A tale of two rallies on the same day in North Carolina

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 16, 2024.

The juxtaposition of experiencing the “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour followed by the “Faith and Democracy” tour in North Carolina on Sunday was a contrast in theology and politics that demonstrates the fracturing of American Christianity unlike any pairing of events in a single day I’ve witnessed.

Sean Feucht’s “Kingdom to the Capitol” worship tour evolved out of his worship protests of COVID lockdowns in 2020, when he targeted locations where Black Lives Matter protests were happening. Since then, he has staged worship events in front of state capitol buildings, as well as annual gatherings at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The event I attended on Sunday was in Raleigh, N.C., his 49th state capitol event of the current tour.

After Feucht’s event wrapped up, I drove from Raleigh to Greensboro for the “Faith and Democracy” tour, which is being organized by Diana Butler Bass, Jemar Tisby, Kristin Du Mez and Robert P. Jones. While the four of them have known each other for years, they recently started a weekly Substack and podcast together called “The Convocation.” So they decided to host a couple of in-person events as the 2024 election nears.

In an interview with BNG, Du Mez said: “When I travel around the country, I love meeting people at events. But so many people feel alone, isolated. Doing this work publicly has its downsides, but one benefit is that we are connected to others doing the work. This is so important. One of our goals is to work to connect people with each other in their local communities. There are so many incredible people doing incredible things. We need to find ways to connect these people to each other. I don’t think we’ve cracked this code yet, but this tour is one attempt to do just that.”

Their event Sunday was hosted by First Baptist Church of Greensboro. Unfortunately, Jemar Tisby was not able to be present. In addition to the scholars, they also had music by Sam Ashworth, Taylor Leonhardt, Rissi Palmer and Tommy Sims.

They have another event planned for October 20 at Dayspring United Methodist Church in Tempe, Ariz., with music from Leonhardt, Sims and Fernando Ortega.

While both the “Kingdom to the Capitol” and the “Faith and Democracy” tours are organized by Christians who say they want to faithfully engage theology and politics, my experience at each of them could not have been more different.

Robert P. Jones, Kristin Du Mez and Diana Butler Bass

The Johnson Amendment

As I drove up I-85 to Feucht’s event, I listened to his latest podcast episode, which was a conversation with Mark Driscoll, the pastor who was ousted for abusing his church in Seattle only to start another church in Scottsdale, Ariz.

During their conversation, Feucht called the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits non-profit organizations from campaigning for a politician, a “sham” and “fake” and said, “They don’t enforce it.”

Driscoll added, “I’m a Christian, conservative Republican, in that order. And so I’ll be voting for the Republican nominee. I mean, there you go. And what’s going to happen to me now is nothing because the Johnson Amendment, you know, it’s never been applied and it’s never been tested.”

It doesn’t seem to dawn on either of them that perhaps this lack of enforcement — which is true — is a sign of Christian privilege in the United States.

Sean Feucht

The two men went on to complain about Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock and said, “As long as it’s the Black church … nobody has any problems.”

According to Driscoll, “If you’re Black or liberal, that’s not a problem. If you’re conservative, that is a problem. … Not that I even care about the Johnson Amendment.”

Feucht said he intentionally mixes worship and politics at his events. “We need to start blending these areas together because we believe all this crap of the Johnson Amendment, the separation of church and state, which was meant to protect the church from the state, not the other way around.”

So it was interesting later that evening when Jones opened the “Faith and Democracy” tour by saying: “One quick disclaimer. We are in a church. And we are having a nonpartisan conversation tonight. We want to love what it means to have separation of church and state, obey those democratic norms in this space. And that’s a bigger conversation we need to have far beyond the next few weeks. It’s a much longer term conversation for us to have.”

After the event, Du Mez and Bass also mentioned to me their careful attention to follow the Johnson Amendment throughout the evening’s conversation.

Shouting vs. listening

One of the most glaring differences between the two events was simply the volume.

The “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour had a full band with a very large professional sound system. I literally felt the bass drum pulsing through my body for nearly three hours straight.

Feucht yelled, “This is not a concert! This is not a nice CCM worship event! We have come to wage war in the Spirit! We have come to shift an atmosphere!”

To shift the atmosphere, he declared, “We’re going to release a sustained shout for three minutes!” And then the entire gathering began screaming and blowing shofars.

One of Feucht’s favorite songs to sing at these events is “I Raise a Hallelujah,” in which the worshipers say they’re going to sing “louder and louder,” that their praises will “roar,” and that they’re going to sing louder than the unbelief of their enemies. Originally, the song was written as a response a child who was facing a life-threatening illness. But at Feucht’s worship events, the song carries a more political vibe.

My ears were still ringing when I walked into the quiet sanctuary of First Baptist Church in Greensboro. Instead of jumping, dancing, screaming, falling down and waving flags, everyone was sitting still and perfectly quiet. And there wasn’t a flag in sight.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.