For Christian nationalists, Eastern Washington is the promised land
Every rock show needs an opener to juice the crowd.
On a late-July evening at the Washington Capitol Grounds in Olympia, it was Treasa Sabo setting the stage for celebrity Christian worship pastor Sean Feucht. But rather than play music, Sabo, striding confidently across the stage, led the revelers crowded around Tivoli Fountain in prayer.
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Kingdom to the Capitol
This was the 22nd stop on the 2023-2024 Kingdom to the Capitol (K2C) tour. K2C is one star in Feucht’s constellation of national Christian movements, and the Olympia date was organized in part by several Christian activists and pastors from Spokane, who then took the tour to Salem and Boise. Among those organizers were Spokane-area locals Caleb Collier and Gavan Spies, acting as representatives of Turning Point USA Faith – a relatively new offshoot of the conservative organization.
On Aug. 20, those same activists brought Feucht to Spokane for a Let Us Worship event, part of a different Feucht praise tour that began as a protest of COVID restrictions, but which has since morphed into a general-purpose anti-government protest that asserts: “Politicians and social media giants have engaged in unchartered [sic] abuses of religious liberty, silencing the faithful, banning our voices, and outright attacking our God-given right to declare His goodness.”
https://crosscut.com/politics/2023/08/christian-nationalists-eastern-washington-promised-land
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The demarcation is generally the Cascade mountain range. I am in north central Washington, generally considered eastern Washington. Where the state overall is blue (both my senators are Dem women, and so is my Congresswoman..thanks to "redistricting "
, my county is deep red, though through much effort, the local Dems are having an impact.
I am on a committee at my Unitarian Universalist Fellowship - a progressive, inclusive denomination, along with several other local Christian churches (a pleasant surprise!) to counteract the impacts of a new fundie church here that ticks all the boxes for homophobia, misogyny, anti-vax/mask etc. etc.
1/8 mile from me down my road a new neighbor erected multiple huge Fuck Biden and Trump 2024 banners along their front fenceline, within weeks of moving in.
So... this article resonates for me.
Thanks!