The evolution of Greg Locke: How a controversial Tennessee pastor wants to save America from its demons (2024)

From viral social posts to his presence in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, many see Greg Locke as a heretic who promotes dangerous ideas. But in his view, he's a revivalist set on a new awakening.

Audience members heaved, cried and writhed as Pastor Greg Locke ordered another evil spirit “out."

Two people violently erupted from their seat only to faceburly church volunteers who dashed across the 20,000-square-foot tent to restrain the flailing congregants. Another church volunteer ran toa womanwho was convulsingand blew a shofar horn, marking another site of liberation from demonic oppression.

The scene inside Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet was disorienting as if moved by a force no human could control.

For Locke, it meant it was all going according to plan.

The mass deliverance service — or the act of casting demonic spirits out of people in a large gathering — is outlined in a manual the controversial Tennessee pastor created, from the opening instructions to renouncing a list of spirits and a closing prayer for healing accompanied by a Hillsong melody.

“It’s organized chaos,” Locke said in an interview about his Sunday evening services. The services, though a new endeavor, mirror his previous behavior for more than a decade.

His clearly defined and strongly held religious beliefs have led the pastor to split from theindependent fundamental Baptists, attacklocal schools and retailers on social media to advocate for right-wing political positions, and stand outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as a mob stormed in. Twitterbanned him for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.

His calculated, self-aware decisions have led to controversy and national attentionwith progressives and conservatives alike at timescalling him out for crossing another line.

Many see him as a heretic who promotes dangerous ideas.

But in his eyes,“I’m a revivalist.”

Split from independentBaptists

Before Locke, 45, was a revivalist delivering the masses, he was an evangelist for the independent fundamentalBaptists.

After converting to Christianity in1992, Locke traveled around the world preaching on behalf of the independent fundamental Baptists, an ultraconservative, loosely connected group of churches.

“They trained me up as their puppet evangelist," said Locke, a Mt. Juliet native. "I was almost like the golden child of the IFB movement for years."

Greg Locke timeline: From independent Baptist pastor to right-wing firebrand

In 2000, he graduated from the Baptist Theological School of New England, an independent fundamentalBaptist-affiliated school, with a master’s degree in revival history, lured to the subject by stories of the First and Second Great Awakenings.

Both periods — the First Great Awakening in the 18th century American colonies and England, and the Second Great Awakening in 19th century U.S.— featured rhetorically compelling preachers converting people to Protestantism on a massive scale.

Locke’s independent fundamentalBaptist background makes his recent embrace of certain charismatic practices more significant.

Charismatic traditions in Protestantism teach that people have the ability to cast out demonic spirits, speak in tongues, or heal physical ailments. Charismatic beliefs are prominent in Pentecostalism, a branch of Protestantism that claims denominations such as Assemblies of God and The Foursquare Church.

Independent fundamentalBaptistswould “largely reject” acts such as mass deliverance, said John Fea, Christian historian and professor at Messiah University in Pennsylvania.

“For Locke, it seems like… the closer you are to the mainstream, the more compromised you are, the weaker you are,” Fea, an expert in early American religious history and editor of an online journal on religion and politics, said in an interview.

Locke said as much when he formally left the independent fundamental Baptists in 2011, five years after establishing his church, originally named Global Vision Baptist Church.

“How foolish I have been to seek so much of man’s approval... I must go somewhere that God can use me without the restraints of others,” Locke wrote in a June 2011 letter announcing that he and the church are splitting. The pastor felt the independent fundamentalBaptists were too legalistic and too hierarchical, a claim the independent fundamentalBaptists would fiercely dispute.

Within weeks, Global Vision replaced BaptistwithBiblein its name, changed its sign, put drums on the stage andhid the hymn books. Locke started preaching in blue jeans.

Still, parts of his independent fundamentalBaptist background stuck with him.

“I don’t deny the reality that the independent Baptists put some fight in me," Locke said. "They gave me some gumption; they gave me some boldness. So, I don’t demonize my past too much."

Digital, and literal, ascent

With anewfound independence, Locke began the work of building a platform for him and his church.

In 2012, he spentfour days and three nights 30 feet in the air in a scissors lift to raise donations for people experiencing homelessness. He set out for a 3,020-mile cross-country bicycletrip the following year to raise money for a plan to expand Global Vision's campus.

By 2014, about 5,000 people followed Locke on social media, he said. Today, more than 4 million people across 10 platforms follow him, he said. About 250,000 people follow Global Vision on social media across several platforms and a Sunday service draws north of 100,000 views on the Facebook livestream.

But that social media clout only amplified when Locke's political advocacy did. It started with a2015 demonstration outside West Wilson Middle School condemning the school district for “brainwashing” studentswith a curriculum he claimed to favorIslam over Christianity. He posted a video on Facebook about it.

The video prompted a rebuke from the school district's director, the first major example of widespread division in the community about Locke's behavior.

“I know for a fact his church does great things in Mt. Juliet,” said Scott Bowen, Lebanon's chief of police from 2003-2014 and whose father is a pastor. “But when he makes a lot of the blanket statements he does, to me it does more harm than good."

Local clergy and public officials seem to keep a distance from Locke when asked for comment. Severalwould not speak about him or his church.

“Pastor Locke will make a lot of statements publicly that a lot of other people would be thinking, but wouldn’t say,” said state Sen. Mark Pody, R-Lebanon. “He doesn’t worry about being politically correct.”

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A year after the Wilson County schools video, Locke's viral post lambasting Target for the company’s gender-neutral bathroom policycatapulted the pastor to a national stage.

The following year, Locke's stance against abortion led him to make Facebook videos criticizing Planned Parenthood, spawning donations in Locke’s name in a comical retort.

“Social media has definitely given us a great audience,” Locke said. "I’ve learned through the years that it’s such a powerful voice it has to be harnessed a little. Because you really can blow peoples' faces off."

Locke does acknowledge at times “that maybe I should have dialed it back a bit."

More often, though, he owns the fact hemakes incendiary statements on social media or in sermons, which people splice into short videos to beshared on social media.

Eventually, Twitter tamped down when it permanently banned Locke in September for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. A local Mount Juliet Facebook page did the same, deleting posts that mentioned Locke or were authored by him, the Washington Post reported.

Experts on Locke's social activity: Twitter 'canceling' pastor Greg Locke unlikely to slow him down, social media expert says

Riding a pandemic political wave and the Trump train

The pandemic has both been at the center of a lot of criticism about Locke and a political wave Locke rode to even more nationalnotoriety.

He started by calling on health officials to designate houses of worship as essential to allow them to stay open.

But Locke’s increasing dismissal ofCOVID-19, masks and the vaccinebecame more extreme and heblasted other churches that closed.

Later in the pandemic, Locke asked people to leave if they were wearing a mask at one Global Vision service. Locke said the statement was directed at specific people who he said were only coming to disrupt services.

Also, Locke was already on the advisory committee for Evangelicals for Trump and would later go to Washington D.C.as an invite to former President Donald Trump's GOP nomination acceptance speech.

Controversial political operatives like Roger Stone and Charlie Kirk came to speak atGlobal Vision. Global Vision was vandalized with spray paintthe week before Stone’s visit and services were drawingcriticism for being quasi-political rallies.

Locke argued pastors have a responsibility in the political realm saying, “every preacher in the Bible spoke against political corruption.”

Some local figures and national experts feel differently.

“I believe he oversteps (separation between) church and state,” said Bobby Francis of the Wilson County Democratic Party.

National scholars have pointed to Locke as a poster child of contemporary Christian nationalism — a term referring to the infusion of conservative Christian beliefs with far-right political views — chronicling in a report Locke’s involvement in the U.S. Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, that sought to halt the certification of votes for President Joe Biden.

‘The greatest awakening’

Locke’s presence at the Capitol steps onJan. 6, 2021, captured headlines and the attention of the U.S. House committee investigating the insurrection, which has requested documents and communications about Locke’s involvement.

What received less attention was Locke’s speech the night before at a rally that signaled a major shift in the pastor’s theology.

Locke at Jan. 6: Symbols brought to Capitol raise questions about role of Christian belief in riot

Locke hosts worship protest leader: Worship protest leader Sean Feucht to lead singing, speak at Mt. Juliet church service

“It’s time ladies and gentlemen to watch God show up and show out and do something great in this nation. How many of you believe that we’re not (just) going to have a Great Awakening? We’re going to have the greatest awakening that we have ever seen,” Locke said, according to a video of the speech.

His speech had it all. Italluded to his past as a student of revival history atan independent fundamental Baptist school, mixed in his political views at the time, and foreshadowed his future embrace of charismatic traditions.

He concluded his remarks that evening with a prayer that featureda shoutout to the Proud Boys militia. “Lord, we believe with all of our hearts that you are going to send a backdoor revival, the likes of which we have never seen.”

Present day,that revival is nigh.

Political rallies won’t bring it about, though, Locke believes. Mass deliverance will.

“I don’t really care about the Trump train anymore,” Locke said in an interview. After finishing out the right-wing "ReAwaken American" tour in May, Locke anticipates participating in fewer political rallies.

"Moving forward, I think it’s going to be the main thrust of who I am and what I preach," Locke said about mass deliverance.

That pivot speaks volumes about who Locke is and how he sees his role, say historians who study the theological ideas and practices embraced byLocke.

“You genuinely believe you are saving people from what you say you are saving them from ... that you’ve been called for this particular time to manifest these particular gifts,”said AmyArtman, Missouri State University professor and expert of charismatic revival history.

Locke’s primary influences today include 20th century charismatic preachers A.A. Allen, Derek Prince, and Win Worley, he said.

All three figures are known for professing the belief that demons can possess nonbelievers and oppress Christians. Mainstream Pentecostal groups reject the latter of the two, said Fea, the Messiah University professor.

“He is picking up on a strand of Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal movement that not everyone is on board with, but some are,” Baylor University historian Andrea Turpin said in an interview.

“If you look at the tree, it’s a branch... But it is not the center branch,” Turpin said about Locke’s beliefs and the history of revivalism, an observation that Fea and Artman echoed.

Prince and Worley also practicedmass deliverance and created models that directly inspired Locke. A2011mass deliverance manual based on Prince and Worley's teachings mimic Locke's mass deliverance design. Locke said he already received a request from a Georgia pastor to offer trainingin mass deliverance.

Locke is also pulling from his own experiences and beliefs, thus infusing his right-wing political ideas and bombastic rhetorical devices with his waragainst demon oppression.

“If you have certain political positions that you think America is going to hell in a hand basket, it could be part in parcel of your vision for revivalism to denounce those and to try to get people saved,” Turpin said.

Locke once protested Target’s gender-neutral bathrooms on Facebook. Today, he'scasting out what he says are spirits causinggender dysphoria.

He has preached at political rallies about the evils of masks. Now he’s exorcising the sickness of COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Controversy built the platform," Locke said. "But thisis why the platform was built.”

Critics will continue to decry Locke for promoting and sanctifying dangerous ideas. That’s a sign to him, though, he’s on the right track.

“I’ll burn the whole world down when I’ve got biblical truth on my side.”

Reach Andy Humbles at ahumbles@tennessean.com or615-726-5939 and on Twitter @AndyHumbles. Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.