A Christian men’s conference, aiming to gather 20,000 fathers and sons at The Gorge Amphitheater in central Washington state in June, has a line up of speakers who have disparaged women and referred to them as their genitalia.
The Father’s Day weekend Freedom Con is organized by Stronger Man Nation, a Christian nationalist group founded by Josh McPherson, pastor of Grace City Church in nearby Wenatchee. This year’s speakers include Josh Howerton, who made “jokes” about sexually subservient women; Ryan Visconti, who said wives are toxic unless they’re weaker than men, and Graham Allen, who spoke of his mother as a “vagina.”
Perhaps the most controversial is Mark Driscoll, who under the pseudonym William Wallace II, once wrote that God created women to be “penis homes.”
Driscoll was celebrated as an “evangelical bad boy” whose brash style was a model for reaching a postmodern generation until mounting accusations of misused funds and spiritual abuse threw his church into crisis. He abruptly resigned from Mars Hill Church in Seattle in 2014.
He has since has relaunched and rebranded in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he’s reportedly demanded unquestioned loyalty from staff and hired firms to surveille ousted members.
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According to McPherson, the Freedom Con conference is “summoning” Christian men who will fight for freedom.
“It is our land. It is our heritage,” McPherson said in an announcement video. “We will rise together. We will stand together. We will resist together. We will not watch Washington state plunge into the abyss. We will liberate Washington state. We will dedicate Washington state back to Jesus Christ.”
One of the nation’s bluest states, Washington is split between its conservative half in central and eastern counties and its far more populous western half across the Cascade mountains. It was the only state where the GOP did not gain ground during the 2024 presidential election.
A second video, released last week, advertised the Stronger Man Nation Freedom Con with a montage of manly men doing manly things. Footage of actor John Wayne firing a lever-action rifle and baseball great Babe Ruth slugging a ball out of the park transitions into shots of contemporary podcasters, preachers and politicians.
McPherson and Driscoll best friends
Since launching Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, Driscoll has risen like a phoenix, returning to public attention as a Christian champion of aggressive masculinity and Donald Trump’s political agenda and style.
Driscoll “tried on a number of hats,” Mike Cosper, host of “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,” told The Roys Report (TRR) in 2025. “What he’s found in the last couple of years is a niche that really works for him. … MAGA Mark is like the new Mark.”
But Driscoll was always welcome in Wenatchee, a three-hour drive east of his old church. He has described McPherson, pastor of Grace City, as one of his best friends and a “friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
McPherson trained under Driscoll in 2010 and modeled Grace City after Mars Hill. The central Washington church is estimated to have about 4,000 members. A few years ago, it was reportedly able to raise $15.5 million in 10 weeks for a new school and to plant a church across the country in Georgia.
McPherson has served on the board of Mark Driscoll Ministries and has asked Driscoll to preach at his church multiple times in the last 12 years.
In Driscoll’s most recent sermon at Grace City last month, he called Grace City one of America’s greatest churches, and said he and McPherson work together very closely.
“Pastor Josh and I talk on the phone a lot, especially for heterosexual men,” Driscoll said. “We talk on the phone a lot — like junior high girls would think we talk a lot.”
In that sermon, Driscoll also spoke about the need for Christians to get aggressive about politics. He said Christians are responsible for bringing everything under the authority of Christ and fighting the “Jezebel spirit” of the End Times, which he said has a stronghold in his former hometown.
Driscoll pointed specifically to Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, a Democratic Socialist who has spoken publicly about having an abortion. He said her office, with its promotion of diversity, is one of Satan’s “injection points.”
“Make no mistake what you guys are up against,” Driscoll said in his hour-long sermon. “It’s powerful. It’s evil. It’s demonic. It’s entrenched. And what you’re trying to do is remarkably important because if the church won’t fight, there’s no one left to fight.”
Pursuing political power
Such political rhetoric has become common at Grace City in the last few years, according to independent journalist Dominick Bonny.
McPherson opposed COVID-19 pandemic mandates that restricted church gatherings and preached in November 2020 that Christians are sometimes morally required to break the law. Church members were urged to get involved in local protests and in 2021, a group refused to comply with the mask mandate at a school board meeting.
Church leaders said at the time that to contend for truth in contemporary culture, Christians need to seek power.
“If godly people will not seek political power and use it,” McPherson wrote in an ebook defending the idea of Christian nationalism, “godless people will. Your choice.”
Grace City’s executive pastor, Adam James, preached a sermon calling for Christians to run for office to fight the forces of cultural Marxism. Last month, he announced he’s running against a fellow Republican for a seat in the state legislature.
“The hour is late and the hour is dark,” James said. “Our state deserves fighters.”
Recruiting fighters
The Stronger Man Nation conference has been explicitly designed to mobilize such fighters.
“We will fight for our wives, our children, our faith, and our freedom,” McPherson said in his announcement video, filmed in front of a mounted deer head and a flag. “America did not make it 250 years because weak men scrolled in silence. … I’ve called warriors and patriots in Christ to join me in this historic moment. No more apologizing for biblical manhood.”
Several of the invited speakers have run for political office before. Nate Schatzline, a pastor at Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth, Texas, is also a state representative who has served two terms.
Schatzline’s pastor, Landon Schott, once claimed, “You’re not a Christian if you vote for a Democrat.” And Schatzline has pushed churches to endorse political candidates, which until recently was prohibited under the terms of religious tax exemption. The New Yorker called him one of the “new faces of Christian nationalism.”
“We’re not taking seats in government,” Schatzline said on a Stronger Man Nation podcast. “We’re giving seats to God in government.”
Refused to apologize
Graham Allen, an Iraq war veteran and podcaster, ran in a Republican congressional primary in South Carolina in 2021, trying to unseat a congressman who had voted to impeach Trump. When a Republican suggested he should run in Mississippi, where he was born, Allen sarcastically apologized.
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t control what vagina I came out of and where it was located when I came out of it,” he said.
Allen, who was raised by his grandparents, later repeated the comments to a Republican’s women’s group. Facing backlash, he said he wouldn’t apologize for his biblical view of gender.
“I can’t help what vagina I came out of,” Allen said again, according to local media reports. “I will stand by that truth. … Babies come out of women and men are men.”
He later dropped out of the race.
Other speakers at the Freedom Con conference have not run for office but are politically active Trump supporters, who speak with urgency about what they call a crisis in masculinity. The full line-up includes authors Eric Metaxas and David Barton, podcaster Chad Robichaux and pastor John Lovell.
David Crowder is scheduled to perform, “bringing his signature vintage Southern rock to the men of FREEDOM CON on Saturday night,” according to the website.
Controversy is church growth strategy
None of the speakers are strangers to controversy. Pursuit NW pastor Russell Johnson, who once aspired to run for U.S. Congress but started a multisite church in the Seattle suburbs instead, has clashed with local authorities, neighbors and progressive activists.
Last year, he was involved in a Mayday USA event in Seattle, which one city leader called a “far-right rally” designed “to provoke a reaction … in the heart of Seattle’s most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood.”
More than 20 trans-rights protestors were arrested for allegedly attacking police and people at the event. Christian organizers later sued the city over the incident.
Johnson says fearlessness is what the times demand and will only grow the church.
“I want to be on the most wanted posters in the hallways of hell,” he said on Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau’s podcast. “I want all of hell to have a panic attack when Pursuit gathers for worship, when we gather behind candidates, when we speak out on social issues …. I just want to keep my foot on the gas.”
Masculine aggression is also the means of rejecting what McPherson describes as the deadly threat of empathy.
“Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell,” he said in a podcast last year. “And — this will be controversial — women are especially vulnerable to this.”
Women are not invited to the men’s gathering at The Gorge, according to the FAQ page on Stronger Man Nation website. Tickets for attendees under 12 cost $99. General admission for 12 and up costs $149.
Daniel Silliman is senior reporter/editor at The Roys Report. He began his two decades in journalism covering crime in Atlanta and has since led major investigations into abuse and misconduct in Christian contexts. Daniel and his wife live in Johnson City, Tennessee.
23 Responses
Perhaps this is the unintentional companion piece to the article on women leaving the church.
https://roysreport.com/study-gen-z-women-are-losing-their-religion/
If this sort of thing is happening and more evangelical “christians” aren’t speaking out against it, why would women (or anyone for that matter) want anything to do with white American evangelicalism?
Good point. Many others sites who have evaluated the reason(s) why women are no longer attending church state the philosophy and attitudes of the speakers and men attending these conferences are one of them.
“In that sermon, Driscoll also spoke about the need for Christians to get aggressive about politics. He said Christians are responsible for bringing everything under the authority of Christ and fighting the “Jezebel spirit” of the End Times.”
When did Christ tell us to be aggressive about politics? When did Christ say we are responsible to bring everything under His authority? When did Christ call us to fight a so-called Jezebel spirit?
Christ said , “Go out into the world and preach the gospel, baptising in My name.”
These wolves don’t teach Biblical patriarchy just misogyny very dangerous people AVOID and warn about them they are destroying TRUE Biblical patriarchy because women and men listen to their twisted Scriptures!
I was just reading through Matthew 23 again! “Christian” Pharisees, who need healing and humility, are among those who seek Him with Grace and Truth! My heart breaks for these men who have lost the Way of Truth and I am praying for them! As I read this article I wondered what some make of Matthew 5? “Blessed are the Merciful…” playing God and besmirching His Name and castigating and calling the very people the Lord will save as demons is dangerous! Will the Lord continue to harden their hearts and sear their consciences? Will they be blind and never seeing and deaf and never hearing? The very “empathy” they are attacking is the conviction and compassion they need! Martha Kinsler
While I don’t at all support the sexist comments by the named ministers, it doesn’t mean the entire conference is problematic. I truly don’t know anyone, myself included, who sees everything clearly and doesn’t have blind spots. Unfortunately, entitlement and deeply held sexist beliefs seem to permeate men everywhere including the church to a greater or lesser extent depending on the individuals. That is a serious concern to me but hopefully separate from the purpose of this conference. Weak men who don’t stand up for family and country are a much more serious concern to me. It seems to be a large part of America’s problem in my opinion. I pray the conference glorifies the Lord and furthers the plan and purpose of God.
When ladies (and men) are reduced by definition of their reproductive parts (which are the Secret Place of the Most High where Covenant is made and Life is created in a flash of LIGHT as sperm meets egg and zinc is released from the egg, thereby commencing the instantaneous, miraculous replication of cells and prohibiting another sperm from joining in that Union which YHWH has created – even in His Own Son Yahshua’s created flesh occurring in MirY’am’s racham), all that is left then is the dividing of the concubine into 12 pieces upon her death, with such emphasis on her reproductive glands … The man from BeitAl (aka: Bethel, House of Alahim) is a sad commentary on this, as other men had abused the concubine all night – providing her no rest, Shabbat, Covenant, day or night; and then her subsequent appearance on the threshold of her master’s house as she dies and becomes a “cut up.” Revelation 14:11 warns that there is no rest day or night with those who adhere to the grindings of the brute beast, the false father of lies.
1000 years later, when Yahshua meets the wasted Samaritan woman (she having had 5 husbands and a current live-in) in the middle of the day at Jacob’s well in Sychar and offers her Living Water which will finally forever satisfy her formerly insatiable thirst for intimacy, she is just stunned that someone sees her for whom she really is: a human being created in the Image of Alahim for only Him Self. She excitedly shares this knowledge of Him with the men of the village – they arrive, and see Yahshua for themselves, and believe!
Perhaps Freedom CON is the correct name for the event, considering the speakers.
I thought the same thing. Who came up with this terrible name? Also, they talk a lot about “fighting,” which I would typically assume to be metaphorical, except it appears they literally mean to fight against flesh and blood as the camo/rifles are so prominently featured in their little Christian conference ad. Living by the sword.
How long are people going to continue to tolerate and enable this theological tomfoolery?
Too bad you didn’t include the reason WHY Graham Allen dropped out of the congressional race. He “dropped out” of the race because he was asked to by President Trump. The statement “he later dropped out of the race” without explanation leaves the reader to conclude that his vaginal comments were what caused him to drop out. That was not the reason. Poor reporting on your part.
For Mother’s Day, Graham Allen deserves a sharp slap in the face from his father for disrespecting women.
Christian Nationalism promoted by this group (and this current U.S. administration), and other mostly evangelical and charismatic churches, is abhorrent. It is neither Christian nor Biblical. It is a false, deceptive religious movement that is dangerous — cultic — and distorts Biblical truth; leads to the abuse of women and children; and damages faith. It is embraced by many so called Christian leaders who have abused their followers and staff in recent years, which the Roys’s Report has bravely reported. It is not surprising that so many women (and many men) are leaving organized religion.
I hope you can publish this article EVERYWHERE! I would hate to be the wife of one of these misogynistic men!
Eph. 5:28, “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.”
Not one of these men is as humble as Butch Wilmore, the true Christian astronaut who almost didn’t make it back home, and wrote a book titled, “Stuck in Space.” He is a genius. His full interview is on the YouTube podcast online with Shawn Ryan. Butch is REAL man who put his whole life in God’s hands from a child all the way to space! A man who says he is first a Christian, protector of his wife and daughters, and an aviator. THAT’s the kind of man who should be speaking to these wimpy men!!!
I was captivated watching this 3 hour podcast listening to this honorable PATRIOT speak about our Lord Jesus Christ and the training he underwent for so many years to achieve the goal of where GOD wanted him to be. He gave Jesus Christ all the glory for every up and down in his life. His training was so intricate, and exhaustive over the course of his Navy education, and none of the men you list in this article are as intelligent or highly credentialed and as HUMBLE as Butch Wilmore! Praise God He brought him back from space!!
Why call it Freedom Con? Don’t these men have enough freedom as it is? I’m guessing they want the freedom to lord it over everyone especially women.
Plus all the speakers are white males.
Wow, Kent. And Gene, too, probably lurking somewhere in the background. Quite a ways to travel for a couple nice Free Methodist boys. I’d heard you’d both taken a Calvinist turn a while back, but I didn’t realize how hard you’d fallen for the whole cro-magnon theobro schtick.
And then there’s Josh, who evidently does you so proud in his faux veteran prepper getup, striking a defiant pose for the gospel of Mark. Those two I never knew, but if either of you ever somehow read these words, I’d like to ask: “Was it sudden? Was it clean? Were there a lot of shades in between?”
These guys are certainly goofballs, and have generally bad theology, and are creating a very bad impression.
But, if we ask why this even exists, there is something that needs to be said, that is very dark and wrong, both in the church and culture.
Toxic, over abundant femininity and the great overuse of therapy based references in the general culture and especially church, and the promotion of women to the detriment of men, (its not zero sum, but 50 years of feminism has made it so), has brought us to this point, where BOTH sexes are becoming caricatures, and nothing is authentic anymore.
The pendulum must swing back.
I believe they are stuck in childhood trying to be “good boys” and please the father figure that was never around. Symbolically and in reality. It is Lord of the Flies.
Jerome, you are not wrong to say what you’re saying here, and I sincerely hope the pendulum you’re talking about somehow gets stuck at the center. Radicalism has a very long, dark history of doing nobody any good. The day before yesterday, this was a foundational tenet of political (if not always social) conservatism.
Thank you for doing what I had thought nearly impossible and persevering until you found a way to blame the mistreatment of women on the women themselves. Kudos to you for doing the difficult work of minimizing the actions of the abusers and laying the blame for the abuse at the feet of the abused. Good work – I’m sure you’re very pleased with yourself.
Why do some of the guys in the photo have guns? I have always thought you have to be a scared , tiny person to always need a gun with you. Imagine repainting the lords supper, but they are all armed to the teeth! Ridiculous, fake tough guys.
Empathy is what makes us human. Narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths have zero empathy. These men are crazy and do NOT know the Word of God.
Josh McPherson says that 12 year old girls are women and ready to have children before they have their periods. So I guess he supports PDFs?? Makes sense since he was interviewing w Vlad Savchuk when he said this. The same man who allows a pdf to lead his men in small groups.