COVID-19 Is Fueling A New Jesus Movement
Worshippers in Kansas City, Missouri attending a Let Us Worship event led by Sean Feucht. Photo from Feucht’s Instagram.
On a recent Friday evening, 7,000 people gathered in downtown Fort Worth’s Trinity Park overlooking the river to sing to Jesus and experience what they’ve heard is a revival sweeping the nation during months of civil unrest and pandemic-related restrictions.
Some drove hundreds of miles to jump, shout and raise their hands to the guitar strumming by evangelical worship leader Sean Feucht, singing lyrics like “up from the ashes, hope will arise/ death is defeated, the king will arise!” and “this is how I fight my battles/ it may look like I’m surrounded/ but I’m surrounded by You [God].” Few people wore masks, but those in the back of the crowd sat grouped on picnic blankets and lawn chairs or stood socially distanced. The music was upbeat and joyful. Jumping and smiling was encouraged. At the end, those who decided to come forward and accept an invitation to know Jesus were dunked in a tank full of water behind plexiglass.
In some cities like Seattle that did not permit his team to host an outdoor gathering, Feucht has called the event a “worship protest” to resist restrictions on religious services and emphasize that Black Lives Matter protests have circumvented bans on large gatherings. He even gathered Christians on the block where George Floyd died.
“Where there was riot God brought revival!” Feucht shouted from a makeshift platform, brushing aside his long blonde curls that evoke a trendy, California surfer vibe. “I believe the enemy [the devil] overplayed his hand and now the church across America is rising up.”
Feucht, associated with the charismatic non-denominational megachurch Bethel in California known globally for exporting its worship music, has broadcast worship, claims of revival and political support for President Donald Trump on a national tour of dozens of cities. Although Feucht is the most visible leader, several charismatic churches and ministries have organized similar but disconnected outdoor gatherings around the country that emphasize preaching the gospel (the Bible’s main message of hope that Jesus can save souls) and praying for unity during a time of political polarization, performing baptisms and prophesying a national revival of souls to Christianity they say is already taking place. They believe this year of hardships is creating an opportunity for ministry, to bring healing and peace.
This week Feucht’s events are culminating with three days of prayer, fasting, street ministry and worship in Washington, D.C., ending on Oct. 25. More than 15,000 people are expected to attend, most from out of town. Their aims are to see people profess faith in Jesus, assert their religious freedom rights during the pandemic, fight Big Tech censorship and end abortion. The next morning after their prayers, the Senate will vote on Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Searching Facebook for the term “Let Us Worship,” Feucht’s movement, came with a warning against QAnon this week and the page can’t be found. Facebook didn’t answer requests for comment as of publication time.
“The only conspiracy we are guilty of subscribing to is the one spelled out in the Gospels where God conspired to send His Son to earth to die on a cross to be raised from the dead to ascend to heaven so that we all might have eternal life through Him,” Feucht said in a statement about the alleged censorship.
He has launched a petition “take a stand against this unlawful censorship and discrimination” and collect other allegations of Big Tech censorship or unfair treatment.
A man kneels during worship at Feucht’s gathering in Fort Worth, Tex. on Oct. 2. Photo by Haeven Gibbons.
Public Worship in a Pandemic
In Greensboro on Oct. 3, more than 500 people marched in a “unity prayer parade” through the downtown area, where young Black college students began the lunch counter sit-in demonstrations in 1960 that spread nationwide and helped change racial segregation. The prayer “warriors” called on “the Spirit of God” to “invade our city to protect, guide and transform our community,” Frank Mickens, minister and founder of FaithFire Worldwide Revival Ministries, told the local news.
“We simply ask believers to pray for revival in America and the world,” Mickens said. “This is an uncommon hour in world history. For the first time, the entire world is seeking relief from the same problem. For the first time, the world is looking for stability from the same shaking of their reality. We believe the Lord is turning the world to Himself in this hour.”
Many have compared the present movement to the Jesus Movement of the sixties and seventies that pushed back on the sexual revolution, drugs and rock n’ roll by creating its own radical hippies-for-Jesus culture. The movement, like the present one, was charismatic and started in California during a time of national polarization and protests for racial equality. The movements also surge around music.
In July, California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom banned singing or chanting indoors for religious services. Many churches were already closed and streaming online. Others met outside. Feucht gathered hundreds on the Golden Gate bridge to sing to Jesus.
“The craziest people showed up there,” he told the crowd in Ft. Worth. “It was just so raw.”
One man who showed up gifted Feucht a 1963 Gibson guitar, saying he was strung out on acid when he met Jesus in the Jesus People Movement and played that guitar to worship him for the first time.
“So I took the ’63 Gibson sunburst up there on the bridge and we started declaring crazy things,” Feucht said. (In charismatic Christian circles, “declaring” things can mean prophesying a “word” or message from God, or it can mean proclaiming something into being that God wills to happen.) “Now is the season to declare crazy things. Never say safe prayers anymore. And I declared a new Jesus People Movement and it’s coming to the nation.”
Sean Feucht wearing some “Let Us Worship” merchandise he sells online. Photo from Feucht’s Instagram.
Feucht is no longer listed as staff at Bethel Church, but he has maintained close relationships. Bethel’s lead pastor Bill Johnson texted Feucht the day after his Golden Gate gathering and gave him a copy of the 1972 LIFE Magazine with a photo spread of the Jesus People in Dallas.
“I flipped through the pages of it and tears began to fall down my face as I saw these wild hippies just going crazy for Jesus, and I said Jesus, I want that in my generation,” Feucht said. “It wasn’t political and it still isn’t political. This is biblical.”
Ann Wolf, 67, told Religion Unplugged at Feucht’s Ft. Worth worship gathering that she remembers the original Jesus Movement and believes it is coming again.
“It was God’s love just coming against a cultural revolution that wasn’t going to bring freedom, it was going to bring bondage,” she said. “This was God’s answer. So that’s why I think that we’re on the cusp of that very thing right now… addictions are up, suicides are up and we’re seeing a culture that’s just immoral now and it’s not sustainable. If you continue to spiral down like that we either lose our culture or we get to return to God out of his mercy.”
It’s hard to imagine today’s hippies – usually associated on the left of the aisle, maybe those mixing Buddhism and Hinduism into non-conformist spiritual practices– falling to their knees for Jesus at a worship rally like Feucht’s. He ran for Congress as a Republican last spring (he lost), and many attending the events don’t wear masks. He has shared the stage with local Black pastors to promote racial reconciliation, but some of Feucht’s critics have stopped identifying as evangelical after attending his events and accuse him of Christian nationalism and insensitivity to the Black Lives Matter protesters. (He frequently talks about bringing revival to the “riots.”)
READ: What is Christian Nationalism?
Still, reinvigorating the faith of those who’ve lost interest in church, those sick of Zoom church, or those with right-wing inclinations, is still a large sea to fish from. A recent Pew study found only 44% of Republicans and 29% of Democrats attend weekly religious services.
Increasing decline of Christianity in the U.S.
By May, only three months into the pandemic, half of practicing Christian Millennials (23-39 years old) had already stopped participating in church online, compared to 35% of Gen X and 26% of Boomers, according to the evangelical polling firm Barna.
“We know that a majority of young people who grow up in the church will either walk away from their faith or walk away from the church when becoming young adults, so it’s a huge loss of faith problem,” said David Kinnaman, president of Barna, in a recent video released with their research.
In the video, Kinnaman posed the question of whether the pandemic and cascading crisis of 2020 will accelerate this loss of faith among young Americans.
“I think it will,” he said. “I actually think we’re going to see an increasing number of people who have lost connectedness with their faith community, with their usual rhythms and practices, that we’re going to actually see an increasing number in the years to come. The long-term impact is even more fallout from that.”
Twenty-two percent of today’s 18-29-year-olds who grew up as Christians have lost their faith entirely. That percentage grew from 11% a decade ago. They have not just stopped coming to church. They don’t identify as Christians anymore.
Barna considers 30% of the same group today “lapsed Christians” who still identify with the faith but don’t attend church, 38% habitual church goers who have meaningful relationships at church and 10% “resilient disciples” who are the most devoted to their spiritual practices and beliefs. The habitual church goers are the ones who “have their hand on the door” and are disconnecting during the pandemic, said Mark Matlock, Director of Insights at Barna.
There could be many reasons why Millennials are disengaging from church at higher rates this year. Unlike Gen Z still in high school and college, Millennials are more likely to have young kids at home that interrupt live-streamed church. They’re also more likely to resist a passive consumption church experience rather than the active participation they’re used to.
“We have a lot of Millennials tell us they don’t want to just sit on the couch and fade away, they want to be active,” Matlock said.
A Saturate OC gathering in July. Photo by Saturate OC.
The new Jesus Movement fueled by religious freedom
Before Feucht began his national tour, he helped lead worship in July at a smaller event in Orange County organized by the self-described Jesus Movement revival ministry Saturate OC.
Parker Green, the co-founder of Saturate OC and a pastor trained by Hillsong Church, told Religion Unplugged his handful of volunteers “just turned up at a beach with a megaphone,” admitting it had kind of a punk rock, resistance feel during a state ban on singing. Hillsong is a charismatic megachurch based in Sydney, Australia that’s known for producing contemporary worship music and drawing in young people and high-profile celebrities like Justin Bieber.
There was “just something different in the air, something radically different,” he said, pointing to the thousands of baptisms they streamed online this summer and emotional healing from loneliness and depression.
“We’ve seen people drop drug addiction, we’ve seen people break free from depression and suicide and actually seek help, find help, find community,” Green told Religion Unplugged. “We’ve seen lots of people repent from things like pornography, sexual sin, get baptized, turn around from it and break bad habits off their life.”
While Saturate OC had planned pre-pandemic to launch revival events, they didn’t expect such a big turnout-- some events drew nearly 2,000 people. With the singing ban and COVID-19 restrictions in place, and as word got out through Instagram accounts and local TV channels, several churches began organizing their own outdoor gatherings. Californians were flocking to beaches to escape their indoor confinements and reconnect with friends.
READ: With Closed Churches, Open Beaches, California Surfer Ministry Hits The Waves
Huntington Beach in particular, where Saturate OC began their worship gatherings, became a symbol of resistance to mask mandates this summer. Orange County is considered a tiny Bible belt in Southern California and elects more conservative, Republican local leaders than its neighbors.
Green said he tried to pull away from political polarization by not requiring their attendees to wear masks, because some see the mask-wearing as a liberal act or virtue-signaling. He estimates a few hundred people stopped coming after that announcement. Although they provided hand sanitizer and free masks, many chose not to wear them.
Outdoor worship was allowed only with masks and social distancing as well as a permit. On one Friday, electronic signs reading “CANCELED SATURATE OC” popped up along the highway, but those who RSVPed for the events knew by automatic messages to their phones which pier along the beach would welcome them to worship. Police from Huntington Beach wrote Green a misdemeanor in July, his first, for promoting religious gatherings without a permit, a potential fine of $1,000. Green believes the government was treating religious gatherings differently than the protests when the county’s public health department advised Saturate OC to keep gatherings under 100 people.
“From a religious liberty standpoint, for me it’s far scarier for there to be precedent to restrict religious liberty for a virus that has less than a one percent mortality rate in California,” Green said.
So far Orange County, about 3.2 million people, has seen about 1,400 deaths and 60,000 COVID-19 cases.
Green’s view falls into line with megachurch pastor John MacArthur, whose Grace Community Church resumed indoor services with about 3,000 people this summer, openly defying the state’s pandemic restrictions. Los Angeles County filed a lawsuit seeking compliance, and the next hearing in the legal battle is on Nov. 13. In the meantime, the church continues to meet in defiance of a judge’s order, and some members have tested positive for the coronavirus, though it’s not clear if the virus spread at the church meetings yet.
Feucht also frequently posts on social media about what he sees as an overblown threat of COVID-19 hamstringing people of faith. “But tHE CHuRCh woRShipPINg iS A heALTh haZARd !!!!!” he wrote on Instagram in mocking type, with a photo of thousands marching in the Women’s March in D.C. last weekend. “Unconstitutional and blatant bias against Christians,” Gia Chacon, an influencer and advocate for persecuted Christians around the world, commented. “It’s time for the church to rise up!”
Saturate OC is heading to Santa Cruz and San Francisco to host revival events and street evangelism Oct. 27- Nov. 4.
Listen to the Religion Unplugged podcast for the full interview with Parker Green.
Taking the movement to the White House
On Oct. 22, Feucht led prayer for the country’s elected officials, prayers for hope and restoration of families and communities, and worship in front of the White House. His campaign called Hold The Line asked its 69,000 followers on Instagram (Feucht’s personal account has 216,000 followers) to bring signs that read “Let Us Worship” and “Revival or Bust” to the National Mall on Sunday, Oct. 25. The worshippers held a block party to worship on the street in D.C.’s Georgetown area Friday night, are hosting evangelism on Saturday and will gather thousands for prayer on the steps of the Supreme Court on Sunday morning and the Lincoln Memorial in the afternoon.
Feucht invited President Trump to the prayer events and posted a letter from the White House signed by Trump on Oct. 1. It’s not yet clear if Trump will attend the events. The president has recently started identifying as a non-denominational Christian rather than Presbyterian, according to a written exchange with Religion News Service given to Trump by Paula White, a controversial charismatic televangelist associated with the prosperity gospel and a faith advisor to the president.
On Oct. 2, Vice President Mike Pence talked about the need for revival in the U.S. to an audience in Iowa, attributing the nation’s founding, the abolition of slavery and the Civil Rights movement to “people of faith.”
“Even a casual study of the history of this nation shows the people of faith have made the difference throughout our country’s history from the very founding of the nation… the preachers of revival in our great awakenings, the way that the pulpits of America thundered for abolition of slavery and led the Civil Rights Movement,” Pence said. “It has been people of faith, I believe with all of my heart, who have led us toward a more perfect union.”
A key theme of the revival gatherings is the idea that America is at a critical time in history. Green said he doesn’t think American Christianity will survive “the idea of COVID-19”; the church has to evolve or it will keep declining. On Wednesday, Feucht posted “Quite the day of resistance, warfare and battle” - common charismatic words for spiritual work against the devil. He spent Wednesday evening walking the National Mall, “dreaming with God,” he said.
“We’re at such a critical juncture, and we need to call out to God for his help,” tweeted Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, president of the Christian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse and one of the first prominent evangelicals to support Trump to promote the prayer events in D.C. this weekend. “Only through Him [God] can America survive.”
In another tweet shared nearly 5,000 times, Graham asked others to join him on the National Mall Oct. 25 and said, “If we want the blessings of the Lord on our country, then we must humbly seek Him in prayer & repentance, & ask if He might bring healing to the U.S.”
The events will be streamed live on Facebook and YouTube.
After Sunday, Feucht’s tour isn’t over. He will go on to Las Vegas, Phoenix, New Orleans and Los Angeles before 2021.
Haeven Gibbons was a summer 2020 intern at The Media Project and a journalism student at Texas Christian University. She works as a producer for the TCU "News Now" newscast, as a photojournalist for TCU360 and as a writer for IMAGE magazine.
Meagan Clark is the managing editor of Religion Unplugged. Follow her on Twitter @MeaganKay.