Dispatches from the Empire


How Evangelicals Use Digital Surveillance to Target the Unconverted

The Mapping Center for Evangelism and Church Growth’s founder and president Chris Cooper suggests using the app to conduct neighborly activities such as putting on a barbecue for potential converts, but scattered throughout the app’s training and promotional videos are suggestions to undertake the controversial practice of “prayerwalking.” An idea becoming increasingly popular among Christian supremacist groups, prayerwalking involves believers flooding so-called “un-Christian” territories in order to combat “demonic strongholds.” In practice, it varies from blessing new neighbors to gathering groups to pray in front of everything from mosques to drag bars in service of “spiritual warfare.”

I don’t want to think less of these people, but they don’t make it easy.