Local Faith Leaders React to Mayor Woodward Attending Controversial Worship Event

Local Faith Leaders React to Mayor Woodward Attending Controversial Worship Event

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News Story by Cassy Benefield | FāVS News

Local faith leaders recently shared their opinions about Mayor Nadine Woodward appearing onstage to pray with controversial pastor Matt Shea and self-identified Christian nationalist Sean Feucht at a “Let Us Worship” event.

During the course of the gathering, which took place Sunday night, local video was shot by Joseph Peterson and posted on X (formerly Twitter) of Shea calling local politicians up to the stage to receive prayer.

Spokane City Council District 3 candidate Earl Moore and Spokane Valley City Council District 2 candidate Jessica Yaeger joined Shea on stage at the Podium, along with Natalie Poulson, a former candidate in the 2022 race for Washington State legislature. Yaeger is also the Spokane chair to Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group labeled “extremist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“We pray a blessing over the leaders you have chosen for this time,” Shea said. “That you would give them your wisdom. That you would give them supernatural love, Lord. That you would give them supernatural discernment. That you would increase their faith. … Give them courage — your courage — to stand on the foundation — the rock — of Jesus Christ. Give them — right now, Lord — the unwavering ability to speak the truth into the darkness and no matter what anybody says around them, they will glory and honor and praise you in every single thing they do.”

This prayer, according to RANGE, came about four years after Woodward separated herself from what she called Shea’s “’extreme rhetoric and ideology.’”

Shea is well-known in the region because of his connections to and participation in domestic terrorism, advocating the creation of a new state called Liberty and his “Biblical Basis for War” manifesto.

Community reaction to the video and its optics that include Woodward has been swift on social media and in local news outlets. Now local faith leaders are adding their voices.

Much of these reactions come after Woodward’s statement about her participation in the event Monday morning.

“I am deeply disturbed that Matt Shea chose to politicize a gathering of thousands of citizens who joined together yesterday to pray for fire victims and first responders,” Woodward said in her statement. “I attended the event with one purpose only and that was to join with fellow citizens to begin the healing process.”

Several hours after that statement, Mark Finney, lead pastor of Emmaus and executive director of Thrive International, reacted to seeing Woodward onstage at the event on his Facebook page.

“This is not ok. I’m not commenting about who anyone should vote for. I’m not saying the mayor is a bad person (I’ve had a number of great personal interactions with her just in this last year),” Finney said. “I’m saying that when community leaders publicly fraternize with those who espouse hatred, racism, and violence, it validates toxic ideologies and makes them seem ‘normal’ to the watching world.”

He continued, “As a follower of Jesus and a Christian pastor I unequivocally condemn all forms of white nationalism. There is absolutely nothing ‘Christian’ about it.”

Shea had this to say in response to Woodward’s comment, which he posted to X.

“This is an annual event planned months ago to worship Jesus. letusworship.us It wasn’t for ‘fire victims.’ She was invited and she accepted BEFORE the fires started on Friday,” Shea said. “However, we of course wanted to pray last night for all those who have lost everything and be there for them and also pray for our leaders.  Praying for leaders, especially during a crisis, isn’t political it is Biblical. She is the one that politicized what everyone knows was a worship event. We are praying for Nadine.”

On Tuesday, Jim CastroLang, Finney’s co-worker as the operations administrator of Thrive International and an ordained United Church of Christ pastor, responded that Shea’s reaction reveals the truth.

“This is a shameful situation. The Mayor needs to stand before the public with humility and vulnerability or we can never believe a word she says again,” CastroLang said on his Facebook page. “This is more than a mistake on her part. This shows a level of sympathy with white Christian nationalism. Time to repent!”

Liv Larson Andrews, pastor of Salem Lutheran Church, was not only upset about seeing Woodward with Shea, but that the mayor would be at a Feucht worship event, especially because of his anti-government and anti-COVID restrictions worship protests during the pandemic.

“The Shea encounter is upsetting on its own, but the fact that Woodward opts to be present at a Feuct (sic) rally makes me, as a Spokane pastor who takes COVID seriously and worked hard to keep my parish safe, feel undermined and unsupported by my mayor,” Larson Andrews said on her Facebook page today.

Not all faith leaders shared their voices via social media, however.

One conservative evangelical pastor agreed to speak with FāVS News on the record and bring his perspective to the conversations around Woodward participating in “Let Us Worship.”

“I am not in the business of saying who’s telling the truth here,” said Mosiac Spokane senior pastor John Repsold in relation to the she said, he said between Woodward and Shea.

He said public officials can’t always know in advance or control who’s on the stage and who’s doing what.

“Suppose she says, ‘No, I’m not going to accept this prayer today.’ Or she doesn’t go to the event, or she’s gracious enough to say, ‘All right, I don’t have to agree 100% with what everybody on stage has said or done in their history,’” Repsold said.

“So that’s the problem I see. It’s like, this is kind of a no win. This is the life, as far as I can understand, of public officials,” Repsold continued. “You show up at a lot of events to which you don’t agree with a lot of the people who are holding an event. I don’t know. But I’m not a public official.”

As a leader in a church that serves people in homelessness, poverty, relational poverty, mental health distress, drug addiction and recovery and more, Repsold finds himself caring about political issues. However, he makes a distinction that he is to be in the business of building the Kingdom of God not a political kingdom.

“My more liberal friends have one definition of Christian nationalism and my more conservative friends have a different definition of Christian nationalism, but ne’er do the two talk,” Repsold said. “I’d like to see more people sit down at the table together and say, ‘Well, what do you really mean by this? And here’s why I have trouble with that.’ But instead, we just seem to lob grenades at the other side.”

“And that’s not going to end well,” he continued. “We’ve seen the history of that in other countries, and that’s a very dark ending.”