Salem hosted not one, but TWO Christian Nationalist events this Saturday, July 29

Kari Lake and Sean Feucht, two of the more charismatic pro-Trump Christian Nationalists in the country, both happened to be in Salem, Oregon this Saturday evening. As far as I know this was a coincidence. The two have appeared at events together, like this one nine months ago, but their events in Salem happened simultaneously about 1/2 mile apart and I saw no overlap between the two.

I’m not writing about these two events because they are a sign of some massive resurgence of Christian Nationalism in Oregon. Rather, they point to different flavors of that religio-political subculture that have taken root inside the OR GOP and in many churches throughout the state and nation. I’d estimate that about 1000 people in total attended these two Christian Nationalist events on Saturday, with many coming from outside of the immediate area. For the sake of comparison, HOOPLA, Salem’s annual outdoor basketball tournament, was happening at the same time in the same part of town as these two events and drew more than twice as many people.

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Kari Lake, failed 2022 AZ Governor candidate who then unsuccessfully tried to claim on the basis of no evidence that the election had been stolen, spoke at a $125/plate fundraiser for the “Constitutional Carry” ballot measure that Oregon’s Republicans are promoting. This measure would make it legal for anyone to carry a gun, open or concealed, wherever they want and whenever they want with no need to get a permit. We’ll see if this gets on the ballot (they’re still in the signature collection stage) and if it does it will almost certainly be roundly defeated given the attitudes most Oregonians have about gun violence.

It’s worth noting that the history of regulating guns in Oregon (and the United States in general) goes way back. Researchers at Duke have created a useful, state-by-state database that lists all of the gun regulation laws passed in the history of the United States, including **the 37 gun regulation laws** that Oregon legislators have passed since the state’s founding. For example, there’s this 1885 law that made it illegal to carry a concealed weapon in the state. In this one way, I guess I’m in favor of making Oregon more like the way it was back in the “wild west” days of the late 19th century. And I’m sure today’s advocates of “Constitutional carry” would find some way of explaining how the “woke mind virus” travelled across time to infect late 19th century Oregon legislators, forcing them to enact such a faulty and un-American understanding of their timeless, constitutional duty.

Despite the historical and political dubiousness of the cause, Kari Lake and her fans were not going to let such details get in the way of an opportunity to sell a cartload of books and raise a couple thousand bucks to pay for the labor and materials required to get a measure with zero chance of passing on the ballot.

On the FB page of the person who organized this event, a commenter expressed disappointment that the posted pictures didn’t show anyone who was armed. Au contraire, said the organizer, almost everyone was packing heat like back in the days when Oregon was great (and it was illegal to carry a concealed weapon, but details details). I can neither confirm nor deny that claim about how much heat was covertly packed at Kari Lake’s Salem event.

The location of the event was kept a closely guarded secret, presumably to put the [sarcasm alert] notoriously violent Antifa of Salem, Oregon off their game and to reduce the need for the crowd of pistol packers to use their weapons. No shade intended to folks in Salem who might identify with Antifa, but I think the only thing Kari Lake had to fear in coming to Salem was being gently mocked for being a self-promoting MAGA maniac.

Based on the pictures I’ve seen of the event, I’d estimate it was attended by about 100 people, most of whom appear to share AARP-eligible status with me, and all of whom (with the exception of Solomon Yue, the OR GOP national committeeman who barely survived a recent recall vote) appear to be white. I mention the age and racial demographics here because they are a notable contrast with the Sean Feucht event across town. There are only so many Oregonians with sufficient money and interest to shell out $125/person to hear a speech from someone who has never won elected office but has recently spent a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago campaigning to be Trump’s VP.

The man in the blue jacket on the right side of this picture is the chair of the Marion County GOP whose media recommendations I analyzed in my most recent Rightlandia post.

A few blocks from the white table cloth event where Kari Lake was speaking, Christian nationalist singer/preacher Sean Feucht led a more emotionally-gripping event (featuring some inspired speaking-in-tongues) from a stage in front of the State Capitol building. Feucht is a shaggy-haired 40 year old evangelical social media phenom who has appeared alongside a who’s who of the current Republican leadership, has prayed in the White House with then President Trump, and has been sufficiently blessed by his social media success that over the past few years he’s been able to purchase over $2 million in real estate in Southern California and Montana. About a month ago he made news by praying with Lauren Boebert and taking communion inside the US Capitol, an act that many people of faith found to be blasphemous and which citizens who are familiar with the concept of the separation of church and state found concerning as well. It made for excellent, lib-owning social media content, however.

Feucht is currently on a “Let us Worship” tour, sponsored by right wing billionaire-funded TPUSA, in which he is traveling to every state capitol to perform next to the state house. Despite the victimology implied by the tour’s name, there is no evidence that any government official has ever singled out him or any other Christians to prevent them from worshipping in the United States, though Feucht did significantly build his public profile back in 2020-1 by protesting against Covid restrictions that applied to all Americans equally but which he spun as a form of persecution targeted at Christians. A relative unknown until 2019, Feucht now sits atop a multi-million dollar ministry that is one part preaching the gospel and one part owning the libs. It strikes me that a significant part of his success can be chalked up to the second part of that combination.

When I saw him in Salem on Saturday he made great pains to point out that this was not a political event, it was all about spreading gospel truth. After saying this, he then took the stage and spoke about how God’s people were going to drive Satan out of the building behind him (the OR State Capital) and take it over for God. Sounds pretty political to me, but that could just be Satan deceiving me. In all seriousness though, last year Feucht wrote an open letter to “church leaders” in which he argued that it was time for right wing evangelicals like himself to stop “shying away from truth in the name of tolerance.” In case it’s not clear, that translates as “God wants us to project hateful feelings and exclusionary energies toward our fellow Americans who we’ve determined are ‘Satanic.’” In the last three months, Feucht has tweeted about “Satan” or “Satanic” forces 17 times. It’s not a minor preoccupation of his, and it’s a decidedly un-charitable way to refer to his fellow Americans with whom he happens to disagree. The permission structure set up by referring to one’s fellow citizens as agents of Satan is not hard to discern.

Feucht’s bus on the Capitol Mall in Salem.

While Feucht’s penchant for social media trolling (on display below) makes him a distinctively MAGA-era figure, he comes by his far right evangelical beliefs honestly. In the 1990s he accompanied his dermatologist father on a missionary project run by Pat Robertson, and then in 2019 he was recruited to run for office in California by the manager of Robertson’s 1988 White House bid. [Feucht’s attempt to get into politics was a total flop, unlike his subsequently successful pivot to guitar-strumming, charismatic MAGA worship leader.] Feucht’s socialization into a Pat Robertson-inflected form of evangelical conservatism suggests that his anti-LGBTQ trolling flows out of genuine conviction and not simply political or economic opportunism.

I checked out Feucht’s event Saturday night because I was curious to see what the crowd looked like. As shown in this excellent reporting, Feucht has many well-documented ties to far right extremists, including people arrested for storming the US Capitol on January 6 and people like Portland’s Tiny Toese who are serving prison sentences for violent, politically-motivated assaults. When Feucht came to Portland to protest Covid protocols in 2021, he surrounded himself with a “security” force that looked a heck of a lot like a right wing paramilitary. Feucht’s very Jesus-like tweet below threatened that these heavily armed friends of his would be happy to enable potential protesters meet Jesus “one way or another.”

That August night, after Feucht’s event had ended, several of the people in his security detail went on a violent rampage in downtown Portland while the police stood back and watched.

So given this history of Feucht’s ties to violent right wingers and my own experience of seeing menacing looking neo-Nazis at an anti-abortion rally at the State Capitol this January and seeing Proud Boys providing “security” at virtually every “conservative” public event in Salem over the past few years, I was curious to see if such groups showed up to provide “security” or recruit new members at his event. I’m happy to report that I did not see anyone in Proud Boy regalia or sporting neo-Nazi symbols at the event. The event had the feel of an outdoor worship service much more than a political rally.

As you can tell from the video Feucht posted of the Salem event, the crowd was fairly diverse (by Oregon standards) and comprised predominantly of people under 40. As evidenced by the high production values of this video (and of everything Feucht posts on social media), his is a very professional operation.

So what is the broader significance and/or impact of Feucht’s visit to Salem? The event was pretty much the definition of “preaching to the choir.” I doubt anyone was converted to the cause. One notable feature of the event was that it opened with brief prayers offered by about a dozen Oregon preachers, many of whom serve churches in Salem. One of those people who offered a prayer is the minister of the River Church (he’s the guy in the blue t-shirt in this picture below), one of the more far right, MAGA-inclined, and anti-LGBTQ churches in Salem that I discussed in this earlier post.

One thing that Feucht’s visit to Salem accomplished is that it created an opportunity for like-minded preachers in the area to spend time together and network. It also gave them a sense of being connected to a broader national revival that Feucht is trying to build—a revival that is not only about saving souls, but also about saving the nation by remaking its politics. It’s easy to imagine these preachers sharing Feucht’s content with their parishioners, and their parishioners coming to understand their membership in a specific church as something that connects them to like-minded Christian Nationalists around the country. Put another way, this event in Salem was just one small moment in a process of movement building. What sort of impact that movement will have on the nation’s politics remains to be seen.

Feucht is an undeniably charismatic speaker and performer who can effectively galvanize an audience. He’s especially good at projecting a gentle and loving demeanor, and then aiming the power of the gathered Holy Spirit not so much at the sin inside the souls of each person listening to him, but rather at the Satanic forces he says are attacking them, their families, and the nation. That “come and take it” threat on his tent (pictured above) is a reminder that his is a fighting faith that intends to bring the entire nation to Jesus, “one way or another.”

While the implied menace of “one way or another” was a clear subtext of the event, the dominant emotion I picked up from the crowd was joy, not anger. I suspect if I was in a body other than my own—that of a very normie-looking, cishet, white, middle-aged, middle-class-guy-in-khaki-shorts—the reception I would have gotten from the crowd may have been different. People taking pleasure in worshipping together is, IMO, a very normal, healthy, human thing. Such gatherings begin to deserve critical attention, however, when the pleasure people are feeling is the pleasure that comes from excluding others, from rousing the furies necessary to engage in physical battle with those others, and from contemplating a future in which one’s enemies (otherwise known as one’s fellow citizens) have been eliminated.

In this newsletter I frequently refer to the concept of “participatory anti-democracy” that I picked up from this excellent article by historian Joseph Fronczak. I find it useful because it captures the complex mixture of emotions that have long animated modern right wing politics. Feucht’s event had a genuinely participatory feel to it, the people in the crowd clearly found much meaning in being in that space together. As in any diverse crowd, I’m sure the messages that people took from the event varied widely. Some were probably thinking mostly about the state of their own souls, some perhaps left newly motivated to engage in church projects that feed the unhoused or provide clothing for those in need. But if those folks follow Sean Feucht on social media, they also know that they are being called to defeat the forces of Satan that supposedly control the Democratic party and that have taken over the souls of LGBTQ folks and those who support them. I consider myself a small d “democrat” because I firmly believe these folks have a right to worship God however they wish. I use the term “anti-democracy” to describe them, however, because they do not extend that same toleration and grace to me and many of my fellow Americans who just happen to love or think differently.

Ultimately, I have faith that the overwhelming majority of my fellow Americans who do NOT agree with Christian Nationalism’s rejection of religious pluralism and democratic diversity will prevent that movement from accomplishing its goals through the normal channels of electoral politics. I write critically about people like Feucht and Lake because I think their politics are fundamentally hostile to the project of modern pluralistic democracy. I’m saddened by how they have made quite lucrative careers for themselves out of convincing others that they should pursue a politics not of open-minded engagement, but rather one of Manichaean battle against Satan or Cultural Marxism or the deep state or wokeism or whatever the monster du jour might be. I know such extreme rhetoric fires people up (and opens up their pocketbooks), but participatory anti-democracy is not just another flavor of democratic politics, it is its antithesis.

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