The rise of Newbury Park Pastor Rob McCoy

Editor's note: This is a shortened version of The Star's subscriber-only story on Pastor Rob McCoy. Read the full story that charts his course from the Conejo Valley to the national stage.

Every seat is taken. Godspeak Calvary Chapel members wearing red, white and blue pins or T-shirts with slogans like “Unborn Lives Matter” spill from the main sanctuary into a foyer anchored by video screens. 

Four days earlier, conservatives packed this Newbury Park church to pray for state Assembly candidates who asked for endorsements, votes and donations. They came together a night later for a documentary on school policies and teachers' unions many of them believe strip parents of their rights.

Today is Sunday. Pastor Rob McCoy stands in a black T-shirt, arms crossed, at a pulpit framed by video screens and a pool used for full-body baptisms. In this sanctuary, he’s built a fortress for the culture wars, a garrison against what he calls the “tyranny” of Democrats. On this and other stages, he contends COVID-19 vaccines kill, critical race theory is “diabolical” and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is being used as a weapon against Republicans.

Twitter is still pulsing over McCoy at a national summit interviewing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia conservative who brands herself “a proud Christian nationalist.”

“Some day, please God, may she be president of the United States,” McCoy says in the video.

Politics have been a constant of McCoy’s two-decade Godspeak pastorship – and not just from the pulpit. The pastor lost a narrow race for a California State Assembly seat in 2014, but won a spot on Thousand Oaks City Council less than a year later. He resigned from the council in April 2020 after deciding to defy state and county lockdowns to pandemic lockdowns on in-person worship services.

His next act is national.

In July, he backed out of a follow-up city council run, citing his growing responsibilities as chairman of Turning Point Faith. McCoy co-founded the evangelical arm of Turning Point USA with its leader, Charlie Kirk, the activist with 1.7 million Twitter followers and a media empire championing conservative politics.

McCoy catapulted into national media on the back of his pandemic protests. But it’s his network — heavy hitters like Kirk and Turning Point USA, which reported more than $55 million in revenue last year — that has him surging in influence among the evangelical right and other wings of the conservative movement.

McCoy and Kirk, who calls McCoy his personal pastor, launched Turning Point Faith in 2021 with an aim to take McCoy’s brand of political leadership to churches around the country.

“I'm a man of faith. I'm not permitted to participate in the public square?” McCoy asked. “Whoever says you can't legislate morality has no idea what they're talking about. Every law is based on someone's morality.”

The group follows a four-decade tradition of evangelical politicking. Its face might be Kirk, the young firebrand behind the college-oriented Turning Point USA, but much of its vision, the same one preached in Godspeak’s sanctuary, comes from McCoy.

Over three months, more than five hours of interviews with McCoy, scores of recorded speeches and media appearances and 46 interviews with his allies, adversaries and observers, Ventura County Star reporters charted the conservative Christian bastion the pastor built in Newbury Park and his steep rise to national prominence.

For subscribers: Culture war propels Pastor Rob McCoy to larger stage

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: The rise of Newbury Park Pastor Rob McCoy