In Placer County, a rising movement to establish a ‘biblical worldview’ in California politics

It’s sturdy and unassuming, all sharp angles and gray stucco. You might drive right past it, maybe mistake it for another gym or suburban shopping center along Highway 65. But it’s the enormous white cross in front of Rocklin’s Destiny Church that makes a lasting impression.

So, too, do founding Pastor Greg Fairrington’s sermons.

Take the one on Sept. 11, in which he predicted “the fury, and the chaos that this doctrine of sexual orientation is going to bring to our society.” Or the one in which he laments President Joe Biden’s efforts to end conversion therapy — a practice widely known to make LGB people twice as likely to attempt suicide and that causes “severe psychological distress” among transgender people.

“I had people walk out on this part in the first service,” he said in June. “But somebody has got to call a sin a sin, and if it’s offensive, so be it … the word of God is written to change culture, not for culture to change the word of God.”

Fairrington’s views on sexuality and gender identity are unsurprising for an evangelical pastor. What landed Destiny on the map was the COVID-19 pandemic, when he led his hundreds of congregants in refusing to adhere to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s public health mandates. (Destiny Church received close to $800,000 in PPP loans in 2020 while refusing to follow those mandates, and the entire loan was forgiven.)

With his heated preaching and social media presence, Fairrington has become a hero to the right and a villain to the left.

If you ask him, however, he’ll tell you he’s apolitical.

“I don’t see things as political and biblical,” he said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee. “I see things as biblical.”

Advancing a biblical worldview

In Placer County, the biblical and the political have achieved a striking synchronicity. Destiny, in concert with a new and increasingly well-organized Christian advocacy group called the American Council, is poised to bring that biblical worldview into Northern California politics.

The group recruits, trains, and endorses candidates for local office, with a focus on school boards. As a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization, the American Council is under no legal obligation to report donations. Its 27-year-old founder, Tanner DiBella, is also marketing and communications director for Destiny Church.

As Destiny’s profile has grown, it has hosted or is slated to host conservative Christian stalwarts such as Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

Politics and parish are deeply intertwined.

Rocklin school board member Tiffany Saathoff, who is up for re-election, is a pastor at Destiny. Elected officials, such as assemblyman and congressional candidate Kevin Kiley and Assembly candidate and former Rocklin Mayor Joe Patterson, are fixtures at both Destiny and American Council events. At least three members of the American Council’s leadership team are also members of the church.

This fusion has sparked concern in Placer County’s secular community about the erosion of the First Amendment’s Establishment clause, which calls for a separation between church and state.

Some have filed complaints against Destiny with the Internal Revenue Service for violations of the Johnson Amendment, the 68-year-old provision of the U.S. tax code that prohibits churches and other charitable organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates.

“This is a concrete, provable agenda to overtake every piece of our local government to reflect the tone, culture, priorities, and religious extremism of Destiny Church,” said one Rocklin parent who’s reported Destiny to the IRS and who, like several other Placer residents interviewed for this story, asked to remain anonymous for fear of harassment by the church community.

Michelle Sutherland, a Rocklin Unified School Board candidate, is running against American Council-endorsed favorites Saathoff, Hamilton and Dereck Counter. She said she worries that the two institutions are “trying to exert disproportionate influence over these local races that are so impactful to our communities.”

She said she is worried that Fairrington and American Council-endorsed candidates won’t work with constituents outside of their immediate voter base.

“We need reasonable leaders who will open themselves up to questions from any constituent and not be beholden to a specific subset of the community,” Sutherland said.

Fairrington and DiBella said their organizations are wholly separate, but their close collaboration is in plain view. Fairrington activates a spiritual and emotional response in his base — his presence is striking, his sermons intense — and DiBella swoops in with political savvy and undisclosed donations to mobilize that base into civic action.

“My desire is for Christians, people who attend Destiny, to be actively involved civically,” Fairrington said. “It’s their Christian responsibility.”

The first step in getting members active in the civic process, according to Fairrington: register them to vote. The second step: make them aware of current issues.

“This is where the American Council helps us tremendously,” he said.

Placer County’s new political player

DiBella grew up in Rocklin, and has been active in Destiny Church for most of his life, first as a congregant and later as an employee. His mother, Karen, is Fairrington’s assistant.

After high school, DiBella attended UC Davis, where he majored in political science. He earned a graduate certification in Marketing Strategy at Cornell, and he’s putting it to use as communications and marketing director at his hometown church.

Two years ago, with help from Dr. John Jackson, president of William Jessup University, a Christian college in Rocklin, he started the American Council of Evangelicals, now shortened to the American Council, to educate evangelical Christians about the civic process.

“It started as a nonpartisan educational framework to get people registered to vote,” DiBella said. In its earliest days, the organization’s work was grassroots in nature, such as voter registration booths and dispersing party platform guides.

DiBella said joining forces with an academic institution lent some credibility to his vision.

Jackson is a frequent guest pastor at Destiny, where his daughter, Rachel Storment, is a worship pastor. William Jessup alumni and former staff have said that under Jackson’s leadership, especially after the election of Donald Trump, the university became a hostile environment to anyone who didn’t fit the neat, straight, conservative social parameters. (“Liberated Jessupians,” a Medium blog run by the alumni, has become an outlet for such opinions.)

Shortly before the 2020 elections, DiBella and Jackson met with members of the Barna Institute, a Christian research group. They delivered some sobering news: Evangelical Christians make up an enormous voting bloc, with incredible potential to be a force at the ballot. But they’re not civically engaged.

“We left really burdened at the numbers. … The report was showing the lack of engagement, not from just evangelicals but people of faith in general,” DiBella said in a recent interview.

DiBella saw a widening gap between the rhetoric of evangelical Christians and what they were actually willing to put into action.

“There were a lot of people not voting from a biblical worldview, that profess to be Christians, followers of Jesus, followers of the Bible. I realized that people have a misconception about the role of the church and government, the role of Christians in government, and our responsibility to vote for things that are biblical,” he said.

“And that’s when things started to shift.”

Seize the COVID moment

In fall 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had mobilized people previously uninvolved in politics. Parents packed school board meetings to protest mask mandates and remote learning. Debates about how, and if, sexual orientation, gender identity, race and racism should be discussed in class became heated.

Many ran for school board. The movement to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom was well under way.

The evangelical church had much to say about all of it. In short: It was a perfect moment for the American Council and its ambitious president to step up.

DiBella began organizing American Council events at the Capitol, letter-writing campaigns, and lobbying, riding the wave of a newly activated base. The efforts paid off.

In November 2021, the American Council’s first annual gala hosted Republican stars Huckabee and Scott — the same weekend they spoke to Fairrington and congregants at Destiny. On Sept. 25, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was its second gala’s featured guest.

The council is a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization, but it also has a political action committee to make campaign donations.

Campaign finance disclosures show that the council is funding mostly local political campaigns for school board and city council in California. These financial disclosures also show that The American Council 501(c)4 donated $15,000 to The American Council PAC — a maneuver widely known as “dark money” in which the origins of major campaign donations become untraceable.

This year, the PAC donated $1,000 to Kari Hamilton and Dereck Counter in Rocklin, and Jonathan Zachreson in Roseville. Zachreson started Reopen California Schools in 2020 and has been a consistent critic of Newsom’s handling of the pandemic.

Joe Patterson, former mayor of Rocklin and a candidate for Assembly, received $2,000. Shanti Landon, who is running for Placer County supervisor, collected $4,900.

The group has also formed new offshoots. Its political action committee is called Save My Nation. On FaithableTV, DiBella, Jackson and Chief Historian Julianne Benzel teach civics and history courses titled “The War on Christian America’‘ and “The Christian Influence in Government.”

Benzel, a former Rocklin High School teacher, made national news in 2018 when she encouraged students to walk out in protest over abortion, as they were doing for gun violence in solidarity after the Parkland school shooting. In 2019, she launched a presidential campaign alongside Donald Trump. That same year, she was listed on Destiny Church’s form 990 as “Director.”

Anti-abortion work is done through its Future of Abortion campaign. For DiBella, the greatest issue at stake in the midterm election is “the issue of life.”

Abortion is as contentious a political topic as ever, certainly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, but DiBella believes the issue of life goes beyond just conception — “womb to tomb,” he said with a quick laugh.

Separation of church and state?

In 2017, the Trump administration sought to “get rid of” the Johnson Amendment. Trump called it a “horrendous” interference “with your First Amendment rights.”

“We will not allow government workers to censor sermons or target our pastors or our ministers or rabbis. These are the people we want to hear from, and they’re not going to be silenced any longer,” Trump said.

“Silenced” is not a word easily ascribable to the pastors at Destiny, who have a platform, audience and lots of money. But as far as the Johnson Amendment goes, Fairrington said he’s above board.

“A lot of people criticize me because of my personal opinions that I post on social media,” he said. “But on Sundays, we feel very comfortable that we’re staying within the Johnson (Amendment) guidance. We’ve read about that, and we feel good about that.”

As a member of the community, Fairrington can support, not support, endorse, or not endorse any politician he so chooses.

But Destiny Church — and his role as lead pastor — doesn’t just exist on Sundays.

Celebrate America, the two-day Fourth of July event at Twin Oaks Park in Rocklin, was sponsored by Destiny. It presented a lineup of musicians, fireworks and impassioned sermons delivered by church pastors, including Fairrington, who plainly states that Newsom should be voted out of office.

“Governor, you don’t have the right to pick winners and losers, but the American voter does, and it’s time for you to go,” he said.

It’s a complicated topic for constitutional lawyers. The country has a long, honorable history of healthy civic engagement by religious organizations. Faith intersecting with politics is nothing new.

Andrew Seidel, vice president of Strategic Communications Americans United for Separation of Church & State, pointed to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as an example.

“The Johnson Amendment was in place when he was very active,” he said. “You can do a lot, and you can talk about a lot of issues. You can tell people to vote; you can register them to vote. There’s a lot you can do without crossing the line into actual partisan politics.”

Fairrington’s Celebrate America sermon may well have crossed that line, according to Seidel, who — along with other critics — considers Destiny and the American Council by extension to be part of a flourishing Christian nationalist movement. Christian nationalism asserts that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and that Christianity should enjoy a privileged position in the government. DiBella stands “vehemently against Christian nationalism” and called the phrase “derogatory.”

“I do not want there to be a theocracy or imposition of biblical law, but I think it’s important that we influence culture and seek laws and candidates that reflect those values,” he said.

If religious leaders are going to enter the partisan sphere, there are strings attached, Seidel said. The public trusts that churches, charities and houses of worship are “out there doing good, not out there doing partisan politics.”

Destiny does plenty of good — Thanksgiving food drives, support for wildfire victims. Fairrington said he does not see his role as a political one. He’s advocating for a biblical worldview and a return to biblical values.

Critics may call those values homophobic, transphobic or anti-LGBTQ, and Fairrington supports anyone’s right to criticize him. But he and DiBella are unapologetic about their cause.

“My dad was a minister. I grew up in the church,” Fairrington said. “It’s my DNA, and I see the modern church, the American church, slipping from its foundations. … I see society and culture not reflecting biblical values. That’s where I come from when I’m writing my sermons.”

Whether Destiny Church has officially violated the Johnson Amendment remains unclear, because the IRS doesn’t update complainants or release findings from its investigations.

Support for the Johnson Amendment is enormous — 76% of Americans in a 2019 Pew Research Center survey said they believe houses of worship should not endorse or oppose candidates. But it’s even more popular among evangelicals. According to the National Association of Evangelicals, 89% believe that pastors should not endorse politicians from the pulpit.

This does not threaten DiBella, who fully supports repealing the Johnson Amendment, and who thinks there’s no historical precedent for a separation of church and state.

“From a historical standpoint, it was never meant that the church just shouldn’t have a voice in these issues,” he said.

He pointed to the origins of “separation of church and state” — a phrase coined by Puritan theologian Roger Williams, who wanted not to keep religion out of government, but government out of religion. (More than a century later, Thomas Jefferson referred to the “wall of separation between church and state” to explain the Establishment clause of the First Amendment.)

“The responsibility of the church is to restrain evil and promote good,” Dibella said. “That is also the government’s job. … We’re in a cultural and political climate where the government finds itself promoting evil and restraining good. The church has a responsibility to take that over and do those things.”

Guidance in scripture

And DiBella contended the ultimate authority on goodness can be found in scripture and in scripture only.

“Culture is offended by the church’s push to be involved,” DiBella said. He admitted sometimes he’s offended by it, too.

“There was a season in life where I was not always conservative,” he confessed.

In high school, one of DiBella’s closest friends came out as gay, and he struggled to reconcile his faith and politics with his friendship.

“So I deconstructed my faith, and for a season found myself questioning the inherency of scripture.”

He found his way back to the church — and did so with allegiance enough to launch a Christian political advocacy group soon thereafter.

But what about his friend?

In his world, plenty of people ”live lifestyles totally antithetical to what scripture would say.”

“They know that my advocacy at some level impacts what their choices are. If they ask, I will say that I believe that that lifestyle is not affirmed by scripture but it doesn’t mean I love them any less.

“We have to be redemptive in everything we do,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not offensive.”

This story was originally published October 2, 2022 at 5:00 AM.