The Christian Movements That Want to End Canadian Self-Rule

When Jacob Reaume, pastor of Waterloo’s Trinity Bible Chapel, speaks to his congregation, the better world he conjures includes Canada being annexed by the United States.

“Before labelling me a traitor,” he writes in his “Pastor’s Blog,” be assured that “I am a patriotic Canadian, loyal to Canada’s historic constitutional order, but I am also awake to the fact that that order has been largely destroyed.”

The constitutional order whose death Reaume mourns supposedly lives instead, today, in the United States of America. “South of the border, Americans have maintained their right to bear arms, have found recourse in the courts for the COVID violations against business and churches, and are much more encouraging of the free market. Meanwhile, our homeland is being flooded with immigrants.”

Reaume, who earned his divinity degree at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, offers his flock an autocratic hero to match his politics. “If we appealed to Donald Trump to restore our social and constitutional order by annexing Canada, we would not be too far out of line with our own constitutional heritage.”

But what about the problem that Canada is further “left” than the United States? “Only those former Canadians and their offspring who clearly demonstrate loyalty to American ideals would be permitted to vote,” writes Reaume. “The other families could exist as disenfranchised persons on the North American continent.”

What should we make of one Ontario pastor’s strange allegiance to a manifest sinner like Donald Trump as he proselytizes destruction of Canada’s democratic government? Start by considering that he is not alone.

Some U.S. evangelical Christians are promoting radical right-wing theologies that seek to overthrow the secular state and replace it with a Christian theocracy.

Canadian evangelicals don’t have the same political clout as their U.S. cousins — 30 per cent of the U.S. population identifies as evangelical compared with 10 per cent in Canada — and they don’t have someone like Donald Trump to get behind. But that doesn’t stop many of them from seeking the same goal.

As we watch their radical fringe grow, some basic questions loom larger. How do they justify espousing these values? Why do they get tax deductions for their efforts?

Rise of the New Apostolic Reformation

Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss and its aftermath revealed the explosive growth of networks of independent charismatic pastors called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. “Charismatic” refers not to someone’s personality but emphasizes the supernatural side of Christianity, spiritual gifts, healings, miracles, speaking in tongues, the laying on of hands and the casting out of demons.

NAR promotes self-proclaimed apostles who implement God’s will on earth and self-proclaimed prophets who receive revelations about what is to be done. It also promotes the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” the doctrine that Christians have a biblical mandate to conquer the seven mountains of society: family, religion, government, education, media, entertainment and business. Christians should have dominion over all aspects of society.

The United States should be run on Christian principles and ruled by Christians. (So should Canada, as we shall see.)

Trump turned to NAR apostles and prophets to help him consolidate evangelical support in 2016. He knew about them at least since 2002, when he watched televised sermons by Paula White, a NAR apostle, and invited her into his inner circle as his personal pastor, where she remains today in an official White House capacity.

Never mind Trump’s biblically reprobate character. NAR apostle Lance Wallnau, a pastor from Dallas, Texas, had compared Trump to King Cyrus of Persia, the heathen warrior king chosen by God to free the Jews from Babylonian captivity. Wallnau declared that Trump was God’s chosen candidate, a new Cyrus sent to disrupt the existing order so that God’s kingdom might be established. Wallnau claimed to have received a word of knowledge that Trump would be a wrecking ball. Trump didn’t even have to be a practising Christian; his overwhelming character flaws were irrelevant. They still backed him.

NAR pastors prophesied that Trump would win the 2020 election. When he didn’t, they claimed it was because of actual demons who had to be vanquished to reinstate Trump in the presidency.

NAR leaders were the principal theological architects of the insurrection. Two dozen pastors fanned out across seven battleground states, whipping up congregations into frenzies of prayer mixed with violent and bloody imagery, and urging them to rise up and defeat the demons.

NAR apostle Dutch Sheets, a South Carolina pastor, met with senior White House officials a week before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. And two days after that, Sheets told his 300,000 YouTube followers they were engaged in a great spiritual battle against the forces of darkness.

Sheets’ followers turned up in Washington on Jan. 6, some carrying flags he had popularized: a pine tree with the words “An Appeal to Heaven,” as a symbol of Christian nationalism. It had been a banner for U.S. troops during the War of Independence. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has one outside his office. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had one outside his vacation home. (The flag was also present during the “Freedom Convoy” shutdown of Ottawa a year later.)

The fate of Canada ‘prophesied’

NAR self-anointed prophet Cindy Jacobs is one of the world’s leading proponents of spiritual warfare, in which believers fight against territorial demons that rule geographical locations. It’s no longer fighting for individual souls but for whole nations. Jacobs set up a sound system in front of the Capitol where she and her supporters prayed, prophesied and sang songs as the mob invaded the Capitol. Spiritual warfare became physical.

Jacobs has been prophesying about the fate of Canada for years. Her first prophetic words for Canada occurred in 2001. She emphasized the importance of Psalm 72:8 in a Canadian context: “He shall have dominion from sea to sea. From the river to the ends of the earth.” God told her, “I said it at the foundation and I have never changed my mind.” It’s inscribed on the arch over the window of the Ottawa Peace Tower. The Fathers of Confederation called the new nation the Dominion of Canada. It was a sign from God.

Jacobs helped set up the Canadian Prophetic Council, which is now based in Kelowna. This is a group of charismatic Christians who meet to pray for Canada and release prophetic words. In 2019 the group met in Charlottetown, P.E.I., and reconstructed a photo of the Fathers of Confederation, assuming similar poses to those they did in 1864 in front of the lieutenant-governor’s residence. It was intended not as tongue-in-cheek but as a prophetic act. Christians shall soon have dominion over the nation.

The New Apostolic Reformation is represented in Canada by the Canadian Coalition of Apostolic Leaders, or CCAL, which is an offshoot of the International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders. This organization was created in Singapore in 1999 to advance the kingdom of God more rapidly and effectively into every nook and cranny of society. CCAL is a non-profit society with Phil Nordin, the founding pastor of Jubilee Church in Calgary, as convener, and a national council of 13 apostles.

The Canadian apostles didn’t have a Donald Trump to champion, but they did support the candidacy of Leslyn Lewis for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2020 and again in 2022. Lewis is a member of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, the largest and one of the most conservative evangelical churches in the country. No Cyrus needed here.

Lewis surrounded herself with an influential spiritual advisory team, which was organized by Pastor Pat Francis, a former member of the International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders, who, like Lewis, is from Jamaica. Francis runs a ministry in Mississauga, Ontario, and was moved by the possibility of “having a born-again faith-based Christian as the next prime minister of Canada.” She urged people to join the Conservative party to support the Lewis campaign and organized a prayer breakfast in Mississauga for Lewis; in 2022 she held a campaign event at the Jamaican Canadian Club in North York. Lewis told Francis, “I feel called for this.”

The best-known name on the spiritual advisory team is Stockwell Day, a prominent evangelical who believes that humans walked the earth with the dinosaurs and does not believe that global warming is real. He got his start in Alberta politics when, in 1984, as administrator of a Christian school near Red Deer, he declared that “standards of education are not set by government, but by God, the Bible, the home and the school.”

Day won the leadership of the Canadian Alliance, lost to Stephen Harper for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada and enjoyed several senior postings in the Harper government. He has retained his influence with the social conservatives in the Conservative party.

Jacobs delivered to Day a confidential prophecy when he attended one of her conferences in Red Deer in 2005. According to Marci McDonald’s The Armageddon Factor, the content of that prophecy has not been revealed.

Phil Nordin, the convener of the Canadian Coalition of Apostolic Leaders, was on the Lewis team along with two other apostles. Then there was Faytene Grasseschi, head of the Canadian Prophetic Council, who has been based in New Brunswick since 2020. Along with her prophesying, she is active in politics, losing a bid for the federal Conservative nomination for Saint John-Rothesay for the 2021 election. She supported New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs on his changes to Policy 713, which sets out to undermine protections for LGBTQ2S(IA)+ students in schools. And she lost as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the 2024 provincial election.

Grasseschi cast herself as a divinely inspired prophet in the mould of Cindy Jacobs, fighting against same-sex marriage and the right to abortion. Her 2009 book, Marked: A Generation of Dread Champions Rising to Shift Nations, expressed views that indicated a leaning to Christian nationalism, speaking zealously about “controlling, reigning over, or subjugating the earth.”

Despite the influence of her evangelical team, Lewis came in third in both leadership races. In 2020 she won the most votes in ridings with large membership bases, indicating strong support in some parts of the country. But because of the system of weighted voting where each riding gets the same number of points regardless of membership, she dropped to third overall. In between the two leadership contests she won a seat in the 2021 federal election in Haldimand-Norfolk in rural southern Ontario, taking over from longtime Conservative MP Diane Finley. Pierre Poilievre, who won the 2022 leadership race with a massive majority, appointed her shadow minister for infrastructure and communities.

The New Apostolic Reformation has emerged in other locations in Canada. In 2014 Cindy Jacobs had a vision of a “prophetic mantle upon Manitoba” and claimed that God wanted to release a “spirit of reconciliation” among Indigenous and non-Indigenous churches. That led apostle Alain Caron, from Gatineau, Quebec, to Winnipeg’s First Nations Family Worship Centre to induct the largely Anishinaabe parishioners into the movement. “I feel an anointing coming on,” exclaimed the centre’s Ojibwe pastor.

Fuelling the convoy: Liberty Coalition Canada

Just over a year after the Jan. 6 insurrection — on Jan. 22, 2022 — hundreds of trucks and cars departed from locations across Canada and converged a week later on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. They were protesting the end of vaccine mandate exemptions for cross-border truckers. Truckers were in the vanguard, but pastors were close behind. Some were outraged by federal restrictions on church gatherings. They were members of a new group called Liberty Coalition Canada, which was founded in 2021 to oppose COVID-19 restrictions on churches. They represent a second strand of Christian theocracy in Canada, related to the doctrine of Reconstructionism.

Three weeks into the convoy, Liberty pastors — all male — wrote an open letter to then-prime minister Justin Trudeau condemning, “in the strongest possible terms,” his use of the Emergency Powers Act to end the convoy occupation. It was a “totalitarian act of repression displaying weakness not strength,” they claimed. Trudeau should “take a knee before Christ the King lest you perish in the way.” Many of these pastors participated in the Ottawa occupation as well as the border blockades at Coutts, Alberta, at Emerson, Manitoba, and at Windsor’s Ambassador Bridge.

Michael Thiessen, a Liberty Coalition leader and a pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Alliston, Ontario, who joined the convoy during the first week, earlier helped draft a document known as the Niagara Declaration that claims limits on religious gatherings are a violation of church sovereignty. Several hundred mainly evangelical churches and organizations signed the document, leading to the creation of Liberty Coalition Canada.

After the convoy ended and COVID restrictions eased, the pastors shifted their attention to other issues like attacking LGBTQ2S+ rights, abortion and same sex marriage. They helped Christian candidates in municipal and school board elections as part of a plan to infiltrate the political system. They joined the Canada Strong and Free Network (formerly the Manning Centre), which supports the conservative movement and the Conservative party.

The Liberty pastors have solidified connections with a radical form of evangelicalism called Reconstructionism, in which Christians seek to reconstruct society according to biblical principles, including areas like law, education and government. It claims the Bible provides a comprehensive framework for living, and Christians should strive to implement these principles in all aspects of life.

Reconstructionism was shaped by Reformed Protestant Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001) to reconstruct society along explicitly biblical lines. The state would become a theocracy and would punish wrongdoing with the severity that God’s law in the Old Testament did. These would include capital punishment for homosexuality, adultery and abortion.

Reconstructionism is presently associated with Pastor Douglas Wilson and Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. His goal is the creation of a theocratic state in which traditionalist Christian men lead essential government institutions. Until that occurs, believers should build their own parallel society to avoid the evils of modern-day secular society. He works to make Moscow a “Christian town.” His church runs its own school system and has publishing and media interests.

Liberty pastors have many connections with Wilson and Reconstructionism. A document that was supposed to be secret but was exposed to CBC reporter Jonathan Montpetit says it wants to align Canada’s laws with biblical principles, following Reconstructionism goals. Liberty podcasts are hosted by a website run by members of Wilson’s church. A prominent member of Wilson’s church attended a Liberty conference at Reaume’s Trinity Bible Chapel in Waterloo. Reaume preached at Christ Church in 2023. Wilson also spoke at an event at the Ezra Institute, a conservative Christian think tank in Grimsby, Ontario, where its founder, Joseph Boot, is a Liberty leader.

Through Christ Church, Wilson has mobilized a far-right coalition associated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which has attracted more openly right-wing evangelicals. One church in the coalition, Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship outside Nashville, Tennessee, is the home church of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s secretary of defence. Hegseth had to back off from his insistence that women should not be allowed in the military because under Reconstructionism, men rule and run everything.

Hegseth held a standing-room-only prayer service in the Pentagon in mid-May. His pastor confirmed what NAR apostles had been saying. God chose Trump “to bring stability and moral clarity to our land.”

Measures of charity

Should churches that advocate for the advancement of the kingdom of God and the replacement of duly elected governments with Christian theocracies be considered charitable organizations?

To be registered as a charity in Canada, an organization must have purposes that are exclusively charitable and conduct activities that further those purposes. The Canada Revenue Agency recognizes four categories of charitable purposes: relief of poverty, advancement of education, advancement of religion, and other purposes beneficial to the community.

To advance religion in the charitable sense means to preach and advance the spiritual teachings of a religious faith and to maintain the doctrines and spiritual observances on which those teachings are based.

The BC Humanist Association, a charitable organization that promotes secularism and human rights, argues that no religious organization should receive charitable status. “Why should we privilege religion for charitable purposes at a time when Canada is becoming less religious?” asks BC Humanist executive director Ian Bushfield.

Every year, Parliament’s standing committee on finance holds budget consultations in advance of the coming year’s budget. And every year BC Humanist submits a recommendation that religion be removed from the charities act.

The standing committee usually ignores this recommendation, but in December 2024 it included it in its list of recommendations to the minister of finance.

This caused a shocked reaction from religious organizations such as the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, a national association of evangelical Christians, for obvious reasons.

Parliament was prorogued and the prime minister stepped down shortly after the committee issued its report. So this recommendation had no effect. But it does raise some questions.

Even if many churches and religious organizations retain their charitable status, do Canadian tax laws grant financial advantages to some churches that seem to go well beyond a religious purpose?

Consider the Canadian Coalition of Apostolic Leaders, whose website pronounces “all authority and dominion flows from Jesus Christ” and that “various governmental spheres among men, including self, family, church, corporate and civil” must operate “under the dominion of Christ.” Three pastor members of the coalition lead ministries in B.C. Their combined charitable tax receipts issued over the past five years top $11 million.

Consider, too, the ministry of Pat Francis, who led Leslyn Lewis’s spiritual advisory team. This former member of the International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders has issued more than $7.5 million in tax receipts over five years.

And then there is the Trinity Bible Chapel of Waterloo, where Jacob Reaume is pastor and preaches the dissolution of a sovereign Canada, to be folded into the United States. His church’s website instructs his followers not to ask themselves “How much of my money am I going to give back to God?” but suggests anyway that “a wise starting point” is 10 per cent of their “gross income.”

Reaume was a pastor at the Freedom Convoy, a signatory of the sovereignty-declaring Niagara Declaration and a founder of the Liberty Coalition. He has supported Christian candidates in municipal and school board elections. And his political views could easily be argued to go beyond religious purpose.

Trinity Bible Chapel of Waterloo is exempt from property tax, like all churches. And over the past five years, the church Reaume leads has issued charitable tax receipts for nearly $8 million.