Under God: How Christianity permeates Yakima city politics

Under God: How Christianity permeates Yakima city politics

A new conservative majority’s decision to reject a Pride Month proclamation is one example of the increasing influence of evangelical ideals in Central WA.

News story by Mai Hoang & Dominick Bonny | Cascade PBS

When the Yakima City Council was discussing this year’s proposed Pride Month proclamation in late May, Councilman Rick Glenn asked “Why are we acknowledging this?” before the 2-5 vote to reject the proclamation.

Just one year earlier, the Yakima City Council had been far more supportive of the region’s LGBTQ+ community: They voted for a Pride Month proclamation by a similar margin, 5-2.

A lot can change in one year with one election. Just months after the
2023 Pride Month proclamation vote, a conservative majority grabbed control of the Yakima City Council in the November 2023 general election.

The two members — Patricia Byers and Matt Brown — who voted
against the proclamation in 2023 went from being a minority faction to holding the reins of Yakima politics. And the new mayor and deputy mayor expressed their leadership in part by mixing politics with their Christian faith.   

At this point in American political history, separating religion,
politics and Donald Trump is almost impossible for many conservatives. And like storms blowing in from the coast, national political trends and fads impact Yakima just as they do every other small town and city in rural America. 

While those winds may feel like a hurricane to some, Yakima feels a
variety of breezes blowing these days. 

Many residents fall outside both conservative and Christian lines. Over the past decade, a series of voting-rights lawsuits have mobilized and energized Latino voters in the Yakima Valley. Alongside Christian churches, there are worship spaces for the Muslim and Sikh communities. A strong faction of LGBTQ+ residents and allies readily criticized the Council’s decision to reject the Pride Month proclamation.

Despite that current reality, several far-right Christian nationalist
leaders, like Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and worship leader
and Christian singer Sean Feucht, declared victory on the day the
Council rejected the proclamation. They took to the internet and
turned city leaders’ decision into a cause célèbre in right-wing
circles.

Yakima still proud

Weeks after the Council rejected the proclamation, 5,000 people
participated in a series of June events organized by Yakima Pride, a
nonprofit that advocates for the city’s LGBTQ+ community, including
a parade, a family fun fair, a prom and a drag performance at State
Fair Park. 

Kaimu Peneku, secretary of the Yakima Pride board, warned that people in the community are watching what city leaders are doing, and that disrespecting a large group of voters and their allies may not be wise. 

“They can have their own opinions and stance on things, but that
doesn’t come without repercussions,” Peneku said. “Visibility is
key. Take these moments and learn from it. Get out and vote. Put
people in City Council that will stand up for you no matter how small
your voice.”

But Yakima is a city of contrasting cultures. The day after the Yakima
Pride events, thousands gathered in Sozo Sports Complex for a Let Us Worship event organized by Feucht.

During the event, Feucht made calls to “push back” against the
“perversion and darkness” of liberals and the LGBTQ+ community.

Feucht shared that a day earlier he and his band had been performing in Sacramento while that city’s Pride event was taking place a few blocks away. He talked of “naked people” parading through the streets in front of children. 

“It was straight-up Sodom and Gomorrah perversion,” he said.

Feucht praised Yakima, in contrast, for remaining a “family city,”
saluting Yakima Mayor Byers, whom he called to the stage, for voting
to reject the Pride Month proclamation.

“Come on, listen, let’s give it up for the mayor,” he said. “There’s something powerful when the mayor loves Jesus. Trust me, I’ve been to a lot of cities. That’s not the normal case in America.”   

Feucht referenced Spokane, where he held a Let Us Worship event a year ago. The Spokane City Council voted to censure Nadine Woodward for praying with the pastor Matt Shea, a former state representative accused of domestic terrorism, in August 2023 during another one of Feucht’s Let Us Worship events. That led to Feucht suing the city and several Spokane City Council members, claiming he had been negatively impacted by the Council’s actions.

In Yakima, there was little fanfare about Byers’ participation in the event. As women waved flags with phrases like “One Nation Under God” on the periphery of the crowd of more than 3,000 people, Byers, in a flowing floral print blouse and white pants, charged up and grabbed a microphone.

“I declare over Yakima today that this is the day when the knowledge
of the glory of the Lord floods our valley as the waters cover the
seas!” she said. “Come on, Jesus!”

Christians in government

Feucht gained status in far-right and evangelical Christian circles during the pandemic. He founded Let Us Worship to protest COVID-19 public health restrictions in his home state of California. He claimed those rules made it illegal “to sing in church.” His intertwining of faith and politics spread as he prayed over former President Donald Trump in the Oval Office during the first of the two impeachment hearings he faced while in office, and has appeared with other leading right-wing figures including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.

“Feucht has become one of the most influential evangelical voices in
the country in the last few years,” according to Matthew D. Taylor,
an author, religious studies scholar and expert in independent
charismatic Christianity and Christian nationalism with Baltimore’s
Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. He’s been
studying Feucht for years.

Feucht looks to make his mark on the current political cycle with his
latest Let Us Worship tour, focusing on revivals in state capitals.
They aim to wage a “spiritual battle” against “powers and
principalities” ahead of the November elections. The tour is set to
conclude in Washington, D.C., in late October days before the
election. Yakima, not a state capital, was an outlier stop on the
tour.

With his long blond hair and affable, charismatic nature, Feucht
stands out on the Christian right for a number of reasons, not least
of which is his transparency about his belief that Christians should
run the government and set policy. 

“The U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. Those are the values that built this country. There’s no really even debating that,” he said prior to the event in Yakima. “And as a Christian I want to see someone with my same values writing the laws of the country. I’m not ashamed to say that I want people of faith to be those that are the ones establishing the framework for education and business and immigration and several of the issues right now that are plaguing our culture.” 

He declined to say if people who follow other religions, or no religion at all, would have a role in his ideal government.

What makes Feucht so popular is his ability to appeal to the various
subsets of people that scholars and some in the media would group
together under the general title of “Christian nationalists,”
Taylor said.  

But Christian nationalism is not a monolith or even a movement, he
claims. It should be conceptualized as a tendency, not a movement,
Taylor said. Your grandmother who wants teachers to lead prayer in
public schools is technically a “Christian nationalist.” So is the
white supremacist militia member who believes only Protestant
Christians should be able to hold office, he said.  

Yakima’s history of faith and politics

Yakima is familiar with the intermingling of Christian faith and public policy. Dave Edler served as senior pastor of Yakima Foursquare Church while a member of  the Yakima City Council from 2003 to 2010 and mayor from 2006 to 2010. 

Edler was known just as much for being a Christian pastor as for his
professional baseball career with the Seattle Mariners. He often cited
his faith for helping him through tough times, including alcoholism. 

Harris Meyer, a former Yakima Herald-Republic editor and freelance
writer, wrote several pieces about Edler’s Christian background and
political career, including one for Crosscut — now Cascade PBS —
in the late 2000s. 

“His leadership style blends Bobo-isms, pop culture, Alcoholics
Anonymous, and lessons from the life of Jesus,” Meyer wrote about
Edler in a profile for Washington State University’s alumni
magazine. 

Edler was known for bipartisanship, however, and received criticism
for not applying his Christian faith in crafting policy. Evangelical
Christians in Yakima were disappointed that Edler wasn’t more
outspoken about issues such as abortion. He also supported policies
that other conservatives on the Council did not support, such as an
auto license fee that would have provided funds for street
improvements. 

A decade after Elder left the Yakima City Council, two members of his Yakima Foursquare Church would join the Council: Byers and Brown, who both had ministerial roles at the church. 

Byers, first elected to the Council in 2019 and reelected unopposed in 2023, made her religious beliefs and her church activities a prominent part of her campaigns, and her church activities are highlighted on the city website.  

Brown, meanwhile, gained a following through a Facebook group called “Accurate COVID-19 Reporting in the Yakima Valley,” which often critiqued the pandemic statistics from the Yakima Health District and media coverage of the pandemic. When he ran for an open seat on the Yakima City Council in 2021, he noted that his ability to keep his DJ business and church activities intact during Gov. Inslee’s restrictions would be an asset to serving on the Council. 

Both Byers and Brown said they don’t agree with the Christian
nationalism label many critics attach to them.

“I’m a Christian, I’m a person of faith and that’s the lens
through which I live, but my commitment is to the city,” Byers said.
“That’s why I’m here serving. It’s not about Washington, D.C.,
it’s about my community where I live and the people I associate with
and reach out to me and want to talk to me about this or that
about.”

Brown says people make a lot of assumptions about the motives of churches and Christians — when he meets with Christians, they usually just state they’re praying for the city. “They’re asking, ‘Hey, how can we be praying for you? How can we be praying for the community? How can we be praying for police officers that are putting their lives on the line every single day?’”

He notes that he and Byers have accepted invitations from
non-Christian faith communities, such as the Sikh. “I was like,
‘Yeah, I’ll go hang out with you guys. Let’s go talk. That’s
what basically I do when someone invites me. I work for you guys.’
And it’s not to push an agenda.”

Still, Brown was influential in establishing the Council’s conservative majority. In addition to being chairman of the Yakima County Republican Central Committee, he also served as campaign manager for Leo Roy, one of the three new Council members.

What has changed between Edler’s time in the Yakima City Council and now is the more aggressive work of evangelical Christians to influence local elections, fueled by concerns over the influence of non-Christian voices, such as the LGBTQ+ community, and the opportunity to apply Christian morals to public policy. 

When faith and politics mix

Once upon a time, serving on a city council or a school board was a nonpartisan position. No one expected a small-town mayor or city council member to weigh in on culture-war topics. But times have changed, and now, a mayor or city council member speaking out about these topics may help them appeal to conservative and evangelical voters.

That change was recognized by the Yakima Herald-Republic’s editorial board, which took note of Brown, as the leader of the county’s Republican party, endorsing candidates in nonpartisan races. 

Bruce Smith, owner of the Yakima Valley Business Times and longtime conservative activist in the Yakima Valley, said that not all Republicans subscribe to evangelical Christian beliefs or the concept of Christian nationalism. 

For example, Smith said if he’d been on the Council, he wouldn’t have rejected the Pride Month proclamation. He said if the city issues other proclamations for other groups and events, he doesn’t see how that should differ for Pride Month. “I just don’t have the opposition that other people have to a person being gay.”

Still, many see the opportunity to include these Christians in a
broader coalition to advance conservative policies and win elections.

“Let’s find the 90% we agree on and work on that … and ignore
the 10%,” Smith said, riffing on a quote by Ronald Reagan.

And in a place like Yakima, it’s still an asset for people to be
public about their Christian beliefs. “When they run for office,
they openly own it,” he said.

Brown agrees that his pastor role was a positive for voters. “I
door-knocked on 8,000 doors when I was running in 2021,” he said.
“When I talked to a lot of folks at the door, they told me, ‘We
actually like that you are a pastor because we know where your morals are … We know you’re not going to remove our police. We know that because of your faith and who you are.’”

Brown, as chair of the Yakima County Republican Central Committee, has also been involved in efforts to mobilize evangelical Christian
voters.

The Yakima County GOP set up “in-person voting centers” in five evangelical churches on two dates ahead of the 2023 general election, and on Election Day itself, Nov. 4, 2023. The centers were the local effort to support a national Republican priority to bring back “in-person voting.” However, as Washington allows mail-in voting, the centers were merely places for voters to fill out their ballots, which were collected from these centers and delivered to county drop boxes. 

Yakima County Auditor Charles Ross said he received some complaint
calls about these centers, but noted that Washington law is OK with
the practice that some consider “ballot harvesting.”

“I was watching this pretty close because we were consulting legal
advice,” he said. “The law is pretty clear you can go ‘ballot
harvesting’.”  

But while it’s not illegal to handle other voters’ sealed ballots, he does not recommend it. 

“Officially, we say it’s in your best interest to handle your ballot yourself,” Ross said. 

Evangelical Christian media

Another example of Christian evangelical voices trying to influence
local politics is The Rainshadow Report, which endorses conservative
candidates for Yakima City Council elections. The conservative
publication, which has been operating online and in print since the
mid-2010s, also publishes exposes on perceived “liberal” Council
members. 

In the months leading up to the November 2023 election, the Rainshadow Report and a homemade print “publication” called The Night Flyer took aim primarily at then-Mayor Janice Deccio and former Council member Soneya Lund. They leveled accusations of a conspiracy between Lund and Deccio’s husband to blackmail current mayor Byers using compromising photos. 

The most recent Rainshadow Report article currently online was
published the day after Lund lost her seat in 2023 and a conservative
majority achieved electoral victory. In the post titled “Lest We
Forget | On Intimidation & Fear,” author Jared Bowers quoted the
gospel of Matthew. 

“Have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be
revealed, or hidden that will not be known,” he wrote. 

Lund, who ultimately lost her reelection bid last fall to new Council
member Rick Glenn, is no stranger to acrimony, but she remembers the experience of being targeted by Bowers as among the most stressful times of her life. Lund believes white supremacy was also a component of that election campaign.

“I was the target because I’m an immigrant,” she said of her Korean background and the vitriol aimed at her. 

Lund said she’ll never run for elected office again.

Asked whether white Christian nationalism is a force in Yakima politics, Lund said “Oh, absolutely.”

However, Smith, the Yakima Valley Business Times publisher, doesn’t
think The Rainshadow Report or other similar publications factored in
the election results, including Lund’s loss.

Smith feels most voters just wanted to bounce back to a more
conservative City Council.

The previous iteration of the Yakima City Council would probably not
be considered liberal in cities such as Seattle. However, there are a
handful of examples, such as the Pride proclamation vote, when the
Council went in a more center-left direction. For example, it voted
4-3 to explore a regional fire authority to generate additional
revenue for the Yakima Fire Department and other fire departments that would participate. That same majority voted 4-3 to implement a
parking-lot plan that would charge for parking for maintenance,
although the plan was never implemented due to pushback from the local business community. Both proposals ultimately fell through.

That same 4-3 majority initially voted to add a third Latino-majority
City Council district in 2022, and ultimately the entire Council voted
unanimously to adopt its final redistricting plan, which included that
third Latino district.

“The last Council was the most liberal in my memory,” Smith said.

This Council, with a conservative majority, has yet to revisit the
regional fire authority proposal, and passed a new parking-lot plan
that involved no fees but rather a slow rollout of enforcement for
existing free-parking time limits. 

Another notable move by this majority, aside from rejecting the Pride proclamation, was firing former city manager Bob Harrison at the Council’s first meeting of the year. The Council would later hire former Yakima County Commissioner Vicki Baker, a Republican, for the position in a unanimous vote.

Christian diversity

Other Christian leaders in Yakima push back against what they see as bigotry masquerading as piety from Feucht and other conservative
evangelical leaders.

Rev. Colby Roberts is an Episcopal priest who marched in the Yakima
Pride Parade alongside parishioners of two Yakima Episcopal churches, St. Timothy’s and St. Michael’s. Roberts also ran a church booth at the festival that followed. 

He said Feucht is hypocritically cherry-picking Bible verses out of
context to justify his own prejudice. 

“He’s on the wrong side of this issue. Period,” Roberts said. 

As for Yakima City Council and the decision to snub Pride, he said
he’s disappointed in the Council for that and called the vote a sign
of disrespect. 

“I feel that it opens the door to hate,” Roberts said. 

Shane Moore, pastor of the Wesley United Methodist Church, remembers a sad story he heard from a gay couple about their experience calling various churches. One claimed that no churches in Yakima were open and affirming to the LGBTQ+ community.

Moore understands that Yakima City Council members govern on the basis of their beliefs — certainly, he expects that one’s faith influences how you vote, he says. For him personally, however, his faith compels him to think of how different policies impact others,
including those with differing beliefs or views.

In October, Wesley United Methodist Church will host a panel
discussion on Christian nationalism, the religious right, and politics
with Matthew Sutton, a historian at Washington State University. 

Moore said he felt a lot of people know the term “Christian
nationalism”  but might not understand what it means or how it
impacts one’s faith practice or their decisions at the ballot box.
He wanted to provide a forum for open discussion.

“I’m someone who believes my faith impacts how I vote, how I see
politics, how I see things,” he said. “But I also know, as I tell
my congregation, A, I might be wrong and B, my faith still compels me to love others.”

Moore is also part of the Yakima Association of Faith Communities,
which has expanded beyond churches and includes an array of religious communities. He leads the organization’s Moments of Blessings, when faith and community leaders gather at the location of homicides or other acts of violence to pray for peace in the community.

The organization has also worked to raise money for Yakima’s Sikh
community to build a new temple, which became necessary to accommodate the community’s growth over the past decade, Moore said.

Moore does note that Byers is a regular participant in Moments of
Blessing events and other interfaith programs.

Still, David Helseth, a retired minister in Yakima, said while the
Pride Month proclamation was a “raising” of a flag, he is waiting
to see whether Christian nationalism has legs in local politics by
watching the other decisions and policies the Yakima Council makes in the next year, including those related to housing and homelessness. Helseth is a board member and former executive director of Justice Housing Yakima, a nonprofit building permanent supportive housing.

Helseth said he’s worked with the Yakima City Council on various
efforts, including securing funding to help pay for the project. But
he took note of a May vote in which Brown and two new conservative
Council members — Leo Roy and Reedy Berg — voted against the use of state grant money to fund infrastructure, such as water and sewer lines, for the project. Byers, in voting to extend the money, noted the city was a pass-through for funding.

“There have been signs in terms of the [rejection] of Pride and then
what they did with homeless issues that signals to be on the lookout,” Helseth said. “There’s a different atmosphere in
town.”

The story was edited to correct when Sean Feucht prayed with former President Donald Trump. He did so during Trump’s first impeachment, not his second, as the story originally stated. 

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