Earlier this year, Christian nationalist worship leader and right-wing political activist Sean Feucht appeared at On Fire Ministries in Spokane, Washington, where he was given a “defender of liberty” award by the church’s pastor, Matt Shea.
Shea is a former Republican member of the Washington state House of Representatives who was stripped of his committee assignments and booted out of the party in 2019 in the wake of a report detailing how he had “participated in an act of domestic terrorism” and “planned, engaged in and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States Government in three states outside the state of Washington over a three-year period.”
The report exposed Shea’s deep ties to the far-right militia movement, as well as a document he authored laying out the “Biblical Basis for War,” in which he declared that the enemy must agree to accept bans on abortion, same-sex marriage, communism, and idolatry and agree to live under biblical law. If these demands were refused, Shea declared that the only solution was to “kill all males.” Shea has been associated with support for white nationalists, many of which have viewed Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho as the home of a future white Christian state.
On Sunday, Feucht returned to Spokane for a worship event where he and Shea jointly prayed over the city’s mayor Nadine Woodward, as well as Jessica Yaeger, a candidate for city council, and Natalie Poulson, a failed state legislative candidate.
“We’ve got an enemy we need to fight. His name is Satan,” Shea proclaimed. “Father God, we pray a blessing over the leaders you have chosen for this time. … Give them courage, your courage, to stand on the foundation—the rock of Jesus Christ. Give them, right now Lord, unwavering ability to speak the truth into the darkness, and no matter what anybody says around them, they will glorify, honor, and praise you in every single thing they do.”
“I’ve had the privilege to pray over many mayors and many governors and even the president,” Feucht then declared. “But not every city in the world has a prophetic history like Spokane. … I pray God that you would give this mayor and her family and her team and the pastors in this region, God, that you give them revelatory wisdom and insight on how to steward what you want to do in this region.”
“Father, I thank you that your word says that the government sits on your shoulders,” added a member of Feucht’s worship team. “Lord, I pray for encounters to hit the mayor [and] her team, that they would have godly, holy wisdom from Heaven, that you’ve entrusted her to govern this city, that she would not ever fear man [but] that she would only fear God. And I pray, Lord, that as she seeks you in the middle of the night and in the morning that she would realize that though thousands may come against her, the Lord is her shield. And I pray the scriptures over her encounters that she only answers to one God, and his name is Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”
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