Make way for the Christocrats...

Ok, I could not make up stuff as good as this! Really.

Twenty-five minutes into the service, he strolls in like a celebrity.

Clearly the center of attention, he greets well-wishers with the comforting style of a pastor and the smoothness of a politician.

The Rev. Rod Parsley makes his way to his seat in the front row as World Harvest Church rolls and rocks with the thunder of praise music. He settles in, and ushers wearing earpieces patrol the aisles.

When the singing ends, Parsley ascends the steps to the stage and speaks with an intensity and eloquence reminiscent of Burt Lancaster’s fiery preaching in Elmer Gantry.

"A new heartbeat is palpitating out of Columbus, Ohio, and it’s hitting the state and reverberating like shock waves across the nation," he announces to worshippers.

From the platform of World Harvest, a nondenominational congregation with a regular weekly attendance of nearly 10,000, the 48-year-old televangelist and author has dived into politics, leading a charge against gay marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, secular humanism and, at times, other Christian churches.

Shouts of approval ring out from the ethnically diverse worshippers nearly filling the 5,200-seat sanctuary, and Parsley doesn’t take long to hit his stride.

There are issues that all sides of the political spectrum must address, he tells the crowd — "righteousness" issues, such as abortion; "justice" issues, such as poverty.

"It may not be intellectually stimulating, but nevertheless it is true," he declares. "The only way to be consistently right is to get on the solid foundation that this nation was founded on, the B-I-B-L-E, that’s the book for me."

A woman rushes toward him. Ushers chase her, but Parsley orders them to leave her alone. He calms her as she repeatedly shouts, ‘‘Save me, Jesus!"

Parsley tells her that, to be saved, she must allow Jesus to become her life. And she returns to her seat, agreeing to surrender to the Lord.

Wiping away sweat, Parsley says that a similar ‘‘great awakening" is about to cover the land.

The sermon that follows on this recent morning is tinged with politics.

Parsley tells worshippers that Americans must be ‘‘Christocrats," becoming citizens of both their country and God’s kingdom.

‘‘And that is not a democracy; that is a theocracy," he says of the divine world. ‘‘That means God is in control, and you are not."