In Cottonwood, a conservative church drives local anti-LGBTQ+ politics
Emails between River Bible Church’s lead pastor and council members show the religious group's influence and partisanship.
They showed up to city council meetings in droves. Some wore tee shirts in support of former President Donald Trump, some held up signs calling for the mayor’s resignation. Others held Bibles, or spoke softly about “Godless” people.
The one unifier was their relationship with River Bible Church, a local self-described “conservative church” in Arizona’s Verde Valley.
River Bible Church is openly hostile against LGBTQ+ people and prominently publishes their stances against homosexuality, transgender people, and same-sex marriage on their website.
Leading its flock at the public meetings was Dustin Daniels, the church’s senior pastor and one of the main organizers against LGBTQ+ rights in the small city of Cottonwood. Records show that Daniels sent out emails to his congregation telling congregants about a local drag show headed to Cottonwood and how they could show up at the council meetings to support a resistance against the performance.
Church members arrived en masse, not once, but to multiple city council meetings. At one point, a working group meeting became a standing-room-only event inside a banquet hall at the local recreation center.
But emails gathered by LOOKOUT show that Daniels’s influence doesn’t just include his own congregants; he’s also used his position to have conversations with Cottonwood city council members who were politically aligned with his church, specifically on anti-LGBTQ+ issues, and pushed leaders to vote for specific partisan bills.