Cathy Townsend is listed in Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition as a “ministry leader”, but there is no publicly available record indicating that she leads any ministry.
She appears to be a political activist who, as an individual, has strongly Christian Nationalist beliefs that motivate her involvement in Republican Party politics.
Cathy Townsend herself seems excited at the idea of Christian violence against the current government of the United States, writing that, “God is equipping the saints with the scepter of Esther… time to roar!”
Esther, as anyone who has actually read the Bible knows, killed tens of thousands of her political opponents.
When Cathy Townsend says that her god is giving Christians the “scepter of Esther” and declares that it is “time to roar”, she is calling for political violence against Americans who disagree with her Christian Nationalist ideology.
Cathy Townsend is a Republican Party insider.
In 2024, Townsend was an Iowa caucus chair for the Republican Party in the town of Clinton. Townsend also oversaw her own election to the position of Delegate to the Republican Central Committee.
Cathy Townsend is a supporter of David Pautsch, who called for the assassination of President Barack Obama. In Pautsch’s opinion, violence is justified when it’s Christians who are perpetrating the violence.
“David loves God and this country,” Townsend writes.
In October of last year, Townsend traveled over the Mississippi River to Illinois to hear the prophecies of Anne Tate, who claims that the Christian god talks to her and grants her new lines of Christian scripture. Tate also has joined with other prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation in declaring that the United States will be overthrown by Christian armies, which will “reconstitute America as one nation under God, a Christian nation filled with followers of Yeshua.”
A new book, Donald Trump’s Army of God: Christian Nationalism in the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, provides information about all 317 members of the Iowa Faith Leader Coalition.
As “a case study in the violent extremism that has come to define the presidential election of 2024,” the book provides a grounded examination of Christian Nationalist ideology that is lacking from other, more theoretical, books on Christian Nationalism.
The Iowa Faith Leader Coalition is an extremist political organization that violates the law
Learn more about the radical Christian Nationalists who belong to Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition.