The traveling Christian bard Sean Feucht — who’s made a name for himself over the past several years defying COVID mandates for Jesus, sparking violence at street protests and raking in millions from MAGA-aligned followers — is back in Spokane today. He is holding a night of worship at Matt Shea’s church On Fire Ministries, which Shea has been touting for weeks as one in a spring series of Christian nationalist organizing events from Coeur d’Alene to Olympia. With that in mind, we thought we’d explain a little of what Feucht has been up to since he was last in town on August 20 and who he is.
Last summer in Spokane
Feucht has a controversial history in Spokane. During an August concert at the Podium, the Gray Fire happened to be raging in Medical Lake, but Feucht’s event sparked another firestorm when then-Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward got onto the stage with Feucht’s host, Matt Shea of On Fire Ministries. After describing gay marriage as a challenge commensurate with the wildfire, which destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed at least two people, Shea laid hands on Woodward, praying for her. The event caused such a stir that it caught the attention of the Washington Post. The Spokane City Council later voted to denounce Woodward for the appearance. As the Inlander’s Nate Sanford tweeted, Feucht filed a damages claim in January demanding Spokane pay him $2 million, claiming the denunciation harmed his reputation.
A less well-known aspect of Feucht’s last visit: when he left Spokane, he embarked on a media tour in which he claimed to have saved the soul of an unhoused man who had stolen his guitar on a previous visit to town. The man, Zach Williams, told RANGE a very different story.
‘We should treat them like terrorists’
Since then, Feucht has leaned heavily into the political battle being waged in the United States over American support for Israel’s continuous attacks on Gaza that followed the October 7 attacks by Hamas. That genocide has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, most women or children. Much of the battle in the US is being fought on college campuses as pro-Palestinian protesters demand their universities divest from Israel.
In late April, Feucht and other Christian nationalist groups were denied entry to student Palestinian solidarity encampments at Columbia University. So the groups staged a pro-Israel counterprotest, which they dubbed the “United for Israel March,” directly outside those camps. The counterprotesters harassed college students trying to enter campus, chanting their support for Israel and saying “Go join ISIS, I heard they like Jews,” “You’re a fucking Nazi,” and “You would get killed in Gaza, they hate you,” according to the Columbia Spectator. Following his Columbia visit, Feucht updated his followers on his Substack Sean’s Update, claiming that pro-Palestinian college protests are acts of antisemitic violence and terrorism.
He wrote of the student protesters, “We should treat them like terrorists.”
Feucht also announced that his counter protests would expand to the West Coast. He and others attended a similar protest at the University of Southern California in early May.
Lucrative evangelism
Feucht has built vast wealth through his various non-profit organizations. Rolling Stone first reported about Feucht’s empire of movements, whose revenue grew many fold from 2019 to 2020 from about $280,000 to more than $5 million annually. Feucht has benefited immensely from these enterprises, including in the real estate market, where he recently listed one of his Northern California homes to rent for $4,700 a month.
Since 2020, Feucht’s nonprofit Sean Feucht Ministries has renovated, rented and resold numerous million-dollar properties in Redding, California and Northwest Montana.
Appeal to Heaven
Shortly after former President Donald Trump was convicted in what’s become known as his “hush money trial” yesterday, Feucht tweeted an image of the Appeal to Heaven flag. The flag is a Revolutionary War-era symbol which in recent years has come to represent the claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent. He also tweeted a video of himself in the U.S. Capitol rotunda saying, “We declare the blood of Jesus over these grounds.”
