MT. JULIET, TN — Pastor Greg Locke thinks the country has a fifty-fifty chance of civil war. And he’s ready to fight, if needed.
“If you show up and try to impede on our First Amendment right, we’ll meet you at the door with our Second Amendment right,” he said.
“That’s what the Bible says,” he told NOTUS in an interview, before correcting himself — “the Constitution says.”
Locke expressed confidence that Donald Trump’s supporters would be successful in a hypothetical civil war inspired by today’s political divisions: “There’s enough people in this country that could pull an insurrection off overnight, and the Democrats wouldn’t know what hit them.”
“But,” he specified, “we don’t want that.”
Fiery rhetoric like his has become increasingly commonplace among some Trump supporters, especially as Election Day approaches. But Locke isn’t just a pastor off the street. He has a large platform — more than two million followers on Facebook alone — that exploded after sharing conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic. Plenty of conservative Christians hold similar views, even about the potential for political violence. Locke is close to Trump’s inner circle: The day after his interview with NOTUS, he met with Trump in Georgia alongside a group of other pastors.
Global Vision Bible Church, where Locke preaches, is tucked between idyllic Tennessee farms and homes with cozy front porches and big backyards. Two Sundays before Election Day, these Christians were worshiping freely. They gathered to sing, hear a sermon, pray over each other and enjoy fellowship with the saints.
To the many Christians facing persecution around the world, such a scene represents unimaginable liberty. The congregants of Global Vision Bible Church freely proclaim the lordship of Jesus Christ. Locke often openly criticizes elected officials from the pulpit, too. Supreme Court cases have reaffirmed those freedoms over and over again.
But Locke and his followers feel as though they are in an existential fight for survival, at imminent risk of losing fundamental rights.
”What we’ve seen is four years of the most accelerated pace toward communism and Satanism that this nation has ever seen,” Locke told the crowd during his sermon that Sunday.
The word of the Lord, according to Locke: If Kamala Harris “gets in” the White House, “we will lose our liberties.”
“They’re going to hate us,” he warned. “We’ll be public enemy number one. Christians will be the number one most persecuted people on the planet, outside the Jewish people.”
Locke has faced threats of his own. In September, police said they found more than 30 shell casings after a shooter targeted his house. But with his warning about Harris, Locke is thinking about something more systematic: state-sponsored persecution.
In interviews, Global Vision attendees shared the same fears, unconvinced that America’s enshrined freedom of religion would withstand the next four years if Harris is elected. Some went even further, saying that if Trump doesn’t win next week, well, that’s it for America.
Locke isn’t the only one who’s talked about the odds of civil war this year. George Lang, a Republican state senator from Ohio, said at a rally with JD Vance over the summer that if Trump and Vance don’t win, “it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.”
“And it will be saved,” Lang said.
He apologized for his remarks after the event, saying they were “divisive” and didn’t reflect his true opinions. Republican lawmakers who spoke to NOTUS about it at the time said his comments raised eyebrows.
”It was surprising,” Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, who was at the rally, told NOTUS. “I don’t think the outcome of this election will produce a civil war.”
And Rep. Jim Jordan said, “We don’t want any of that to happen.”
Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett also brushed it off at the time. “I hear these tough guys talking about war,” he told NOTUS. “But I would say once they get under fire or a tank rolls down their street, they’re not going to be talking too tough.”
Still, Republicans from states like Texas hear arguments in favor of secession from their constituents on an almost daily basis. And Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska told NOTUS earlier this year that people who are willing to rebel against the federal government have “taken over” most state Republican parties.
Kevin, 65, of New Hampshire — who didn’t want to share his last name — told NOTUS after the Global Vision Bible Church service on Sunday that he also thinks civil war is possible.
“I feel like there’s going to be a lot of discord and a lot of violence, no matter who wins,” he said of the election. “It could lead to violence and another civil war, however that manifests itself.”
Kevin isn’t sure what he would do in that situation. “I don’t know,” he said when asked. He personally prefers peaceful protests and civil disobedience.
Even with all of the country’s political divisions, he said, he has a “great feeling of peace” about the election.
“I do not think it’s possible that he would lose,” he said of Trump. (Kevin doesn’t believe Trump actually lost in 2020, either.)
“Quite honestly,” he said, “I feel like the assassination attempts on President Trump are indicators that he may just be God’s chosen person for this time.”
The only way Trump could lose, according to Earnest Forsythe, 62, “is if God’s done with America and he wants One World Order to take over. Then he would let Kamala come in.”
”But I don’t believe that,” Forsythe told NOTUS in an interview on his way into the Sunday service. Trump “ain’t going to lose at all in a fair fight.”
How would Forsythe respond if Trump does lose?
“Well, then it’s God’s plan,” he said.
Attendees at Global Vision’s service on Sunday — largely living just outside of Nashville, but some visiting from other states after discovering Locke’s political posts online — said they don’t actively want violence if Trump loses. The ones who spoke with NOTUS were united: To respond with force, even to an election they think was stolen, wouldn’t match their religious beliefs. After all, Christ told his followers to offer the other cheek to attackers who hit them.
“If he does not become the president, it’s OK, because the Lord knows if the system was rigged or it wasn’t,” said Victoria Wonser, 45.
Some others raised the specter of civil war unprompted, though, saying it would test their loyalty to the country. And others defended Trump’s supporters who were violent after his 2020 loss.
”We’re allowed to go in the Capitol,” Forsythe said of the events of Jan. 6, 2021. “It’s the people’s house.”
He offered another, very different defense, too. “It wasn’t good patriot people that went in there, that did it. It was a setup from the other side,” he claimed. “The FBI and all of them. They brought in actors.” (Trump has said that if he is elected, he will pardon people who were convicted in the aftermath and called it a “day of love.”)
Pastor Locke was actually outside the Capitol that day. He says he never went into the building, and nearly four years later, he doesn’t have any real regrets beyond recognizing the optics weren’t particularly helpful in the moment.
”I’m still fully convinced that they stole it that time,” he told NOTUS. “But I didn’t become an insurrectionist, you know? I didn’t go crazy and burn stuff down.”
If Harris becomes president, however that might happen, he said, “I’m going to accept the fact that they end up being in power. I just probably won’t accept how they obtained that power.”
The real question is how he would respond if intense persecution of Christians happens afterward, like he expects. And what qualifies as egregious, or worthy of exercising the Second Amendment? Losing tax-exempt status? Locke said he expects the IRS under a Harris administration to target churches and for progressives to bring a flood of lawsuits intended to undermine freedom of religion.
“We’re not just gonna lay down and just let them just run over us,” he said. “We’re going to protect our rights to the death, if need be.”
Polls show a very tight race, but Locke thinks it’s “impossible” for Harris to win without cheating.
Locke isn’t new to conspiracy theories. He lives in his own information bubble, often sharing outlandish or debunked claims. He told NOTUS he fully believes Trump will “sweep” deep-blue California next week, that he wouldn’t be surprised if Michelle Obama is a man, suggested the government creates powerful hurricanes, and that immigrants in Ohio really do steal and eat household pets.
His social media posts, he said, “are for a totally different crowd” than his local church. “It is my political ranting page.”
Most people at Global Vision Bible Church are well aware of Locke’s posts, however. His online presence drew plenty of them there in the first place. His political comments during sermons are met with applause and shouts of “Amen!”
Does he worry he might be driving people with different beliefs — about how hurricanes form, for instance — away from Christianity by asking potential converts to also believe conspiracy theories?
”I’m always going to turn people away from the faith,” he replied, nonplussed. “God’s going to draw people to the faith. I’ve got the responsibility to bring people to Christ, all that kind of stuff, but Jesus didn’t win them all.”
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.