The Church Where Defying COVID Orders Takes on a Holy Aura with Sam Kestenbaum
Sam Kestenbaum is an award-winning freelance journalist who regularly contributes to the New York Times. He recently wrote a feature on Godspeak, a Calvary Chapel church in Ventura County, CA. At Godspeak, Sam writes, defiance to COVID mandates takes on a holy aura. It is the reason business is booming--attendance has tripled during the pandemic and the head pastor, Rob McCoy, is a rising star in the Right-Wing influencer world. Sam shares his experiences reporting on Godspeak and how it is a nexus for understanding what's happening in conservative churches all over the country.
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AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi, faculty in religion at Skidmore College.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
And I'm joined today by Sam Kessenbaum, who's a freelance journalist, writes about North American religions for the New York Times and other outlets.
His reporting has won a number of awards, the Rockawar Award for Excellence in Feature Writing and the Silurians Press Club Award.
In 2020, a series of his profiles on religious figures was awarded a first place prize by the Society for Features Journalism.
And for the New York Times, he's written about an amazing sort of diverse array of things, from Marianne Williamson and A Course in Miracles, to an End Times evangelist who says the Bible foretold Donald Trump, the revival of a forgotten 19th century scripture called the Osp, and a poet turned psychic, Jane Roberts, Seth Channeling, and NBA star Amiri Stoudemire and his turn towards Judaism.
That's a lot.
And Sam, I'm excited.
I wish I could ask you about all those things, but I'm going to ask you just about one thing.
So first of all, let me say thanks for being here.
Happy to be here.
Thank you for having me.
You wrote a piece recently in the Washington Post about something that really caught my eye, and the piece is great, and it's basically about a Southern California church called Godspeak, part of the Calvary Chapel Network, that has been flouting COVID restrictions and COVID mandates.
And this sort of resistance to COVID prohibitions and mandates about indoor gatherings and so on and so forth, Has basically led to attendance skyrocketing.
There's about a thousand people attending the church in person these days.
There are many more attending online, and it seems that the pastor, Rob McCoy, who's a big character and somebody we'll talk about, has really tapped into something here.
Here's where I'd love to start.
You write that defiance takes on a holy aura at Godspeak at this church.
How does that look?
I mean, what does that mean?
Defiance takes on a holy aura.
What's going on there?
Sure.
I guess what I want to point out there is that we might have some Presumption or some notion coming in that people are deciding to not abide by protocols so that they can do this thing called worship, that they can worship, they can go pray, they can do religious activity.
And what I want to kind of highlight here is that at a place like Godspeak, and I think Godspeak is a nexus for a lot of things right now, but at a place like Godspeak, The defiance itself is the draw.
I spoke to a congregant and I said, do you have a problem that nobody here is wearing masks?
And they said, are you kidding?
That's why I'm here.
So it's not as if, oh yeah, I'll go to that place.
I don't like that they have such kind of culture war politics, but I can do worship there.
No, it's in fact, it is the culture war politics.
That is the worship, so to speak.
Now, Tertullian, the third century church father, has this great line that has been told over and over again, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
And in this case, it seems to be that defiance of the COVID orders, and as you said, the culture wars, seems to be the kind of draw.
It is the seed that is fueling this sort of massive increase in attendance at Godspeak.
Did people there, or do people there talk about defiance of whom?
Is it Gavin Newsom?
COVID as a hoax?
Is it the federal government?
Who are they defying?
Or does it matter to them?
Is it just simply the defiance that counts?
Yeah, it can kind of shift, I think.
I think McCoy, Rob McCoy, who is the leader of Godspeak, who's a kind of businessman-turned-pastor-turned-politician, or kind of all those at the same time maybe, who is at the head of the church.
His messaging, he's very savvy.
He's a good speaker.
He can kind of speak on multiple levels.
So certainly he'll speak out against Newsom.
He might speak against county officials, too, though he himself was a county official.
He was the mayor of Thousand Oaks at one point.
So there's a kind of a subtle messaging, I think.
Science itself, you bring up defiance of science.
That's an interesting thing, too, because they would not say that they're anti-science.
They would say the state is not looking at real science.
Another overlapping set of characters who I saw at this church We're the kind of anti-vaccine entrepreneurs who are having a kind of particular moment now, too.
Judy Mikovits, who's another California character.
RFK Jr.
was there.
Simone Gold, who was actually at the Capitol riots.
She's another kind of entrepreneur of this moment.
Those are other characters who kind of have moved, have passed through the door of Godspeak.
And so they're certainly speaking in the register of science.
And I think people who I spoke to appreciated that.
I had an interesting conversation with one woman who was explaining, I'm a critical thinker.
And that's what's led me here, is thinking critically about what's in the news, what's being told to me about the numbers.
And it is that critical thinking that is brought me to defy pandemic restrictions and come to this church.
And there were a lot of new members there.
As I mentioned, attendance tripled, according to the church.
And I met people who before Had nothing to do with Calvary Chapel.
There's a, there's a, I think that kind of denominator there's this thing happening with denominational boundaries, not really mattering so much as kind of the culture war itself as the kind of gravitational force at this moment.
So, so maybe that, that speaks to your defiance question.
That is like.
I think the posture of defiance itself was probably the most important draw to them.
I even met some people who had been attending LDS who were there.
So like kind of theological, you know, we might think to be, oh, people go to church for this set of core theological reasons.
And at least in this case, those seem to be secondary to this other thing that's happening.
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