Does God “want America back?” According to one Texas church, yes. Fort Worth–based Mercy Culture Church is taking dominion over a spiritual battlefield in our nation’s capitol. This is a prime example of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), the Seven Mountain Mandate (Dominionism) teaching, and Christian Nationalism.
This from the Texas Monthly newspaper:
With a prayer house across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court building, leaders of the Fort Worth–based Mercy Culture Church are taking their spiritual battle to Washington, D.C.
Speaking from the main stage of his Fort Worth church last month, Pastor Landon Schott recalled a recent vision he’d had while praying near the U.S. Supreme Court, one in which a demonic serpent descended upon the Oval Office.
“I see Jezebel circling the White House,” he said in December, referring to the biblical character often associated with idolatry and sexual impurity. “She’s in the form of a snake; her neck is a python. And I watch her slither around the White House twice. The first time going around was Hillary [Clinton]. The second one was Kamala [Harris]. And then I saw the hand of the Lord keeping her from the White House. There is a demonic attack, because Washington, D.C., is one of the greatest places of power in the world.”
Since 2019, Schott has copastored Mercy Culture Church, guiding the Fort Worth–based church network amid rapid expansions into Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Waco. Schott, along with his wife and copastor, Heather, has steadily accumulated influence and celebrity in a fast-growing sect of charismatic Pentecostalism that believes Christians are commanded by God to battle demons and wage spiritual warfare to save America.
Now the pair is taking that battle directly to Washington. Last month the church announced a major expansion into the nation’s capital, which includes a new congregation as well as a prayer house, located across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court, that the Schotts believe will let them guide the spiritual courses of the high court and the country. The church is also set to open another campus in Orange County, a historically red part of California with deep ties to fundamentalist conservative movements.
But Mercy Culture’s national ambitions are hardly surprising. Since the Schotts, who did not respond to interview requests, founded the church, it has been among the most politically active congregations in the state, driven by an existential view of politics and the couple’s belief that Christians have a divine mandate to control every aspect of society. “We are not a political church,” Landon Schott told congregants in December, drawing laughs from a few in attendance. “What we are talking about is not political. What we’re talking about is spiritual. . . . We’re a church of fighters. We’re a church of reformers, and we’re a church that’s gonna see righteousness in our nation.”
For years, the church has defied federal prohibitions on overt political activity by endorsing candidates and ballot initiatives from the pulpit to tens of thousands of people who watch services online or attend in person. Mercy Culture claims to have helped elect more than one hundred candidates in Texas via For Liberty & Justice, a tax-exempt nonprofit that is based out of the church’s Fort Worth headquarters and led by state Representative Nate Schatzline. And the church operates an online training program that prepares conservative Christians to influence government, including by running for office.
As its footprint in Texas politics has grown, Mercy Culture has increasingly aligned itself with a hyperpolitical sect of charismatic Pentecostalism—namely, the New Apostolic Reformation, a loose network of self-described prophets, many of them based in Texas, who believe they have been ordained with supernatural gifts, including prophecy, speaking in tongues, and the ability to expel demonic spirits. NAR-affiliated pastors were a driving force behind Trump’s early rise, giving crucial backing to his seemingly long shot presidential bid as many other white evangelical leaders initially kept him at an arm’s length. Many of them mobilized their followers in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and have since remained among Trump’s most ardent loyalists.
Mercy Culture’s expansion into Washington comes as NAR affiliates continue to play outsized roles in the second Trump administration, including through the National Faith Advisory Board. Launched in 2021 and led by Paula White-Cain, a Florida pastor and senior adviser to Trump’s White House Faith Office, the board has become a key conduit between the president and his broader religious supporters. Both of the Schotts sit on NFAB’s spiritual advisory board. Last year, Schatzline announced that he would not seek reelection to the Texas House and would instead lead church-mobilization efforts for the NFAB, which is also partnered with his For Liberty & Justice initiative. And in December, White-Cain appeared onstage with the Schotts at Mercy Culture’s Fort Worth campus, where she urged congregants to elect Christians to every level of government—from local school boards to judgeships.
“It’s not only a Marxism and a socialist agenda and ideology they want,” White-Cain bellowed. “It’s a radicalization to take out all Christianity. And if we don’t stand up, look at history. You might not get another time.”
Minutes later, the Schotts unveiled the church’s new plans for Washington. Central to Mercy Culture’s capital expansion is the Threshing Floor Prayer House, a $3.1 million two-story that the Schotts said would help them influence the affairs of the U.S. Supreme Court building, the back side of which is so close that “you could hit a Ping-Pong ball” to it, Schott said. “Revival and Reformation in America & the Nations,” reads one of the bullet points on a list of prayer items in the house, according to a promotional video released by the church. Other items include “Abortion to be Illegal in All 50 States”; Trump to be “Baptized in the Holy Spirit”; and “Every Captive of Human Trafficking to be Set Free.” (Mercy Culture has for years focused on trafficking and last year broke ground on a facility in Fort Worth, over the objections of a vocal group of neighbors and some city council members, where the church plans to house survivors).
Since then, Mercy Culture has begun hosting a new Bible study at the Threshing Floor aimed at “discipling government.” Launched last year and initially held in the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation, the Bible study has been attended by more than three hundred Capitol Hill staffers, according to Mercy Culture, and has been promoted by Heritage’s director of government relations, Chris Wingate, whose parents are on the pastoral team at the church’s Fort Worth location.
Separately, Mercy Culture is opening a new church in the area, for which the Schotts tapped Jaco Booyens, a prominent antitrafficking activist, to lead the new campus with his wife, Philipa.
“God wants America back,” Booyens told the congregation gathered at Mercy Culture last month, after his new role was announced. “The Lord is sending his son back, and he’s coming with fire in his eyes and a sword in his mouth.”
