After wildfires erupted in Los Angeles County earlier this year, a team from the Department of Housing and Urban Development descended on the wreckage. Led by HUD Secretary Scott Turner, the entourage walked through the rubble in Altadena, reassuring victims that the Trump administration had their back. At Turner’s request, a Christian-nationalist musician named Sean Feucht tagged along. “I can’t overemphasize how amazing this opportunity is,” Feucht had posted on Instagram the day before. “I’m bringing my guitar. We’re going to worship. We’re going to pray.”
Feucht has recently become a MAGA superstar. He tours the country holding rallies that blend upbeat Christian-rock songs with sermons that tie in his right-wing political views. Between praising President Donald Trump as God’s chosen one and suggesting that abortion supporters are “demons,” Feucht has repeatedly advocated for the fusion of Church and state. During a performance in front of the Wisconsin statehouse in 2023, Feucht paused after a song to make a proclamation: “Yeah, we want God in control of government,” he said. “We want God writing the laws of the land.” He has held rallies at all 50 state capitols, spreading similar theocratic messages.
Feucht did not respond to multiple requests for comment. At times, he has denied being a Christian nationalist, but it can be hard to take that perspective seriously. Last year, he overtly embraced the term at a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “That’s why we get called, Well, you’re Christian nationalists. You want the kingdom to be the government? Yes! You want God to come and overtake the government? Yes! You want Christians to be the only ones? Yes, we do,” Feucht said. “We want God to be in control of everything,” he continued. “We want believers to be the ones writing the laws.”
Feucht has the ear of many top Republicans. After he held a prayer gathering on the National Mall a week before the 2024 presidential election, Trump personally congratulated him for “the incredible job” he was doing defending “religious liberty.” Feucht then attended Trump’s inauguration prayer service at the National Cathedral in January, where he embraced Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The very next week, he posted that House Speaker Mike Johnson had invited him to hold a worship event in the Capitol. Then, in April, Feucht performed at the White House.
Given his rallies and political connections, Feucht is “maybe the most effective evangelical figure on the far right,” Matthew D. Taylor, the senior Christian scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, told me. He is a big reason Christian nationalism has more purchase now than at any other point in recent history. According to a February poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, a majority of Republicans support or sympathize with Christian nationalism. They agreed with a variety of statements provided by PRRI, such as “If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.” Last month, the Appeal to Heaven flag—a symbol popular among Christian nationalists—was spotted flying above a D.C. government building. Feucht is pushing to bring religion and government into even closer alignment.
Feucht comes from a subset of evangelical Christianity known as the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. As my colleague Stephanie McCrummen has written, “The movement has never been about policies or changes to the law; it’s always been about the larger goal of dismantling the institutions of secular government to clear the way for the Kingdom. It is about God’s total victory.” Many NAR adherents believe in the “seven-mountain mandate,” a framework that seeks to go beyond ending the separation between Church and state. The goal is to eventually control the “seven mountains” of contemporary culture: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government. Feucht has endorsed the fundamental concept. “Why shouldn’t we be the ones leading the way in all spheres of society?” he said in a 2022 sermon. In a conversation that same year, Feucht referenced his desire for Christian representation in “the seven spheres of society.”
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NAR has several high-profile leaders, but Feucht has been especially adept at drawing outside attention to the movement’s goals. After rising to prominence during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic by throwing Christian-rock concerts in violation of lockdown orders, Feucht has built a massive audience of devotees. His constant stream of worship events across the country makes Christian nationalism more accessible for the religious masses, as does his prolific social-media presence (he has half a million followers between Instagram and X). Feucht is connected to just about every faction of the modern right, even the grassroots fringe: On one occasion, he enlisted a member of the Proud Boys, the sometimes-violent far-right group, as part of his security detail. (Feucht later claimed that he wasn’t familiar with the group.)
With Feucht’s help, a version of the seven-mountain mandate is coming true. The Trump administration is cracking down on “anti-Christian bias” in the federal government, and the president has hired a number of advisers who are linked to Christian nationalism. Under pressure from parents and lawmakers, schools have banned lesson plans and library books related to LGBTQ themes. Feucht is not single-handedly responsible for these wins for Christian nationalists, but his influence is undeniable. Feucht and Hegseth discussed holding a prayer service inside the Pentagon months before the secretary of defense actually did it. Or consider Charlie Kirk, the MAGA power broker who helped run the Trump campaign’s youth-vote operation, and then vetted potential White House hires. In 2020, Feucht unsuccessfully ran for Congress and was endorsed by Kirk. Within a week of the endorsement, Kirk invoked the seven-mountain mandate at CPAC, the conservative conference. With Trump, he said, “finally we have a president that understands the seven mountains of cultural influence.”
But not everything has been going well for Feucht. Last month, six staffers and volunteers who worked for Feucht published a long and detailed report accusing him of engaging in financial malfeasance. Feucht’s former employees claim that he withheld promised expense reimbursements from ministry volunteers, engaged in donor and payroll fraud, and embezzled nonprofit funds for personal use. The allegations track with earlier reporting by Rolling Stone and Ministry Watch, the nonprofit Christian watchdog. Both have reported on opaque financial dealings involving his nonprofits. Citing a lack of transparency and efficiency, Ministry Watch currently gives Sean Feucht Ministries a “Donor Confidence Score” of 19 out of 100, and encourages potential donors to “withhold giving” to the organization.
Feucht hasn’t been charged with any crimes stemming from the allegations, and has denied wrongdoing. “None of those allegations are true,” Feucht said in a video he recently posted to YouTube. “We’re in great standing with the IRS. We’re in great standing with our accountants.” He later added, “We are taking ground for Jesus, and we are not apologizing for that.” It’s possible Feucht’s audience will take him at his word. The NAR movement is insular and unwavering in its worldview: Allegations are evidence of persecution for success. Still, a large part of Feucht’s power is derived from his donors. At some point, some people might get fed up with giving him money. “He could lose traction at the follower level,” Taylor said.
So far, that seems unlikely. Scandals can take down people, but ideas are more resilient. Kirk has continued to advocate for Christian-nationalist positions; last year, he argued that “the separation of Church and state is nowhere in the Constitution.” (It is, in fact, in the Constitution—right there in the First Amendment.) Even the formerly staunchly secular world of tech is becoming more open to Christian nationalism. In October, Elon Musk held a town hall at Feucht’s former church in Pennsylvania, and has called himself a “cultural Christian.” Marc Andreessen and other investors have backed a tech enclave in rural Kentucky closely affiliated with Christian nationalists. Regardless of what happens to Feucht, many of the world’s most powerful people seem to be inching closer to what he wants.
