Pastor/influencer Russell Johnson is the media-savvy new face of growing, Trumpified churches.
Dominick Bonny at The Bulwark:
HELL, IN MOST POPULAR ACCOUNTS, is a rather timeless place. But according to Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White-Cain, it’s not entirely beyond the reach of time.
In fact, when a particular young minister wakes up in the morning, she recently said, an alarm goes off in the underworld. That’s how the devils know it’s time for Satan to get tormented.
Based in the Pacific Northwest, the minister White-Cain was admiring is a former Republican campaign operative and lobbyist-turned-pastor/influencer who has been developing a novel approach to Christian ministry that brings together right-wing politics, belligerence towards the press, digital-native media savvy, and revivalist evangelism. Though you have probably never heard of him, Pastor Russell B. Johnson and the independent charismatic church he founded, the Pursuit NW, have over the past decade built a religious fiefdom in Washington state that today features a growing network of church campuses and alternative educational institutions.
And alongside the tax-exempt church institutions he has been building, the 40-year-old pastor has been creating an explicitly political operation: A PAC based at the church issued a voting guide in 2024 that endorsed Trump for president, and following some legal complications, Johnson’s church recently launched yet another new political organization. As he more openly aligns himself with the MAGA right, it may be that he will play a greater political and cultural role in the latter half of the second Trump administration.
But questions surround Johnson’s synthesizing approach to ministry. As his influence has risen, so have his wealth and his personal fame. And as Trump’s IRS continues to signal its intent to further relax enforcement against churches whose political activities might otherwise threaten their tax-exempt status, Johnson’s ministry could offer a preview of an even more politically aggressive evangelicalism that could emerge in the years ahead.
[...]
Brash and combative, flamboyant and engaging, Johnson is a rising star among right-wing influencers. His growing online profile has led to multiple trips to Washington, D.C. as a member of Paula White-Cain’s National Faith Advisory Board; he was part of a group that visited with Trump at Mar-a-Lago before the 2024 election. His local political activism has grown in tandem with his ministry: In addition to heading his church’s PAC in the run-up to the 2024 election, he helped lead a rally in Seattle last May that resulted in chaotic confrontations with protesters, dozens of arrests, and a lawsuit Johnson filed against the city’s then-mayor.
Charlie Kirk apparently saw the aggro minister as a man for this moment, and he could be taken to be an avatar of just the sort of politics Kirk advocated: Johnson was a political operative before he turned to preaching, and in his ministry, the boundaries between the two categories start to dissolve.
THE SON OF PARENTS WHO worked in ministry and Christian education, Johnson came of age believing he was headed for a career in politics. After graduating from college, he became a lobbyist in Olympia and also supported several Republican campaigns, and he made plans to move to Washington, D.C. to advance his political career. His turn toward ministry began in the mid-2010s. He transitioned out of the professional political world by taking up a youth ministry role at a Pentecostal megachurch before eventually opening his own church in 2014. The Pursuit NW is charismatic, meaning that it welcomes the classic expressions of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including speaking in tongues, and incorporates them into its worship.
[...]
Johnson will be doing his part to combat this dysfunction when he joins other pastors and literal ex-commandos at the Gorge, Washington state’s famous natural amphitheater overlooking the Columbia River, for a Father’s Day weekend men’s conference this month. The two-day event features talks from many core leaders of the modern MAGA evangelical movement—including Mark Driscoll, Eric Metaxas, and Josh Howerton—alongside Christian manosphere podcasters and veterans like Graham Allen, John Lovell, and Chad Robichaux, who will explain what Christian men today need to do to change the culture and achieve their movement’s concrete political goals. Tickets to “Freedom Con: Rise of the Statesman” will put you back around $200—if you’re a man. Women from the church hosting the event can pay $55 for the privilege of taking tickets, distributing food, and even serving on the “tidy team,” which is responsible for cleaning up after the boys.
JOHNSON’S RISE AS A JET-SETTING political pastor with deep connections to MAGA world started before Trump won his second term. Apparently around the time that he visited Mar-a-Lago in 2024, Johnson was invited to join the National Faith Advisory Board (NFAB), an organization led by Trump’s personal pastor, the charismatic televangelist Paula White-Cain, who reportedly has a basement office in the West Wing.2
White-Cain traveled to Johnson’s church in August of last year and extolled his virtues during a service.
[...]
Churches are free to lobby on specific issues without threatening their 501(c)(3) status, which gives pastors like Johnson plenty of room to declaim on social issues—as he does on abortion, LGBT+ issues generally, trans issues in particular, liberalism writ large, and other culture war themes, sometimes directly from his pulpit. But the larger prohibition on tax-exempt church organizations campaigning for or against candidates, made part of the tax code with the Johnson Amendment in 1954 (named for Lyndon B. Johnson), remains in effect, notwithstanding the many times since 2016 that Trump has called for it to be repealed.
From 2023 until earlier this year, Johnson’s church was affiliated with its own political action committee (PAC). According to public information, Johnson was listed as Pursuit PAC’s president; the organization’s last treasurer was Amy Wuerch, who is also listed as the “executive pastor and business officer” of the Pursuit NW’s unaccredited college. Its address was the same as that of the church’s Snohomish campus, and the listed email address was the church’s generic contact address. In the 2024 election, Pursuit PAC endorsed Trump for president and a straight Republican ticket (with the exception of one independent).
The PAC ran on a volunteer basis and its only recorded donations came in 2024; that year, it received a warning from Washington state’s Public Disclosure Commission for minor infractions related to state law, including a failure to disclose its sponsorship of its voting guide. The FEC administratively closed the PAC in March after a period of inactivity, and the PAC’s website URL now bounces visitors to the site of a new organization called “Pursuit United,” which appears to be carrying forward the mission and goals of Pursuit PAC. The new organization’s address is the same as the Pursuit NW’s Kirkland church campus.
Johnson himself has not been shy about telling members of his church and his followers online exactly how he thinks they should vote. He has occasionally shared election guides to his social media feeds. He posted his most recent “Pastor’s Picks” (subheading: “Getting Conservative Leaders Elected”) during the lead-up to last year’s elections, making recommendations for almost all races and proposals that would appear on ballots in Western Washington counties and cities. Most of Johnson’s lists came from a man named Joe Fuiten, the “pastor emeritus” of the church where Johnson got his start in youth ministry. Fuiten has written about his approach to voting guides and endorsements: “I personally almost always align with Republicans since they tend to align with me and my Biblical values. Even when I have endorsed Republicans who are liberal I have almost always done so because even a liberal Republican strengthens the political influence of Republican majorities who tend toward my views.”
Johnson and his PAC’s endorsements and other activities raise complicated questions about what the tax code allows for churches that wish to retain their 501(c)(3) status. It’s not likely to be a pressing concern for the pastor, however: For years, the IRS has been relaxing enforcement in this area, as a joint investigation by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found in 2022, and this in turn has emboldened more and more churches to push the boundaries of tax law relating to political speech. Ultimately, if Trump were to get his longstanding wish for the Johnson Amendment to be repealed outright, conservative pastors across the country who wish to incorporate a more overt political strategy into their ministries will look for models among those who have spent years pushing the line. Johnson’s approach with the Pursuit NW gives a sense for what could be ahead for American churches if we do cross the threshold into a post–Johnson Amendment era.
Russell Johnson, the pastor of The Pursuit NW, is turning the church into a center for MAGA Christianity.
The Justice Department failed to explain why it simply couldn’t put in writing that the slush fund is dead.
Brandi Buchman at HuffPost:
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal judge slapped a preliminary injunction on President Donald Trump’s so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for Jan. 6 rioters on Friday.
“The bottom line is I don’t have the type of uncontestable evidence to show that [attempting to create the fund] would not be repeated,” Judge Leonie Brinkema said. “And there is clear evidence, in terms of statements by the acting attorney general and multiple statements by the president who has talked about how important it is that this fund should go forward.”
Justice Department attorney Andrew Block was unable to explain why the government simply could not put in writing that there were no plans to accept claims or conduct payouts.
“I don’t know, your honor. I have not had the ability to speak to the attorney general and ask that question,” Block said.
Brinkema gave the government one week to provide a declaration, signed under penalty of perjury by both acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, stating there would be no fund going forward.
Andrew Floyd, a former Justice Department prosecutor who also served as deputy chief for the Capitol Siege division investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, filed the lawsuit in May. (Floyd was fired by former Attorney General Pam Bondi amid a rash of other Jan. 6 prosecutor firings last year.) Shortly thereafter, Brinkema ordered the government to temporarily stop plans to create or operate the fund born from Trump’s self-serving settlement with the IRS.
In the wake of that ruling, both Blanche and other lawyers for the Justice Department have represented that the fund was “not going forward,” but ahead of the hearing on Friday, Floyd’s lawyer, Joel McElvain, said there’s no consistency between what is said publicly and what is said in court.
“Defendants have failed to substantiate that position with any competent evidence, despite repeated requests from plaintiffs, much less evidence of a written modification of the Trump v. IRS Agreement that created the Fund or a rescission of the Acting Attorney General’s order funding it,” McElvain wrote.
The Justice Department is reportedly quietly looking for ways to keep the gravy train flowing to people who feel they have been victimized by Democrats or the Biden administration. And even without a designated “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” legal experts told HuffPost, there are easy ways payouts could be accomplished anyway.
Judge Leonie Brinkema put the block on Donald Trump’s reparations plan (aka the “Anti-Weaponization Fund”) for Capitol Insurrectionists.
WHO KNEW..."WHITES ARE NATIVE AMERICANS." PER THIS DAMN FOOL. AND "INDIGENOUS PEOPLE" aka NATIVE AMERICANS ARE NOT NATIVE AMERICAN BUT CAME FROM ASIA...LOL...not funny but shit. ....? DA FUQ?
WHAT A DUMB ASS..BUT HOPEFULLY HE DOES NOT HAVE ANY KIDS. But question is the fool saying the indigenous folks flight landed before the whites back in the 1400's? LOL.
TOO EARLY FOR THE BULLSHIT.
@justsayin59. @sbrown82. @saywhat-politics. folks back to bed. LOL. what a fucking fool.
Alarm over the judgment and behaviour of the world’s most powerful man, and the consequent risks to the world, can only get worse
This is a rather kind comment on Donald Trump's condition: it stops short of saying, 'Old turkey neck should do what he does best and go and cheat at golf at one of his clubs.'
He is being propped up by people who don't actually care about America, world peace, decency, kindness and generosity; they, like him, prefer a get richer, trample the needy, attack the weak, steal from the feeble brained morons that worship me kind of world.
If he was a car, he would have gone to the scrap yard more than a decade ago, not taking up space in a showroom as a priceless vintage model to be admired.
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
discoholicmusic
