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The cameras were rolling last October as Rod Parsley took to the Statehouse steps in Columbus to announce the kickoff of his grassroots group, Reformation Ohio. Bolstered by a bused-in crowd of supporters, Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, rappers, and a dance troupe, Parsley grabbed the microphone and sounded the call to arms.

"A Holy Ghost invasion is taking place!" he called. "Man your battle stations, ready your weapons, lock and load. Let the reformation begin!"

Some analysts credit Parsley for helping President George W. Bush win Ohio in 2004. As pastor of the 12,000-member World Harvest Church, Parsley used his platform to campaign for a state ban on gay marriage. When those he rallied entered the polling booth, most also pulled the lever for Bush, who won the state by only two percentage points.

Parsley has ambitious goals for the November election, which features hard-fought Ohio gubernatorial and Senate races that could also shape the presidential election in 2008. But he's not doing it alone.

Fellow pastor Russell Johnson lacks Parsley's charisma, but he has mastered the art of organizing. His group, the Ohio Restoration Project (ORP), recruited nearly 1,800 churches with "Patriot Pastors" and deputized them to draft new "values voters."

The ministers signed 410,000 Ohio homes onto Johnson's mailing list, and the ORP can tap 100,000 prayer warriors through e-mail in a moment's notice. This is more than just a group of voters ready to punch some ballots. According to ORP outreach materials, it is a "mighty army" ready to do battle.

While Johnson reaches white evangelicals and fundamentalists, Parsley appeals to both African Americans and Pentecostals. Together, the two men have forged a political machine that aims to remake Ohio politics—and the nation.

Russell Johnson taps the door of the hotel bar as he strides past. "This'll be shut down, of course," he says before leading the way through the faded Rodeway Inn. The décor suggests a certain nostalgia for the 1970s.

Johnson speaks of closing the bar with the confidence of a man who owns the property—which he does. His church, Fairfield Christian, just purchased it for $1.9 million, with plans to convert it into a conference center.

His 3,000-person church is less "mega" than Parsley's, but Johnson can't be accused of thinking small. A short man who resembles James Dobson in profile, Johnson soon plans to add more classrooms and an artificial waterfall to his church. He brings the same expansive vision to the Ohio Restoration Project.

From his base in Lancaster—30 minutes down Highway 31 from Columbus—Johnson oversees both his church and the ORP, which aims to cleanse the "arteries of our culture" from the "toxin of dogmatic secularism." This political angioplasty will be performed by the statewide network of Patriot Pastors.

Their top policy concerns are (1) the right to life (i.e., an end to abortion), (2) maintaining a godly definition of marriage, (3) preserving a parent's right to discipline and educate, and (4) defending the rights of Christians and their churches to "teach biblical values in the public square."

This stance lines up with a Republican agenda, a fact made more clear by Johnson's concern that Ohio families are struggling beneath the "weight of excessive taxation and government waste," that a "secular jihad" is overtaking the country, and that the media treat Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden "with more respect than the leader of the free world, George W. Bush."

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November 2006, Vol. 50, No. 11