JTA — A pro-Israel pastor who inveighs against “sharia law” and wants Jews to accept Jesus is the favored candidate in a crowded congressional primary in Oklahoma on Tuesday.

Jackson Lahmeyer, the founder of Pastors for Trump and a political activist from the Tulsa area, secured the president’s endorsement ahead of Tuesday’s primary for the state’s solidly Republican 1st District House seat. Other big GOP endorsements soon followed, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, helping to pull Lahmeyer away from the other nine candidates vying for the nomination.

Much of Lahmeyer’s national profile has been defined by his regular invocations of “sharia law,” traditional Muslim doctrine often used as a right-wing shock tactic. One of his campaign platforms is “Ensuring That Sharia Law Never Takes Root In Our Nation.”

On Sunday, Lahmeyer also responded to allegations published by the Daily Mail that he had cheated on his wife, writing in a post on X that “this matter was already dealt with privately between me and my wife, Kendra, through counsel and prayer with God and spiritual advisors.”

Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District is home to a thriving Jewish community — one that has recently urged Jews from Canada to take up residence — as well as multiple large Jewish organizations including Schusterman Family Philanthropies.

Multiple representatives of the Jewish Federation of Tulsa declined to comment on Lahmeyer’s candidacy. But it’s clear that if elected, he will bring to Congress some specific ideas about Jews.

“The Antichrist will be a political leader of Jewish descent,” he told a livestream of his church on October 8, 2024, a day after the one-year anniversary of the bloody Hamas-led invasion of Israel. “That is how the Jews will worship him.”

During his sermon, Lahmeyer based the claim on his reading of biblical prophecy, arguing that the Antichrist will “speak great blasphemy” and will “have no regard for the gods of his fathers.”

Lahmeyer’s preaching about the Jewish Antichrist has also sparked concern among some Jewish voters.

“Jackson, I am appalled at this post. I’m Jewish. I supported you[r] run for office at every turn. I have children and grandchildren. Antisemitism is at an all time high. I’m scared for them. This is abhorrent,” one X user wrote in response to a February........

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