SPOKANE VALLEY — The mayor of this Spokane suburb recently told an audience of fellow conservatives that police should have shot Rodney King. He heard no objections.
Nor was there dissent when a popular pastor urged his congregants during a recent Sunday sermon to gird for war with an anti-Christian government. They applauded.
So it’s perhaps not surprising that Spokane Valley is at the heart of a district where voters keep reelecting Matt Shea, a state lawmaker who distributed a document last year telling Christians to “kill all males” if gay people and abortion advocates don’t yield to fundamentalist religious law after the U.S. government collapses. The six-term Republican, who counts the unrepentant mayor and the doomsday pastor as close allies, wants eastern Washington to secede and form a 51st state called Liberty embodying his style of Christian values.
Shea commands more influence than his state legislative role would suggest, speaking nationally and attracting wide attention in far-right and white supremacist circles. The militia proponent and participant in the so-called patriot movement describes the United States as a Christian nation under siege.