The New York Giants’ hiring of former player David Tyree as the director of player development has resulted in controversy and a statement from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The controversy stems from a 2011 interview with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), in which Tyree said that gay marriage would lead to anarchy and lawlessness. In another interview, he stated that he would trade his 2008 Super Bowl catch if it would stop marriage equality, and he’s also indicated that he believes in reparative therapy. The Giants’ general manager has defended Tyree, stating that the team did due diligence before hiring him for the job, in which he will mentor young players in their off-the-field life, including business interests. But it’s Tyree’s own mentors and business associates that will likely lead to more controversy for the NFL team and to further questions about Tyree’s claim this past week that his views have evolved.
Tyree’s mentors, and at least one business partner, are apostles in a network of modern-day, self-declared (or, in their view, God-ordained) “apostles” and “prophets.” An invitation-only list of prominent apostles, the International Coalition of Apostles, has included Tyree’s mentor and co-author, Apostle Kimberly Daniels, and his business partner, Apostle Frank Duprée. They maximize their impact through loose relational networks in a religio-political movement that has been dubbed the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
The apostles and prophets of this network aren’t your garden-variety homophobes; they are on the cutting edge of activism and incitement against gay rights in the U.S., Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
Following his miraculous Super Bowl catch, Tyree co-authored an autobiographical book with Daniels, whose son Michael Jennings has also played for several NFL teams, including the Giants. Daniels is also a mentor to other players on the NY Giants and Jacksonville Jaguars and was reportedly invited by the Jaguars to lead a Bible study for the team.
Tyree describes Daniels as his “spiritual mother” and the person who prophesied his role, over the phone, on the evening prior to the Giants’ 2008 Super Bowl win. In the New Apostolic world of modern-day apostles and prophets, one’s spiritual father or mother not only acts as a mentor but also provides spiritual authority and protection. Tyree’s spiritual mother is nationally known as “the demon buster,” a specialist in expelling what are supposed to be literal demons and in “healing” homosexuals. Tyree claims that he himself has been possessed by a demon that caused him to exhibit symptoms of mental illness and to spend four days in a psychiatric hospital.
Like other NAR apostles and prophets, Daniels and Duprée promote the concept of the “Seven Mountains Mandate,” or the belief that Christians should take “dominion” over the seven power centers of society and government. The sports industry falls under the categories of the entertainment, media, and business mountains, areas aggressively targeted by NAR leaders. In her book of spiritual warfare prayers, Daniels describes “gatekeepers of the sports industry” as being “strategically set in place for prophetic evangelism throughout the industry.”
The Demon Buster
In her dual role as an apostle and prophetess, Daniels has served on the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders. This group meets to make prophetic declarations about the future and has included such figures as Harry Jackson Jr., Cindy Jacobs, Sarah Palin’s mentor Mary Glazier, and Lou Engle. Engle is known for co-founding TheCall events, used in 2008 to promote Proposition Eight in California and as a platform for supporters of the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda in 2010.
Kimberly Daniels and Harry Jackson Jr. spearheaded the fight against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2007 by targeting African American churches and pastors with claims that the bill was part of a homosexual “satanic agenda” to muzzle and perhaps even imprison pastors. Their efforts included full-page newspaper ads (pictured left) in D.C. featuring Jackson and Daniels in the top photos of the left column. Jackson has been described in a report by Americans United for Separation of Church and State as “point man for the wedge strategy” of “using attacks on gay rights and abortion as a wedge between African American churchgoers and their political allies in the civil rights and progressive communities.” This strategy was revealed in a NOM document leaked in 2012, describing a plan “to drive a wedge between gays and blacks - two key Democratic constituencies.”
Daniels and Jackson were interviewed on a popular evangelical show on Daystar TV, alongside their fellow “comrade in war” Cindy Jacobs, about their opposition to the hate crimes bill. The six-minute video (embedded below) jumps from the interview to short individual clips of Daniels, Jackson, Jacobs, and also Lou Engle and Che Ahn, in a documentation of their homophobic language and false claims that the hate crimes bill would result in the jailing of pastors for preaching against homosexuality from the pulpit. The compilation of clips was produced by Bruce Wilson, now with TWOCARE, when Daniels was running (and won) a city council seat in Jacksonville, Florida in 2011.
The video also includes short excerpts from a sermon in which Daniels embraces slavery as a Christianizing influence and claims that “Jews own everything.” It reveals glimpses of her brand of the prosperity doctrine, or the belief that God rewards those of proper faith with health and wealth.
Although Daniels won her city council seat as a Democrat, she authored an article in Charisma magazine in 2008 calling for black Christians to vote against Barack Obama. Daniels is featured regularly in Charisma, which provides a forum for her claims that demons can be ingested by eating Halloween candy. Daniels has written numerous books, including one with a foreword by Diana Hagee, wife of controversial televangelist John Hagee, and another filled with prayers for use in repelling and expelling demons in all kinds of situations.
The spiritual warfare prayers in her book Prayers that Bring Change fall under headings such as “Prayer for Hollywood Entertainers” and “Prayer for Professional Athletes.” The following are a few selected excerpts:
- “I pray against all forms of perversion, sex, lust, and homosexuality that are sweeping through the Hollywood industry and professional athletics.”
- “I bind the spirit of lesbianism, whoredom, and strange women and displace it with the anointing of the virtuous woman. I command the gay men to become straight and the unfaithful brothers to repent and become mighty men of valor.”
- “I renounce the witchcraft that comes with homosexuality/lesbianism.”
- “Bless all the men and women who stand before the world as gatekeepers of the sports industry.”
- “I pray that salvation will be made known to the people of Israel who do not believe the Messiah has come.”
- “I break the control of all forms of ancient religions, philosophy, astronomy, divination, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, new age, and any other power that these secret organizations draw power and strength from.”
David Tyree also references his close relationship with Apostle Ardell Daniels, Kimberly Daniels husband. Ardell Daniels is one of founding board members of the Oak Initiative, a religio-political organization fighting against a perceived Marxist/Homosexual/Islamic coalition. In 2010, the Oak Initiative produced a short video titled “Marxism in America” featuring another board member, retired Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who claims in the video that the nation is in the grips of a Marxist takeover.
Apostle Frank Dupree
As recently as 2013, Transformation Newark magazine featured a double-page advertisement for David Tyree and Frank Duprée’s joint venture marketing health supplements, powders, and drinks for the Northeast region of Impax World products. The ad, as seen, capitalizes on Tyree’s fame and his book authored with Kimberly Daniels.
Apostle Frank Duprée is also well connected in regional and national networks. “Bishop Duprée,” as he is also called, is one of the founders of Transformation Newark and the Metro Apostolic Network in New Jersey and New York, with branches in Pakistan and Kenya. The Metro Apostolic Network council includes Apostle Joseph Mattera, recently named U.S. head of the International Coalition of Apostles. (The ICA also recently changed its name to the International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders or ICAL.) The ICAL is forming national networks of apostles in countries around the world.
Gatekeepers in the Sports Industry
Giant’s coach Tom Coughlin has described the position of director of player development, for which Tyree has been hired, as extremely important in football franchises. In Coughlin’s words, the job is to aid players in “their development as young men, the opportunities in the business world and in networking in the city that they happen to be playing in.” Tyree certainly has access to extensive and very interesting networks in the New York and New Jersey area. He has repeatedly voiced his willingness to use his access and position to advance his worldview. Now, he can be one of those strategically placed “gatekeepers in the sports industry.”
According to the introduction to his autobiography, Tyree left a letter in each of his teammates’ lockers in September 2007. In the letter, he described himself as called by God to be a spiritual leader to remove the team out from under a “spiritual dark cloud.” He wrote that God wanted to do great things with the team, but that it required faith in the Lord in order to win the championship. He issued an invitation to the “First Team Fellowship/Bible Study” at his house.
Tyree continues the introduction by admitting that not many of his teammates took him up on his offer, but he still describes the Giants’ victory as “A Supernatural Bowl” (also the title of a chapter in the book). The book includes a “Hall of Faith” of NFL players who also believe in a supernatural component to football, and that the faith required to tap into that supernatural power must be shared with their teammates. A football-style prosperity doctrine is described in detail by Tyree and Daniels in the closing chapters of the book.
In his 2011 interview with NOM, Tyree said that athletes and believers who are in positions to do so should voice their opposition to gay marriage. He added that believers are doing God an injustice if they don’t “make his heart known to the country.” “It’s not about establishing a theocracy,” Tyree continued. “It’s about what’s right.”