How conservative firebrand Micah Beckwith catapulted to the top of Indiana GOP politics

Micah Beckwith's kingdom is expanding.

From a conference room inside the coffee house affiliated with Life Church in Noblesville, the 41-year-old pastor looks out to an expanse of grass and trees next to the church. He rattles off plans for a gazebo, an amphitheater for weddings and open mic nights, an outside bar, sports fields.

At a time when most churches are grappling with a decline in attendance, this Noblesville church's congregation has grown threefold since 2020. And for that, Beckwith ― a man who may soon become Indiana's second-highest state officeholder ― gets much of the credit.

"People ask, 'How are you growing so much?'" Beckwith said. "We've engaged in truth. I mean, we've just been unapologetic in saying, 'This is true, this is what God's word says.'

"We're not going to bow to the cancel culture."

Here, politics and religion are purposefully intertwined.

In what his congregants see as divine providence, Beckwith has managed to bypass the traditional processes and jump straight to the top of Indiana's ballot as running mate to Republican gubernatorial nominee Mike Braun, despite never having held elected office. The only public office he's held was an appointed position on a suburban library board, where he attracted national headlines over a book relocation policy.

He bucks convention in more ways than one: He holds ultraconservative views that are farther to the right than most Americans, he believes that religious leaders should engage head-on with politics ― on that, he practices what he preaches ― and he mobilized enough grassroots support to get nominated to the ballot over Braun's preferred lieutenant governor pick.

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He's part of a movement that believes the ills of society can be attributed to a turning away from religion ― specifically, turning away from the dominant religion among the nation's founders, Christianity. The "ills" he denounces are the very issues that many others consider fundamental to their liberty and safety: abortion access, same-sex marriage, restrictions on gun ownership, transgender healthcare. His detractors say he pushes an us vs. them mentality that makes Indiana hostile to many groups ― even other Christians who disagree with his church's views.

Beckwith wasn't formally trained for any of this. He has a business degree from a small liberal arts school, and he didn't go to seminary. But he's built a loyal following, and it's easy to see why: He's dynamic, he's earnest, and he's consistent. And he's a true believer.

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At Life Church, the altar is a concert stage, and Beckwith is lead guitarist on worship songs on a summer Sunday. He's strumming and singing songs about battle and victory, about trembling at the name of Jesus. He urges the congregation in a shouting voice, "Come on, church, declare it!" Everyone is on their feet.

As the song builds to a climax, Beckwith loses himself ― he bounces around the stage, darts his eyes around the room and lets laughter escape from his smile.

There are no skeptics here.

"Micah's on fire with the Holy Spirit!" member Laura Johnson says.

How Beckwith stumbled into ministry

Beckwith didn't set out to be a pastor or a politician, but the seeds of a firebrand were planted early.

As a 5-year-old, he tagged along with his mother, Kathy Beckwith, to hand out red roses ― a symbol of the anti-abortion movement ― outside a Walmart near Hillsdale, Michigan, on an anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. When one woman refused to take a rose, Micah grabbed it, chased her down and implored: "Please, please, don't kill babies!"

"He's always been very free to tell people what he thinks," Kathy Beckwith said, "and not back off of it."

No topic was off limits at the dinner table, especially when it came to politics. His mother's side had some "big-time Democrats," though Kathy herself was an Independent; his father's side were staunch Republicans. The family of six went to a guitar-strumming, contemporary nondenominational Christian church, but the kids went to a private Baptist Christian school for their K-12 education, where ties were required and students memorized Bible verses to earn privileges.

The school was also where Micah got comfortable speaking and performing on stage, Kathy said ― students had to participate in music programs and give book reports on the Constitution before the entire school. Micah got his first drum set at 12, and the worship leaders at their church took him under his wing on the worship team.

Beckwith remembers trying to poke the bear at that age, too, asking his pacifist Mennonite missionary of a grandmother about topics like the war in Bosnia and the Iran-Contra deal. Then as now, Beckwith has a habit of sprinkling in relevant stories from the Bible to back up his arguments.

But still, he assumed he'd work with the family business in the dairy supplies industry, so ministry wasn't on his mind.

It's true, what he likes to mention on the campaign trail: His father, Jon Beckwith, did invent the ice cream flavor Moose Tracks, and would go on to invent more flavors under the business Denali Alaskan Classics, according to a 1999 article from the Times Herald in Port Huron, Michigan. His grandfather, Robert Beckwith, invented the half-gallon ice cream container in 1952 and the gallon container a year later. Beckwith grew up helping with sales calls and going to Michigan Dairy Association conferences.

Religion remained part of his identity. He went to Huntington University, an Indiana school affiliated with the Church of the United Brethren, on a golf scholarship. Students had to go to chapel multiple times a week to fulfill a quota. Many students went even more often than they had to, said Brian Perry, one of Beckwith's college roommates.

Even if he didn't predict Beckwith would go into ministry or politics, it's not entirely surprising to Perry, either. Beckwith was always outgoing, liked speaking or playing music in front of a crowd, and was not shy about his beliefs, which Perry said were the same as they are now.

The difference being, he was mostly among like-minded peers then.

"In no way did he go around making everybody mad," Perry said. "I think most people agreed with him anyway."

Rather than dive into the family business entirely, Beckwith ran an embroidery franchise shop in nearby Fort Wayne for a few years while drumming in a Christian rock band he and some classmates formed in college. The band, Attaboy, toured the country and released multiple albums ― and still exists today, with just one original member left.

In the meantime, he and his wife, Susan, who he met at Huntington, moved to Noblesville. In 2009, White River Christian Church, where they were members, had an opening for a youth worship pastor ― a job that brings Christian rock to the pulpit. Five years later, he started the same job at a different church, Northview Church in Carmel.

While there, the Beckwiths had their two children through in-vitro fertilization: 7-year-old Brody and 5-year-old Savannah. The Beckwiths see IVF as "the pursuit of life," he said ― as long as unused embryos are not destroyed.

Politics enters the picture

The polarizing rise and election of former President Donald Trump happened shortly after Beckwith arrived at Northview, a mega church with thousands of members. Unlike most of the other staff, he wasn't shy about sharing his conservative views and his early support of Trump.

Trump exemplifies Beckwith's view of Christian nationalism: It's not that everyone in power needs to be Christian. Trump hasn't always been the most Godly man, Beckwith says, but he's the president God used to overturn Roe v. Wade.

"I don't see necessarily the fruit of Christ's likeness coming out of him," he said. "However, what he does do really well is he defends Judeo-Christian principles, whether he knows it or not."

In mid-2018, Beckwith pivoted from writing posts to recording Facebook live videos in his car to talk about political issues of the day from a biblical lens. The main thread, which remains the cornerstone of his philosophy: The church has a duty to fight in the political arena. And that means calling out same-sex marriage as "stupid" and gender identity confusion as "straight from the devil," as he put it in an August video that year.

A year later, he would announce a run for Congress, motivated in part by his disagreement with then-U.S. Rep. Susan Brooks' vote for a bill extending civil rights protections to sexual orientation and gender identity. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Beckwith was vocal against mandatory masking and vaccinations, doling out religious exemptions to anyone who asked.

His public image and outspokenness made leaders uncomfortable at Northview, Beckwith recalled. Though Executive Pastor Jason Pongratz wasn't available for an interview in time for publication, he said in an email that the church "does not endorse or support any specific political campaigns or individuals."

But Nathan Peternel, the senior pastor at Life Church, agreed with Beckwith's view that churches should, as Beckwith puts it, "dig in your feet in the sand a little bit and fire back." The two met by happenstance at a festival in Atlanta, Indiana, in 2019. They found another belief in common: that the United States was not meant to be a secular nation and that policy should be governed by Biblical principles.

"He was bold on that," Peternel said of Beckwith. "That made me trust him."

When Beckwith lost his congressional bid ― though, as a newcomer, he placed third of 15 candidates despite being vastly outspent ― Peternel offered him a job leading Life Church's Noblesville campus. Beckwith left Northview, Pastor Pongratz said via email, "in a healthy and mutually beneficial fashion."

And Beckwith brought with him a following. Brenda Ahlers, who sported Beckwith merchandise head-to-toe at the state GOP convention and at Life Church on a recent Sunday, first met Beckwith at a pork festival in Tipton County during his congressional run. She said she took one look at him and felt a rush of relief.

"He was like a mini-Pence," she said. "I was never so impressed with his knowledge of the Bible, the Constitution."

She agreed to be his Tipton County coordinator for the campaign, as she was for former Gov. Mike Pence. Then when she heard Beckwith was starting at Life Church, where her sister attended church, she decided to switch churches and make the half-hour trip every Sunday.

Some people left, too, as a result of Beckwith's arrival. One can hear Beckwith addressing a divided church during his first sermon, in August 2020. The subject of his sermon was Nehemiah, a figure in the Bible who called out the powerful and elite ― and a figure that reminds Peternel of Beckwith.

"I know there’s a lot of different political opinions in this room," Beckwith told the crowd. "I don’t mean to be offensive when I say this, but we cannot destroy our history. Tearing down statues, whitewashing history, is a bad thing. It doesn’t mean we were perfect … it just means we have to know where we came from."

The church felt the sting of the departures on its pocketbook for a bit, but Beckwith cultivated a movement. From about 200 regular attendees at the Noblesville campus before COVID, the church averages nearly 600 attendees today. And it's unabashedly conservative: A decal on the front glass door warns that the church, nicknamed locally "the gun church," allows concealed carry.

They are undeterred even by a video he posted after the riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, in which he said God sent the rioters there. Beckwith later took the video down because of the level of vitriol it attracted, but a shortened version made the rounds on social media after he won at the GOP convention in June. The clip excludes some context: Days earlier, when the House convened the 117th Congress, the Rev. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri invoked the name of Brahma, the Hindu God. Beckwith interpreted this as a mockery of Jesus and the Christian God and said that therefore, God made a mockery of the nation's Democratic temple.

Beckwith and Peternel shrug off backlash as a sign they're doing the right thing.

"You can’t cancel-culture Micah," Peternel said. "Micah definitely has mobilized the people of Life Church."

Two years into Beckwith's time at Life Church, the congregation seemed fully bought in. One summer Sunday in 2022, during a sermon about bearing God's armor, the lights went dark in the room, battle music blared, words scrolled on the screen behind Beckwith as he read them with increasing vigor: "For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world.”

The crowd cheered and gave him a standing ovation.

Beckwith shouted: "Who is ready to go to war? Are you ready?"

Reaching beyond the church

In September 2022, Beckwith took the fight to the Hamilton East Public Library, where he and other conservative board members pushed a controversial book-relocation policy that stirred up once-quiet board meetings.

Library boards had already been in the spotlight over challenges to materials that some found too sexually explicit for children. The all-Republican Hamilton County Council appointed Beckwith to the library board in September 2022 by adding his nomination to a meeting agenda after the meeting had started, then voting 6-0 without public discussion.

Some library board meetings were explosive. At times, police escorted community members out of the room for shouting at board members. And the board earned national headlines, particularly in August 2023 when author John Green found out two of his books, "Looking for Alaska" and "The Fault in Our Stars," were among 1,300 books moved from the teen to the adult section.

Green took to social media to call the policy in his home state "ludicrous." Amid backlash, the board later suspended the policy, with Beckwith the sole member to vote against ending it.

Evan Casey, a Fishers resident who attended some meetings, described them as "confusing."

"It was very frustrating to people. It didn’t seem like he listened," he said of Beckwith.

In the middle of all of this, Beckwith had started a new campaign in mid-2023: an independent run for lieutenant governor. He would resign from the library board a few months later.

By this point, those who were concerned with Beckwith's policies were talking to one another on social media. Reece Axel Adams, a student at Earlham College in Richmond who had been blocked from Beckwith's Facebook pages, formed a group called Hoosiers Against Micah Beckwith ― a place where others who had been blocked or who just aren't plugged in could talk and "ensure he does not get anywhere near the reins of power," Adams said.

Adams, who's queer, compares the state to Florida, which Beckwith has praised for its legislation seeking to curb LGBTQ rights and what teachers can discuss in classrooms.

"I know Indiana’s conservative, but we’re not that conservative," Adams said. "That really scares me. One Florida’s enough, we don’t need another Florida."

Adams and his partner talk often about the prospect of moving elsewhere.

"In so many areas Indiana is becoming hostile," he said.

Why Beckwith promotes Christian nationalism

Beckwith won the lieutenant governor race in part because he spent a year traveling the state and meeting with hundreds of delegates in person. He educated them about the choice they have, tapping into an anti-establishment spirit that doesn't want to just roll over and heed Braun's selection.

His own church turned out for Beckwith in a big way. Forty of the delegates to the GOP convention were from Life Church, and Beckwith won by a margin of only 60.

He is very upfront about his beliefs that America should be run based on Judeo-Christian principles, as he insists the founders intended, and that this does not violate the separation of church and state. Beckwith often quotes a letter from John Adams in which he wrote, "We recognize no sovereign but God, and no king but Jesus!”

The separation of church and state refers to the idea that the state cannot establish a church ― a principle rooted in the fact that early settlers came here to get away from the Church of England. That's a theocracy, which Beckwith says he is not pushing for. It also is very clearly outlawed by the Constitution.

The role of religion in politics is more complicated. There's little doubt most of the founding fathers espoused Judeo-Christian values, since that was the dominant religion of the day, said James Fuller, history professor at the University of Indianapolis. But they also argued and disagreed a lot; plus, society today is far more pluralistic, with many religions and atheists.

"What would they say in the context of the 21st century? It’s really impossible for us to say," Fuller said.

That line of separation between church and state, or religion and politics, has been hotly debated throughout American history, said Daniel Conkle, law professor emeritus from Indiana University. George Washington added the "so help me God" at the end of the oath of office. Some early presidents declared days of prayer while others, like Thomas Jefferson, thought they were unconstitutional. More recently, the Supreme Court ruled public tax dollars could support private religious education.

The influence of religion has not only been seen in conservative politics. Religious arguments were used to advocate for the abolition of slavery and, later, the end of child labor. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s advocacy was informed by his Christian faith.

Like many things, the devil is in the details. Does Beckwith's belief that same-sex marriage is a defilement of God mean he would advocate for banning gay marriage? (No, he tells IndyStar ― but he would defend churches if the government compelled them to ordain such marriages.)

"The more specific a religious argument is, the more it is based upon specific scriptural passages, the more potentially divisive it can be," Conkle said.

Casey, the Fishers resident, is also a former Christian minister. Beckwith's support of Christian nationalism not only alienates other religious faiths, but his interpretation of the Bible alienates many Christians who believe that Jesus had a simple, loving message of redemption, Casey said. Jesus himself, for example, never discusses homosexuality in the Bible.

"I believe that he is wrong in his theology, and also he is using this manipulation of semantics to convince people that his way is correct," Casey said.

"It’s sad that Mr. Beckwith just cannot see the humanity that we all have," he said. "It’s us vs. them, rather than a we. That’s what kind of breaks my heart for him."

Beckwith is unabashed about pushing "us vs. them." In his eyes, Christians need to embrace confrontation and go to war over what they see as the absolute truths written in the Bible. The warrior mentality pervades many of his sermons ― delivered with a smile.

"If you are a threat to the enemy and you walk in the power of prayer, like Elijah did, you’re going to be such a big threat that the enemy’s not going to hold back," Beckwith said in a 2022 sermon. "They’re going to pull out their big guns against God’s mighty prayer warriors.

"If God is on your side, who can be against you?"

Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter @kayla_dwyer17.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pastor Micah Beckwith catapults to the top of Indiana GOP politics