In February 2025, I wrote about the pastor of a Mercy Culture church in my hometown of Waco, Texas, who was offended by a prayer offered for immigrants at a local gathering of faith leaders. After the event, Les Cody took to social media to ask other Christians in the city whether they were fed up with city leadership that would have the gall to allow prayers of mercy to be lifted for the most vulnerable among us.
Well, the folks of Mercy Culture have been triggered, once again, by an act of mercy. This time they aimed their ire at Baylor University.
In late August, Mercy Culture’s social media accounts shared an open letter to Baylor that began with, “I thought you were unapologetically Christian.” It then offered examples it believes challenge the Baptist university’s Christian bona fides, including headlines from the past year from the student newspaper, The Baylor Lariat.
One slide read, “Now you accept other religions that lead people to hell.” The headline directly above this statement came from a November 2025 Lariat story announcing that one of Baylor’s many dining halls would offer halal options for Muslim students. Other headlines were 2024 opinion pieces from students about witchcraft and interfaith prayer spaces on campus.
Other slides decried Baylor’s inclusion of “woke student-led” groups on campus and allowing churches with “woke agendas” to set up a table at its annual church fair during orientation week. (Full disclosure: The photo depicting the “woke agenda” church was of the booth set up by my church, University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, which meets at 1701 Dutton on Sunday mornings at 10:45, but we really don’t get started until about 11:00, as most of us aren’t “woke” enough at the advertised time.)
The Mercy Culture post ended its rant with a call for Baylor to “turn back to God,” to be “unapologetically Christian,” and for “revival and reformation” to come to campus.
Always At War
For those unfamiliar, the Mercy Culture network of churches began in 2019 with its Fort Worth campus. Led by pastors Landon and Heather Schott, the movement has grown to a handful of campuses across Texas, as well as in California and Washington, D.C. The Waco campus opened in 2023.
Though it isn’t formally connected with the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), it retains close ties with some of its leaders, such as Sean Feucht. Like its NAR siblings, Mercy Culture is less concerned with mercy than it is with establishing dominance over every sphere of influence. In a town like Waco, that means making “spiritual inroads” into Baylor.
Online pushback against Mercy Culture’s open letter to Baylor centered on its critique of the university offering halal dining options for students.
This was likely because it was first on the litany of grievances the church had toward the university. It was also the complaint that most deviated from the gospel. The New Testament gives Christians literal instructions on how to respond to the presence of food that is part of other people’s religious practice. Nowhere does it include the hysteria Mercy Culture exhibited in its rant.
But focusing on this one element misses the larger point, which is that Mercy Culture represents a growing movement within Christianity that interprets its faith through the lenses of conquest and control. It cannot thrive in a world without enemies. Once it destroys one, it will move on to the next.
A movement built on hunting witches cannot survive without a witch. When there are none around, it will create one out of thin air.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.