armageddon IN OHIO

'Forces Of Righteousness' Battle 'Hordes Of Hell,' As Ohio Restoration Project Seeks To Bring Theocracy To The Heartland

Ohio pastor Russell Johnson is girding for a battle of biblical proportions.

"There is a warfare for the heart and soul of America," says Johnson, pastor of a burgeoning fundamentalist Christian congregation in Lancaster. "This is a battle between the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell. Millions of souls weigh in the balance and the church stands at the Critical Crossroads of history."

What is Pastor Johnson's strategy for addressing this crisis? He and an array of powerful Religious Right leaders across Ohio are trying to form a church-based political machine to dominate the state Republican Party and eventually seize control of the governor's office and other governmental posts.

Called the "Ohio Restoration Project," Johnson's scheme seeks to enlist 2,000 "Patriot Pastors" to help spread the church's message of a society in moral jeopardy and to register at least 300,000 new voters before the state's 2006 elections.

In a letter originally posted on the web site of his Fairfield Christian Church, the pastor asks supporters to "pray that God will raise up a harvest of Patriot Pastors who are dedicated to making a difference in this hour of American history." Furthermore, Johnson wrote, "what happens in Ohio in the next 18 months could very well make an impact on what happens in America in the next 20-30 years."

Johnson's project has caught the attention of state and national media, as well as some of the country's leading Religious Right figures. In late March, The New York Times devoted extensive coverage to the plan.

In Johnson's view, the state's GOP has done too little to advance the Religious Right agenda, which he sees as bringing organized religion back into the public schools and rolling back all kinds of civil rights advances. He told the Times that Ohio's Republican Party "is out of touch with its base" and "acts as if it lives in Boston, Mass."

Johnson is working hard to change the GOP's orientation. His congregation of about 2,500 has already opened the church's doors to the Fairfield County Republican Party's apparatus. In early March, the Republican Party Central Committee conducted a "special meeting" at the church to fill precinct vacancies. In mid April, the Fairfield Republicans held a "Reagan Dinner" fund-raiser at the church, at which Fox News Channel pundit and former U.S. congressman John Kasich provided the keynote address.

Moreover, the Lancaster Eagle Gazette noted in an early April piece that several members of Johnson's church have already ascended to public office, including a county judge, the county sheriff and at least three city councilmen.

Steve Davis, chairman of the Fairfield County Republicans, told the newspaper, "It's been very helpful for the churches to help spread the word."

Pastor Johnson is not alone in his quest to influence the outcome of elections and advance the Religious Right agenda. According to reports in several Ohio newspapers, including The Columbus Dispatch and the Toledo Blade, other prominent religious conservatives are coordinating with the Lancaster pastor.

Rod Parsley, an Ohio televangelist whom the Times describes as "a rising star in the religious broadcasting world," is on board with Johnson. Parsley opened his mega-church, in Canal Winchester, just outside Columbus, to the Ohio Restoration Project on May 9 for a prayer breakfast to help recruit Patriot Pastors. The Dispatch reported that the event, the third in a series of similar meetings, lasted more than four hours and was attended by Johnson, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

"Our nation is in crisis," Parsley told his audience of more than 1,000 Ohio pastors. "The moral foundations...are crumbling around us."

Like Johnson, Parsley, pastor of the World Harvest Church and founder of a Religious Right lobbying group called the Center for Moral Clarity (CMC), is confident that evangelicals made the difference in the 2004 general elections. He is just as determined to rouse more of them to become intimately involved in politics in the future. He also shares Johnson's strident views on the state of American values.

For Parsley, a tall man with a bellicose preaching style, the outcome of the 2004 general elections, where 11 states, including Ohio, passed anti-gay marriage constitutional amendments, the timing for a re-energized Religious Right movement could not be better.

"What we saw in that election was that conservatives shined the light and the majority of Americans agreed with those values far more readily than they did with the values of the liberal left," Parsley told the Dispatch earlier this year.

According to The New York Times, Parsley "will be an inspirational speaker" for Johnson's Restoration Project. Parsley's CMC web site claims that his Columbus church has 12,000 members and offers television broadcasts that are seen by millions.