Hail
Columbia

Various media outlets throughout America and elsewhere have reported what many have long expected:  Texas Governor Rick Perry has entered the 2012 race to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.  Already, there are polls and analyses cropping up that indicate that Gov. Perry has the chops to truly shake up the political field on the right.

This is particularly worrying considering his ties to the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement.  On Wednesday August 10th, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC gave a succinct description of the NAR during a larger piece on Gov. Perry’s presidential aspirations:

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

Forrest Wilder, of the Texas Observer, reported on the relationship between Gov. Perry and the NAR earlier in August as his impending entry into the Republican race was becoming more clear.  From the article:

[Texas pastors, Tom Schlueter of Arlington and Bob Long of San Marcos] told Perry of God’s grand plan for Texas. A chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas was “The Prophet State,” anointed by God to lead the United States into revival and Godly government. And the governor would have a special role.

[...]

At the end of their meeting, Perry asked the two pastors to pray over him. As the pastors would later recount, the Lord spoke prophetically as Schlueter laid his hands on Perry, their heads bowed before a painting of the Battle of the Alamo. Schlueter “declared over [Perry] that there was a leadership role beyond Texas and that Texas had a role beyond what people understand,” Long later told his congregation.

It was only one week ago that Perry’s prayer rally, named The Response, took place in Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas and following that event, Wilder penned a new article describing his feelings that mainstream media outlets had failed to dig deeply into the connections between Perry and speakers at the Response and what the growing policial activism of the NAR might mean for the American future.  Perhaps to rectify this, Wilder was on both the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC and on Democracy Now! earlier this week.  First, the clip from the Rachel Maddow Show:

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

Unfortunately, I was unable to determine the best way to embed a video from Democracy Now!, but I invite you to visit their site to see the interview with Wilder.