FEUCHT’S KINGDOM: HOW A SINGING HATE-PREACHER WANTS TO PUSH CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM ON AMERICA

“We want God to be in control of everything! We want believers to be the ones writing the laws! Yes! Guilty as charged. We wouldn’t be a disciple of Jesus if we didn’t believe that.”

Sean Feucht preached from the stage of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Sheridan Church on a Thursday night last April.

This is the message that Feucht is taking to the steps of every state capitol in the country between now and the 2024 elections.  It’s his latest campaign, aptly named “Kingdom to the Capitol,” in partnership with the white Christian nationalist organization, TPUSA Faith. 

Feucht, a singing hate preacher, has a long history of involving himself and his ministries in bigoted “culture war” issues. Fuecht grew up in a pentecostal world filled with miracles and spiritual gifts. This world always felt very fringe in American Christianity. But in the last decade, as the far-right as a whole surged, Feucht’s brand and influence has grown into a multi-million dollar empire with no signs of slowing down.

THE OPPORTUNIST

On March 27th last year in Nashville a school shooter killed three children and three adults. 

According to the Gun Violence Archive, 99% of mass shooters in the last five years were not trans. But that didn’t stop Feucht from fomenting hatred. Feucht was just starting his ”Kingdom to the Capital” tour. Like most of the far-right, he jumped on the shooter being identified as trans to demonize trans people, listing three other incidents where the shooter was—or claimed to be—trans or nonbinary.

“The modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists,” Feucht said. 

Later in a zoom prayer meeting he claimed the shooting was an LGBTQ+ attack “specifically targeting Christians.”

But Feucht was far from done inserting himself into the tragedy. In the days following the shooting, local community leaders, parents and children were protesting to demand reform to gun laws at the Tennessee State Capitol. Feucht called them “evil” and “radical leftists.”  According to Feucht, “God had it planned from the beginning of time” for his tour to grace the state the following weekend.

On April 1st Feucht took to the steps of the Tennessee capitol. He was joined by an army of male pastors from around the region, including Greg Locke, the pro-insurrection preacher who LCRW previously covered. 

Jack Johnson (R), the Majority Leader for the Tennessee State Senate joined Feucht on the steps. Feucht asked the crowd to pray over Johnson’s “important work”—like banning drag performances and gender affirming care.

Feucht regularly gets platformed by the likes of Fox News, while also having the ear of  politicians around the country—including Congress members like Marjorie Taylor Greene—all to promote his worldview and see it manifested in government. 

But Feucht was born into an evangelical world flush with cash and violently opposed to queer people. His network today touches every major aspect of the anti-queer movement in the U.S.—from violent far-right street brawlers to the halls of power.

FEUCHT’S UPBRINGING

“Sean” was born John Christopher Feucht (Pronounced FOYT)  in Montana in 1983. His father was a dermatologist-turned medical missionary. Feucht has many iterations of his origin story, but all involve traveling the world with his parents on their missionary work. His father baptized him in the Amazon river when he was 10.

“Dad put me under the water, and when I surfaced, I felt a profound sense of destiny and calling on my life,” Sean wrote in his autobiography.

Feucht grew up in a charismatic church called Christian Life Center in Missoula, Montana. The family moved to Virginia in 1994, when his father was hired by the late hate preacher Pat Robertson to work for Robertson’s “Operation Blessing” Ministry.

Feucht claims he didn’t think about going into the ministry growing up—he wanted to play basketball or football professionally.  He tells the story that one night the usual worship leader for his father’s regular bible study couldn’t make it. Fuecht says he only had his guitar for a few weeks and only knew a couple of chords, but tried to lead the worshippers anyways. 

“The night was an absolute train wreck. I continually broke out in a nervous sweat, strained my voice and broke not just one but two guitar strings,” he recounted. “I was embarrassed and ashamed in front of 15 of my peers. I remember running to my room afterward, vowing that I would never lead worship in public again.” 

But Fuecht continued to help with his fathers’ prayer meetings and eventually ended up leading youth group worship. Around this time Feucht, still in high school, met his future wife, Kate. Later, he studied at Oral Roberts University—the Tulsa, Oklahoma, school that produced a rich line of megachurch preachers including Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen. 

At age 17, young Feucht would experience something that would inspire and change him forever—“The Call 2000” in Washington DC September Second, 2000, where allegedly 400,000 people descended on DC two months prior to the 2000 presidential election for repentance, mourning and fasting. The evangelical movement was angry and activated with the failed impeachment of Clinton and were hoping to usher in Jesus’s return to the White House as Clinton’s term was coming to an end. 

Feucht was so impressed he would go on to volunteer for The Call for a few years. Lou Engle, the hate preacher who started the anti-abortion ministry Bound 4 Life was the founder of The Call. Che Ahn, the founder and president of Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministries was CEO and Chairman of the Board for The Call. Both men are part of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).The NAR is a secretive, influential network that seeks to be its own branch of Christianity, complete with its own prophets and apostles. The NAR are dominionists—believers in establishing a Christian theocracy. Feucht calls Ahn and Engel mentors and maintains close relationships to them to this day.

Feucht founded his first campaign, “Burn 24-7” a “global prayer and worship” movement in 2005  while at Oral Roberts. What began as a “series of spontaneous, all night, dorm room worshiping gatherings” then moved to a “city wide movement” in the following year, through to today with the mission “to plant a sustainable furnace of 24-7-365 worship, prayer and supernatural explosive outreach.” Essentially, this means pop-up worship events, some lasting over 24 hours, focused on biblical prophecies, God’s super healing powers and recruitment in local communities. “Burn 24-7” has  “furnaces” located in Africa, Australia, Europe, Asia, South America and North America.  

In 2010 Feucht founded “Light A Candle”—a missionary movement “bringing the light of Jesus to the hardest, darkest and most forgotten places in the world” while also offering his followers the opportunity to sponsor children under this banner. Their tagline was “Not your typical sponsor program.” Feucht’s followers could sponsor a child in India for $39 a month, which would ostensibly go towards food, medical care and education. He claimed the mission would rescue “these children from a life of hopelessness, exploitation, even forced temple prostitution.” 

In April of 2023 Light A Candle posted a story on its Instagram page showing a number of its missionaries praying outside a temple for the Yazidi religion. The video was overlaid with a caption reading “We see chains broken and the enemy’s power defeated.” Social media users identified the temple as being near the Yazidi-majority town of Ba’adre, Iraq.

“So right now we just break the power of this temple, we break the power of the Satanic curse that it places on people who enter Jesus… and we curse all of the enemy that is attached to this, we say it will come to nothing,” one of the activists can be heard saying in the video. 

Light A Candle is planning missionary trips to Iraq, India, Uganda, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Egypt for this year.

Days before the 2016 general election, Bethel Church announced that Feucht would be joining the “Bethel Music family.” Bethel, located in Redding, California, is a megachurch with 5-6 thousand members. The Independent Charismatic brand the church falls under is adjacent to but distinct from NAR networks.

Bethel Church is a major player in the Christian music scene. Their music is played on Christian radio stations nationally and downloaded globally through iTunes, Spotify and streamed on Youtube. Feucht has signed multiple music deals with them over the years.Bethel’s base of operations was where Feucht started to dip his toes into electoral politics. In 2019 Feucht ran as a Republican in California’s 3rd congressional district. He was then living at his Redding address in the 1st District. Feucht only got 13.5% of the vote, but launched successful projects off of it. His “Hold the Line” PAC is still collecting money for his wider political ambitions today. They collected about $44 thousand in donations in 2022.

For this article, LCRW spoke at length to Matthew D. Taylor, ICJS Protestant scholar and creator of the “Charismatic Revival Fury: The New Apostolic Reformation” podcast series. The series covered Feucht in depth. Taylor also has a forthcoming book, “The Violent Take it By Force,” which has a chapter about Feucht. 

Taylor says Bethel is a big part of where Feucht got  “his need to intervene in American culture.” Bethel actively engages in local and national politics, including city council takeovers, always with the intent of pushing bigoted policies on abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and other such issues. Taylor says in Feucht, the NAR’s and specifically Bethel’s ideas about Christianity merged. 

“Both Bethel and the NAR leadership networks emerged in the late 1990s, shaped around this idea of modern apostles and prophets leading the church into a new age of miracles. A lot of Feucht’s theology comes out of the NAR, but a lot of his presentation comes out of Bethel,” Taylor said.

“Case in point: both the NAR and Bethel believe that Christian leaders need to be confrontational leaders in bringing the kingdom of God to earth,” he added. 

Taylor said the major example of this was the way NAR pastors reacted to COVID restrictions—particularly in California. Pasadena-based NAR pastor Ché Ahn and his close friend Bill Johnson of Bethel fought COVID restrictions against meeting in public. Ahn took his case to the California Supreme Court and even won. 

“But instead of stalwartly fighting legal battles from one congregation, Feucht chooses spectacle: staging his protest first on the Golden Gate Bridge and then in renegade worship concerts in city after city. The theology is strongly NAR, but the pizzazz is straight out of Bethel,” Taylor says.

Bethel and its global multi million dollar music business helped boost Feucht’s profile in the wider movement while making massive sums and saw him become more prominent in national culture wars and politics. Feucht continues to produce music and albums along with his Bethel connections, his music being only one of the many revenue streams that lined his pockets over the last decade. 

“Most churches in the United States rely on donations from congregational members to make up more than 90 percent of their budgets, but at Bethel, that dynamic is reversed. As of 2013, only 19 percent of Bethel’s thirty-seven-million-dollar annual budget came from member donations.” Taylor notes in his forthcoming book.

2020 saw the launch of “Let Us Worship” in response to stay at home orders and congregation limits for COVID19, with pop-up worship events, many targeting hot spots for protests around the country following the murder of George Floyd. Chasing controversies around the country lets Feucht generate content and keep the views and donations flowing—though he calls it “shining light into darkness.” This tour led to Rolling Stone calling him a “Superspreader” and inspired his film about the “Let Us Worship” movement and “spiritual warfare” unironically titled Superspreader. Since then, Let Us Worship has only continued to grow and spawned an election-flavored version of live in-person events: “Kingdom to the Capitol,” where Feucht is making millions in donations. 

“Spiritual warfare entails a popular set of Christian beliefs and practices about invisible spiritual realities (angels and demons) that are battling all around humanity,” Taylor explains.

“What [NAR founder] C. Peter Wagner and the NAR cohort have introduced is a high-octane, organized schema of spiritual warfare that Wagner called “strategic-level spiritual warfare,” where apostles and prophets serve as “generals of spiritual warfare” who orchestrate campaigns of spiritual warfare — mobilizing Christians to pray and do activism to make real-world progress in defeating these demons,” he says.

FEUCHT’S PROFITS

Sean Feucht Ministries consists of Hold the line, Let us Worship, Burn247, Camp Eliah and the current Kingdom to the Capitol tour. Light A Candle Global, the global missionary and child sponsorship program, runs as its own entity. All are active today.

At the beginning of 2022, the Feuchts packed up the family and headed south to Orange County. After renting a Dana Point home for $6,000 a month, they purchased a $1.65 million home in a private affluent neighborhood which has become their primary residence. 

The COVID pandemic saw huge profits for Sean Feucht Ministries, with earnings jumping from less than $300,000 in 2019 to more than $5.3 million in 2020. The Feuchts and their nonprofit own millions of dollars in residential properties. Most were purchased after 2020 and the launch of “Let Us Worship.” Feucht and his fellow performers beg for donations at every “Let Us Worship” and “Kingdom to the Capitol” event.’ They never miss an opportunity to push merchandise, whether at a state capitol or online via their many social media platforms.

LCRW doesn’t have a complete picture of Feucht’s income, but what’s available through public records shows his work makes him incredibly wealthy. Sean Feucht Ministries, Inc, which is a tax-exempt religious organization, made over $5.3 million in 2020—about $4 million of which was pure profit. Light A Candle, the other ministry Feucht operates that claims to offer aid through “international relief,” took in $538,000 in 2020. LCRW can reveal in 2021 this increased to $1.34 Million.

Fuecht pays himself two salaries. In 2020 “Light a Candle” paid him $37,467 for ten hours of work per week and “Sean Feucht Ministries” paid him $119,000 for 40 hours per week. In 2021, Feucht gave himself a pay raise at Light a Candle from $37,467 in 2020 to $48,000.

For his “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour Feucht bought a fully refurbished tour bus. He has new merchandise dropping regularly including shirts, hoodies and hats with slogans like “Hold The Line, stand strong and tall”, “Jesus loves America” and “Imago Dei, Oh what a miracle,” referring to Feucht’s 2022 anti-abortion song.

Feucht and his many ministries regularly call for donations, weekly if not daily, through each of the ministry arms. Let Us Worship is a major money-maker for Feucht. Not only does he ask for millions of dollars from his followers, but he takes physical donations at each event alongside merchandise sales.

This past ‘Giving Tuesday’, Feucht sent a digital fundraising blitz: a text message to his followers then several posts across his many social media accounts with a small ask of $2.3 Million in donations. 

“For 2024 we have 24 Kingdom to the Capitol stops remaining, and each revival costs around $97,000 to pull off, which means we need to raise just over 2.3 million to hold these two dozen revivals” the text read.

This has been his biggest direct ask from his followers to date that LCRW is aware of. But $100 thousand per event is typical for Feucht. Prior to the Let Us Worship 3 year anniversary in Oceanside on 25th June, 2022, Feucht put out a call to his followers that they needed $100,000 for the event. On the day of the event, Feucht’s hype-man Jay Koopman put on the hard sell again:

Feucht and his family own a $1.65 million property in Orange County and another in Redding. He also purchased a million dollar property in Bigfork, Montana, which he uses both for recreational hunting and as an AirBnB property. Renting the property costs $450 a night with a 2 night minimum, plus cleaning fees—double the rate of other rentals in the area. Despite Feucht and his wife constantly advertising the property in their Instagram stories, it rarely gets booked.

Feucht also bought a physical foothold in Washington DC in 2022—a fully renovated two bedroom, one bathroom, double-story semi-detached row house on Capitol Hill. Dubbed  “Camp Elah,” it’s one block from the Supreme Court. Sean Feucht Ministries presumably paid a $967,000 price tag for the place.

Introducing on Capitol Hill – Camp Elah 🗝🔑

In an Instagram video promoting the location, he said Camp Elah is “a small space, for people of big faith. Our prayer is for Camp Elah to be a launching point for the next generation of Davids; men and women who fearlessly slay giants in the land. ” 

“One of the major concepts (prophetic memes) floating around the NAR and related circles is the idea of what they call a “great end-times transfer of wealth” from the world to the church,” Taylor explains, adding that “ “There are numerous prophecies about this in the movement.”

“The idea is that, in order for Christians to accomplish grand scale revival and fast-paced transformation of societies, they’re going to need a lot of money. The prophecies envision a massive miraculous influx of money that will issue from secular or non-Christian entities to Christians,” he continues. 

“Sometimes the analogy is even used of the Hebrew people plundering the enslaving Egyptian households on the cusp of the Exodus. So there’s a great willingness to pray for and even demand (or decree and declare) for huge sums of money to be transferred into the church for the furthering of the kingdom of God,” Taylor says.  

“You also have to remember that all of these folks are country cousins (and often allies) with the Word of Faith movement, which is usually what people are talking about when they say “prosperity gospel” teachings,” he concludes. “So there are these miraculous beliefs and attachments around money, conceiving of money as a signal of God’s favor and blessing.”

FEUCHT’S CONNECTIONS

Taylor describes Feucht as a “paradoxical hippy Californian musician who is also a right wing provocateur and proponent of Christian supremacy.” He told LCRW that while Feucht may not see himself as a member of the theocratically-minded New Apostolic Reformation, NAR philosophy was a heavy influence on him.

“The NAR was totally in the ether wherever he was whether it was Harrisburg or Bethel,” Taylor said, citing Feucht’s mentor’s or “spiritual fathers”—“The Call” co-founders Che Ahn of Harvest Rock and Lou Engle, senior pastor of Life Center, and NAR Apostle Charles Stock and Bethel leader Bill Johnson. 

“I’m a little more cautious,” Taylor says of calling Feucht an NAR idealogue. “[Feucht is] about as close to them as anybody, I’m just not sure he would understand the NAR as part of his own identity.” 

Che Ahn is the founder of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, founder and president of Harvest International Ministries (HIM), one of the largest NAR networks in the world, and a televangelist. Ahn is the International Chancellor at Wagner University, founded by the NAR’s father figure, C. Peter Wagner. Ahn is the co-founder and executive director of The Call, the early 2000s evangelical campaign that inspired Feucht. .

Ahn’s ministry had a major impact on the American church scene, as he helped to introduce new ideas such as spiritual warfare into modern evangelicalism. C. Peter Wagner is one of Ahn’s main mentors. Ahn is also an “influencer” with the Colorado based Truth and Liberty Coalition alongside the likes of QAnon promoter Clay Clark, Dinesh D’Souza, Eric Metaxas and Lance Wallnau. The Truth and Liberty Coalition is a Christian nationalist organization based in Colorado which focuses on making churches more politically active. They recently made headlines for targeting at least 30 of 178 Colorado school boards in a power grab. 

Ahn and his church, Harvest Rock in Pasadena, made headlines in 2020/21 when they took on California Governor Gavin Newsom in a case about COVID19 congregation restrictions. Ahn successfully argued that state restrictions against meeting in person for church during the outbreak of the deadly disease were discriminatory. Governor Newsom was also ordered to pay Liberty Counsel $1,350,000 in reimbursement for attorney’s fees and costs.  

Ahn was also active in rejecting the 2020 election, taking the main stage on Jan 5th 2021 at the “Stop the Steal” rally in Freedom Plaza, DC. 

“We’re gonna rule and reign through president Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ,” Ahn said on stage. Ahn then made biblical comparisons of the Clintons to Jezebel and Trump to Jehu, who ordered Jezebel thrown out of a window. 

The next day was of course the infamous January 6th, where Trump supporters built gallows outside the Capitol building and then stormed it, some with specific plans to find and murder Democratic politicians.

Lou Engle, another of Feucht’s mentors, is a Christian evangelist and member of Ahn’s apostolic network Harvest International Ministries (HIM). He is best known for organizing “The Call DC” in 2000. The Call, after its initial event in 2000, was active for 18 years, filling stadiums across America and elsewhere. The Call both left a huge impression on Feucht and made Engle a major influence on the evangelical world. 

One can imagine a young Feucht in the year 2000 seeing the massive crowd in DC lead by dynamic and emotive leaders such as Ahn and Engle. Taylor says The Call functioned as  “a sort of coming out party for neo-charismatic Christianity in a very public and political way.”

“You can see how that could really galvanize a young guy like Feucht. Across legions of interviews and in written reflections, Sean returns again and again to The Call DC as an utterly transformative experience,” Taylor remarked.

“There was an energy and expectation that was palpable! You could almost feel the electricity of the crowd!…It was the most intense twelve hours of nonstop worship, prayer, and fasting for revival in America I had ever been part of,” Feucht recalled about The Call.

Feucht’s connections go far beyond religious figures. When in DC, Feucht regularly meets with leaders of the MAGA movement. In February of last year he met Marjorie Taylor Greene at her office to discuss the “Protect Child Innocence Act.” If passed, the bill will make it a felony to perform any gender affirming care on a minor, prohibit the use of federal funds for gender affirming care or for health insurance that covers such care, and prohibit institutions of higher education from offering instruction in gender affirming care. It also makes any non-U.S. national who performs gender affirming care on a minor deportable and inadmissible to the United States. 

In a video dated February 2nd last year that Feucht and Greene made to promote the bill, Greene repeated the lie that doctors are “performing genital mutilation surgeries on kids.” Feucht urges his followers to “pray into this bill. This thing has to pass.” The bill was introduced to the house on August 19th last year, and at press time has been referred to the subcommittee on immigration and citizenship.

In March of this year, Feucht and Let Us Worship returned to hold a special prayer event for “members of Congress and Senators.” Feucht and his movement entered the nation’s Capitol for prayer for the third time in 6 months, this time joined by Lauren Boebert. Feucht has had access to the nation’s capitol at least 8 times in the last two years. 

Feucht’s profile has only risen since his anti-lockdown campaign. MAGA and Trump faithful candidates and elected officials go out of their way to be photographed with Feucht, or to grace the stage of his traveling revival. As the Kingdom to the Capitol tour gains momentum ahead of the presidential election season, more candidates and elections will jockey for Feucht’s influence.

Taylor says Feucht’s pop up worship events are not used “as happy go lucky Christian worship of god, but as a guerilla warfare campaign to take over spiritual territory.” 

“Central to this “strategic-level spiritual warfare” paradigm that Peter Wagner and others pioneered in the 1990s is the idea that there are ranks of demons with higher ranking demons (they believe the biblical references to “principalities” and “powers” refer to these) holding sway over literal physical territory and human institutions,” Taylor explains. “Wagner called these high-level demons “territorial spirits.””

“So the whole concept of strategic-level spiritual warfare is that Christians can take back spiritual territory through orchestrated campaigns of spiritual warfare to defeat or displace territorial spirits and exert Christian control (instead of demonic control) over that physical territory or those human institutions,” Taylor concludes. 

“This was the theological paradigm that drove much of mobilization for January 6,” he says.

And the paradigm Feucht follows embeds him deep within the right-wing power structure in the U.S.

In 2019 amid the intensifying impeachment probe, prominent Christian pastors and worship leaders prayed over President Trump in the Oval Office. He told them he “needed prayer now more than ever.”

About 50 worship leaders from across the country gathered for a “faith briefing” organized by Paula White-Cain, the president’s personal pastor and special adviser to the White House’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative. 

“We just laid our hands on him and prayed for him. It was like a real intense, hardcore prayer. It was so wild,” Feucht told Fox News after the meeting. 

“I could not believe he invited us in. That he carved out time to meet with us,” said Feucht.

Even after Trump’s loss, Fuecht has maintained a connection to him. Feucht attended another “Pastors for Trump” event on May 11th last year at the Trump Doral Hotel in Florida. He was joined by former Trump advisor and QAnon figure Michael Flynn, infamous Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone and season 18 “American Idol” contestant  and revivalist Jimmy Levy. Feucht posted a video from the event calling Levy  his “amazing friend” and complaining about “wokeness in the churches.”

Levy went on to speak at the ReAwaken America tour at the Trump Doral the next day where he invoked QAnon blood libel conspiracies about so-called Hollywood elites. . 

“These people are drinking the blood of children. These people are injecting a chemical called adrenochrome that they extract from children that are scared,” Levy said.

Feucht’s Trump-world connections don’t end with the official campaign. Feucht is a regular on Steve Bannon’s War Room show. Bannon, a former chief strategist for the Trump whitehouse, co-founded the once-influential far-right propaganda mill Breitbart News in 2007.

In April, 2022, Feucht organized a Burbank protest against Disney after the company gave a mild pushback against Florida governor Ron Desantis’s then-newly implemented “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Feucht went on Bannon’s ‘War Room’ podcast the day before. They discussed Feucht going “into the belly of the beast,” Feucht calling Disney a “goliath” of the “gay agenda” and “child groomers.”   

“We’re making some noise man, [Disneyland leadership] are going to feel the pain of the parents,” Feucht told Bannon.

At  TPUSA’s annual Student Action Summit in Florida 2022, Feucht discussed why “cancel culture is cancerous” with Nazi dog-whistler Jack Poesbic, a man Feucht calls a “good friend.”

”He[Posobiec]’s been so helpful for me. He helped retweeting when my book was being canceled by Harper Collins,” Feucht said. 

Capitol rioter Elijah Schaffer (now based in Australia) and Fuecht met up in Texas July 2022. They regularly join each other on their podcasts. The former Blaze employee was fired after a sexual assault accusation came to light. He also attended J6 as a “reporter” and entered Nancy Pelosi’s office while calling the rioters “revolutionaries”.

Feucht also held prayer meetings with Kari Lake, the Trump loyalist and former news broadcaster who turned losing the governor’s race in Arizona into a lost cause narrative for herself. Feucht also appeared on the former Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s “originals” program and is a regular guest on OAN, Newsmax and other friendly networks.

Feucht’s international connections are worth mentioning. Let Us Worship held its three year anniversary in Oceanside last year in June and went on to hold three events in Canada during September. In November, Let Us Worship went to Australia for the first time, holding two events on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland with Daniel Hagen Ministries and Fire Church.

Feucht’s most dangerous connections are with violent fascists like the Proud Boys, militias and figures like former Washington State Representative Matt Shea. In August 2021, Feucht held a rally in Portland, Oregon surrounded by men who he boasted were his “security team.”

“If you mess with them or our 1st amendment right to worship God, – you’ll meet Jesus one  way or another,” he said on Twitter under a photo he took with the “security team.”

“Feucht presents as a cheerful golden retriever for the Lord, but he’s also fuming at a long—and growing—list of enemies. He’s the sort of person who can joke: mess

with me and my crew, which happens to include some Proud Boys, and we’ll

make sure you meet Jesus one way or the other,” Taylors says.

Feucht’s rallies, especially on the West Coast, attract violent right-wing agitators. At the Portland event, infamous Proud Boy Tusitala “Tiny” Toese and a gaggle of Portland’s usual fascist street brawlers attempted to start fights, some while open-carrying pistols and most armed with bear mace, clubs and other such weapons.

Feucht doesn’t just attract street-level brawlers. He’s done multiple events in Washington State with Matt Shea, who wrote a manifesto called “The Biblical Basis for War” and who a Washington State House investigation found participated in domestic terrorism. Shea also has ties to Christian militias and groups like the Oath Keepers.

But if paramilitary-minded fascists are Feucht’s most dangerous connections, perhaps Feucht’s strangest ties come from his efforts to groom young people into the fold of his belief system. Feucht is consistently at war with secular GEN Z. After the midterms last year he took to Twitter to rant about them. 

“Gen overwhelming (D+28) voted for: Abortion on demand, Mutilation of Children’s bodies, Weed, LGTBQ+ Student loan forgiveness, Lockdowns crushing society, Open borders, Casinos/stop clubs essential over the church, The left hijacked their minds. We need revival,” Feucht said.

Christian Gen Z, however, is a major focus for Feucht. He regularly appeals to the youth to turn to Jesus—and he’s already inspired at least one youth movement: “California Will Be Saved” (CAWBS.) CA Will Be Saved is led by two major Feucht acolytes, Joel Mott and Ross Johnston. CAWBS was inspired by “Let Us Worship” in early 2020 and has birthed their own youth movement focusing on pops-ups filled with the usual music, revival and baptisms—with a particular interest in converting queer people to be “saved” by god.

But Feucht’s biggest intervention in youth culture is through Turning Point. TPUSA Faith and Feucht have been playing footsies for some time, turning up to each other’s events and draining funds from each other’s followings over the last 2 years. It wasn’t until February of 2022  that Feucht joined TPUSA Faith as an official contributor, and TPUSA Faith became an official partner for the Kingdom to the Capitol tour. 

This pairing along with the impending primaries and the 2024 presidential election will no doubt be a key activation opportunity for Republicans. Feucht and Kirk will provide candidates and GOP leaders an opportunity to grace the Kingdom to the Capitol stage, and the duo will access the halls of power while growing their respective brands and bank accounts. 

KINGDOM TO THE CAPITOL

Kingdom to the Capitol was soft-launched in Washington DC on October 21st 2022—10 days before the midterms. The day before was the third “Awake America’ event—yet another of Feucht’s events held annually on the Washington Mall. 

Feucht had his guitar slung around him as he played inside the Russell Senate Office building with 30-40 bandmates and worshippers.They sang about putting their faith in God to drive change in the halls of power, prayed for biblically-led leaders to take power and some took to the US Capitol-branded podium to preach. 

On October 22nd 2022 Feucht hosted Senator Josh Hawley, who fled the mob he helped rile up on J6, for his “Awake America” event on the national mall. They stood on stage reminiscing about the vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court two years earlier. 

“Just in case the parallels between these events and Sean’s seminal spiritual awakening at The Call DC in 2000 weren’t obvious—Christian protest events, on the National Mall, at the height of presidential elections—Sean invited Lou Engle to help lead the DC Let Us Worship crowd from the stage,” Taylor said about the 2020 event.

TPUSA Faith officially joined the party then as well. They previously weren’t named an official partner—even though Feucht was wearing merch from their joint campaign months before.

Two days later, “Kingdom to the Capitol” officially launched in typical Feucht fashion—with an over-produced Instagram video. It was the usual Feucht fare—stock footage of women with babies, a bloody crown of thorns on an open bible, the American flag, his fervent followers worshiping and crying.

“What started with a remnant small, Gideon’s army on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in July of 2020 has now gone viral across America,” Feucht proclaims in the video. He goes on to say Let Us Worship had toured “more than 170 cities across the nation, gathered hundreds of thousands.” Feucht’s turnouts, though sometimes in the thousands, are usually much less.  

His pitch in the video is to bring his ministry to every state capitol building in the country. 

For the most part, the tour consists of Feucht going to state capitols, being invited in by local politicians, and singing and praying with his entourage. But there have been some standout moments so far.

It was early in the tour that Fuecht preached at Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Sheridan Church, making openly Christian nationalist statements.  

“We want God to be in control of everything! We want believers to be the ones writing the laws! Yes! Guilty as charged,” Feucht proclaimed.

Feucht took this opportunity to double down on his views after the comments went viral during the week while in Austin. 

“We want believers in this building writing the laws of the land, this is a biblical belief that every Christian should believe,” he said.

“Feucht and other entrepreneurial charismatic political activists rarely spell out exactly what sort of government or civil order they are envisioning. They aren’t writing policy white papers or theological tomes on what a “godly” and “Christian” government would look like,” Taylor says, continuing,“Instead, they imagine a miraculous explosion of faith (a revival) that will lead organically to societal conversion (reformation) and the institution of a Christian-based government.”

“It’s sometimes difficult to parse whether their vision is a theocratic national order built around top-down legislating of Christian morality or an anarcho-capitalist order with localized Christian fiefdoms,” Taylor explains. He says the “overall vision is what I call “Christian supremacy.”” As Taylor describes it, it’s a system where Christian morality as interpreted by conservative charismatic types like Feucht governs through policy and dominating official culture.

“The people who would benefit are conservative Christians and their financial backers,” Taylor says. “The people who will suffer in such a system are those (Christians or otherwise) who are not on board with these interpretations of Christian morality: women seeking to terminate pregnancies, LGBTQ communities and individuals, people of other faiths or other Christian traditions, people who are not religious, and people who value pluralism and the separation of religion from the state.”

“One way to conceptualize this would be: take the makeup of the most conservative Christian caucus in a predominantly red state, say Texas, and imagine them suddenly being empowered as the unmitigated governing legislature over a predominantly blue state, say California,” Taylor concludes. 

“Now picture what sorts of laws and policies such a legislature would enact to make California align with their kingdom of God and which sorts of people would be disadvantaged or targeted with such legislation. That is Feucht’s political hope, near as I can estimate.”

A few weeks after worshiping inside the Texas state capitol, Fuecht took to Twitter to celebrate the passing of SB14, which bans gender-affirming care for trans youth, forcibly medically de-transitioning them. 

“WE WON!!!!! Child mutilation is now banned in the state of Texas!!! SB14 has now passed! 

The very prayers we prayed inside that Capitol just weeks ago have been answered!!PRAISE GOD!!! #KingdomToTheCapitol,” Feucht tweeted.

Last year in June, Feucht posted that his car was broken into and his guitar was stolen when parked overnight in downtown Spokane. He then claimed fantastically that he and Jesus Christ saved a homeless man who allegedly stole the guitar and “traded it for dope” at a local pawn shop. Gavin Spies, a strategic manager at TPUSA Faith, claimed he found the guitar at the pawn shop. 

The incident turned into a PR blitz for Feucht’s ‘Kingdom to the Capitol’ tour. The alleged thief, Zach Williams, got a water baptism on stage to the fanfare of right wing-media. Matt Shea, the Spokane-area politician who plotted a Christian fascist insurrection and schemed to train child soldiers, was the one who performed the baptism on Williams.

But the reality of the story wasn’t what Feucht claimed. In an interview with Range Media, Williams claimed he was pressured into the stunt and was back on the streets the next day.

 Grandiose miracles of healing and the power of god (through Feucht himself of course) are a regular part of Feucht’s performances and lore, resulting in more donations and airtime on conservative media. In July while Kingdom to the Capitol was in Albany, Feucht posted a video of a woman handing over her crutches and dancing amongst the crowd. 

“Look what God did tonight, Healings miracles and salvations broke out at the Capitol steps in Albany,” which resulted in more donations and Instagram likes, shares and more media coverage.

“Faith healing has a long history in Christianity, evidently going back to Jesus himself who is described in the New Testament as healing various physical ailments,” Taylor told LCRW. 

“It was reintroduced with vigor into modern Christianity by the rise of Pentecostalism in the early 20th Century and particularly by a series of revival leaders in the 1950s, involving figures like William Branham, Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin,and so forth,” he continued. 

“These mid-century revivals are sometimes collectively referred to as the Healing Revivals, and they provide part of the wellsprings of contemporary charismatic belief and practices,” Taylor explained. 

“The entire charismatic sector of modern evangelicalism is built around the idea of rejuvenating and reactivating the supernatural dimensions of Christianity, so faith healing is one of the major types of miraculous manifestations that are sought after and prayed for.”

Taylor says miracle-working is a way to prove the miracle-worker’s message is correct in a compelling and emotionally powerful way.

“Unfortunately, now Trumpian politics have also become part of the package in many of these faith-healing events,” Taylor says, “so that the miracles not only verify and validate the faith of Christians but they’re believed to also verify the righteousness of Trump’s political cause.”

Last May while in Wisconsin for the Kingdom of the Capitol tour, Feucht posted an image of the progress pride flag painted on the streets outside of the state’s capital. The caption read: 

“Canceling this demonic flag of perversion over the state of Wisconsin tonight. We plead the blood of jesus that sparks a better world”

Feucht’s long held view is that the queer community is an evil “LGBTQI Mafia” and that queer people need healing from “sickness.” 

“We are one of the only ministries I know that at every altar call we say hey, if you’re battling with same sex attraction, if you’re battling with issues, if you’re in the middle of transition therapy, god wants to heal you,” Feucht said in an interview. 

In April last year Feucht set his eyes on Disney. Feucht and his fellow protestors were taking aim at the media conglomerate’s stance opposing the recently passed ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law in Florida along with Disney’s lip service to the LGBTQ+ community. 

“By enlisting Disney in their fight to sexualize children, the left has once again awakened the greatest political force—parents. We’ve had enough. We’re fed up, and we’re fighting back,” Fucht said in an op-ed for TPUSA.

The first protest was at Disney HQ in Burbank but would soon make its way to the Anaheim and Florida theme parks. 

“We call for every wall of perversion to come down in Jesus’ name. We call for every wall to strip the innocence of our kids to come down. God, we pray that you would expose Disney for what it is, expose this corporation, bring everything that’s been hidden into the light” Feucht said in Burbank.

Fuecht was joined at the event by some of Southern California’s most violent right-wing agitators.  Beverly Hills MAGA event regular Shiva Bagheri, who previously attacked this reporter at the Cedar Sinai Breast Cancer Center in 2021 during an anti-mask protest, as well as Awaken pastor and Jan 6 attendee Samuel Deuth attended, while former RAM (neo-nazi fight club) member Ryan Sanchez promoted the event on his socials in its lead up. 

A week prior to the Disney Burbank protest, Feucht and his entourage targeted the West Hollywood queer community in a pop-up “Jesus march” that they announced on the day of the event. He was again joined by Shiva Bagheri and other local violent right wingers.

Feucht set up in the park behind the world-famous queer restaurant and bar “The Abbey.” The park happens to also be in front of LASD’s WEHO HQ. He and followers then roamed the streets in the heart of the queer communiy’s entertainment strip before ending back at the Abbey—this time at the entrance.

Kingdom to the Capitol finished up for the year with its 27th stop at Des Moines, Iowa on August 27th. The first stop in 2024 is in Honolulu on February Third. Aside from the tour, Feucht is holding a “Let Us Worship”-branded event March 15th and 16th in Seattle called “Firestarters Conference.” A week before this year’s presidential election, Feucht also plans to head back to Washington D.C. to rally. Those plans aside, he’s likely to show up at many political flashpoints this year—as he has in the past.

“Sean Feucht is at the forefront of a movement that is hyper-politicizing evangelical worship in a profoundly right-wing direction: he marches with Proud Boys and enlists their help providing security for his events; he operates as a Republican taste-maker with politicians from Donald Trump to Ron DeSantis to Josh Hawley to Lauren Boebert wanting to be seen with him; and his efforts are fueled by a very extreme theology of Christian supremacy,” Taylor tells LCRW. 

“He might not be everyone’s stereotype of a religious right leader,” Taylor concludes, “but his activism over the past few years has sling-shotted him into the company of the most prominent Christian nationalist leaders in the United States today.”