Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward appeared at an event linked to Matt Shea and religious extremists who have made inroads in the Inland Northwest.
“We welllllcome you, Holy Spirit!” called out Sabo, a pastor at Olympia’s Woodland Church. Sabo invited the Holy Spirit to enter the Capitol. She commanded the crowd to pray. They did. She spoke in tongues. Some in the audience joined her. Two large speaker arrays projected Sabo’s unknown language more than three football fields across the Capitol campus.
Thousands of hands reached toward the sky. Some of those hands held shofars – an ancient instrument made from an animal horn.
In the U.S., the shofar has become a symbol of political resistance for some evangelical Christians, and was blown by rioters in the January 6 storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The use of the shofar by evangelicals is controversial and considered cultural appropriation.
Kingdom to the Capitol
This was the 22nd stop on the 2023-2024 Kingdom to the Capitol (K2C) tour.
Christian nationalism has simmered in the American psyche for decades, but in the last 15 years it has boiled over with increasing frequency into the public square, energized by growing resistance to cultural liberalism. Keystone events like the election of the nation’s first Black president, the presidency of Donald Trump and pandemic shutdowns have fueled the growing movement. Though many Christian nationalists see that phrase as derogatory, some embrace it and agree its definition is apt: They want the Christian God in control of government.
For some Christian nationalists, the Inland Northwest is even more than a nexus. It is the promised land. A place for believers to gather and eventually rule, whether the ultimate name for that holy country is the Unstoppable Kingdom, the State of Liberty or the American Redoubt.
The movement’s growth has been so significant that Christian nationalism has moved from a supporting actor on the broad right to a star of the show, with large national right-wing organizations like Turning Point USA making a concerted effort to attract the faithful to a brand that had previously focused on college-campus culture wars.