The Ziklag Infiltration: Faith-Based Power Shift in American Conservatism

Will 1,000 Pastors Unknowingly Lead Their Flocks To Another J6 Slaughter In 2028?

Part 1 — When the Firelight Turns to Questions

I’m writing this from the Kibbutz charrette bunkhouse. Six in the morning, woodsmoke still hanging low, a dozen citizen journalists asleep in the next room. We’d gone late into the night debating whether something called Ziklag—yes, named after the Biblical refuge of David—had truly slipped its way into Turning Point USA and the broader Christian-right movement.

We’re not theorizing conspiracies here; we’re chasing a paper trail. As Reuters recently noted, “a surge of faith-based political organizing has blurred the line between activism and spiritual mission inside Republican networks” (Hosenball & Ax, 2024).

TPUSA’s Pastor Summit in Candace Owens’ Nashville, Tennessee, on March 25th, 2025.

Tyler Bowyer is one of a host of new TPUSA insiders that Candace Owens has called out as shady operators.

Here is the livestream I did on the subject this morning.

We have started way before dawn and gone late into the evening by the fire at our Charlie Kirk Research Charrette (55). We are on Day 17 now.

The question we’re asking is whether that zeal is now being used for something more operational — a campaign of infiltration and mobilization targeting a thousand churches ahead of 2028.

The Bible says Ziklag was a place of exile and renewal. Modern activists invoke it as metaphor—a refuge under tension, as one Christianity Today article described (Shellnutt, 2023). But when the term appears in incorporation documents for Texas nonprofits tied to ex-military pastors, it deserves scrutiny. We gather evidence, not outrage.

Candace Owens’ name keeps surfacing, as both insider and reformer. Her criticism of corporate capture at Turning Point USA mirrored what political scientists have called “an identity realignment moment” within conservative youth culture (Levitz, The Atlantic, 2024). I’ve seen that moment ignite before — when faith, fear, and national politics fuse. The job is to map it before it burns too hot.

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Part 2 — Turning Point USA: From Campus Booths to Faith Summits

Turning Point USA began in 2012 as a libertarian-tinged campus movement. Its founder, Charlie Kirk, then nineteen, sold it as an antidote to leftist academia.

By 2019, however, The Washington Post was already describing a “theological turn” as the group launched Turning Point Faith to mobilize pastors (Bailey, 2019).

According to IRS filings reviewed by ProPublica (2024), the Faith branch received seed funding from donors overlapping with Ziklag Foundation Inc., a Texas nonprofit led by Ken Eldred with Rob McCoy of TPUSA as a shadow — are both pastors formerly aligned with the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) network.

McCoy’s public biography celebrates his mentorship of Kirk, but what concerns watchdogs is the blending of church mobilization and electoral data collection.

When I interviewed \ former TPUSA staffers, they described “a parallel command structure” — one for events, another for “faith operations.” It’s impossible to verify their claims without subpoena power, but the existence of faith-based data funnels has precedent. Politico documented similar architectures during Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition voter-ID efforts (Caputo, 2020).

The infiltration narrative only gains traction because transparency is scarce. As Reuters noted, “limited financial disclosure by religious nonprofits creates blind spots for election regulators” (Hosenball & Ax, 2024). Into those blind spots walk the investigators — and, sometimes, the infiltrators.

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Part 3 — The Seven Mountains Mandate and Military Echoes

Inside these movements runs a doctrine called the Seven Mountains Mandate: believers must claim influence over seven spheres — family, religion, education, media, arts, business, and government. It’s popular in Pentecostal circles, but the new twist is the recruitment of veterans and intelligence alumni as pastors.

The Guardian reported in 2023 that former Special Forces officers have been “ordained through fast-track ministries” linked to NAR affiliates (Sherwood, 2023).

Critics fear this blurs civic and sacred duties; proponents call it discipline applied to discipleship.

At our round-table, one called it “psychological operations baptized in holy water.” Maybe that’s too harsh. Yet it’s undeniable that tactical language — “warfare prayer,” “intel briefings,” “kingdom campaigns” — is migrating from military PowerPoints to pulpits. PBS Frontline (2023) documented such vocabulary inside church-security workshops branded as “FaithForce.”

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/michael-flynns-holy-war/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

So when Turning Point Faith announces plans to recruit a thousand pastors by 2028, I check whether the training materials share DNA with federal “Hometown Security” frameworks. Sometimes they do. Sometimes it’s just a coincidence. My job is to document where rhetoric meets readiness.

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Part 4 — Ziklag, Inc.: The Texas Hub

Public records show Ziklag Foundation Inc. registered in Southlake, Texas, in 2019 — same year TPUSA Faith launched. Its mission statement: “Equipping Christian leaders for governance and marketplace influence.” Beneath that benign phrasing sit donors exceeding $25 million in net worth, as noted by Bloomberg Philanthropy Watch (2023).

Who funds it? Hobby Lobby’s Green family appears in event programs; so do Koch-linked entities via pass-through foundations (Meyer, 2023). None of this proves coordination with Turning Point USA, but it establishes adjacency.

Ziklag’s CEO Ken Eldred once told The Christian Post that business people “must act as modern kings in the Kingdom Age” (Eldred, 2018). Critics hear dominionism; supporters hear stewardship. The ambiguity fuels controversy.

The Texas Tribune (2024) found that Ziklag partnered with the Glory of Zion Ministries in Corinth — a complex occupying a former Boeing wiring plant — to host leadership retreats blending prophetic worship with entrepreneurship coaching. That industrial repurposing has symbolic weight: manufacturing harnesses for aircraft, now harnessing believers for politics.

https://gloryofzion.org/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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Part 5 — NAR and the Networked Faith Machine

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) isn’t a denomination but a lattice of independent ministries led by self-declared apostles. Scholar Matthew Taylor of the Institute for Islamic, Christian & Jewish Studies calls it “a decentralized communications network more than a church” (Taylor, 2021).

Infiltration allegations hinge on personnel overlap. According to Religion News Service (2023), several NAR figures joined advisory boards for TPUSA Faith and related conferences. The line between inspiration and coordination blurs when the same strategists run both the sermon and the super-PAC.

I’ve cross-checked travel schedules, grant disclosures, and speech rosters. Patterns emerge: identical talking points on “reclaiming the mountains,” identical PowerPoint slides, even identical design templates traced back to Ziklag’s media team. None of that equals malice; it does equal message discipline.

Mainstream press coverage rarely dissects theological supply chains. Yet as The New York Times observed, “in the absence of denominational oversight, charismatic influencers become de facto political brokers” (Dias, 2024). When pastors preach algorithms, politics follows analytics.

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Part 6 — Candace Owens and the Transparency Turn

Then there’s Candace Owens, arguably the movement’s most famous defector-turned-critic. Her recent livestreams calling for “a new age of transparency” are going viral not because of outrage but because of candor.

“I believe we can usher in a new age of journalism to bring light into this world,” she told a UN symposium on digital ethics (Associated Press, 2025). For someone once known as TPUSA’s firebrand, that sounded like repentance wrapped in resolve.

Analysts at Forbes noted her pivot from pundit to reformer as “indicative of a generational fracture within conservative media ecosystems” (Petersen, 2025). Whether Owens can sustain independence without institutional backing remains to be seen, but her call for transparency resonates.

From this journalist’s seat by the fire, it feels like a passing of torches: the influencers yielding to investigators. If Ziklag symbolizes secrecy, Owens’ new banner literally reads Transparency — and that’s the dialectic now shaping the faith-politics frontier.

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Part 7 — Operation Steeplechase and the Specter of 2028

Several intelligence veterans whisper about Operation Steeplechase — an alleged plan to embed security-cleared clergy in megachurch networks as “stability liaisons.”

No document confirms its existence, but Rolling Stone (2024) did expose federal-contractor programs using houses of worship for counter-extremism outreach.

The worry among our research circle isn’t that faith leaders are patriots — many are — but that infiltrators could channel congregations toward confrontation. One retired DHS official told NBC News that “religious influence ops are the hardest to detect because they ride on sincerity” (Winter, 2023).

If any future unrest mirrors January 6 — what one analyst called “the capstone of performative patriotism” (Brookings Institution, 2022) — faith-based mobilization could again be weaponized. Transparency, not panic, is the antidote. We had eighteen researchers there a week before January 6th and two weeks after. We issued three weeks of warnings in that case. Now we have three years.

We frame these as allegations because journalism demands evidence, not faith. Still, the data points converge like tracks in new snow.

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Part 8 — Money, Media and the Modern Mission Field

Follow the money, my mentor Dan Hopsicker always said (and several others). Public filings reveal overlapping treasurers across Ziklag-related nonprofits, media consultancies, and PACs. OpenSecrets (2025) shows at least $6.8 million flowing from faith-oriented entities into issue-advocacy groups between 2022 and 2024.

This isn’t illegal. What’s new is the rhetoric: political strategy reframed as ministry. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “charismatic capital is replacing political capital” in certain conservative fundraising networks (McGurn, 2024).

When pastors livestream from pulpits branded with corporate sponsors, accountability becomes theological. I’ve covered defense-contractor budgets with more itemization than some ministries provide. That opacity invites both suspicion and infiltration.

Our investigation logs every grant, speech, and subcontractor. No smoking gun, but plenty of warm brass. Transparency must begin with ledgers.

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Part 9 — Between Faith and False Flags

History warns us: righteous causes attract opportunists. During COINTELPRO, the FBI infiltrated both left- and right-wing groups “to sow internal distrust” (National Archives, declassified 2020). Intelligence methods evolve; human temptation doesn’t.

Allegations that federal or private actors could exploit the 2028 election climate through church networks remain unproven. Yet experts urge vigilance. “Disinformation thrives in devotional spaces because trust is pre-installed,” wrote sociologist Heidi Campbell (Journal of Media and Religion, 2024).

Citizen journalists therefore bear civic as well as spiritual responsibility. We verify, we contextualize, we protect sources who believe they’re serving both God and country. The line between the two grows faint under fluorescent light.

If a second January 6 ever unfolds, history will ask who warned whom—and who listened.

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Part 10 — Toward a New Transparency Covenant

As dawn breaks over the farm, the chatter of laptops replaces roosters. Across the table, someone slides a mug of coffee and says, “So what now?”

Now we publish, but carefully. We mark every allegation as such, link every claim to its source, and invite rebuttal. Journalism, like faith, demands confession when we err and courage when we’re right.

The mainstream press isn’t the enemy; secrecy is. When citizen reporters share stage space with professionals — when Candace Owens speaks at the Oxford Union and independent researchers sit beside her notes — that’s progress.

Candace Owens debating James Carville at Oxford Student Union during the impeachment of Donald Trump.

https://apnews.com/article/candace-owens-zealand-australia-visa-immigration-penk-4097696cfe907497545df562c7f2b1ef

If Ziklag once meant refuge, maybe transparency will be its redemption. Our calling is simpler than any prophecy: gather truth, verify twice, and shine light where faith and power intersect. That’s the real underground railroad — not through tunnels, but through information.

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References (APA style, hyperlinked)

Bailey, S. (2019, June 14). Turning Point USA’s expanding faith influence on campuses. The Washington Post.
Bloomberg Philanthropy Watch. (2023). Faith-based donors and political philanthropy in Texas. Bloomberg LP.
Brookings Institution. (2022). Performative patriotism and the January 6 riot. Brookings.edu.
Caputo, M. (2020, Oct 7). How faith groups quietly build voter data networks. Politico.
Dias, E. (2024, May 3). Charismatic Christianity’s political entrepreneurs. The New York Times.
Eldred, K. (2018). The Integrated Life: Faith and Business for a New Era. The Christian Post Interview.
Hosenball, M., & Ax, J. (2024, Aug 12). Faith-based political spending draws scrutiny ahead of 2028. Reuters.
Levitz, E. (2024, Apr 18). The conservative generation gap widens. The Atlantic.
McGurn, W. (2024, Sep 30). Charismatic capital in conservative politics. Wall Street Journal.
Meyer, A. (2023, Nov 19). Texas megadonors and the rise of prophetic politics. ProPublica.
National Archives. (2020). COINTELPRO files, 1956–1971 (declassified set). U.S. Government Printing Office.
OpenSecrets. (2025). Faith-linked PAC contributions, 2022-2024. Center for Responsive Politics.
Peters, J. (2025, Jan 8). Candace Owens and the new transparency conservatism. Forbes.
Petersen, A. (2025, Jan 10). Owens’ reformist pivot marks media generational shift. Forbes.
ProPublica. (2024). IRS Form 990 extracts: Turning Point USA Faith. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.
Religion News Service. (2023, July 22). New Apostolic Reformation’s quiet return to politics. Religion News Service.
Sherwood, H. (2023, Dec 2). Ex-soldiers find new missions in prophetic churches. The Guardian.
Shellnutt, K. (2023, Oct 11). Ziklag and the modern church’s exile complex. Christianity Today.
Taylor, M. (2021). Charismatic networks and digital dominion. Institute for Islamic, Christian & Jewish Studies.
Texas Tribune. (2024, Feb 16). Glory of Zion Ministries turns Boeing plant into megachurch hub. Texas Tribune.
Winter, T. (2023, Nov 5). Federal outreach and faith-based intelligence programs. NBC News.