Outside agitators are striking back at pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses across the country. Seeing an opportunity to further their own agenda, Christian nationalist groups are joining them.
On April 25, worship leader Sean Feucht, along with conservative pastor Russell Johnson and author Eric Metaxas, led the first of their “United for Israel” marches outside the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University. Feucht said the rally was intended to show solidarity with the university’s Jewish students and faculty, although neither group invited the Christian leaders to the campus.
Rather, this pro-Israel rally portends a shift from Christian nationalism to Christian militantism among the Religious Right.
Another United for Israel march was held last night at the University of Southern California, and more are planned for other locations.
Sean Feucht, an extreme right-wing Christian dominionist personality, sings at a gathering of evangelical zionists. A noisy mixture of pro-Israel, pro- and anti-Zionist, and evangelical Christians demonstrated outside New York City’s Columbia University April 25, 2024. (Photo by John Rudoff/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)
The ringleader of the United for Israel rallies is Feucht, a charismatic worship leader with ties to Christian music and media juggernaut Bethel Church. Sporting a California surfer vibe, he came to national prominence during COVID for his cross-country tour of “worship protests” in the face of pandemic restrictions.
On that tour, Feucht strategically targeted sites of political and racial unrest, including the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis, CHOP in Seattle and a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland. Feucht promised to turn “riots into revivals,” and his strategy of trolling justice-seeking protests increased his social media following as well as his personal revenue, which grew from less than $300,000 in 2019 to $5.3 million in 2020.
To keep the donations and clicks coming, Feucht followed up his pandemic tour with a ”Jesus March” past the gay bars of West Hollywood and an anti-LGBTQ protest at Walt Disney Studios.
Awaken pastor Samuel Deuth, who also attended the January 6 insurrection, helped lead Feucht’s Disney protest, and former neo-Nazi fight club member Ryan Sanchez promoted it on his social media accounts.
Feucht’s social media posts chronicle his interactions with far-right representatives of the Republican Party, including Steve Bannon, Ralph Reed, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump himself. He also led worship for the “Reawaken America” tour with Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and has connections with the secretive Council for National Policy.
Social media publicity image for Russell Johnson and a campus of his church.
Feucht is currently on his “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour of state capitals sponsored by Turning Point USA Faith, aiming to “restore America’s biblical values,” according to the TPUSFaith website.
Joining Feucht at the United for Israel march was the pastor of Pursuit NW Church, Russell Johnson. Pursuit is a multi-campus nondenominational church affiliated with the Pentecostal Fellowship of Christian Assemblies. Its bathroom signage aggressively asserts the restrooms are for “biological men” and “biological women.” An area billboard advertising the church’s elementary school boasts it is “Not Woke.”
Social media post showing new bathroom signage at Pursuit Church.
Johnson, who comes across as a little bit hipster and a little bit hip-hop, has been a featured speaker at many of Feucht’s concerts and has appeared with controversial megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll. It was Johnson who, concerned about “antisemitism on college campuses” and its “demonic core,” called Feucht and said, “We might need to rally at Columbia University and take a stand.”
Rounding out the United for Israel trio, and lending an air of gravitas to the rally, was author and conservative radio host Eric Metaxas. His controversial biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer portrays the German martyr’s Confessing Church as a conservative evangelical denomination battling the corrupting influence of the liberal Union Seminary and the apathy of the Reich church. Metaxas carried a large poster of Bonhoeffer at the United for Israel rally to promote his new book, Religionless Christianity, which launched two days prior.
A spinoff from his Bonhoeffer book, the new book critiques the modern church for its passivity in the face of cultural upheaval. “The parallels to Germany in the ’30s, I mean it’s sick, it’s the same thing,” Metaxas said in a YouTube conversation with Feucht. “That inability to have a biblical view of the role of the church and to act out on what we claim to believe — that opened the door to hell on earth and led to the death camps.”
Metaxas previously compared Hillary Clinton to Hitler and called her “Hitlery.” He is best known for promoting a false “Christian nation” origin story for the United States. And he’s one of the defendants being sued by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive for defamation by his denial that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
Eric Metaxas
When Metaxas laments the complacency of the contemporary church, he isn’t talking about a church sitting on the sidelines while African Americans are disproportionately gunned down and locked up, the wealth gap widens and children cower in their classrooms during active shooter drills. Metaxas, Feucht and Johnson want to see a militant church fighting against “wokeism” and standing up for Christian nationalism.
A devotee of Donald Trump, Metaxas hosted the “Jericho March,” a rally in Washington, D.C., that laid the spiritual groundwork for the January 6 insurrection less than a month later.
At the Jericho March, surrounded by shofars and Israeli flags, conspiracy monger Alex Jones referenced the book of Revelation and told marchers as Christians “the state has no jurisdiction over any of us.” He then vowed Biden would be removed “one way or another.”
Backing up his threats was Stewart Rhodes, founder of the militia group the Oath Keepers. The Oath Keepers, along with other paramilitary groups including the Proud Boys, also have provided “security” for Feucht’s “Let Us Worship” protests.
The Jericho March’s combination of religion, politics and militarism in an open and unapologetic way served as a template for the United for Israel march at Columbia.
According to Johnson, on the afternoon of the march, “The cops showed up and said, ‘Do you have a permit for this rally?’ I said ‘No, I don’t, but I have a First Amendment right to rally and gather in the streets for the purpose and context of worship.”
“With Johnson armed with a megaphone, and Metaxas carrying his Bonhoeffer poster, they marched through the streets of New York City followed by a hundred protesters waving Israeli flags.”
A few dozen people gathered to hear Feucht lead worship before the police pulled the plug on the generator powering the band’s keyboard and turned off the speakers. Undeterred, Feucht picked up his acoustic guitar. With Johnson armed with a megaphone, and Metaxas carrying his Bonhoeffer poster, they marched through the streets of New York City followed by a hundred protesters waving Israeli flags.
As they marched, the protesters encountered other activist groups, both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel. Their singing, shouting and shofar blowing did little to bring “revival” to the area surrounding the downtown campus. Instead, they stirred up animosity between the groups as police officers struggled to keep the various contingents apart.
Johnson claims 4,500 demonstrators eventually joined the march, while other reports say the attendance was only a few hundred.
The United for Israel march ended at the gates of the Columbia University campus, where Feucht spoke to his supporters and others gathered there.
“We represent millions of Americans who are fed up with antisemitism on our university campuses,” he said. “We are standing with Israel. We are standing with our Jewish brothers and sisters, and we declare today that the gates of Columbia shall not prevail. The gates of hell shall not prevail.”
“Jesus was a Jew and, if you love Jesus, you stand with every Jew, just as Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood with the Jews of his time,” Metaxas said to the crowd. “We speak the love of God over our enemies, and we speak the name of Jesus over this city.”
Johnson stood nearby holding a poster that read “Hamas Universities.” On it were the names of schools where other pro-Palestinian demonstrations have occurred, arranged in the shape of a swastika: an indication that the Jewish students and faculty the trio claim they were there to support were not necessarily their target audience.
Social media post showing Russell Johnson climbing the gate at Columbia University (Via Facebook)
Johnson then climbed on the university gates with a hybrid American and Israeli flag. Feucht led the crowd in singing the chorus to “10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord),” and the national anthems of Israel and America. Then the two, along with Metaxas, exited the scene with security personnel, leaving behind a large group of protesters who climbed on the school’s gates and shouted insults at a row of Columbia students who stood quietly holding signs supporting Palestine.
While some student demonstrations on college campuses have crossed the line from free speech into hate speech, at this particular demonstration it was those rallying outside the university’s gates who were fanning tension into conflict. It’s unclear if they were following Feucht’s march, or if they were part of another pro-Israel demonstration. Either way, the resulting chaos is par for the course for these “worship protests,” which lack the discipline required for acts of civil disobedience and often attract outside agitators looking for a fight. The chaos left in the wake of these marches also provides proof for Feucht’s followers that the country is on the brink of collapse.
“The chaos left in the wake of these marches also provides proof for Feucht’s followers that the country is on the brink of collapse.”
For charismatic Christians like Feucht, Johnson and Metaxas, the chaos also is evidence of an even greater battle taking place in the spiritual realm. Charisma, the far-right Christian media outlet, promoted the United for Israel march under the label “spiritual warfare.”
The event’s ties to the current war in Gaza only heighten its significance.
“We are living in the last days, these are the end times,” Feucht said. “And our response is important to the Lord. Our response is important to the future of our children, is important to the future of America. What kind of country do we want to live in in the last days?”
While 63% of all American Christians believe the “return” of the Jewish people to Israel has “prophetic resonances,” a certain segment of Christianity starts spewing “end times” prophecies any time there is a conflict in the Middle East. In such dispensationalist scenarios, the Jewish return to the Holy Land is a utilitarian trigger for Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. The Jews themselves are either condemned or forced to convert to Christianity.
When asked at the United for Israel march what happens to the Jews during the end times, Feucht refused to answer.
Feucht’s father worked for Pat Robertson, whose 1991 book, The New World Order, posited that the Gulf War was a harbinger for a demonic spirit that would “unleash a world horror” killing 2 billion people. Robertson also said homosexuals wanted to destroy all Christians and Democrats would soon be “putting Christians like you and me in concentration camps.” That is, unless viewers donated $20 a month to CBN.
Participants in the “Stand with Israel” tour meet the press in Los Angeles May 8. (Photo via Facebook)
The New World Order could have been laughable. But Republicans of that era needed Robertson’s Christian Coalition to swing elections their way and went along with his twisted theology and conspiracy theories to get it. Trump and MAGA Republicans have shown they, too, are willing to embrace the tenets of extremist charismatic Christianity in exchange for votes.
“We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals,” Trump said in a 2020 campaign speech.
What’s most alarming about this current surge toward theocratic authoritarianism is that it is showing signs of being able to persist without Donald Trump at the helm. The United for Israel rally revealed any cause can be recast as an epic struggle between good and evil, especially when set against the backdrop of end-times prophesy. If what is seen is just the surface of a supernatural struggle, then only “true Christians” are equipped to identify and resist the threat.
With this mindset, seeking Christian control of the nation’s governance isn’t just a nicety, it’s a necessity — one that requires Christian militantism to enforce it.
“Christian nationalism is just the devil’s term for actual Christians,” Metaxas said. “We are in a war, and if Christians do not wake up in this hour, it is over and we will be to blame. We dare to say Jesus defeated death on the Cross. If you actually believe that, you’re going to live differently, you’re going to live fearlessly and you’re not going to drink the Kool-Aid, the fake gospel that we’re supposed to be nice.”
It’s easy for Metaxas, Johnson and Feucht to encourage followers not to “be nice” from their social media perches as they exit worship protests surrounded by security. But what about the followers they leave behind, a combustible mix of paramilitary groups, politicians and Pentecostal prayer warriors convinced the fate of the world hangs in the balance?
Kristen Thomason is a freelance writer with a background in media studies and production. She has worked with national and international religious organizations and for public television. Currently based in Scotland, she has organized worship arts at churches in Metro D.C. and Toronto. In addition to writing for Baptist News Global, Kristen blogs on matters of faith and social justice at viaexmachina.com.
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