Churches and state

To get to King’s Church in Washington, D.C., congregants typically walk, ride the Metro, or find a nearby parking garage. There’s not a parking lot or steeple in sight. For a few hours every Sunday morning, this Southern Baptist church takes unlikely shape inside a downtown event venue owned by a bar.

One Sunday in January, Pastor Ben Palka addressed the elephant in the room.

“Well, I learned this week that I am a D.C. insider,” he opened his sermon. He was referring to a Vanity Fair article about King’s Church published days ­earlier. It called King’s a gathering place for conservatives aligned with the Make America Great Again ideology. As portrayed by the pop culture magazine, the gathering was a secretive assemblage of political power players, where fellowship time after the service was networking for jobs and midweek small group meetings were political war rooms. The proof? The attendance of conservative White House and Capitol Hill staffers.

That Sunday, Palka came clean:

“From time to time on Monday nights, a group of us meet at my house, and we spend time sitting around my kitchen table plotting, plotting how to get economic, cultural, scientific, and political leverage. … I’m talking about one of the world’s most famous turn-based strategy games—Civilization VII.”

Despite the tongue in cheek, it’s perhaps understandable why King’s might look unusual to outsiders. A church in a bar sounds scandalous to some, yet Washington pastors commonly turn to innovative meeting locations. But what Vanity Fair missed is that King’s Church members simply exemplify the industry of the city: politics. However, they come to church for something entirely different.

With 857 houses of worship in 2015, Washington ranked fourth for the most religious venues per resident. Since then, real estate developers have turned some houses of worship into luxury condos. Many churches share space with other congregations, swapping the early and late morning services.

“You are either theologically liberal and dying, or gospel preaching and have a shot at survival,” said King’s staff pastor Daniel Davis. “If you look around, it’s like a cemetery of once-faithful churches that are now emptied and flying rainbow flags.”

A 2024 Pew survey found that 56% of D.C. residents describe themselves as Christians, but 47% seldom or never attend religious services. Sunday morning brunch, by contrast, is the fashionable activity.

After pastors Ben Palka and Wesley Welch founded it in 2018, King’s Church ping-ponged between hotels, a charter school, a church funeral chapel, and the Spy Museum. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, its congregation grew from 50 members to now around 600. Penn Social, a recently renovated bar, has accommodated the congregation’s Sunday morning gatherings, but on March 1, King’s will move to a larger rented space. During the week Welch, Palka, and Davis work out of an office converted from a row house on 10th Street Northeast. They’re in the middle of a capital campaign to purchase their own building.

“Sometimes the proximity can be confused as intent,” Palka said. “If you’re swimming in a political context, and you have people who work in politics, people can read into that and think we must be recruiting political people. No, it’s just the nature of the industry here.”

It is true that most churchgoers in Washington have some connection to politics: Some are federal employees, others work at lobbying organizations, some are journalists covering the bosses of their fellow church members. Davis is a former Senate speechwriter, and Palka has experience in defense and national security.

But in our interviews, the pastors pushed back against the idea that King’s is a MAGA hub. Although they said many of the congregants are likely conservative in their day jobs, the church is not partisan. It avoids endorsing political candidates, and it has declined partnerships with Turning Point USA and other politically oriented organizations.

“If I meet with a staffer whose boss is involved in some high-stakes political showdown, and they come and meet with me after a long day at work, we’re not talking about the showdown. We’re talking about their life,” Davis said. “Church is a space for them to actually get away from the craziness of their job. It’s way less political than most people think it is.”

Less than 3 miles away, the District Church, planted in 2010, meets in a high school auditorium. The congregation is awaiting renovations on its future home, a historic Baptist church strategically located along 16th Street Northwest. Colloquially known as the “Highway to Heaven,” the street hosts a high number of churches, mosques, and synagogues, culminating in the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church across the park from the White House. Like King’s, the typical attendee at the District Church is young, highly motivated, and only in town for a few years.

“Everybody else’s national news is our local news,” Lead Pastor Aaron Graham said. “The question is not if we’re engaged but how we’re engaged in politics as Christians. I think we want people to vote. We want people to pay attention to what’s happening in the news. … But I try to stay away from electoral politics or partisan politics.”

In practice, that means Graham pushes the church toward unity, despite the potentially conflicting political views of his congregants. The fact that some Washington churchgoers also have the chance to write policy presents D.C. pastors with unique challenges.

“Whenever I do speak up about something that’s more political, you can almost hear the room hold their breath,” Graham said. “My theory is that they’re nervous that I’m going to say something that’s explicitly partisan that may jeopardize friendships in the church because the conversation later is going to be, ‘Are you for or against what Pastor Aaron said?’”

Davis, the King’s pastor, agreed about that potential pitfall.

“As a pastor, especially in D.C., you have to not allow [your politics] to affect your shepherding of people who might differ on some things and recognize that politics is not the greatest thing,” he said. “If there’s anything I learned in 10 years working in politics, it’s that it makes a terrible god.”

The Sunday after the Vanity Fair article, Palka joked lightly about running an insider conservative recruiting network. Then he launched into his ongoing sermon series. The topic was about how to live as a Christian in a secular environment that misunderstands you. The title: “Life in Babylon.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to note that King’s Church will move into a new rented space on March 1.