Four days earlier, conservatives packed this Newbury Park church to pray for state meeting applicants who asked for approvals, votes and donations. They met a night later for a documentary about school policies and teachers’ unions. Many of them are depriving parents of their rights.
Today is Sunday. Pastor Rob McCoy stands in a black T-shirt, arms crossed, in front of a pulpit framed through video screens and a pool used for full-body baptisms. In this sanctuary, he built a castle for the culture wars, a garrison opposed to what he calls the “tyranny” of the Democrats. On this and other scenes, he argues that COVID-19 vaccines kill, that critical race theory is “evil,” and that the Jan. 6 attack on the U. S. Capitol. UU. se is being used as a weapon, opposed to Republicans.
Twitter beats McCoy to a national summit where he interviewed Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgian conservative who bills herself as “a proud Christian nationalist. “
“One day, please, God, possibly she will be president of the United States,” McCoy says in the video.
TPUSA pastor chokes on Marjorie Taylor Greene, asks God to name her president some día. pic. twitter. com/nPSX5yqKpV
Politics has been consistent throughout McCoy’s two decades of Pastor Godspeak, and only from the pulpit. The pastor lost a close race for a seat in the California State Assembly in 2014, but won a seat on the Thousand Oaks City Council in less than a year. Later. He resigned from the council in April 2020 after deciding to defy state and county lockdowns opposed to pandemic lockdowns of in-person worship services.
His act is national.
In July, he retired from a follow-up career for the city council, citing his day-to-day jobs in development as president of Turning Point Faith. McCoy co-founded the evangelical branch of Turning Point USA with its leader, Charlie Kirk, the activist with 1. 7 million Twitter fans and a media empire that champions conservative politics.
McCoy catapulted himself into the national media following his protests against the pandemic. But it’s his network, heavyweights like Kirk and Turning Point USA, that generated more than $55 million in profits last year that has made him gain influence among the evangelical right and other wings of the conservative movement.
McCoy and Kirk, who calls McCoy his pastor, introduced Turning Point Faith in 2021 in a bid to bring McCoy’s brand of political leadership to churches across the country.
“I’m a kind of faith, don’t I have the right to participate in the public square?” asked McCoy. “Anyone who says you can’t legislate morality has no idea what they’re talking about. .
The organization follows a four-decade culture of evangelical politics. His face may simply be that of Kirk, the young brandon Turning Point USA, but much of his vision, the same one preached at Godspeak’s shrine, comes from McCoy.
In 3 months, more than five hours of interviews with McCoy, dozens of recorded speeches and media appearances, and 46 interviews with his allies, adversaries, and observers, Ventura County Star reporters mapped the conservative Christian fortress the pastor built in Newbury Park and his fort to national notoriety.
Bishop Broderick Huggins, a Baptist minister who leads churches in Port Hueneme and Kansas, met McCoy at a ministerial convention just a decade ago. Huggins, a Democrat who supports the Black Lives Matter movement, is McCoy’s political opposite. They were united through religion and much needed in each other’s churches.
Huggins watched in horror at media policy on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the U. S. Capitol. The U. S. vote was in the U. S. to prevent Congress from counting electoral school votes for Joe Biden. He sent a query to McCoy.
“I said, ‘Rob, are you part of this madness?’ Recalled. McCoy assured his friend that he had played no role in the attack. He then said he didn’t make it to D. C. because he knew “it was going to be a disaster” and that there was “no hope” of preventing the electoral vote. Godspeak co-pastor Rick Brown went to the Capitol, but said on a podcast that he “fainted from Dodge” when he learned that other people were looking to enter the building.
Two of McCoy’s allies who spoke from Godspeak’s pulpit, Dr. Simone Gold and John Strand, arrested in connection with the attack.
Gold is a doctor who advocates the use of off-label drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 and has a remedy protocol for McCoy’s in-laws after testing positive for COVID-19. He pleaded guilty to the crime of illegal entry into the Capitol and was sentenced to two months in prison.
Strand, director of communications and model, convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding as well as misdemeanors similar to his access to the Capitol.
McCoy praised the two for their bravery in their legal battles and presented character testimony to pass a trial on Gold’s behalf. He argues that the punishment for the Jan. 6 crimes was fueled through partisanship.
“It seems to more than 74 million Americans that this is the militarization of the government opposed to the opposition party,” he said.
For some, McCoy’s claims, as well as claims that COVID vaccines have killed nearly 40,000 more people, show how much he has replaced in recent years. the majority only a few times out of a bunch of votes, according to a review of council minutes.
Councilwoman Clos Angelesudia Bill-de los Angeles Peña said the only significant update reminded her of her opposition to an immigration bill. I saw him as a colleague I could work with. That view has changed.
“Obviously, he’s a rebel sympathizer, so it’s not something I associate with at all,” she said.
McCoy’s friends said his arguable forays into the COVID-19 lockdown and other issues were part of his DNA. He has a two-decade history of preaching politics.
“It’s consistent with what Rob has been,” said the Rev. Tom Stephen of Monte Vista Presbyterian Church in Newbury Park. “I think he really believes the pandemic wasn’t as bad as it was, as I really do. “
When COVID-19 emerged, McCoy followed state and county closure orders and held church services.
But on Palm Sunday 2020, he defied closure and reopened the church, protesting that places of worship were not identified as businesses and were prohibited from holding indoor services.
The county filed a complaint. Godspeak also sued the governor of California, whom McCoy nicknamed Gavin “Newsolini. “
The church has become one of the house of worship teams in the vortex of a national standoff over pandemic restrictions and the danger of COVID-19.
Although the county dropped its lawsuit, the legal war over Godspeak’s counterclaim continues in an appeals court.
“They offered us more than $100,000 to leave, and I refused,” McCoy said. “It’s never about money. We need them to be exposed.
He argues that vaccines kill, that masks don’t work, and that lockdowns violate the Constitution.
The lawsuits and fighting lockdown have put people’s lives at risk, said Dr. Raj Bhatia, an Oxnard intensive care physician and one of several fitness leaders who has spoken out against McCoy and his church.
“My reaction has been that it’s irresponsible,” Bhatia said, also protesting McCoy’s continued claims that other people have been misled about COVID-19 vaccines. people at risk.
Some members of Congregation Godspeak — “I can count them on the fingers of one hand,” McCoy said — died from the coronavirus. The pastor worked to make sure church members who tested positive were treated with medications such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. McCoy believes the virus at the beginning of the pandemic, but said he recovered after taking unapproved treatments.
The fight against confinement has a central role in the McCoy brand.
Some of the nation’s most powerful anti-vaccine voices, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , son of the assassinated presidential candidate, and Ventura’s virologist Dr. Anna S. Judy Mikovits, spoke in a documentary about the COVID plot, “Plandemic. “on the Godspeak stage.
Business owners who, like McCoy, defied the county’s COVID-19 restrictions by staying open during the shutdown, greeted him as a hero last year at a collection from a coalition called Companies Representing American Values.
They gathered without a mask at Mrs. Olson’s Coffee Hut in Oxnard. McCoy told them that there is nothing more important than fighting together for freedom.
Matt Brimigion, owner of Ms Olson’s and founder of the coalition, said McCoy helped him in the early days of the shutdown and supported him. the church sent dozens of consumers on its way, Brimigion said.
The restorer who never went to church now goes to Godspeak once a month.
“I love Rob,” Brimigion said. It brings hope to other people and an explanation for why to believe. “
McCoy said his church has donated more than $500,000 in aid to churches, gyms and other teams that have fought the closure.
In August 2020, McCoy gave the impression on Kirk’s podcast with Chino Hills pastor Jack Hibbs of two “persecuted pastors,” and then began talking about COVID-19 lockdown protests across the country.
“When we’re told we’re not essential, it’s an ideological battle,” McCoy said on the podcast. “Pastors want to realize this. “
Charles Hall, a sociologist at Pepperdine University who has been attending the Godspeak examination facility for more than a year, said McCoy’s sermons refer to an ongoing struggle against government tyranny.
“God tells them that their lives are at stake here and that the fate of our country depends on the status of Christians to God in our schools, in Sacramento, Washington, in public,” Hall said.
Godspeak is one of the fastest-growing churches in Ventura County, Hall said. He said whether this expansion would continue when existing threats subside.
“If the battlefield is politics, it probably wouldn’t be too complicated to locate new political enemies and new political issues to rally around,” he said.
Kirk reclined in an eared chair on the level of Westgate Chapel in Edmonds, Washington.
“I was told that politics and the Bible do not mix, that the government and the Bible are at odds,” he told the crowd gathered for a special occasion in May 2021. That was, he said, before they met, a Southern California pastor named Rob McCoy.
Kirk rose to fame as founder of Turning Point USA, gathering votes for Trump in 2016.
“You’re a Christian,” Kirk McCoy reminds him defiantly. And I must tell you, the Bible not only says a lot about civil government, it doesn’t just say a lot about how we interact with our leaders, yet I think you communicate it more publicly. “
Matthew Boedy, a professor of devout rhetoric at North Georgia University, has been following Kirk a lot since Turning Point added him to a watch list of “radical professors. “his guilt for separating his politics from his faith.
“Who does that?” Boedy asked.
McCoy, whom Kirk calls his “personal pastor,” praised the activist whose rhetoric reached his own.
“If my content is effective, it sounds like a lot if it comes out of Charlie’s mouth,” McCoy said.
McCoy said he met Kirk after Jerry Falwell Jr. , son of the prominent televangelist and later president of Liberty University, first presented him with an assignment at the school’s seminary and then at the Falkirk Center, Kirk and Falwell’s tank that defeated Trump. the end of 2019.
Within two years, McCoy became a nationally syndicated podcast host and spoke everywhere, from Kirk’s Phoenix Freedom Nights to the National Mall in Washington, DCMcCoy said he had “no idea” if his national profile was developing.
“If I have any notoriety, it’s not through my accomplishments, but I’ve had the privilege of partnering with well-rounded people,” he said. “It’s like a Forrest Gump anointing. “
Boedy said the dating was calculated.
“Why did McCoy look at Charlie Kirk?” Boedy asked. ” He saw precisely what everyone saw: a rising star with millions of dollars and a political stamp that also happens to be Christian. “
Kirk has temporarily become the most prominent disciple of McCoy’s combination of Christianity and nationalism, speaking at churches across the country, the “only places” according to Kirk were open COVID-19 lockdowns.
“Obviously, either saw an opportunity with the other,” Boedy said.
McCoy’s basic political theology—that America is basically Christian and will collapse in the face of biblical morality—fits into a diversity of ideals that scholars call Christian nationalism.
Sociologist Andrew Whitehead, co-author of “Taking America Back for God,” said Christian nationalism is a harmful manifestation of the relationship between religion and politics.
“There is a convenience with authoritarian social control, a strong sense of who is at the top. . . and that’s down,” Whitehead said.
Conservative politicians and Christian leaders have mostly rejected the label until this summer. Greene, the Georgia congresswoman, led the change.
“I’m attacked by the godless left because I said I’m a proud Christian nationalist,” she wrote. “They hate America, they hate God and they hate us. “
When asked if he knew he was a Christian nationalist after his interview with Greene, McCoy hesitated.
“I’m a Christian and I’m in nationalism,” he said, then pointed sharply. “But am I in a theocracy? No, and it’s better to be on the date. Because every time the church wields the sword, it him. “
At Turning Point Faith, McCoy said he hopes to give pastors a “buffet” of reasons to make their policy explicit, than to hell with tax exemption.
McCoy’s philosophy about the intersection of politics and religion is based on a chosen reading of a passage from the Bible. McCoy teaches that Jesus asked his disciples to fight for God’s law only in the church, but in government.
Caleb Campbell, father of Desert Springs Bible Church in Phoenix, spent the past year attending Turning Point Faith events and anonymously posting his reports under the Twitter name Disarming Leviathan.
“It’s a dramatic false impression of Jesus’ teachings, and it’s going to do a lot of damage,” he said. “We don’t know what God they serve. Is he the God of military power?Are you talking about Jesus God? Because it doesn’t smell like that. It’s a trash can in general.
McCoy, a swimmer who competed in the Olympics and also studied history at CSU Fresno. He said a campus pastor taught him Christianity, sparking a hobby that led to a task as a youth director at an Armenian church and enrolling in a Mennonite seminary after stints promoting client assets for the monolithic multinational Unilever and market knowledge for media giant Nielsen.
He came to Thousand Oaks and Calvary Chapel Church later called Godspeak in 2001. He has supported candidates for the pulpit and claimed that the separation of church and state was designed to protect the church from government influence, but not the other way around.
From the beginning, he treated the sermons as monologues on “The Tonight Show. “He interspersed biblical teachings with punchlines and non-public stories. It tells of his father, a naval officer who commanded riverboats in the Vietnam War, and his struggles to reconcile. with her “leftist” sister, lesbian and married to her longtime partner.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new ammunition and an audience that has expanded beyond the sanctuary. In July 2021, McCoy preached about flying on a plane near a mother and her teenage sons wearing an N95 mask even between bites of food. The youths looked like McCoy, who had no mask. He blew into the air to galvanize them. After the robbery, he told the woman he was raising her children that she was a coward.
McCoy’s many critics stick to his sound clips and post them on Twitter with hashtags like #christofascist and #RobMob, the latter referring to what they see as right-wing conservatives with Godspeak connections speaking at board meetings or running for office.
“We have a tendency to focus on celebrity and the outrage it provokes,” said Jon Cummings, a common critic and leader of Indivisible: Rabbit, an organization formed in reaction to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Cummings pointed to McCoy’s criticism of the public. education, critical race theory, and the handling of LGBTQ issues in schools.
“What is rarely proven is how harmful their concepts are. He to destroy public schools,” he said.
McCoy said public education in California may not be sustainable. He claimed that liberal ideology has undermined education.
About 2,000 more people attend Godspeak’s weekend services, four times more than before the pandemic. As they waited for the start of a baptismal service on Sunday, they praised McCoy for his candor in dealing with real-life issues.
Linda Sayles de Camarillo first came to Godspeak two years ago when McCoy and other church leaders remained indoors despite a court closure order.
“I wanted to make a statement: They’re not going to bully us into not going to church,” he said. family members making clinical plans.
“I need leadership,” he said of McCoy. He has been in politics for so long. It has data on what’s going on. “
Godspeak is housed in a building formerly occupied by a YMCA. It was purchased about five years ago and then rented to the church at an incredible price through Texas billionaire Dan Wilks. He is a faith-driven conservative who has contributed millions to political action committees. and Republican candidates, adding McCoy to his 2014 California State Assembly candidacy.
McCoy’s network of friends also includes senators and governors and came to the White House when he was Trump’s president.
My friend Rob McCoy listened to my suggestion in @seanhannity @FoxNews and accepted me!Take THAT, Gavin Newsom! A California pastor temporarily turns his chapel into a strip club to be “essential” https://t. co/Nj2qbKTG1d
He was at his time as a councilman when Thousand Oaks overcame the double whammy of the Woolsey Fire and Borderline shooting that left 12 others dead in November 2018.
A week later, as Trump wrapped up a tour of the devastation of California’s wildfires, the commander-in-chief stopped in Ventura County and met with some of the families and first responders affected by the shooting.
McCoy showed he organized the assembly by reaching out to some of his many Republican friends, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and his predecessor, Sean Spicer.
He said he met Spicer while helping advise a Republican National Committee organization on a 2015 field trip to Israel with the American Renewal Project. The organization, founded by conservative activist and former Godspeak congregation member David Lane, hoped in part to recruit pastors. for political office. McCoy said he’s likely to be the “prototype” of that vision.
On a Wednesday night in August, Godspeak was packed for a political action forum hosted through Free Ventura, the organization started through Godspeak co-pastor Brown and church member Bryce Eddy. Brown said the goal is for applicants to protect “common sense. “government.
“We are beaten. We’re beaten in guns,” Brown said. If we do nothing, they will crush us. “
A spectator’s T-shirt overlaid Donald Trump on a symbol of Abraham Lincoln. Another said “McCoy Assembly” in a return to the pastor’s crusade in 2014. “You all love Jesus,” says a third.
During the next hour, Free Ventura applicants for the state Assembly, Congress, County Board of Supervisors and Rabbit Recreation and Parks District.
McCoy said he supported Free Ventura but did not direct it and did not recommend its formation. He alone approves applicants from the pulpit and allows them to cope with the congregation.
The backers are in tension with the church’s nonprofit status. Churches and other 501(c)(3) nonprofits would possibly host nonpartisan candidate forums and voter registration campaigns. But they are prohibited from spending a “substantial” amount of cash on lobbying and distributing published statements opposing a candidate.
Endorsements are also prohibited. But the restrictions are almost never enforced, with one rare exception in 1992, when a church in a New York town lost its tax-exempt prestige after buying full-page classified ads that opposed Bill Clinton in the presidential election.
McCoy scoffs at the tax law and says he will mention the chairs.
“I give my sermons to the IRS, and I say, ‘Come get me,’ and none of them did,” he said in a 2017 sermon.
Despite IRS rules, conservative and liberal churches have long played a role in American political life, said Joseph Blankholm, an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara.
“If you lead a crusade and a strategic crusade and don’t go to churches, you leave votes on the table,” he said.
More than politics and religion merge in Godspeak. A monthly nonprofit newspaper, The Rabbit Guardian, folds into the church and recovers to be given to dating that has raised hypotheses about McCoy’s influence.
The newspaper and pastor were criticized on social media after an article titled “Third Grade Instructor Promotes Gender Confusion in the Classroom. “The instructor’s school was vandalized a few days later with graffiti reading “perverts work here. “
McCoy said he’s long talked about the need for an independent, community-based source of information. But he said he published The Guardian and did not have an editorial role in the paper or any of its articles.
“The verbal exchange I had with (co-founder) Amy Chen is, ‘You’re reporting the truth. ‘That’s it,” he said.
McCoy did not settle for the position at Liberty University.
He said he turned down the concert “shortly before the pandemic” after the school told him he would have to leave the city council, resign his role as Godspeak’s pastor and move to Virginia.
“The smartest I’ve ever done,” McCoy said.
In August, Falwell, Jr. , the university’s president, resigned after a series of high-profile scandals.
The Falkirk Center failed and, in March 2021, the university refused to renew Kirk’s contract. Instead, the New York Times reported, Kirk would launch a new “field program” based on the Turning Point Faith church.
McCoy, its co-chair, has been concerned from the beginning. He said his precedence remains, by God, where he will be, “as long as he is allowed. “He has no intention of running again.
“That’s the last thing I have on my radar,” he said. “What I do across the country is much more effective. “
What he does is go from Newbury Park to Phoenix to Tampa and appear on Kirk’s podcast, “The Charlie Kirk Show,” as well as his own news-watching podcast, Liberty Station, which often appears on the top two hundred lists since its revival. . by the conservative radio station Salem Media.
In the summer of 2020, he joined the National Policy Council, a secret conservative strategic network that counts former Vice President Mike Pence and Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, among its nearly 450 members.
He said he oversees Turning Point Faith’s “biblical citizenship” categories such as Turning Point Academy, a “patriotic and pro-American” network of private and charter schools. A school for spouses was announced in Phoenix, the headquarters of Turning Point. McCoy said the program also works in Ventura County.
Boedy, the rhetoric professor, said McCoy’s paintings with Turning Point Faith reminded him of earlier conservative evangelical movements like the Christian Coalition.
With Kirk and Turning Point USA, the still-young Turning Point Faith has the prospect of being even bigger: “It’s a lot more commitment, a lot more money, a lot more notoriety,” Boedy said.
In September, McCoy traveled to Phoenix to speak at a Turning Point convention about the evils of the World Economic Forum’s plan for a “big reboot. “Kirk, former White House adviser Steve Bannon and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones spoke.
“I’m tired of watching what happens and in a defensive position,” McCoy said. “It’s time to go on the offensive. “
The crowd applauded.
Tom Kisken covers health care and news for the Ventura County Star. Contact him at tom. kisken@vcstar. com or 805-437-0255.
Isaiah Murtaugh covers education for the Ventura County Star in partnership with Report for America. Contact him at isaiah. murtaugh@vcstar. com or 805-437-0236 or on Twitter, @isaiahmurtaugh and @vcsschools.