by the Guardian and Documented.
Wanting towards and past the 2024 election, leaders of Ziklag took discover of the Her Voice Motion’s potential within the bigger tradition wars, promising that Donnelly would, partly, “ignite and gas an epic motion”.
‘Girlboss mother engaged in a non secular battle’
In Donnelly’s telling, Her Voice Motion was born in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, forces that closed her church and traumatized her neighborhood.
Though it’s unclear how a protest motion in opposition to police brutality would have impacted her church – and Donnelly didn’t return requests for remark – the concept of a motion on the left that was able to amassing nationwide consideration proved extraordinarily motivating.
“For over 180 days straight, my hometown, of Portland, Oregon, was dominated and destroyed by this group, merely due to this: they’d a unified battle plan, with sufficient folks executing it,” says Donnelly in a video selling Her Voice Motion. “The church wants a unified battle plan.”
With the correct quantity of coordination, maybe Christians – and particularly, Christian ladies – may garner assist for a motion of their very own, making calls for round points similar to abortion and transgender rights, which Donnelly opposes.
Donnelly already had expertise with a sure form of organizing: as a profitable multi-level marketer who earned sufficient income to propel her household into affluence.
From 1999, when she joined the dietary complement firm AdvoCare as a “distributor”, till the agency’s dissolution amid a number of lawsuits alleging it was an unlawful pyramid scheme, Donnelly earned hundreds of thousands – an exhilarating enterprise. In line with a 2017 lawsuit that named Donnelly and different early AdvoCare distributors as defendants, Donnelly described the expertise as akin to “leaping in a brand new Lamborghini and with no velocity restrict on the freeway and you’re simply zipping as quick as you need to go as a result of your foot’s on the gasoline pedal”.
Donnelly was later dropped as a defendant, however AdvoCare, which was sued by the Federal Commerce Fee for allegedly defrauding its lower-level distributors, collapsed – and Donnelly poured her efforts into godlier locations.
The Oregon marketer and her husband based two teams: a church, referred to as Collective church, and a Christian non-profit registered below the title Tetelestai Ministries. Via Tetelestai, Donnelly presents programs on relationships, wellness, wholesome consuming and even decoding desires. In 2021, the Donnellys “commissioned” one other couple to guide Collective church and stepped into an oversight function.
Donnelly’s church and Tetelestai Ministries, kind a part of a rapidly-growing non-denominational Christian motion that embraces modern-day prophets and apostles and emphasizes direct encounters with God, religion therapeutic, talking in tongues and the idea in demons. Like Donnelly, many different prophets, apostles and preachers of the “neo-charismatic” and New Apostolic Reformation actions lean into common tradition and fluently deploy social media to attach with believers on-line.
A lot of Donnelly’s social media content material is aspirational: glamorous pictures of Donnelly, who’s blonde and immaculately put collectively, a picture of her kids exhibiting off Her Voice Motion swag, a grateful submit devoted to her husband for gifting her an infinite portray of Jesus to embellish the wall above her “prayer chair”.
Within the Pentecostal and charismatic actions, “there’s an extended custom of glamorous ladies utilizing mass media to do political activism and to do revival conferences,” stated Leah Payne, an affiliate professor of spiritual historical past at Portland Seminary. “As a Charismatic, [Donnelly] is culturally very aware of learn how to use new media and new media platforms.”
When she’s preaching to the Christian mothers who kind the core of her followers, Donnelly talks about relationship struggles, lends a voice to the pressures of parenting and presents testimony about her personal trauma and salvation.
“I acquired to be about 20 years previous after which all the pieces caved in, I discovered myself eager to take my very own life,” stated Donnelly at a Pentecostal church occasion in Colorado this summer season. An encounter with Jesus, she testified, helped her heal from the lingering ache of her mother and father’ divorce and the sensation that her father had deserted her.
“What’s actually compelling about what she does is that she interweaves activism into her standing as a mom, and her standing as a lady – so she’s combining this ‘lady boss’ feminism with our tradition’s enthusiasm for very attentive parenting,” stated Payne. “She’s a girlboss mother who’s engaged in a non secular battle for her kids, and never simply her kids – all kids.”
Donnelly steadily sermonizes about what she believes kind essentially the most critical dilemmas for American kids: nervousness, despair and pornography – but additionally cultural affirmation of LGBTQ+ identities, which Donnelly claims are the product of demonic possession.
On the heart of Donnelly’s group are “prayer hubs”, teams of two to 10 individuals who collect on at the least a month-to-month foundation to hope, working from Donnelly’s prayer guides and chatting on the group’s app, which capabilities as a clearinghouse for information, conferences and occasions. Convening below the nickname “mama bears”, the prayer hub activists place themselves as religious however aggrieved protectors of kids.
“This nation is headed in a path that could be a direct menace to our freedom, particularly for our youngsters and our grandchildren,” Donnelly says in a video selling the prayer hubs. “We’re inviting you to affix us in a method that has the satan working scared. As a result of when this works, our nation will flip again to God and our freedoms can be preserved.”
With targets that lofty, the mama bears would want highly effective allies.
‘A bunch of frothing females’
Donnelly’s community shortly turned a subject of dialog among the many leaders of Ziklag, a secretive and influential Christian donor community that has spent hundreds of thousands on ultraconservative causes. Because the group developed a method to drive evangelical turnout within the 2024 election to assist elect Trump, Ziklag leaders turned to Donnelly’s community of girls as a political organizing software.
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Donnelly, who had included Her Voice Motion, Inc in June 2024 because the political wing of the ladies’s community, was well-positioned to tackle such partisan work. On the primary Her Voice Motion name in July, Donnelly defined how the group would permit the community to get into extra overtly political activism, with the aim of “educating, equipping and activating as many women and men as attainable”.
“Possibly it’s the varsity board, perhaps it’s metropolis council. Possibly you’re going to go to the library and begin reserving some story studying hours,” stated Donnelly. “We’ve acquired to get on offense and have our voices carried throughout America.”
In an inside video selling its initiatives to donors, Ziklag proposed to “assist and repurpose these hubs for frontline organizing”, a mission the group internally known as the “Mama Bear” initiative. Ziklag pledged $400,000 for this initiative, although it isn’t instantly clear how a lot went on to Donnelly’s group, understanding that the community of conservative mothers had affect and will influence get-out-the-vote efforts in key swing states.
Leaders of Ziklag praised Donnelly’s tenacity and skill to prepare ladies, suggesting their donations may “pour gas” on the work Donnelly had began.
Drew Hiss, govt director of Ziklag, put it bluntly.
“We’ve acquired a bunch of frothing females who’re all about Don’t Mess with My Children,” stated Hiss, throughout a method name. “And we wanna assist.”
Along with Ziklag, Her Voice Motion has fashioned alliances with influential Christian power-building hubs, activists and pastors.
An inside video produced by Ziklag and reviewed by the Guardian and Documented proposed coaching Donnelly’s prayer hub activists alongside the Trump-allied organizations America First Coverage institute and America First Works, and John Amanchukwu, a college board activist who has fought for ebook bans in colleges throughout the nation. Amanchukwu appeared within the July Her Voice Motion technique name, encouraging the ladies to give up enjoying the function of “good Christians” and reclaim colleges and communities via confrontation.
“Trustworthy Christians understand that we live within the final and evil days and Devil has the household in his crosshairs,” stated Amanchukwu.
Donnelly and her workforce have additionally developed a relationship with Christians Engaged, a conservative Christian non-profit that produces voter guides and presents candidate coaching applications. Prematurely of the 2024 elections, Bunni Kilos, the director of Christians Engaged, appeared as a visitor on the Her Voice Motion to strategize get-out-the-vote initiatives. To encourage members to get to the polls, HVM coordinated with Christians Interact to advertise a voting pledge prominently on the group’s app.
Lance Wallnau, a self-proclaimed prophet who has been funded by Ziklag and arranged occasions for Trump in swing states this yr, was an early supporter of Donnelly. “We higher listen, as a result of the mama bears are rising up,” stated Wallnau throughout a Ziklag technique name.
‘We are able to’t sit again’
Her Voice Motion has had a meteoric rise. Since 2020, Tetelestai Ministries, the Her Voice Motion umbrella group, has elevated its funding by greater than 250% pulling in additional than $2.2m in 2023. Because the group grows, Donnelly has directed the group towards explicitly political goals, turning her prayer hubs into political organizing hubs.
“Identical to now we have the air recreation, we even have a floor recreation,” stated Donnelly in the course of the July 2024 Zoom name. The “air recreation” – prayer – could be bolstered by a political effort mobilizing members via the newly-founded political wing of the group.
Her Voice Motion is modeled after a push by charismatic and evangelical pastors in Peru referred to as “No te metas con mis hijos,” or “Don’t mess with my children” – a nod to the parable that LGBTQ+ activists covertly try to show kids trans and homosexual via the general public faculty system. Donnelly has described her efforts as “copy-pasting” the techniques of the Peruvian motion, and has coordinated carefully with Christian Rosas, a conservative Peruvian political operative who was concerned with the motion there.
Her Voice Motion’s first nationwide motion came about on 13 April, with members holding simultaneous rallies on the state capitols. The actions, which had been coordinated with the anti-LGBTQ+ parental rights group Mothers for Liberty, drew solely modest attendance however supplied the group a chance to check its skill to mobilize politically.
For at the least a yr, Donnelly deliberate a mass rally on the Nationwide Mall for October 2024 – coordinating with a number of the motion’s most influential leaders, together with the infamous anti-LGBTQ+ pastor, Lou Engle, to attract “one million ladies” to Washington DC. Che Ahn, a California-based pastor and the chief of a sprawling and massive community of church buildings and ministries spanning greater than 60 international locations, would play a distinguished function on the rally as effectively.
With Ahn’s community, Engle’s expertise summoning mass prayer gatherings and Donnelly’s personal rising non secular community, the Christian mothers motion pulled off a serious day-long rally. They could not have convened “one million ladies” – police estimates positioned the occasion at nearer to 50,000 – however the group was in a position to maintain down an extended stretch of the mall for an occasion that drew a various and even worldwide group.
On a December Her Voice Motion name, Donnelly highlighted that since March, the group has doubled the variety of prayer hubs across the nation, leaping from 3,500 to 7,000. If Donnelly’s figures are right, Her Voice Motion may, in its infancy, already retain tens of 1000’s of members. Pointing to an inflow in funding, Donnelly employed state administrators in swing states to create “tremendous hubs” and develop the prevailing infrastructure.
Donnelly performed up Her Voice Motion’s influence on the election in the course of the name.
“We take a look at the elections, and we take a look at each battleground state went purple – I’m telling you proper now, we all know why that occurred. Not simply due to Her Voice Motion, I might by no means be that ignorant to suppose it was simply Her Voice Motion, however I can let you know that we had a big, giant piece to play. As a result of why? Dedicated prayer hubs and plenty of them.”
Between the success of the October rally and Trump’s win, Donnelly had proof of idea. The group has deliberate anti-trans “Don’t Mess with Our Children” marches in Miami, Houston, New York, Seattle and Los Angeles in early 2025. Donnelly additionally urged members of the group to “double down” on efforts earlier than the midterms and 2028 elections.
Within the meantime, they might construct out a public-facing marketing campaign in opposition to LGBTQ+ inclusion, mimicking the form of direct motion techniques that LGBTQ+ folks have employed for many years.
“When the Pleasure neighborhood wished their very own month of June, a proclamation throughout America, they didn’t silently hope this was going to occur – they went into the streets. They began parades. They acquired permits. They did all of the issues which can be really out there to us,” stated Donnelly. “We are able to’t sit again and simply form of hope that they offer up.”
This text was produced in partnership with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism mission. Karen Goll is a senior democracy researcher with Documented.
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