Sean Feucht can’t always get what he wants.

At his Christian supremacist “Revive in 25” prayer rally at Gas Works Park on Saturday, there were no fist fights to film. No “trans terrorism,” or demonic forces. No suppression of his First Amendment rights, though he implied on Facebook that the Seattle Police Department knew antifa was coming and was preparing for a fight. No such luck.

Feucht is a professional provocateur who ascended to Christian nationalist superstardom in 2020, when he launched a “Let Us Worship” tour to protest COVID restrictions. He’s continued his travels. As Kate Burns wrote for The Stranger earlier this week, Feucht selects liberal cities for maximum political combustibility, setting the stage for a confrontation that will fuel weeks of “Christians under attack” content in right-wing media.

Seattle was the perfect place. In May, the Christian supremacist group Mayday USA’s anti-trans rally in Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill that ended with Seattle Police arresting 23 protesters, in some cases violently. After Mayor Bruce Harrell denounced the “far-right” rally as an attack against  transgender people and the city’s values, Mayday USA held an unpermitted “Rattle in Seattle” protest on the steps of City Hall to protest, claiming they’d been discriminated against as Christians. They hadn’t.

A repeat would be exactly the thing he’d hoped for, especially a few days after a former student shot up a Catholic school in Minneapolis, killing two children (court records show the shooter identified as trans at one time). In an Instagram rant, Feucht said trans people had a “demonic spirit hellbent on stealing, killing and destroying.” Feucht even planned to play Cal Anderson, but last minute talks between organizers and city officials moved it to Gas Works. On social media, he falsely teased that the city had issued a permit and may revoke it, but even that gambit didn’t pay off. 

New information about God. MADISON KIRKMAN

Feucht had his permit. And his stage, his band, his scenic view of Lake Union, and the power of the Holy Spirit. But no spectacle, just people exercising their constitutional rights with pro-trans signs and banners, queer flags, crackling megaphones and a kazoo brigade. Police only arrested one person on the edge of the event, but it’s still unclear why. His calculated, political return to the “spiritual battlefield” of Seattle was a flop.

Because without controversy, who is Sean Feucht? He’s a lame guy strumming a guitar in a field for an audience magnitudes smaller than the earthshaking revival he expected (or that was implied by the enormous fenced off area). It was just another Saturday night; just another bad rock concert in Seattle.

Pursuit NW lead pastor Russell Johnson, who helped organize Feucht’s concert and preached with White House Faith Office head Paula White-Cain earlier this month, posted on Twitter that “antifa is NOT sending its best.” In a sermon in Kirkland this morning, he read the same statement from Mayor Bruce Harrell he read last night, which thanked Revive in 25 for moving the event. (“Seattle is, and always will be a place where all voices can be heard, where prayer and peaceful protest are both protected” it read. “…As Mayor, I will always stand on the side of love and free speech and whoever stands on that side, stands with me.”) Johnson claimed the statement as a victory.

“Over the last 90 days [since the Mayday rally], what is said in scripture is true—the heart of the King is like water in the hand of God,” Johnson said. “He moves it in whatever direction he wishes … You should have seen the faces of the media and the protesters—it was like, ‘How on earth did Pursuit pull this off?”’

Before his last song last night (and an ask for donations, “not much, but something”), Feucht  noticed the protest had thinned behind him.

“I hate that!” he said. “Don’t leave before we’re done! Just extend your hand Lord. We just say ‘Get them with your love.’” The crowd extended its hands. His keyboard player, Chino, used to protest him, he says.

“We speak over them—may they be those who once were against God, and now they’re for God!” he shouted.

Feucht started his show at 5 p.m. Wario Kazooman Savage was a few minutes behind (Wario Kazooman Savage is a pseudonym, obviously).

“Make sure you get a kazoo, the kazoo is your power,” they said as I walked down the path toward the protest.

Savage wore a pink cowboy hat, shaggy pink cheetah-printcoat, and blushed-out pink clown makeup. Up close, I saw their penciled-in moustache. They stood in front of a stuffed horse. A trans flag hung in the tree beside them rippled in the breeze.

Billed on posters as the “WORLD’S LARGEST” kazoo performance of Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” with an accompanying Roan lookalike contest. The “silly” protest was meant to minimize the confrontation experts say Feucht wanted.

Savage says they’ve done a lot of “renegade” shows in the electronic music scene with their best friend. The two were sitting on Savage’s bedroom floor when they heard Feucht was coming to Seattle.

“And we were like, how silly would it be if we came to just be clowns,” they said. “We’re not hurting anybody—we’re just literally taking up space. Nothing wrong with that. We’re here, we’re queer.”

Under the right circumstance, hundreds of kazoos can sound beautiful. MADISON KIRKMAN
The Chappels Roan. MADISON KIRKMAN

Savage had no idea their protest echoed a 2005 action in Olympia, Washington, when clowns mocked a neo-Nazi rally on the capitol steps. It worked so well even the police were laughing. When Nazis went to Spokane the next year, clowns followed. Nationally, clowns have an impressive track record against Nazis. They work because Nazis are stupid (see The Producers, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Nazis).

Before the festivities began, Savage introduced the Rev. Osagyefo Sekou of Valley & Mountain Fellowship, a United Methodist church in Columbia City. As an “old country Black man” from a town with 11 houses and 35 people (Zent, Arkansas), he said he wanted to share his tradition with them.

“Is that alright?” he asked, and began his blessing.

Every one of them was “fearfully and wonderfully made,” he said, breaking “every curse” spoken against them and “every lie” told about them for being who God called them to be on earth. He prayed they would know those Christians were lying to God, that they knew they were “cast down, not out,” persecuted, but not forsaken.

“And God, may they know what is happening on the other side of the field is a heresy against your gospel—and goes against the essence of who Jesus Christ is,” he said. “And most of all, we ask that they might find joy—joy in their friendships, joy in their relationships, and joy wherever they go. And may they know they are perfect the way they are.”

He told the crowd he loved them; that they were his whether they loved that or not. Like any good minister, he invited them to his “weirdo” church. His youth pastor was nonbinary. And if he called them “baby” when he greeted them, it’s because he’s a southerner.

“That’s how I keep from misgendering you,” he said with a smile, handing the mic over to Savage, who warned the crowd about the suspicious, unmarked van up the street. Agents of some kind were inside, they said, and pointed out a dirt exit road for anyone who wanted to leave.

“All that being said, let’s get fucking silly,” they said, cuing the music. The crowd blew along, buzzing like a cloud of mosquitos. When the drums kicked in at the chorus, Savage lifted a hand in the air and swayed. They exhaled when the song ended. What a workout, they said, and invited the lookalike contestants to the stage, which was judged by kazoos instead of applause. It was sublime, and like most great music events, it was over in less than half an hour.

The crowd drifted down the hill toward Feucht’s concert, blowing whistles and horns, ringing bells, and screaming at the top of their lungs.  Steph, a trans 19-year-old Roan lookalike contestant, wheezed “Entrance of The Gladitators” on her accordion (aka the circus song). “It’s always a good day to spread queer joy,” she says over a bleating airhorn.

Another lookalike contestant, Jessamy (“like Sesame”), wore a cowboy hat and Christmas ornaments as earrings, was not queer, but there to stand with the queer community. Absurdity is an attention-grabbing way to combat the fear these groups perpetuate.

“As you can see, there are many a queer folk here,” she says “Seeing them having fun, dressing up, having a good time, shows they’re not broken; they’re not defective the way people who spread Christian nationalism would have you believe.”

On the other side of the fence, a crowd swayed to Feucht’s music, arms raised above their heads in prayer. Children danced with their parents. A woman in a lawn chair on the periphery smiled at me between bites of her subway sandwich. Although there were already ten feet between us, a man shuffled away as I passed, eying me with suspicion. A man with a billowing, red “JESUS IS KING” flag slung over his shoulder walked toward the stage with a raised arm.

Feucht lauded the diversity of his band. “Y’all can work on your diversity a little bit back there,” he cackled over the horns. Trans flags waved behind as he thanked Jesus for sending his best to this city, and he introduced the next song, which he wrote in the Montana mountains he grew up around. One of the reasons he loves coming to this “crazy” city, was that his dad took him here to see the San Antonio Spurs play the Supersonics at Key Arena.

“What would happen if we had church inside of it,” he said. “That was the first thought that hit my mind as an eight year old … “Come on–just lift up your hands. Lift up his name over this city.”

“I just want to speak the name of Jesus,” Feucht sang. “To every dark addiction starts to break. Declaring there is hope and there is freedom—I speak Jesus.”

The guitars rolled in like a thunderhead. A dog to my right lost its mind.

I want to be clear. Feucht’s music blows absolute ass. Not because it’s Christian rock, or worship music (I’m Catholic, I fuck heavy with hymns). Great religious music is everywhere. It’s in gospel, in soul, in blues. In Vedic chants. In meditative, ambient new age tapes. There’s George Frederick Handel’s The Messiah, Sufjan Stevens, Sam Cooke. There’s spirituality in Frank Ocean, in the band MeWithoutYou. The Louvin Brothers were fire and brimstone bible thumpers, but goddamn, those beautiful songs.

Feucht’s songs suck. They are structureless, Jesus-themed madlibs. There are no hooks, no stories, and little substance. It’s only an impression of meaning. Even “Awesome God” has hooks.

I bump into Rev. Sekou in the crowd. The music sucks, he says, and he wanted to sit down. We trudge across the field, and he makes a seat of someone’s cooler. In his tradition there is “ain’t no oil on the one and three, all the oil’s on the two and four.” Think about Black musicians who created the greatest musical tradition in the history of the Western World, he says, musicians like pastor and singer Al Green, saxophonist John Coltrane, soul queen Aretha Franklin, guitarist and singer Albert King, the queer, Black, and soulful rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Rosetta Tharpe, and jukebox king Lewis Jordan.

“You know, the entire country ain’t produced that kind of music,” he says.

Rev. Sekou doesn’t mention it, but he’s a musician. He performed a Tiny Desk concert with the Seal Breakers in 2018. He started that show with the same line as his blessing Saturday—by saying he was from a small town with 11 houses and 35. In his tradition, they do a little call and response, he said, and asked if they would talk back to him. (“There’s a lot of trouble in the land,” he said then. “But we’ve got one question: do you want to be free?”) The owners of the cooler he’s sitting on listen intently from their picnic blanket.

Can you feel the love? MADISON KIRKMAN
But does he love you? MADISON KIRKMAN

“This theology is market-driven theology. This idea that when praises go up, blessings come down. It’s an extractive and capitalist discourse which has dominated contemporary Christian music over the last 20-30 years. It’s poorly written music, it’s repetitious. The most dangerous part of it: there’s no lament, so there’s no way for you to go before God and grieve—to have pain, agony and despair. That’s part of the human existence.”

Theology tells us more about what we believe than what the Bible says, he says. Using religion to justify a cause is part of a great American tradition—after all, religion was used to uphold and to oppose slavery. America at its best, has attempted to incorporate and care for the most vulnerable, a “strong part of the Christian tradition,” he says.

“One of the challenges with the guys on the right is there is a limited clergy who actually have theological education,” he says (Rev. Sekou is a PhD candidate in religious studies). “So most of them, like, hear from God, and then they start preaching and they understand the theology that they have—all theology is inherited and ideological.”

Just then, someone on stage says that this performance was not about a brand, or provoking, or about Let Us Worship.

A person on the picnic blanket behind Rev. Sekou chortled, pink bangs wisping from their mostly shaved head.

“‘Let Us Worship’ is literally on the damn canvas tent,” they said.

“This is not protesting every church,” answers their friend in all black. “It’s not about Jesus.”

On stage, Feucht says the Lord, with a giant smile and magic eraser, is “erasing all of the things” that plague Seattle.  Linda is standing next to me. She came from the south of the city and asks if I am religious.

“I’m a Catholic” I say.

“Well, that’s not–” she says, stopping herself. She grew up Catholic. But she’s a real “Jesus Person” now. She’ll go see anyone who loves the Lord.

“But they have to be real Jesus people,” she says.

“Do you think he’s a real Jesus person?” I ask, pointing out Feucht’s former associates have accused him of moral, spiritual and financial abuse over many years. Their signed statement “strongly urged” he be “removed from positions of leadership and financial stewardship.”

“One thing is for sure—this is the honest truth—I know Jesus personally; Jesus won’t let people be successful if they don’t love him.” We all reap and sow, she says, that’s in Galatians.

“There are many successful people in this world who do very evil things and are rewarded for them,” I say.

“Not in heaven.”

“Not in heaven, but on earth, and we’re on earth right now.” “It wouldn’t keep going—God would stop,” she says. “Say they’re doing something, somebody would probably step in.”

“How would you feel if those allegations were proven true?”

“Well I would have to see it side by side.”

After Linda takes me on a tangent about the quality of my skin, lying Bob Ferguson, the fairness of “illegals raping our children,” and trans women in the state’s women’s prisons, I shut off my recorder and thank her for her time. She asked my name.

Vivian, I say.

Something clicked and she smirked behind her sunglasses. Like Elon Musk’s “son…daughter,” she says.

“Do you believe in heaven?” she asks.

I told her I did. In truth, I have no idea.

“Well, you can’t get there.”

She put her hand on my shoulder.

“I want that to happen for you.”

Vivian McCall is The Stranger's News Editor. In her private life, she is a musician and Wii U apologist. If you’re reading this, you either love her or hate her.

66 replies on “Christian Supremacist Sean Feucht Flops at Gas Works”

  1. Shouldn’t we at least TRY draconian restrictions on free speech? Sure, nothing happened THIS time, but we’re missing the opportunity to be like the UK and have thousands of people arrested for speech crimes every year. Depending on who’s in charge, it could even be your political enemies who are prosecuted for hate speech. But people are speaking now and we just…LET them?!

  2. “We wanted his terrible concert to end”

    How is that democratic or progressive? This is not the LGBT community I once knew that championed free speech.

  3. Sounds like neither side got what they wanted. The left wanted a violent confrontation to get airtime and the Christians wanted a lightning bolt to hit Vivian. Better luck next time!

  4. There were probably a lot of kids who had their first taste of a real city because of that dopey event, and that’s always a good thing – to see the world outside of their town, their church, and their parents’ stupidity.

  5. @5 – You say that like it’s a good thing? If I’m getting railed by a hot evangelical, I’d never want it to end!!!

  6. @4

    “to see the world outside of their town, their church, and their parents’ stupidity.”

    Pretty sure one sightings of trantifa lifting their shirts to flash their moobs won’t have the effect you image.

  7. Oh Simon. Dear “Simple Simon”. So obsessed with transpeople Simon.

    How well I remember my first trip to New York City. I was ten, flew as an unaccompanied minor on UAL, met Papa Vel-DuRay at LaGuardia, and proceeded to the Waldorf, where we spent a week before heading up to Boston and then Maine.

    We went to Mass every morning at Saint Patrick’s and then papa went to work at the Helmsley Tower. I was not to leave The Waldorf, but I did – including a few excursions through 1970’s Times Square. While I saw many drag queens, leather men, and hookers (some of whom were probably trans), I was much more interested in the buildings – especially the grand old theatres, and the subway.

    Children don’t have dirty minds, but some adults sure do…..

  8. @12

    Nothing sadder than an old, lonely homosexual with daddy issues, whiling away his hours on Slog, for, what, nearly two decades now?

    My condolences.

  9. Simon dear, projection is one of the surest forms of denial, and denial is one of the cruelest forms of self-harm.

    I know that taking personal responsibility is anathema to you people, but you really should try it before you spiral even more down into that vortex of despair that you are wallowing in.

    But I will give you points for calling out my supposed “daddy issues” instead of my “privilege”. Even though I was hella privileged.

  10. So, this traveling bigot show was so bland, it produced merely a long rambling article so dull, even the Stranger’s commenters care little about it? Glad to know this traveling bigot show found a way to make their bland Jeebus even more boring.

    It’s good to recall that while tolerance requires effort, apathy does not.

  11. @18

    Maybe showing us your moobs will brighten my day and hasten the day when I cash in my Seattle equity and move to sunnier climes and wait with the missus for the adorable pitter-patter of the feet of grandkids on Christmas morning?

    And dear, all the homosexuals I knew in school were of the “Another Country” bend. Privileged, sad, lonely boys, ripe for the picking.

  12. “all the homosexuals I knew in school were of the “Another Country” bend. Privileged, sad, lonely boys, ripe for the picking.”

    That sounds like you are saying that you used to sleep with boys, but are now 100% he-man butch, Simon dear. The testosterone just flows, and you’ve humped away at “the missus” so much that there were legions of babies who are now having babies (but you’re only allowed to see them on Christmas morning? What’s up with that?)

    As for relocating, I say, why wait? Florida beckons to you with increasing fervor. Touchng herself in erotic desire for you to be inside her, as I’m sure all the other states below the Mason/Dixon are. Or you could find a cozy home in Arizona, land of the Kari Lakes, who are all looking for a real man like you.

  13. It appears that the protest against Feucht was measured, disciplined and creative. Seattle activism at its intelligent, defiant best. Kudos. After reading this I almost wish I’d been there (almost, mind you).

  14. “That sounds like you are saying that you used to sleep with boys”

    Oh no, those poor boys were picked up but old sad gay men like your friend Ed Murray. Forty plus year old gay men, grasping at the last straws of their youth. I do imagine being a homosexual in your 20s was fun for you, all that wanton buggery, so little accountability, unless you caught some dreadful disease. But then you woke up at 40, a tired, old, childless, unloved poof, and realized you’ve been fighting the evolutionary prerogative of all life to reproduce, and walking Into the Wildrose waving your turkey baster just wasn’t quite the same; of course now you walk into the Wildrose and realize it should be renamed the “Cock and Balls” since the crazy T’s, trantifa, took over Cap Hill. I’d suggest all you old poofs jump off the crazy Tranny-train before it crashes.

    Regard the sun. Thinking more Hawaii, or maybe Bali, but the wife has an inkling for the Algarve where she summered. Luckily father loved us, and mother didn’t spoil us gay, and both left us enough to start looking soon.

  15. Simon, you’re never going to move, admit it. 🙂 You love arguing with gay people so much! You love reading about them and seeing what they do! You’re obsessed! It’s kinda cute.

  16. Simon dear, you have such a rich fantasy life. A pretty gross fantasy life, but rich nonetheless.

    And there’s so many assertions…. Being gay is fun in your 20’s (side note: it wasn’t for me. My twenties were roughly the first decade of HIV/AIDS) all gay men are going to end up like Ed Murray (side note: I don’t know the man personally). And what a strange reference to the Wildrose – a place I haven’t set foot in since the 90’s.

    I have a feeling you’re going to end up a newly divorced elderly man living in some foreign country where access to children is much more open. Wasn’t the Dominican Republican the place where that perv Limbaugh was caught with drugs while being a sex tourist? That’s probably sunny. You should look into it.

    And that would explain why you only have access to the grand children at Christmas.

  17. It’s encouraging that at least this one time the people Feucht was here to antagonize didn’t take the bait. Hopefully it’s the start of a trend.

  18. @31: You’re older than you say. I’m positive you were in your twenties during the 70’s, dancing to Donna Summer’s ‘Last Dance’ every Saturday night.

  19. If only, Coolidge dear. I emerged from my mother in February of 1965.

    rudeboy dear, the low attendance is the other side of the double-edged sword of the villianizing of the big Democratic cities. MAGA, being comprised mostly of old people and the dim-witted, have been told that all major cities have all been burned to the ground, while at the same time being comprised entirely of poop and needles.

    But the Washingtonians of that ilk sure love the Seahawks and Mariners, and are eager to come to Seattle when they need the services of FredHutch, UWMC, Harborview, and Children’s Hospital.

  20. 35: Don’t forget that you and assorted Seattle ilk are always over here to enjoy our fine ski resorts, hiking trails, fishing rivers, and warm hospitality in cozy lodges and bread-n-breakfastes. You need us as much as we need you.

    Hell, you had sex with us but would never admit it.

  21. Coolidge dear, Mr. Vel-DuRay and I have owned a house in North Central Washington for several years. Since it’s actually paid for (no mortgage) and property taxes out in Eastern WA are ridiculously inexpensive, we will probably end up out there full-time as we wait for Jesus to come take us.

    I find it telling that you apparently think that everyone east of the Cascades is a MAGA type. A careful examination of the election results will show that many of the counties are purple at best. And I have always maintained that the east/west divide is silly.

  22. Oh, and as for sex, I’m sure that I have been “in congress” with many eastern Washingtonians, and definitely some eastern Oregonians, over the decades. Spokane is a nasty town (and I mean that is the best possible way)

  23. @31

    No doubt the ’80s were tough dear. It turned out that anuses didn’t evolve to have objects, large or small, inserted in them …. no matter what side of the Cascades you’re on. It is almost – dare I say it – unnatural.

    Maybe your newfound friends in trantifa, flashing their estrogen-pumped moobs, need to study science more too?

  24. Terrible article. Antifa. They should not be allowed in Seattle or the state or the country. Terrorist group. Vivian, I do not hate you or anyone unless they violate my kids but I do not agree with your journalism. Just a bad article.

  25. @23 It’s not about “feeding the trolls” or even acknowledging the troll. If just a small handful of the bused-in home-schoolers at the Feucht rally peered over the fence and wondered if maybe they’d be happier dancing to “Pink Pony Club” with the kazoo players than nodding along listlessly to sub-mediocre worship songs (or perhaps caught some of the Black pastor’s prayer and got just a tiny inkling that there are deeper, more meaningful forms of Christianity than simplistic “Jesus Saves” white-bread fundamentalism) the protest was worthwhile.

  26. @45

    The second they see some caterwauling trantifa troon lifting up its shirt to flash its moobs, you wanna bet no amount of kazoos will help?

  27. a little Culture can be

    Good for the let ’em Know there’re

    Terminally Other Pathways than

    sheltered Republican fucking

    simone: “Jesus.”

         they might even have
    

    their Own minds

  28. Ooops!

    wrong

    site!

    take two:

    a little Culture can be Good for the

    Terminally sheltered

    simone:

    let ’em Know there’re

    Other Pathways than

    Republican fucking

    “Jesus.”

    they might even have

    their Own minds.

  29. Simon dear, are you some sort of chatbot? You have a very limited vocabulary, and you don’t seemt to have many topics that you can discuss. Or are you just old and lonely, rejected by your family because of something you did to one of your grandchildren, and visiting Slog when you get tired of whatever dark web Russian porn site you are obsessed with?

  30. @50

    Well, bugger me, so much projection. Why is it an old pervert’s defense to an adversary is to always accuse them of being perverts too?

  31. Projection? Moi? Simon dear, you are the absolute queen of projection. Just read your comments in this thread.

    I am leaning more towards the side of you being a low-quality chat bot. Your spelling and grammar is good (quite rare for a MAGA type), but you are repetitive and limited in your vocabulary, and you don’t initiate, only respond.

  32. 55: But you and essentially all of us snarky commenters, both left and right, PROJECT others into stereotypes (in your case here – an incel and a chatbot) all the time.

    Hence, it’s all projection.

  33. “ Because without controversy, who is Sean Feucht? He’s a lame guy strumming a guitar in a field”

    Please don’t use “lame” as a synonym for stupid or disgusting. It is really a slam against people with disabilities.

  34. @54 If you don’t think there are people who literally worship the man, you need to stop doing butt stuff and pay attention. Ain’t nobody buying bibles signed by JD Vance no matter how many couches he fucks.

  35. Holy fuck, the comments on this one. And “transtifa” LOL. Oh, that’s a knee slapper. You should go start a comedy routine inside of a rotting whale carcus.

  36. Coolidge dear, I did not “project” the idea that Our Dear Simon is an incel. I speculated, based on his comments, that he is either an elderly pervert or a low-quality chatbot.

    If he is indeed a chatbot, Kristofarian dear, I have no idea under whose direction he is. Perhaps one of those mischievous computer science majors at UW? A student at Lakeside? Some budding genius at Cleaveland or Rainier Beach?

  37. Project, speculate, whatever, it’s all just nonsense, to put others down and insult them to make yourselves feel better.

    I’m guilty of it too, but at least I’m aware of it.

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