Grace City Church Pastor Claims Vaccines Are 'Supercharging the Virus'

GCC founder made the claim on the CrossPolitic Podcast, which is produced by an organization fronted by extremist pastor Douglas Wilson in Moscow, Idaho

McPherson on CrossPolitic, where he told the hosts it was a “misdemeanor” to leave your house during the early-pandemic quarantine in Washington state.

On Sept. 15, 2021 Grace City Church founding pastor Josh McPherson appeared as a guest on the Christ Church podcast “CrossPolitic” out of Moscow, Idaho. McPherson came on the show to talk about his first Covid-era manifesto titled “We Do Not Consent.” In it McPherson describes how he organized a group of more than 40 people to sue Washington State Governor Jay Inslee over Covid-19 mandates.

Christ Church, known colloquially to locals of Moscow as “Mother Kirk,” is an extremist Calvinist sect led by Douglas Wilson. Wilson has received international attention for his defense of slavery. He has also dismissed the idea of marital rape. A man “can’t trespass in his own garden,” he infamously wrote on the topic. He has also gone to bat for sexual predators and is listed as a “guest lecturer” in Grace City Church’s Vector Academy marketing booklet, which is how I first learned about him.

The two Calvinist organizations have apparently become close, which is not surprising considering their anti-public health and pro-theocracy positions. What is surprising are some of the things McPherson let slip on the podcast. The episode clocks in at an hour and 25 minutes long so I plucked out the most interesting tidbits and will link to the full episode on CrossPolitc’s Facebook page at the end.

After the introductions podcast host Toby Sumpter, an associate pastor at Christ Church, tees McPherson up.

“You lost the lawsuit, and yet, like, when I finished reading the story I was like ‘I want to fight!,’” Sumpter said, pounding a fist on the table.

Sumpter then asked McPherson to tell the story from the beginning. McPherson obliged and made it less than 30 seconds into the story before fibbing.

“We were locked down in phase one at the time, in Wenatchee, and phase one is: it’s a misdemeanor to leave your house,” McPherson said.

“Wow!” exclaimed co-host David Shannon.

“A misdemeanor to leave your house?!” asked co-host Gabe Rench, incredulously.

“Yeah, it was just crazy,” McPherson confirmed.

“In America, people!” added Shannon.

It was not a crime to leave your house though. Gov. Inslee actually encouraged Washingtonians to get outdoors and get exercise at the time. In the “Stay Home Stay Healthy” document the state outlined a whole range of “essential activities” outside the home that were totally acceptable. The interpretation of “essential activity” is incredibly broad.

Here’s a screenshot of one portion of the proclamation.

You can find and read the entire proclamation online here.

I was curious to understand how McPherson could make such a claim and then double down on it with total confidence. I had not heard or read of any Washingtonian being arrested or charged with a misdemeanor for leaving their house during the quarantine. If someone had been cuffed and booked into the county clink for simply leaving their home in spring 2020 you’d think it would have made the news.

McPherson’s gross exaggeration made more sense after I read through the state law, or RCW, that pertains to the governor’s emergency powers. In RCW 43.06.220, right at the bottom, it states the penalty for disregarding a governor’s orders during a state of emergency.

“(5) Any person willfully violating any provision of an order issued by the governor under this section is guilty of a gross misdemeanor,” RCW 43.06.220.

But if you’re able to leave your house for essential activities: to obtain supplies, care for pets and loved ones and even to get exercise, what is the problem? The plan was the quarantine, or “lockdown,” would only last two weeks. Perhaps the problem was that attending religious services was not deemed “essential” during that two-week period.

Regardless, let’s chalk this claim by McPherson to be a gross exaggeration and move on because McPherson has a lot more to say.

“Every day of our life as a church is a day of civil disobedience,” McPherson says about 18 minutes in. “And we get flak for that. And our point is no one is obeying these laws.”

It’s a bold statement. It’s also not true. Many Washingtonians did obey the “Stay Home Stay Healthy” proclamation in March 2020. I’m sure McPherson knows that but I don’t think that’s the point. If he can convince the audience that no one was obeying the law, then his decision to encourage his followers to disobey the law is negated.

From there, McPherson explains how he called elected officials, community and faith leaders to him at his palatial home, built largely by his followers, near Monitor, Wa. Here he held court, gathering allies for his legal action against Inslee. I detailed that event in a previous post.

But back to the interview.

“When Peter says to obey the emperor, right, he’s talking about the highest law of the land at the time, which was the emperor because he could speak and it’s law, McPherson said. “One of the things we’ve been working at doing in our church is just educating our church, relationship to like, basic civics, and so the pop quiz question is: ‘Who’s the highest law of the land?’ And everyone, not everyone, many folks are acting as if it’s the governor. It’s not. ‘It’s the president!’ It’s not. It’s our constitution…”

Here’s where the hosts wax about the importance of the Constitution for a while and then McPherson drives home why the document is so important to protecting our freedoms in a way that was as predictable as it was tactless.

“If that fence goes over then they have access to shoot at everyone. Which is why the church failed in Germany,” he said. “I don’t want to have the epiphany that we should do something when they’re burning my Jewish friends. I want to have the foresight to stand up sooner and talk sooner and talk louder. So we never get there.”

Using real examples of Jewish persecution in order to stoke a victimhood fetish among evangelicals is common practice on the Christian extreme right.

It’s something that anyone in real media would call out, but on this show no one bats an eye at comparing minor inconveniences to persecution by the Nazis. The focus is on blurring the lines between church and state, not providing an accurate representation of historical facts. It’s a focus driven home by the host TJ Sumpter in his “yes, and” to McPherson’s holocaust reference.

“People miss the fact that our country was established as a constitutional republic with the constitution as the highest law of the land because Jesus is king!,” Sumpter added. “There’s a direct connection between the way our country was established and the gospel.”

There are many reasons the founders wrote the constitution. None of them were because “Jesus is king,” as Sumpter claims. But the logo of the show features the words “Every knee will bow” so it’s pretty clear where the hosts stand on the issue of separation of church and state.

I’ve heard of people bowing and knees bending, but a knee bowing is new.

From there McPherson laments Washington’s recent police reform laws, talks about how Chelan County Sheriff Brian Burnett was going to be a plaintiff in McPherson’s lawsuit against Gov. Inslee and further explains the legal strategy, or “the play” as he repeatedly calls it.

After that the group gets a little off topic and it turns into a greatest hits tour of fundamentalist Christian grievances. So of course homosexuality, always a favorite whipping boy, is trotted out to explain why things are so terrible.

“But make no mistake when we’re living in the fruitlessness of homosexuality, the fruitlessness of abortion, all this fruitless culture it is murder,” Gabe Rench said. “And that anger that is there, that is undergirding this whole culture will turn on the righteous. You can’t have homosexuality for 40 years in our culture, and celebrate that pride in San Fransisco, the pride parade is happening in Boise here soon, you know, you can’t have that kind of pride and it not turn into killing those who are righteous. That pride hates light and that darkness will attack light.”

There’s plenty more misinformation, fear-mongering and outright lies which you can hear if you watch or listen to the full episode, but let’s skip to near the end when McPherson mentions “demons” and denounces “woke churches” for being on the side of the devil.

“There’s a finite amount of demons. They’re not making more baby demons. It’s a military tactic right? Demons get assigned and this is your job, this is your area, your geographical area, this is your church, whatever.” McPherson said. “When a church is weak in the gospel or abdicating their authority to the government or when a church goes woke they’re no longer a threat to the enemy and those demons that were assigned to that church can be reallocated.”

It’s an illuminating window into the way that McPherson conceptualizes “spiritual warfare” as they call it. It’s a statement that would illicit concerned looks and maybe even a call to the local mental hospital if an unhoused person was shouting it at you on the street, but coming from McPherson on this podcast no one bats an eye.

Demons, their geographic assignments, and woke churches aside it’s McPherson’s claim about Covid-19 vaccines near the end of the podcast that really stands out. Up to this point, McPherson and GCC leaders had been careful to couch their anti-vaccine rhetoric firmly in the realm of protection of personal freedoms and standing up for an individual’s right to choose. But McPherson reveals his anti-vaccine stance in more straightforward terms among his likeminded brethren.

“There’s, there’s medical proof the world over that the vaccine is super-charging the virus,” McPherson said. “More people will die and they’re going to turn to the non-vaxxed, or the people standing for their rights to be non-vaxxed, and blame them and by and large that’s going to be the Christian community. More persecution is coming…”

It’s a paranoid fever dream born of intense self-pity and entitlement. It’s also an illuminating look into why McPherson and GCC have been staunchly anti-vax and anti-mask since Covid-19 burst onto the scene in early 2020.

You can watch the full episode here.