One of Donald Trump’s most influential Christian nationalist backers has privately shied away from rallying supporters for the Republican party before the midterms, instead urging them to focus their attention elsewhere – including emulating El Salvador and Poland, finding a successor for Charlie Kirk and even focusing on their own diets.

At the “As One” weekend for paying “partners” in the Dallas-Fort Worth area earlier this month, Lance Wallnau, one of the first prominent rightwing evangelicals to back Trump in 2015, spoke across three sessions about the virtues of El Salvador’s prison system, school boards and the movement’s future. The midterms, then little more than three weeks away, were not mentioned once.

Wallnau has long espoused being both “overt and covert” in Christian politics, and helped write the blueprint for Christian nationalists within the Maga movement to turn their faith from personal salvation towards political, social and institutional conquest.

Wallnau still champions Trump and Republican candidates in public. In spring, he praised Trump as “an actual Old Testament prophet king” whose “enemies are freaking out” because of his political skill. But behind closed doors, he conceded that the Maga movement is struggling to appeal to young people, and urged supporters to think about building a post-Trump infrastructure, with leaders who will outlast the president.

“Charlie Kirk’s death bothers me,” he told the weekend’s gala dinner, referring to the slain rightwing activist whose murder at a public event in Utah last year galvanized many on the right. Wallnau posited himself as the person to anoint the next Kirk. “I got to find that guy. That’s my job,” he said. “I feel more like a Samuel than a David” – a reference to the Old Testament prophet who anointed Israel’s kings.

Wallnau promoted El Salvador as one nation with “a president through prophecy”, a reference to the country’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, whom he said was building a “sheep nation” – a term for the godly nations that are separated from the “goat nations” in the end times. He also spoke approvingly of eastern European nations Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, all of which have experienced hard-right political surges in recent years.

At home, he pointed followers to the power of local action. He praised churchgoers in Southlake, Texas, for taking over the school board and kicking out “progressive Marxist liberals and demonic ideologies”. He told those upset about a mosque in nearby Irving to “go vote out this city council”, and suggested the movement “infiltrate Islam”.

Speaking candidly at the partner weekend, Wallnau said that privacy was necessary because journalists “stalk me”. In a room in which only a handful of people appeared to be under 40, he acknowledged his following as “an ageing demographic”.

Wallnau, 70, is highly revered in evangelical circles. He co-wrote the 2013 book Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate, which urges Christians to take control of seven spheres of society, from government and media to education and business. Two years later, he became one of Trump’s earliest champions, likening him to King Cyrus, the Persian ruler who was not of the Israelites’ faith, but furthered their cause.

Trump appeared to allude to this idea at a recent rally in Kansas, recalling that “a certain pastor from Dallas, Texas” had said: “He might not read the Bible as much as us … But one thing about him – he’s the greatest leader.”

During the 2024 election, Wallnau founded the Courage Tour, a travelling festival of faith and politics that toured swing states for Trump. Despite his ministry booking more than a million dollars in income from the tour, Wallnau has not sought to repeat it in this election cycle.

While Wallnau is often loud in public, his private musings are more telling – and more politically charged. He is an important cog in the Ziklag group, a secretive Texas-based Christian dominionist group with a minimum net worth requirement of $25m for membership. Ziklag’s operations were highly active and influential in the 2024 presidential election, targeting voter turnout, sex and gender issues, and Christian mobilization.

In leaked members-only videos addressing the Ziklag group in 2023, Wallnau laid out ideas for the dark-money group’s electoral strategy: “You almost hate to put it out this clearly, because if somebody else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out,” he said. The group divided its battle plan into three operations for the 2024 election: Checkmate, which funded so-called electoral integrity groups; Steeplechase, which mobilized churches; and Watchtower, which stoked tensions over sexual identity and parental rights.

In a follow-up “strategic ministry webinar” for As One members last Wednesday, less than two weeks before election day, Wallnau acknowledged the elephant in the room. “We all have a certain responsibility … but you can’t be responsible for the whole nation,” he said, referring to the elections. “You’ve done your job. Your conscience is clear, and whatever comes out in the midterms is going to be. We’ll sort that out when it happens.”

He then urged followers to focus on themselves, rather than politics. “When you’re dealing with something you don’t like, something that isn’t working, something that isn’t clear,” he said, “there’s some seed of a greater benefit that can come out of that … maybe it’s going to be lifestyle, or maybe it’s going to be diet.”

The political content he did offer looked further ahead beyond the midterms and played on familiar far-right tropes. Repeating Trump’s claim that unrest in France was caused by immigration, he warned that “what’s happening in Europe could be coming here in 18 months”. The As One weekend, he said, had been about focusing energies on the future: “Thirty-six months from now, a lot can change.” For now, he was “pulling back” from current events towards Bible studies where “I don’t have to deal with anything negative”.

André Gagné, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal who has followed Wallnau for years, reviewed the transcripts of the events and said that private gatherings like this are a big part of his appeal. “He’s a populist,” Gagné said. “He impresses on Christians the need to get involved in societal transformation.”

Gagné said the silence on the midterms reflected strains in Trump’s coalition, even from some of his earliest, and most victorious, backers: “There’s fractures in the movement,” he said. “My sense is that Wallnau feels he has to tread very carefully with what he’s going to say in overly defending Trump or overly talking about the midterms.”

When Wallnau complains that journalists stalk him, Gagné added, “he’s actually bragging”. And his talk of Kirk’s successor was partly about himself. “He sees himself as someone that’s going to lead the way after Charlie Kirk,” he said. Wallnau’s distancing himself from Trump is not merely strategic, but practical: he has to think of who is coming next – why he is so happy to point to leaders of other nations, such as Bukele in El Salvador. “He talks about there are many Cyruses, that there are all these other very strong leaders that God is raising up,” Gagné said. “Trump is not the only one.”

Wallnau’s most recent book, The Return of the Lion, sets out the stakes in starker terms. “Revival is personal. Reformation is institutional,” he writes. “Jesus is coming back to execute vengeance on rebellious angels and everyone and everything aligned with them.”

At the gala, Wallnau closed out the evening more combatively, asking attenders to stand up with him and participate in a karate chop together. “Here’s the problem,” he said, accusing partners of half-measures. “[If] you don’t break a board, you break your hand.”