COVID Protests
Those challenges would apparently soon materialize,
and Feucht’s rise to fame in the wingnut circus really took off with his “Let
us worship“ worship concerts in 2020, which protested and demonstratively
violated lockdowns and COVID-related regulations and which drew crowds of thousands
to protest various restrictions on people gathering (it is worth noting that
Feucht and the Bethel Church simultaneously accepted
the Paycheck Protection Program and other loans offered by the federal
government to keep businesses alive during the pandemic). The concerts were
promptly expanded to form a sort of response to Black Lives Matters protests – the
groups who came for the Covid-lockdown protests apparently didn’t mind – targeting
cities where such protests were being held; Feucht called his concert series “a
new Jesus movement”. (In fairness, it should be noted that Feucht had
earlier arranged a worship concert at the site of the murder of George Floyd
where he referred to Floyd’s murder as an “injustice”). Donald Trump
himself signed one of Feucht’s guitars prior to a “Let Us Worship” even
at the National Mall in DC, which was apparently attended by some 35,000 people.
The tour was sponsored by Feucht’s own Bethel Church, whose leader Bill Johnson
is on record as a hardcore anti-vaccine activist who refers to the COVID-19
vaccine as the “mark of the beast”.
The concert series was the centerpiece of the
‘documentary’ Superspreader (“[d]uring the COVID-19 lockdowns, an
evangelical Christian singer stands up for religious liberties by holding mass
outdoor worship concert”), an insane conspiracy flick trying to argue that
measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 “were part of a communist plan to
take over the country”. The movie is notorious also for how it tries to portray
Feucht as a victim – despite making millions off his tours – e.g. by
including amateur footage of violence completely unconnected to Feucht or his
tour; and when Feucht innocently says that he did not expect the “level of
demonic activity” he confronted at an event Portland, which did
involve violence, he conveniently neglects to mention that the violence was
carried out primarily by his own paramilitary bodyguard. The movie was produced
by Michael Mauldin and his company Mauldin Media – Michael being the husband of
Meredith Mauldin, a.k.a. Meredith McKoy, a B-movie actress and Christian singer
who performed with Feucht at his “Let Us Worship” events.
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Source: Don't remember
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The self-portrayal as a victim is of course, and as it is for most fundies,
part and parcel of his identity: Sean Feucht is persecuted, as demonstrated by the fact that Congress
sometimes passes legislation he disagrees with. Legislation protecting the
rights of LGBTQ people for instance, is persecution of him now and will lead to even worse persecution
of him and Christians like himself in the future, insofar as they will have to
live with legislation they disagree with and cannot force people who disagree
with them (him) to act the way they (he) want them to act. Of course, he has
also claimed that Christians are on the verge of being imprisoned for their
beliefs, citing as his primary evidence various dreams he has (or claims to have) had.
Other Antics
After graduating from Oral Roberts University,
Feucht founded a number of organizations, including, in 2010, Light a Candle,
an ‘international outreach movement’ supposedly doing missionary work around
the globe while charging volunteers thousands of dollars in fees to participate;
and Hold the Line, a movement intended “to inform, educate, and inspire”
young people to become politically active and oppose “the progressive agenda
being forced upon America” (as he puts it,
Christians must “step out and confront the demonic schemes being pushed
through the schools, the media and the government. We can confront the devil
and the Left”). Currently, his main operation is Sean Feucht Ministries,
Inc., a nonprofit tax-exempt cash cow).
In 2019, Feucht was part of the group of fundies visiting then-President Trump
for a faith briefing at the White House with the goal of praying Trump out of
troubles related to the first impeachment attempt in 2019: “We just laid our
hands on him and prayed for him. It was like a real intense, hardcore prayer”,
Feucht reported.
In April 2022, Feucht called for the “walls of
perversion to come down in Jesus’s name” at a protest outside of “demonic”
Disney’s California corporate offices. And Feucht sees the devil in most things
he doesn’t fancy. For instance, Feucht unsurprisingly thinks
Biden is advancing a satanic agenda; with Biden, “[t]he enemy is launching
an all out attack on truth, attacking the Bible, and God’s sacred design for
the family, sexuality and gender” and the Biden administration is, as
political opponents of wingnuts always do, “carrying some of the most
anti-Christ agenda and philosophy that maybe we have seen in the history of
America” (here
is, apparently, more evidence). And as with fundies in general, it is hard to
figure out precisely why it matters or is a bad thing, for as Feucht sees it,
“we are living in the last days”:
“These are the end times … we’re living in the midst of it.”
During the 2022 congressional elections, Feucht
performed at campaign rallies in support of Kari Lake
and Doug Mastriano.
In early 2023, Feucht launched
his ‘Kingdom to the Capitol’ tour, co-sponsored by Turning Point USA, which would focus on swing states to educate
people e.g. about how the LGBTQ movement is driven by demonic forces (“schemes
of the devil in the political realm”); a similar theme characterized his
contributions to Clay Clark and Michael Flynn’s ReAwaken America tour. Before his events in the Pacific
Northwest, Feucht had conducted “a 3-day prayer and fasting movement in preparation” because
the Pacific Northwest because “is #1 for witchcraft and demonic activity”.
Particularly notable among those
Northwest events in his Kingdom series was his appearance in Spokane with Matt Shea.
Despite (or,
unfortunately, because of) his fundie lunacy, Feucht is extremely
well-connected, and numerous members of Congress consider
themselves fans and/or friends. Indeed, Feucht has even got his own Capitol
Hill townhouse, “Camp Elah”, set up for meeting with strategists and
lawmakers to help his efforts to “take back territory” and, with God’s
help, elevate “men and women of faith” into
positions of political power; ‘Christian’ and ‘men and women of faith’ for
Feucht is of course synonymous with ‘those who agree with me on politics’ – and
to make that clear, Feucht points out that
“the fact that there is even such a thing as ‘Evangelicals for Harris’ that
pastors/influencers join shows you just how apostate much of the American
church has become” (Feucht elsewhere characterizes Harris as
“A RADICAL BABY KILLING MANIAC!” – and both she and Walz are backed by demonic forces)
and he has described
the fact that not all Christian leaders are outspoken MAGA activists like him a
“leadership crisis”.
That said, Feucht has complained that
he is being unfairly “labeled by libs as a chRiStIAn nAtIoNaList.” Of
course, the dastardly liberals probably label him that way partly because Sean Feucht has
in fact proudly declared himself to be a Christian nationalist.
Miscellaneous
Here are Feucht’s views on the Gaza situation: (“this a prophetic hour” ostensibly
connected to the End Times). Recently, his Let Us Worship events have
therefore morphed into “United for Israel” marches
targeting universities where there have been recent student protests to profess
the idea that the conflict is a harbinger of the End Times predicted in the
Bible.
He has also expressed
some artistic differences with Taylor Swift, having at one point claimed that
when families have followed his recommendation to stop listening to Taylor
Swift, their daughters were no longer angry all the time and stopped having
nightmares. Or shorter Sean Feucht: Anyone and anything he doesn’t fancy is
Satan (Swift, in particular, is apparently “the demon god Molech”).
There is a decent Sean
Feucht resource here.
Diagnosis: Though
explicitly a Christian nationalist, explicitly a dominionist, and quite
obviously insane, Sean Feucht has become something of a central figure on the
religious right, and in particular when it comes to efforts to integrate fundie
rightwing views with MAGA-style conspiracy theories. But despite having become
immensely influential and despite milking millions and millions off his
audiences, Feucht has no problem viewing himself as a poor victim of religious
persecution on the grounds that there are still people who disagree with him
and even dare to criticize his views. So it goes. One of the most dangerous
people in the world.
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