At Freedom Con, there were feats of strength and CrossFit contests. There was an obstacle course and a station for practicing how to change a tire. There was prayer and music, and original verse from a pastor and a tactical gear salesman known as the Warrior Poet. There were exhortations from the stage to run for office, to have more babies, and to reject “woke secular gay paganism.”
“Heterosexual, sober men who marry girls and read Bibles, we’re the new punk rock!” the pastor Mark Driscoll said in a fiery sermon that brought attendees to their feet.
More than 4,500 men gathered in central Washington over Father’s Day weekend for a testosterone-fueled celebration of Christianity and patriotism that culminated in a statement calling conservative Christian men “to rise as statesmen.”
Men came with their sons. They came with their pastors. They came with their brothers, their hunting buddies, their Bible study friends.
The two-day event took place just outside the small town of George, Washington, against the backdrop of America’s 250th anniversary. The amalgam of political activation, Christian worship and male bonding provided a glimpse of an emerging right-wing movement with masculinity as its unifying force.
Rick Slaughter, 44, camped overnight at the festival on Friday with a group of eight men and boys from around Orting, Wash. On Saturday afternoon they smiled for a photo on the sloping lawn overlooking the Columbia River, with the state flag of Washington and another one reading “JESUS IS KING.”
The men meet weekly in a group affiliated with Promise Keepers, an evangelical men’s ministry that boomed in the 1990s and has recently been resurrected with a sharper political edge. The trip was an opportunity for them to spend more time together and hear from political candidates and well-known pastors about their responsibilities as Christian men, as they saw it.
“What we’re trying to do is be better men,” Mr. Slaughter said. Many of the members have become sober and started marriage counseling since joining the group. Mr. Slaughter has gotten a handle on an anger problem, he said. (Federal prosecutors accused Mr. Slaughter of attacking Capitol Police officers in the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, but the case was dismissed last year when President Trump granted sweeping clemency to participants. Mr. Slaughter described the charges in an interview as “a lot of lies.”)
Mr. Driscoll, who resigned under pressure more than a decade ago from the large church he founded in Seattle, has made a roaring comeback as the evangelical mainstream has embraced his style of brash provocations in the Trump era. Accused of bullying and cultivating a culture of fear at his church in Seattle, he now leads a large congregation in Scottsdale, Ariz., and has a huge online following.
His sermon on Friday swept through the first books of Genesis and Exodus, drawing connections between ancient biblical stories and contemporary American politics. He described the Tower of Babel as an illustration of the perils of globalism, and an entity faced by Moses as “the transgender god of Egypt.”
“New days, old demons,” he said. “You men need to understand, if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.”
Many of the pastors on the program’s lineup were leaders of a growing cohort of politically aggressive churches closely allied with the Trump administration and its priorities. Some were there to promote new political and educational institutions that indicated their ambitions to extend their influence beyond the purely spiritual.
Grace City Church, a large congregation in nearby Wenatchee, Wash., spearheaded the event under the auspices of Stronger Man Nation, a men’s ministry. Both were founded by Josh McPherson, a pastor who has been invited to pray for Mr. Trump in the White House and whose empire now includes a popular podcast and a new “antiwoke” college he envisions as a “Protestant West Point.”
Issues mentioned from the main stage included social-conservative mainstays like abortion and gender identity, but also housing prices and construction costs, in a state where both significantly outpace the national average.
“Even young men like me, who want to be providers, who want to start a family, who want to say no to vice and live a righteous life, are crushed by the weight of tyranny,” David Prince, a student at Grace City’s new college, said from the stage on Saturday during a presentation with other Gen Z men.
Another recurring theme was how important it was for conservative men to stay in blue states rather than decamping to friendlier jurisdictions like Texas.
“What a weekend like this represents is an infusion of hope into good men who have been sidelined, by virtue of feeling like this is a David versus Goliath here in Washington,” Russell Johnson, 40, the pastor of a growing network of churches in Washington, said in an interview. “If all the good guys leave, the state doesn’t get better, it gets worse.”
It was up to pastors like him to encourage them, he said.
“What in the hell is the point of having influence if you don’t use it for stuff that matters?”
In a hypnotically energetic sermon on Saturday night, Mr. Johnson exhorted men in the state to stay put.
“This place is worth fighting for!” Mr. Johnson said from the stage. “It doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone or how many mistakes you’ve made or how upside-down this region appears to be: When God starts speaking, things start shifting, darkness begins trembling, and God’s people start advancing.”
Nate Schatzline, a pastor and Republican state representative in Fort Worth, told attendees at an afternoon panel that many of his church’s small groups — a format that traditionally includes Bible study and socializing — organize outings to speak at local city council meetings. Another pastor on the panel reminded the group that churches in Washington can collect ballots for their congregants, a strategy once viewed skeptically by Republicans but more recently embraced.
Mr. Schatzline, 34, also runs an organization that mobilizes churches to support local conservative candidates and train others to run for office. The group has chapters in four states, including Texas and Washington, but plans to expand to 28 states by the end of the year. The church he works for, Mercy Culture, has endorsed candidates and recently opened an outpost in Washington, D.C.
“The G.O.P.’s not perfect, and we need reformation, but let’s as the church stop complaining about the G.O.P. when we refuse to be engaged with the G.O.P.,” he said at the panel. “We consider the G.O.P. a partner in this fight.”
Afterward, dozens of men crowded up to the stage to speak with him.
Adam James, a pastor at Grace City Church, called Mr. Schatzline a “rising star” and compared him admiringly to Charlie Kirk in an interview.
Mr. James, who is running for a State House seat in central Washington, offered some of the event’s most direct policy prescriptions from the main stage on Saturday. He encouraged the crowd to support conservative candidates for five open Supreme Court seats in the state, and promoted “Bible-believing” candidates for several legislative seats, including the one he hopes to take over from a Republican legislator he described in an interview as an “establishment” figure. He also announced that a push to eliminate the state’s new income tax had just reached enough signatures to be added to the ballot in November, and urged the men to vote for it.
The takeaway for some attendees was that it was time to start paying attention to down-ballot races and midterm elections.
“Everyone shows up to vote for president, but no one shows up to vote for dogcatcher,” said Kenny Blight, 38, who is part of Mr. Slaughter’s Promise Keepers group. “I want a biblical dogcatcher.”
Almost the only women on the grounds, other than venue employees (and one journalist), were hundreds of volunteers from Grace City Church who each paid $55 to be there. (General admission for men was $199.)
“God created men for a purpose, they’re providers and protectors,” said Marcy Lyon, 55, who was volunteering with her teenage daughter. “When they get together and bond, it helps them stand up.”
A small pergola on the top of the hill was set aside as a women-only listening area for volunteers. A whiteboard read in looping script: “Ladies — please be considerate and enjoy this space quietly. We want to minimize distractions so our men can listen.”
