A tale of two rallies...

The choices facing us are clear

Sean Feucht and I seem to have a special connection. He featured a cameo of me in his anti-lockdown documentary Super Spreader, and I featured a one of him yelling Christian nationalist things in For Our Daughters.

Last Sunday, our paths almost crossed in real life. Sean was staging a “Kingdom to the Capitol” worship tour at the state capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina. Later that day, Robby Jones, Diana Butler Bass, and I were holding a “Faith and Democracy” event in nearby Greensboro.

Rick Pidcock, an intrepid reporter for Baptist News Global, attended both, and wrote up a wonderful piece comparing the two events.

Before I turn things over to Rick, a couple words about our Faith and Democracy tour. First, a huge thank you to everyone who showed up in Greensboro. I loved that the event was designed with community in mind and we had plenty of time to meet people and chat after the event. I had so many deeply meaningful conversations with those of you who came. It was a wonderfully encouraging time together.

Also, the music was incredible. Grammy-nominated Sam Ashworth, Dove Award-winning Taylor Leonhardt, Rissi Palmer (host of Color Me Country), and Grammy Award-winner Tommy Sims (who co-wrote the song “Change the World” that Eric Clapton made famous). They brought such beauty and depth to the event and now I want to bring them along to every event I do.

Fortunately, this Sunday, Taylor and Tommy will be back with us in Tempe, Arizona, along with Fernando Ortega, a Dove-Award winning musician.

Arizona friends, come for the music, stay for the democracy pep talk. Seriously. Bring your friends—there will be (really great) food and plenty of time to connect with each other. And free books!

For the Tempe event, register here.

Earlier that afternoon, at 2pm, I’ll be attending a screening of For Our Daughters at Desert Springs Church (16215 N Tatum Blvd Phoenix AZ 85032). **(Note: this address has been corrected. Don’t go to Chandler!)

We will have a wonderful panel discussion following the film, including a long-time Twitter friend, Johnna Harris, who co-hosts the podcast Bodies Behind the Bus. Reserve a spot here!

But now, back to Rick Pidcock and his compare-and-contrast report, “A tale of two rallies.”

Here’s Rick, in Baptist News Global this week:

The juxtaposition of experiencing the “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour followed by the “Faith and Democracy” tour in North Carolina on Sunday was a contrast in theology and politics that demonstrates the fracturing of American Christianity unlike any pairing of events in a single day I’ve witnessed….

While both the “Kingdom to the Capitol” and the “Faith and Democracy” tours are organized by Christians who say they want to faithfully engage theology and politics, my experience at each of them could not have been more different.

Robert P. Jones, Kristin Du Mez and Diana Butler Bass

The Johnson Amendment

As I drove up I-85 to Feucht’s event, I listened to his latest podcast episode, which was a conversation with Mark Driscoll, the pastor who was ousted for abusing his church in Seattle only to start another church in Scottsdale, Ariz.

During their conversation, Feucht called the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits nonprofit organizations from campaigning for a politician, a “sham” and “fake” and said, “They don’t enforce it.”

Driscoll added, “I’m a Christian, conservative Republican, in that order. And so I’ll be voting for the Republican nominee. I mean, there you go. And what’s going to happen to me now is nothing because the Johnson Amendment, you know, it’s never been applied and it’s never been tested.”

It doesn’t seem to dawn on either of them that perhaps this lack of enforcement — which is true — is a sign of Christian privilege in the United States….

Feucht said he intentionally mixes worship and politics at his events. “We need to start blending these areas together because we believe all this crap of the Johnson Amendment, the separation of church and state, which was meant to protect the church from the state, not the other way around.”

So it was interesting later that evening when Jones opened the “Faith and Democracy” tour by saying: “One quick disclaimer. We are in a church. And we are having a nonpartisan conversation tonight. We want to love what it means to have separation of church and state, obey those democratic norms in this space. And that’s a bigger conversation we need to have far beyond the next few weeks. It’s a much longer term conversation for us to have.”

After the event, Du Mez and Bass also mentioned to me their careful attention to follow the Johnson Amendment throughout the evening’s conversation.

Shouting vs. listening

One of the most glaring differences between the two events was simply the volume.

The “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour had a full band with a very large professional sound system. I literally felt the bass drum pulsing through my body for nearly three hours straight.

Feucht yelled, “This is not a concert! This is not a nice CCM worship event! We have come to wage war in the Spirit! We have come to shift an atmosphere!”

To shift the atmosphere, he declared, “We’re going to release a sustained shout for three minutes!” And then the entire gathering began screaming and blowing shofars.

One of Feucht’s favorite songs to sing at these events is “I Raise a Hallelujah,” in which the worshipers say they’re going to sing “louder and louder,” that their praises will “roar,” and that they’re going to sing louder than the unbelief of their enemies. Originally, the song was written as a response to a child who was facing a life-threatening illness. But at Feucht’s worship events, the song carries a more political vibe.

My ears were still ringing when I walked into the quiet sanctuary of First Baptist Church in Greensboro. Instead of jumping, dancing, screaming, falling down and waving flags, everyone was sitting still and perfectly quiet. And there wasn’t a flag in sight.

“Listen, listen while the storm in your heart is raging, listen, listen, listen,” Sam Ashworth quietly sang, almost in a whisper accompanied by his acoustic guitar. “Listen, listen to the message of hope and the and the whispers of ghosts, listen, listen, listen.”

Musicians at “Faith and Democracy” event.

Responding to Hurricane Helene

While they have been looking forward to hosting the “Faith and Democracy” tour, First Baptist Church of Greensboro has spent much of its energy over the past few weeks helping their neighbors in Asheville, N.C., recover from Hurricane Helene. They have collected food, water, clothing, cleaning and hygiene supplies in partnership with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and First Baptist Church of Boone, which has become a hub and feeding station for students and others in the surrounding area.

According to the church’s website, their desire is to be a generous part of “the ongoing work of relief and restoration.”

But while Feucht’s “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour drove into Asheville to lead worship for Revol Church with Operation Blessing on the way from their event in Atlanta to the gathering in Raleigh, they spoke about their vision for Asheville more in terms of engaging in worship warfare.

“The flood hit Asheville, a place that’s famous for being New Age and witchcraft,” Feucht declared from the stage in Raleigh. Later, he added, “I’m frustrated as I just came from Asheville to see what I’ve seen. I don’t even want to get into it. It’s crazy.”

Feucht also took the opportunity to criticize FEMA, which has become so common among Donald Trump and his conspiracy theorist supporters in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene that the National Guard has confronted two trucks of “armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA.” According to the Washington Post, this has led to FEMA one day last week ordering its workers in Rutherford County to “stand down and evacuate the county immediately.”

Because Feucht uses worship as a weapon of spiritual warfare, his team set up a stage in Asheville and began blaring their worship music. While they were part of Operation Blessing’s plan to provide aid, their primary goal was to wage spiritual warfare through worship aimed at fighting off demons, rather than simply seeking to provide relief and restoration as loving neighbors.

Feucht told the worshippers in Raleigh, “We began to worship and all these folks came down from the mountains.” He added, “And these are not church folks.”

“There’s not a spell or a curse that’s too weighty to overcome the blood of Jesus,” Feucht said. “And so we declare the blood over North Carolina.”

Apparently, some of the people in Asheville who lost family members and friends and homes weren’t interested in having blood declared over them.

“They had a damaged mindset of who God was. I can tell it,” Feucht recalled thinking about them. “They felt like he was a mean old man, a Gandalf, sitting in his rocking chair waiting to beat them down with religion and that he was a father that was ashamed of them.”

Flag seen at “Kingdom to the Capitol” event.

…Thus, while the neighborly love of First Baptist Church of Greensboro is about bringing relief and restoration to the people of Asheville, the worship warfare of Feucht is about loudly confronting them with calls to become evangelicals. It sounds hopeful because it’s about a father waiting with open arms. But it’s an attempt to coerce people into submitting to a hierarchy.

Rick goes on to report on additional contrasts: “the worship of hierarchy” vs. a faith “centered on love rather than fear, one that is centered on equality rather than hierarchy, one that is centered on pluralism rather than propaganda, and one that is centered on truth rather than dominion.” A persecution complex, vs. a call for reslience and hope modeled on the Black Christian tradition. Belittling vs. welcome and belonging. A contrast of falsehoods vs. truth-telling. A direct assault on democracy, vs. a Christian defense of democracy.

For the “Faith and Democracy” gathering, letting your light shine means embracing your neighbors in relationships of love rather than fear, equality rather than hierarchy, pluralism rather than propaganda, truth rather than dominion.

**For more reporting and analysis, follow Rick at rickpidcock.com