God released his peace all of this crowd, and they lapped it up.
God "released his peace" all over this crowd, and they lapped it up. RS

On Sunday evening Sean Feucht, an evangelical musician who recently ran a failed Congressional campaign in California, performed a concert and baptism ceremony in front of a couple hundred suburbanites at Cal Anderson park.

A vast majority of the crowd did not wear masks or facial coverings, in violation of Governor Inslee's statewide mask mandate, which requires people to "wear a facial covering when in a public space...[including] both indoor and outdoor public spaces."

The concert itself also appeared to violate the state ban on gatherings, the state ban on outdoor live music, plus several state requirements related to religious services—that is, if organizers want to call the concert a "religious service."

Needless to say, I am only now beginning to recover from the full-body orgasm I experienced during Feucht's white-hot ministry. Over the course of the two-hour event, the unmasked concertgoers pressed together, at times embracing one another at the behest of their holy, golden Dom.

And who could blame the crowd for gathering together and acceding to his demands, even in the middle of a deadly respiratory virus outbreak that has killed over 1,770 Washingtonians and infected over 65,000, with at least one "super-spreader" event directly tied to a church choir? I mean, truly, if you can behold this galloping palomino without immediately creaming your jeans, then the devil never stood a chance against your rock-hard, towering faith:

In prayer and in performance, Feucht and other speakers begged God to “release His peace all over, all over, all over Seattle, all over Capitol Hill." They implored the crowd to "just focus on Jesus tonight," as if the neighborhood's kinksters needed any goading.

Feucht spoke of bringing a "tangible love" and a ministerial "light" to Seattle, a "dark" city he viewed as "defeated" after a month of historic uprisings against police brutality, which were initially spurred by the police killing George Floyd. Those protests, which continue every day as an ongoing referendum on the Seattle Police Department, have sparked major policy shifts at City Hall and changed the way some local leaders view policing.

The killing of Floyd also touched Feucht and his band of believers. Shortly after the killing, one of them claimed God spoke with him and directed him to organize a nationwide virus revival tour. They've been traveling (and raising money) ever since, spreading vague messages about "UNIFYING THE CHURCH" and "racial reconciliation," which apparently requires people to establish a "vertical relationship with God" that will presumably create a horizontal relationship with other human beings. Or something. I don't know, this was just the shit he said. (It's worth noting the crowd was almost entirely white, and that many Black leaders call for reparations—not some sort of personal, spiritual "reconciliation.")

Feucht began gigging at the Floyd memorial in Minneapolis. In late July, city and county officials "condemned" his gathering at Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA, according to the Record Searchlight. On Saturday, Feucht drew a crowd of "hundreds" in Portland. And after the closing number last night in Seattle, one member of Feucht's cohort asked the crowd for “prayer," and, more importantly, "alms" to fund a future stop in Los Angeles.

Feucht belongs to Bethel Church in Redding, CA, which the Record Searchlight describes as "a megachurch [that] draws in followers from around the world and believes in 'supernatural' ministry, including praying people back from the dead."

He was also one of 50 pastors who prayed over the President in the Oval Office during the impeachment hearings last December.

Though he's gone now, Seattle won't soon forget Feucht's throbbing, ecstatic preaching. Nor will they forget this hoodie: