In Dearborn, the latest evidence of the new Crusades

Police in tactical gear pushed their way through the crowd of Christian Crusaders in Dearborn, Mich., Tuesday as January 6 insurrectionist Jake Lang and pastor Lorenzo Sewell led the flag-waving, shofar-blowing worship warriors into battle against their Muslim neighbors.

Dressed in tactical gear with an American flag on his vest, Lang yelled through a megaphone about the gospel of Jesus Christ. As he held up a “Jesus Christ is King of Dearborn” sign, the crusaders chanted, “USA! USA!”

Lang demanded, “President Trump! Send ICE into Dearborn! Send ICE into Dearborn!” Then while holding up a “Make Crusades Great Again” sign, he yelled, “We will take our country back!”

As their worship battle continued, Lang took his megaphone to the back of a pickup truck, where a woman dressed in all white was waiting to be baptized. “By the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, you are born again!” Lang yelled before submersing the woman in a baptistry in the back of the pickup truck.

With sirens blasting, the Christians chanted while holding up a sign with the image of Muslims riding on the top of an airplane with the caption, “Deport 100 Million. Save America.”

Then as they entered Dearborn’s library, where a City Council meeting was being held, multiple people were arrested.

The worship Crusades against Muslims

With enthusiasm among Republicans running low heading into the midterm elections, conservatives are turning to worship crusades as a way of fueling Islamophobia to get out the vote for Trump and his allies.

Ten days ago, Christian nationalist troubadour and worship leader Sean Feucht seethed as he walked up to Buckingham Fountain in Chicago to discover a group of Muslims peacefully worshiping and reading from the Quran.

“They got their banners and they’re lifting them up. And they’re marching through the city. And they’re shouting, ‘Allah Akbar!’ And they’re lifting up an altar to a foreign god!” Feucht complained. “No, I’m not in the Middle East. No, I’m not in Iraq or Afghanistan. This is Chicago. … The city is being filled with worship and dedication to a false god.”

He continued: “Right now, they’re in America. And they’re in our cities. And they’re marching. And they’re declaring things. I mean what they were talking about — Allah, Mohammed, all the stuff — guys it’s insane!” Feucht says on video. “The city is being hijacked with prayers and decrees to a false god. And darkness is coming over the city because of it.”

Then Feucht declared, “It’s time to take back territory! Time to take back territory for Jesus in Chicago!”

And that’s exactly what he did. He led his band of worship warriors right through the Muslim worship gathering while waving flags, blowing shofars, banging on buckets with American flag stickers on them and chanting, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

“We did a Jesus March right through the Muslim March in Chicago!!! This is crazy!!!” Feucht announced on social media. “The Muslim march stopped at a street corner. And we marched literally right through them just declaring the name of Jesus. And it was like a holy confrontation that we didn’t even plan for.”

Feucht’s worship events are part of his “Roots of Revival” tour, which features the Trump administration’s “America 250” logo. As Feucht told Charlie Kirk’s former pastor and Turning Point USA Faith cochair Rob McCoy during an event in 2025: “I was on a phone call today, actually, on the way down here, talking with the America 250 team. We are planning and plotting to do revival meetings, sponsored by the U.S. government, all across the nation.”

Antagonizing your neighbors

Although Feucht has spent the past month spreading fear of Muslims and calling the church to wake up, he was not in attendance during Lang and Sewell’s Christian Crusade in Dearborn.

So in response to questions about why he wasn’t there, he posted in a video on social media saying he wanted to be home for his son’s first day of school. Then he added: “There’s a lot of people that I know that are there and they’re meeting at City Hall and they’re doing a pig roast and they’re burning the Quran. … There’s a lot of those guys I really like. And I like how America is waking up. … I’m engaged in the fight and raising awareness. However, I really feel God’s called me to maybe a different path, a different way to approach this.”

Feucht said, “I just don’t know that antagonistic, you know, burning the Quran, eating pork sandwiches in mosques, that’s not the strategy God’s given me.”

Apparently marching through a peaceful Muslim worship gathering while chanting in order to take back territory for Jesus isn’t antagonistic.

‘You will be replaced’

But despite Feucht wanting to distance himself from the tactical-gear-wearing insurrectionists, he admits they’re his friends.

On Aug. 2, Feucht called Lang “my friend” and said Lang “was just stoned by Muslims in Dearborn, MI while protesting the massive march they had today.”

It’s important to remember Lang was pardoned by President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection, in which he allegedly used a bat to beat a police officer. Since being pardoned, he’s continued promoting racism and inciting violence.

“White people in America, you will be replaced, and your children will be Black Muslims if you don’t stand up now,” he says in one video.

In another, he calls immigrant children “anchor babies sent in as chemical weapons by the Talmudic Jews.”

To members of congress who receive donations from American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Lang said: “Congressmen and women that have been taking AIPAC money, we suggest you stop now before the Crusades really start; you will be on the menu. These people have sold our country out. Treasonous traders will be hanging from the gallows rightfully and justfully prosecuted and hung for treason.”

Then in front of AIPAC headquarters, Lang did a Nazi salute and declared, “That’s the AIPAC building right there. White Christian men are not gonna sit around while you turn our children into a bunch of n—er lovers.”

This is who Feucht calls, “My friend.”

‘Fight, fight, fight’

I first encountered Feucht and Sewell together in person at the Rededicate 250 events in Washington, D.C., back in May.

“Anybody remember Jericho?” Feucht called out to the worship warriors at the Sylvan Theatre in front of the Washington Monument. He was referencing the story in the Hebrew Bible where the Israelites marched around the city walls, blew their shofars, screamed and then scaled the walls to commit genocide and plunder their neighbors who were worshiping a “foreign god.” Sound familiar? This biblical story also was the inspiration for the Jericho Marches that arose after Trump lost the 2020 election as part of what Trump supporters called a “hypersonic warfare speed” attempt to overturn the election and climaxed with the scaling of the U.S. Capitol walls on January 6.

Then with everyone thinking about Jericho, Feucht added, “And then there was, ‘Let Us Worship!’”

“Lang spoke about ‘mongrel third worlders’ living in Detroit who are ‘multiplying like cockroaches.’”

Leading his warriors through 30 seconds of screaming as the sound of the worship band swept them up, Feucht yelled, “Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” And then he introduced his friend, pastor Lorenzo Sewell, who later prayed at Trump’s second inauguration.

Not only did Sewell rile up the worship warriors at Feucht’s event, he also spoke the following day at Trump’s official Rededicate 250 event on the National Mall. While whipping everyone up into a frenzy about Jesus, Sewell said: “When our Founding Fathers were thinking about blessing America, they were thinking about the God of the Bible. They were thinking about our Lord, Jesus Christ. And how many know there’s only one name given among men? … Do I have somebody in here that will say, ‘I will stand up today and fight, fight, fight for the soul of the nation?’”

As part of this fight in preparation for his partnership with Lang in last night’s crusade in Dearborn, Sewell hosted Lang at his 180 Church in Detroit on Sunday, where Lang spoke about “mongrel third worlders” living in Detroit who are “multiplying like cockroaches.”

Dancing with wolves

In my forthcoming book, Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism, I ask, “While Christian nationalist worship leaders love to play the innocent victim card, their events stoke the fires of retribution. The question is: Who may be in the crowd, and what might they be getting activated to do?”

Specifically, what might Feucht’s friends be activated to do as his worship band rages and he calls his army to take territory away from Muslims without stopping? According to Feucht, his friends are those who are openly calling for a Christian Crusade where members of Congress will be hanged for treason.

And these aren’t Feucht’s only violent friends. At a worship event in Portland, Ore., back in 2021, Feucht posted a photo of himself surrounded by armed men, some of whom were members of the Proud Boys. Feucht added the caption, “If you mess with them or our 1st amendment right to worship God — you’ll meet Jesus one way or another.”

But despite all the calls for fighting and crusading from Sewell and Lang, Feucht’s most violent friend is sitting in the Pentagon, waging a holy war against Iran.

Pete Hegseth brandishes a tattoo of the Christian Crusader and white nationalist phrase, “Deus Vult.” Prior to joining Doug Wilson’s Christian nationalist church in D.C., Hegseth attended a church in Tennessee that has posted videos of their children dressed up as Crusaders while singing worship songs about cutting down the sacred trees of non-Christians.

After the worship service at the National Cathedral during Trump’s inauguration, Hegseth approached Feucht and asked, “So Sean, what do you think about doing worship at the Pentagon?” Hegseth has since been leading monthly worship services at the Pentagon that invoke the name of Jesus and sacralize their war fighting with Scripture.

And lest we think his invoking of crusades and Holy War language isn’t personal with Iran, Hegseth devotes an entire chapter in his book American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free to an American crusade against “Islamism,” which he identifies as “the most dangerous ’ism.’”

“America is not at war with Islam, but we are always at war with Islamists,” Hegseth writes. “Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Taliban, Iran and the likes are the latest manifestations of an Islamist movement that has no plans to ‘coexist.’ They seek land, they seek power, they seek demographic and political advantages, and they actively seek the military means — especially nuclear weapons — to bring the West to its knees.”

Is it merely a coincidence that Hegseth is reportedly depleting our weapons stockpiles as he bombs Iran while quoting the Bible and worshipping?

Who’s really planning to attack Christians?

Hegseth, Feucht, Sewell and Lang claim Muslims are taking over the country. In fact, Lang has another Christian Crusader march planned for September 11 in New York City that he’s branding as the “March on Mamdani,” a reference to the city’s new mayor.

But as the four men wield worship as a weapon to fuel their crusade against their Muslim neighbors who they claim are attacking American Christians, ironically they’re the ones who appear to have a plan to attack American Christians who disagree with them. We’re already seeing the Trump administration send undercover spies to progressive Christian churches, including the church led by Baptist News Global writer Cody Sanders.

These conservative Christian crusaders have to defeat any American and any Christian who won’t bend the knee to their theology. So while they may be on a crusade against Muslims today, they also envision a crusade against Christians who they believe are leftists.

As Feucht said in response to Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde’s plea to President Trump for mercy, “Wokeness must be completely eradicated in the churches of America.”

To Lang and Sewell’s delight, in American Crusade, Hegseth agrees. He calls for the “utter annihilation” of the left and says, “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and is the author of a forthcoming book, Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.