Depending on whom you ask, Sean Feucht is either a spiritual warrior pushing back against the LGBTQ+ agenda or a Christo-fascist bent on the establishment of theocracy. Reviled by some and loved by others, this year the Christian nationalist pastor has found the doors of President Trump’s White House open to him to lead fellow pastors in worship, while eight cities in Canada have banned him from performing citing safety concerns and the spreading of “hate speech.”
Now Feucht has his sights on Seattle. The founder of the Let Us Worship movement plans to bring his “Revive in ’25” tour to Gas Works Park in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood on Aug. 30. He originally planned to hold that event at Cal Anderson Park on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, the city’s historically LGBTQ+ neighborhood. He announced his plan in the days after police and counterprotesters clashed at that park on Memorial Day weekend when Mayday USA brought a similar concert and rally featuring local Christian nationalist pastors Jenny Donnelly, Matt Shea and Russell Johnson.
The outrage and fallout over that event — and the expected response to Feucht’s upcoming Labor Day weekend event — plays right into the Christian nationalist playbook that Feucht himself has helped develop over the past five years, which has helped them gain followers, raise money and build influence at the highest levels.
The playbook
In many ways the three Pacific Northwest pastors featured at the Mayday USA event have followed the playbook perfected by Feucht, and have seen their influence grow because of it.
Johnson is head pastor at Pursuit NW, a charismatic Christian megachurch with sites across the region including Seattle, Snohomish and Kirkland, where he recently hosted televangelist Paula White, who leads the White House Faith Office. Donnelly is a former multilevel marketer who co-founded The Collective Church, which has locations from Portland to north central Washington and followers across the country. Shea is a former state legislator who was expelled from the state GOP caucus for participating in “domestic terrorism.” He also authored "The Biblical Basis for War,” a pamphlet that calls for Christian supremacists to “kill all males” who refuse to go along with the “American Redoubt,” the plan for an evangelical Christian theocracy based in Montana, Idaho and Eastern Washington. Now he’s a podcaster based in the Spokane Valley.
The Mayday USA event ended with SPD using pepper spray against counter-protesters who considered the event a far-right anti-LGBTQ+ “fascist” rally. The following day, Johnson called them “antifa militants” on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News, and said worshippers were “swarmed” by hundreds.
“They were throwing water balloons filled with urine at Christians who stood in the park and were assaulted for the high crime of worshiping Jesus in a public space,” Johnson told Ingraham.
There is no evidence to substantiate Johnson’s claim of urine-filled projectiles. Only 23 arrests were made that day, and counter-protesters didn’t start moving into the event space until Donnelly decided to shut down the gathering early. Protesters at Johnson and Donnelly’s event said they were doing so peacefully.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell criticized the group in a press release shortly after the event.
“Seattle is proud of our reputation as a welcoming, inclusive city for LGBTQ+ communities, and we stand with our trans neighbors when they face bigotry and injustice,” he stated. “Today’s far-right rally was held here for this very reason — to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city’s values, in the heart of Seattle’s most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood.”
Although no one on Donnelly and Johnson’s side was pepper-sprayed or arrested, the pair claimed they and their people were suffering persecution at the hands of Harrell and city officials.
Their supporters called for Harrell to resign and held a follow-up protest outside Seattle City Hall several days later, where eight more protesters opposed to Donnelly and Johnson were arrested.
The story made national news and caught the attention of Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, who posted on X that folks in his agency would be looking into it.
“We have asked our team to fully investigate allegations of targeted violence against religious groups at the Seattle concert,” Bongino wrote. “Freedom of religion isn’t a suggestion.”
In short, the event was a resounding success.
That’s the analysis of Matthew D. Taylor, senior Christian scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where he specializes in American Christianity, American Islam, Christian extremism, and religious politics. He has followed Feucht’s career, and is the author of books on Christian extremism, including The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy.
In it, Taylor examines the shift of once-fringe Christian political concepts into the mainstream.
Feucht, a California-based performer, Christian nationalist and political activist, has honed the craft of holding controversial events in high-profile locations since the pandemic. He’s since been getting headlines, driving up social media engagement and selling merch. The strategy was pioneered by Lou Engle, a Christian minister and the founder of now-defunct prayer movement TheCall which held religious rallies focusing on political issues in the 2000s and 2010s.
Their goal is to provoke a reaction, Taylor told Cascade PBS.
“I think the location is an element of that, the format is an element of that, the message is an element of that. On all fronts, they’re trying to get a reaction,” Taylor said. “I will also note that they get a lot more cover now because of the new Trump administration, because of the National Faith Advisory Board and the White House Faith Office and this ‘anti-Christian bias task force’ led by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.”
The choice of venue is often influenced by their theological motivations, in this case staging a public confrontation with what they view as demonic government and cultural entities. The performative aspect of trying to provoke a spectacle is also important, Taylor said. It’s the playbook that Sean Feucht set down in 2020 and 2021 with his “Let Us Worship” movement in response to COVID-era restrictions on gatherings, especially religious ones.
“[It] has now been perfected through many iterations ... to do whatever they can to draw out a confrontational counter-protest. That gives them a foil and they can claim persecution based on their caricatured portrayal of that opposition.”
Feucht did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Though Feucht has been the subject of study by academics like Taylor and profiled in Rolling Stone and The Atlantic, many folks don’t know who he is or understand his power within the right-wing religious movement that has suddenly gained so much traction in Washington, D.C.
At 42, Feucht looks like the embodiment of the stereotypical youth pastor many Millennials interacted with at vacation Bible camp or youth group lock-ins. He dresses mostly in sports jerseys and jeans and usually has an acoustic guitar in hand.
But when he opens his mouth, Feucht sets himself apart.
He doesn’t balk at embracing once-radical political positions, such as his declaration that the U.S. should be a theocracy where only Christians are in charge.
“I want a country where Christians are making the laws. I want a country where believers are engaged in every sphere of society,” he said in a 2023 interview. “There is no law outside the Biblical moral law.”
As a graduate of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, a revivalist Christian training center in Redding in Northern California, Feucht was trained to be a “spiritual warrior” and bring the fight to the enemy on his territory. It’s an offshoot of Bethel Church, a congregation that describes itself as being “rooted in the love of God and dedicated to worldwide transformation through revival.”
“The Lord has given us a mandate to be a resource center to impact cities and nations,” its website says. “We believe we’re on the edge of the greatest revival of all time.”
Some in Redding call Bethel’s school “Christian Hogwarts,” but the school prides itself on making a real-world impact.
“Their theology is one of spiritual warfare, of conquering culture, of taking over society,” Taylor said.
Billed as a “non-denominational” church, Bethel sets itself apart from historically mainstream American evangelicalism in two ways.
First, they’re “continuationists,” which means they believe that miracles described in the Bible continue to occur today and can be administered by true believers. Faith healing, prophecy, raising the dead, speaking in tongues and casting out demons are all on the table for anyone in their minds.
This belief has resulted in practices like “grave soaking,” in which Bible school students will lie on the graves of dead revivalists in the belief that they might absorb the deceased’s powers.
Second, they believe in the Seven Mountain Mandate, also known as Dominionism, a prophecy that calls for Christians to gain influence over and eventually dominate all “seven mountains of societal influence” to shape culture and transform society: religion, family, education, government, media, business, and arts and entertainment.
Many also believe domination of those mountains will usher in the return of Jesus Christ and the end of the world – a concept enthusiastically welcomed within these large and growing circles of believers.
Taylor said the idea traces back to John Calvin, one of the most famous and influential theologians of the Protestant Reformation, and a later Dutch theologian named Abraham Kuyper, who wrote about different “spheres” of authority and emphasized that God is above them all.
But it wasn’t until 2013, when Bethel Church’s lead pastor Bill Johnson and preacher and televangelist Lance Wallnau published the hit Christian-lit book Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate, that dominionism broke into evangelical Christian pop culture and spread like wildfire.
“Today more than 50% of evangelicals would say they agree with the Seven Mountain Mandate,” Taylor said.
And in many ways Feucht, who attended in 2016, is the poster child for the school – living proof of what a graduate can achieve. Over the past five years he has popped up at the center of almost every culture war in America.
After signing to Bethel Records and launching a Christian music career, COVID-19 hit, and his series of concerts and rallies called “Let Us Worship” was born. At a time when people were urged to practice social distancing and mask in public, Feucht urged people to gather in large groups at strategic high-profile locations unmasked to sing praise and worship with him in protest.
He held one such event at Gas Works Park in 2020, despite being denied a permit to perform due to the pandemic.
“Politicians can write press releases. They can make threats. They can shut down parks. They can put up fences,” Feucht told the crowd at that event. “We’re here as citizens of America and citizens of the Kingdom of God and we won’t be silenced.”
That year he also filed a lawsuit against California Gov. Gavin Newsom over COVID mandates in that state, and ran for California’s 3rd Congressional District seat. He garnered just 25,243 votes (13.5% of total eligible voters in the district) and didn’t make it past the primary.
In 2022, after the Disney corporation took a public position against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Feucht organized protests outside the entrance of Disneyland in California.
Mai Hoang
In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, he embarked on a “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour, co-sponsored by Charlie Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA, and visited and performed in every state capital. During that tour, Feucht made an appearance in Yakima after the city rejected a proclamation acknowledging Pride Month.
That tour focused on heavily on swing states and garnered backlash from dozens of religious leaders in the Pacific Northwest, who signed a letter to political leaders denouncing Feucht for declaring that people with his “narrow view of Christian theology” should make all laws in the United States and using religion to advance an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. Signers included Rev. Lara Crutsinger-Perry of United Churches of Olympia, Methodist pastor Benjamin Cremer of Cathedral of the Rockies in Boise, Father Joseph Farnes of All Saints Episcopal Church in Boise and about 40 others.
“We reject these attempts to cloak bigotry in religious language, and we ask you to do the same,” the letter reads. “This rhetoric is especially dangerous when paired with Sean Feucht’s and Turning Point USA Faith’s willingness to court political violence across our region and the country.”
That last sentence referred to Feucht’s open embrace of militia members and Proud Boys as security during gigs.
In 2021 Feucht posed for a photo with his security team before a show in Portland, Ore., and posted it to X with the caption: “If you mess with them or our 1st amendment right to worship God – you’ll meet Jesus one way or another.”
One of the men who provided security for that event was Jeffrey Grace, a resident of Battle Ground, Wash., who was charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. Grace was included when Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people connected with the insurrection. Another known Proud Boy, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, later sentenced to almost eight years in prison for violence at far-right rallies in Portland, was also there to provide security.
Financial questions
Feucht has also faced accusations of dishonesty, financial mismanagement, moral and ethical misconduct and abusive behavior from former colleagues. Some of them set up a whistleblower website called Truth and Freedom Stories, where former volunteers and employees post details of financial records, claim Feucht is committing multiple types of fraud and share their firsthand experience of mismanagement and abuse.
“Over many years, we have personally witnessed Sean choose to engage in repeated and unrepentant behavior that includes manipulation, exaggeration, control, lying, gaslighting, and spiritual and emotional abuse,” they wrote.
And while his leadership style might have left some feeling upset, the pandemic and the protest concerts it brought were a boon to the pastor and performer. According to MinistryWatch, a Christian nonprofit that oversees a database ranking the transparency, accountability and credibility of ministries, Sean Feucht Ministries’ revenue exploded from $283,526 to $5.3 million between 2019 and 2020 – the most recent year that Feucht’s organization filed a 990 form (churches, unlike other nonprofits, are not required to file 990s). MinistryWatch gives Sean Feucht Ministries an F grade and a donor confidence score of 19 out of 100 – meaning they advise donors to withhold giving..
Truth and Freedom Stories also posted property records on their website showing that Feucht’s real estate portfolio is worth nearly $10,000,000 in luxury homes from Montana to California –although many are listed as “parsonages” owned by Sean Feucht Ministries and not the man himself.
The show will go on
In Seattle, counter-protests to Feucht’s Let Us Worship “Revive in ’25” event are planned, and the city received letters and petitions urging the city to deny the permit in Cal Anderson Park. Ultimately, the Seattle Parks and Recreation department and Feucht agreed to move the permitted event to Gas Works Park after negotiations. Last week, on its Facebook event page, Feucht’s team posted plans for outreach and a march at Cal Anderson Park, but references to those plans were deleted after the city reached out to the group.
Mayor Bruce Harrell and Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, who represents the district that includes Cal Anderson Park, said the city couldn’t deny or unilaterally relocate the permit based on the event’s content because of the group’s Constitutional rights.
“Recognizing that Cal Anderson Park is an important gathering space for our LGBTQ+ residents and receiving their feedback on the event location, we worked with the organizers to suggest alternative park locations,” they wrote in a press release.
“Everyone has a First Amendment right to make their voices heard, regardless of content or belief. We are focused on facilitating that right of expression for everyone in our city – while also prioritizing safety,” Harrell and Hollingsworth said in their statement.
Not that a permit denial would have stopped the spread of the message. After the rejections issued by Quebec; Abbotsford, B.C.; Halifax and other Canadian cities, Feucht made the case that Christians are persecuted – and took the opportunity to thank donors.
“Now listen, we did not choose this fight. We did not provoke this fight,” he said in an Aug. 6 social media video addressing the Canadian permit denials. “However, we are in the middle of it and God is with us. And if he’s for us, who can be against us? So thank you for praying, thank you for donating and watch as God begins to move.”
Being able to spin the rejections as a win shows how this Millennial professional religious protester has set the tone for so many other aspiring right-wing Christian influencers, Taylor said.
“I would say that Donnelly and her crew, and I’d include Russell Johnson in there and even Matt Shea – they have learned from Feucht and evolved a model based on a lot of the more confrontational events he was doing,” he said.
For counter-protesters who want to avoid playing into Feucht and others’ hands, Taylor advised being respectful and not taking the bait.
“Try to make your protest about what you are for – pluralism, freedom, equality, dignity, and so forth – rather than merely about what you are against,” Taylor wrote in an email. “Feucht and his ilk thrive on provocation and confrontation and being able to portray their opponents as unhinged, angry, hateful, anti-Christian, etc. Don’t play into that. Make it about the principles that you want to promote.”
For protestors who identify as Christian, Taylor advised to “Out-Jesus them!”
“Sean Feucht is the one who is often being anti-Christian and hating on Christians with whom he disagrees. In your protest, highlight how far the teachings of Jesus (about servanthood, self-denial, and caring for the least and the lowest) are from the practices and activities of Sean Feucht. Use verses from the Bible to show what a total debacle of a Christian he is.”
