As I write this, Sean Feucht is a little under an hour away from taking the stage at Greg Locke’s church east of Nashville for one of his “Let Us Worship” concerts. Feucht would like us to believe he is leading a protest against restrictions on churches imposed in the wake of the COVID pandemic. But it has been amply established not just beyond reasonable doubt, but beyond ALL doubt, that this premise is a complete fraud.
For one, Feucht is holding this concert at a church whose so-called pastor is not only spreading COVID disinformation despite knowing one of his parishoners died of COVID, but has actually BANNED masks from his church and is actively discouraging people from getting vaccinated. It is inconceivable that Feucht isn’t aware of this.
It is equally inconceivable that Feucht doesn’t know that he is coming to a metro area where one of his previous events has been definitively linked to over 250 COVID cases. And that same metro area is gasping under the weight of the Delta variant, with a number of major hospitals in the Nashville area running dangerously short on beds.
Feucht declares on his Website that he is holding “Let Us Worship” events as an outlet for “the Church to rise up with one voice and tell our government leaders and the rulers of big tech that we refuse to be silenced!” But if he is holding this event at a church that is showing willful and reckless disregard for COVID safety measures, and doing so in a city where one of his events caused a superspreader, then that claim is 100 percent fraudulent.
So what’s his game plan? Well, as a left-leaning Pentecostal/charismatic Christian, I suspect that he is going to claim that people are being saved and touched by the Holy Spirit. Sure enough, in a video he posted to Instagram, he crowed about how a woman who attended a “Let Us Worship” event in Chattanooga was healed of a brain tumor.
To that, I have only one thing to ask—“But at what cost?” At risk of people getting horribly sick, or potentially passing this to people who could get horribly sick? At risk of people getting debilitating complications?
More and more, Feucht sounds a lot like John Allen Chau, the misguided kid who ventured to North Sentinel Island off the coast of India in hopes of converting the Sentinelese, one of the last uncontacted peoples in the world. The Sentinelese, for those who don’t remember, have been isolated from the outside world for 60,000 years. Due to that isolation, they have no genetic immunity; even something as mundane as a cold could kill them. That’s a big reason that the Indian government doesn’t allow anyone to come within five nautical miles of the island. Chau knew this, and went anyway. The islanders killed Chau on his third attempt to contact him and buried him in the island sand; the Indian government decided it was far too dangerous to recover his body.
What Feucht is doing is no different. By holding this event at a church that has actually banned mask-wearing, and in an area that is in the midst of one of the worst COVID outbreaks in the country, he can no longer claim that this is civil disobedience for Jesus. This is an act of willful and reckless disregard for public health and public safety.
Feucht isn’t quite done yet. Tomorrow night, he’s holding a “Let Us Worship” concert at Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia—the megachurch pastored by evangelist Jentezen Franklin. My wife lived in the area when I met her, and I have a lot of friends there—so naturally, this has me spooked.
If—God forbid—a serious COVID case or a death can be tied to one of these gatherings, by all rights Feucht should be sued into poverty. Hell, I hope some prosecutor in the area has the cojones to bring criminal charges against him and Locke or Franklin. The strongest protections afforded under the First Amendment do not and should not be carte blanche for this kind of disregard for public safety.
Let it be said in no uncertain terms—Sean Feucht is killing people.