As Indiana’s gubernatorial candidates squared off last week during their first debate, Democratic nominee Jennifer McCormick repeatedly criticized her Republican opponent’s running mate for accusing her of having a “Jezebel spirit.”
Micah Beckwith, a controversial pastor who upset state GOP leaders by capturing the lieutenant governor nomination in June, is running on a ticket with U.S. Sen. Mike Braun. As Braun and McCormick addressed various issues and took shots at each other, McCormick mentioned Beckwith’s attacks on her. A Republican-turned-Democrat, McCormick is a former state superintendent of public instruction and a former public school administrator who has been married for nearly 30 years to a public school teacher. But to Beckwith, McCormick is the personification of an evil spirit.
“If you look at the Republican ticket versus the Democrat[ic] ticket, it’s strength and godly boldness versus just I would say the Jezebel spirit and just this idea of no boldness or boldness for immorality,” Beckwith said on a podcast pushing a 50-day pre-election prayer effort.
In a debate last week with Braun, McCormick brought up Beckwith’s comment along with the fact Braun’s campaign was using an ad with a digitally altered image of her. She called the “Jezebel spirit” rhetoric “extremism” that’s “beyond the Hoosier values,” and she connected it to Beckwith calling himself a “Christian Nationalist.” She also pushed Braun to admit those attacks were wrong and apologize, but he refused to do so on either account. So McCormick questioned if Braun has the character needed to lead.
The line of attack shouldn’t have surprised Braun as McCormick had already addressed it on social media. Noting how she was being called a “Jezebel spirit” despite her record as a wife, mom, teacher, and public servant, she added, “Ladies — we deserve better than this.”
Screengrab as Jennifer McCormick (left) and Mike Braun debate on Oct. 2, 2024.
While Beckwith claimed his “Jezebel spirit” attack “has nothing to do with being a woman or not,” such attacks are often commonly used against women. Vice President Kamala Harris is also being called a “Jezebel spirit,” most notably by Trumpian “prophet” Lance Wallnau, a key figure in the New Apostolic Reformation. He’s the guy who popularized the “seven mountain mandate” and the claim Trump has been ordained by God to be a Cyrus-like ruler. Last month, Wallnau argued the 2024 election is “Trump vs. the Jezebel spirit.” After pushing whey protein products for people to buy, he explained why he thinks Trump will still win and why he thinks Harris is a “Jezebel spirit.”
“When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation, and domination — especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth — you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit,” Wallnau said. “So with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination, and manipulation.”
Wallnau’s actually been calling Harris “a Jezebel spirit” since 2020. But he’s increased the rhetoric since Harris became the Democratic choice for president in July. He now insists Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.” And with that comes violent undertones since he often talks about how the Old Testament figure Jezebel was killed.
Despite that rhetoric, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance last month went to Pennsylvania to speak at Wallnau’s “Courage Tour,” a series of political worship events being held in swing states. Such an appearance helped elevate Wallnau even more, putting his rhetoric in the mainstream of the Republican Party along with Indiana’s lieutenant governor nominee.
While journalists have been trying to point out the meaning of the “Jezebel spirit” comments by Beckwith and Wallnau, they sometimes trip up on the details. Like an Indiana political publication that called the “Jezebel spirit” attack “a biblical phrase about wicked women.”
There’s just one problem: “Jezebel spirit” is not a biblical phrase.
Although the name Jezebel shows up 20 times in the Bible — in 1 Kings, 2 Kings, and Revelation — there is no reference to the phrase “Jezebel spirit.” To call that a biblical phrase or concept is simply inaccurate. But it does show the power of charismatic preachers like Wallnau in creating a concept and getting it framed as just what the Bible clearly says. So this issue of A Public Witness looks at the use of this problematic phrase and the danger it poses in today’s politics.
The Biblical Jezebels
Nineteen of the biblical uses of Jezebel refer to a queen of the northern kingdom of Ephraim after Israel split. The texts introduce her as a Phoenician princess, daughter of the King of Tyre (which is in modern-day Lebanon). She married King Ahab in the northern kingdom, who is generally regarded as one of the eviler kings ruling over that part of the Hebrew people. The texts blame her for pushing the worship of Baal, killing prophets of God, and stealing land after killing the people who owned it. The prophet Elijah condemned both Ahab and Jezebel.
Eventually, Ahab and Jezebel both met a bloody ending. After Ahab died in battle, one son briefly ruled before dying and then another son ruled for 12 years. But the House of Ahab came to an end in a violent coup by Jehu. After killing the king and other family members, Jehu ordered servants to throw Jezebel from a window. Her body was then mostly eaten by stray dogs. (Such a great story for children’s time next Sunday!)
Queen Jezebel Being Punished, a 1650 painting by Andrea Celesti. (Public Domain)
There is one additional Jezebel reference in the Book of Revelation. In the letter to the church in Thyatira, condemnation is given for tolerating “that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet” (some translations say “your wife Jezebel”). Many scholars and preachers argue this wasn’t really the woman’s name but that she’s being compared to the ancient queen. That might be true, though they don’t point to textual evidence of “Jezebel” being used as such an insult yet.
The reasoning for the argument that Jezebel is not her real name is no one would name their daughter after that evil queen. But people literally name their daughters Jezebel today even after the Revelation text further poisoned the name’s connotations. Sure, it’s only about 20 babies about of a million in the U.S. today, but it happens. Other people portrayed as villains in the biblical texts — like Delilah and Cain — also still get picked sometimes as names today.
It is the Revelation 2:20 reference that particularly adds to the connotations of Jezebel today since that woman is not only described as a false prophet but also as one pushing sexual immorality. (She was also criticized for pushing the eating of food that had been sacrificed to idols, but Paul also said that was okay.)
Whether the woman was actually named Jezebel or just called that in the verse, there’s still no reference in the Bible to “a Jezebel spirit” or “the Jezebel spirit.” To understand the popularity of the spirit language about the self-proclaimed prophet, we must turn to today’s self-proclaimed prophets like Wallnau.
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The Rise of the ‘Jezebel Spirit’
The use of “Jezebel” as an insult against women is not new. The term has especially been used against Black women since the time of slavery to claim they were hypersexual. This was used to justify the raping of enslaved women by arguing they actually wanted it. The racist and sexist trope continued during Jim Crow and beyond.
As Kamala Harris put her hand on a Bible to take the vice presidential oath of office in 2021, multiple Southern Baptist pastors sparked national controversy for calling Harris a “Jezebel.” Rev. Amos C. Brown, a civil rights icon and Harris’s longtime pastor, penned a Word&Way column at the time in response to the “Jezebel” attacks on Harris.
“For a White man to use that word to describe any Black woman is demeaning in the extreme,” Brown wrote. “Such vile tropes have no place in our society or political discourse.”
While the term “Jezebel” has long been used as an attack line, the idea of a “Jezebel spirit” didn’t gain popularity until much more recently. According to Google’s analysis of books published since 1800, the phrase “Jezebel spirit” was virtually unused until the early 1990s. From 1994-2001, it rose dramatically — and is now at its highest recorded level.
So what happened? Some hints of the embrace of this phrase can be seen in books starting to use the phrase around that time. Charismatic preacher Bill Hamon, an “apostle” in the New Apostolic Reformation movement, referenced the “Jezebel spirit” in his 1991 book Prophets, Pitfalls, and Principles: God’s Prophetic People Today.
In 1994, Francis Frangipane, who started a charismatic ministry in Iowa, published The Jezebel Spirit. The same year, Bible teacher Fuchsia Pickett — whom Charisma magazine later called “a spiritual mother in the charismatic movement” — wrote about the “Jezebel spirit” in her book The Next Move of God: A Divine Revelation of the Coming Revival.
“It is not difficult to trace the working of this Jezebel spirit in today’s culture,” she argued. “It energizes the feminists, and is the motivator of abortion. It is especially rampant in the entertainment industry, flaunting itself in its glamor and brazen desire to seduce the minds and affections of a nation.”
Also in 1994, charismatic megachurch pastor Dick Bernal, who started backing Trump in 2015, wrote about the “Jezebel spirit” in his book When Lucifer and Jezebel Join Your Church. While many writers in this era emphasized that the “Jezebel spirit” can be found in men and women, Bernal argued “the Jezebel spirt primarily works through women or effeminate men.”
In 1996, charismatic minister Rick Joyner, who backed Trump in 2016 and since, wrote about “the Jezebel spirit” in his book Overcoming the Religious Spirit, which is part of his “combatting spiritual strongholds series” of books. He uses the phrase “religious spirit” to talk about “a demon which seeks to substitute religious activity for the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.”
“The Jezebel spirit usually gains its dominion by making political alliances, and it often uses a deceptively humble and submissive demeanor in order to manipulate. However, once this spirit gains authority, it will usually manifest a strong control spirit and shameless presumption,” Joyner wrote. “The Jezebel spirit especially attacks the prophetic ministry because that ministry has an important place in preparing the way for the Lord.”
Charismatic preacher Rick Godwin also wrote about the “Jezebel spirit” in his 1997 book Exposing Witchcraft in the Church. He criticized this spirit for “her evil schemes and tactics” that have a “toxic affect” on a church. To deal with a Jezebel spirit, he recommended confronting her directly and making sure she submits since “when a woman is submitted to her husband, Jezebel’s tactics cannot affect that marriage.”
Numerous other books in that era and more recently also use the phrase. The list of such works by charismatic preachers and “prophets” includes Unmasking the Jezebel Spirit by John Paul Jackson (with a foreword from Lou Engle), Destroying the Jezebel Spirit by Bill Vincent, Jezebel’s War with America by Michael Brown, and The Spiritual Warrior’s Guide to Defeating Jezebel by Jennifer LeClaire.
Many of the concepts pushed by leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation movement and the broader charismatic world are new teachings that gained significant use in the last few decades. Like the idea of a “seven mountain mandate,” which is only a couple of decades old but now is even embraced in the broader Christian world. Similarly, the concept of a “Jezebel spirit” exploded in use over the last three decades to the point that it now strikes many people as a biblical phrase.
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Jezebel & Jehu
A phrase like “Jezebel spirit” cosplays as a biblical idea without actually being grounded in the text. This makes it malleable as it can be used to attack people for issues well beyond those for which the two biblical Jezebels were condemned. The phrase can be applied to basically any woman one disagrees with politically, framing them as ungodly regardless of their actual religiosity or character. But with a holy veneer put on the partisan attack, it transforms political differences into a cosmic conflict of good versus evil.
With the development of the “Jezebel spirit” concept, those employing this rhetoric have managed to add a spiritual warfare lens on top of the long-used misogynistic and often racist “Jezebel” trope. This makes the attack even more dangerous. Instead of just calling someone an immoral woman, the “spirit” term adds a more demonic frame. That makes battling and defeating the person so described all the more critical to save the church, state, or nation.
This rhetoric is even more alarming when Trumpian self-proclaimed “prophets” compare Trump to Jehu, the coup leader who killed the king and Jezebel so he could take the throne. Like Herman Martir, who has met with Trump multiple times and has spoken at Wallnau’s “Courage Tour.” He declared last week that Trump has “the Jehu anointing.”
“God has a prophetic destiny for America,” Martir said before pointing to Trump surviving an assassination attempt in July as proof that “God has his hand” on Trump. “I think we’re at that moment where God is raising up to say, he is like that anointing, that Jehu anointing on him and is called by God to destroy Jezebel. … This is spiritual warfare to the highest level and we need a war president.”
We’ve already seen how “prophecies” about an election mixed with spiritual warfare language can help inspire a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Adding the “Jezebel spirit” and “Jehu anointing” framing increases the potential for post-election violence, especially in light of the claims of God ordaining Trump to win after the July assassination attempt. That’s why it matters when misogynistic partisan attacks are dressed up in religious garb. And it’s why we must put an end to the use of the unbiblical “Jezebel spirit” phrase.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
A Public Witness is a reader-supported publication of Word&Way.
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