“We are going to prepare for war,” he shouted, and a few minutes later: “I’m not on the Earth to be blessed; I’m on the Earth to be armed and dangerous.”

That is how four days under the tent would end—with words that could be taken as hyperbolic, or purely metaphorical. And on the first day, people were not necessarily prepared to accept them. But getting people ready was the whole point of what was happening in Eau Claire, an event cast as an old-fashioned tent revival, only not the kind involving Nilla wafers and repentance. This one targeted souls in swing states. It was an unapologetic exercise in religious radicalization happening in plain sight, just off a highway and down the street from a Panera. The point was to transform a like-minded crowd of Donald Trump–supporting believers into “God-appointed warriors” ready to do whatever the Almighty might require of them in November and Continue Reading on the Atlantic…