Mike Brewer targets Southland Books as a “regional demonic stronghold” across the street

From the outside, the church looked like a plain brick storefront in Maryville, Tennessee, with mirrored windows peeling and a simple sign reading THE WELL, REVIVAL HUB. But the man at the desk across the street, Mike Brewer, began posting videos explaining that this bookstore was not just a local business. In his account, Southland Books and Cafe was roughly 100 yards away and served as a “regional demonic stronghold” for “strategic-level spiritual warfare,” with the goal of “remove the enemy.”

To Lisa Misosky, the owner of Southland, that claim landed like an ambush, not a debate. She was 58, Catholic, and gay, raised in Maryville and used to living among conservative Christians. Still, demonic activity sounded “probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said after seeing the first accusation videos in the fall of 2022, before she understood how fast that language was spreading through the Christian right and the wider political landscape. Her real question was practical: what does “demonic” mean for her store, her customers, and whether she needed security?

Brewer and his wife Andrea built their worldview on the belief that God was orchestrating cosmic combat. The Brewers began attending conferences with names like “Voice of the Prophets” and “Voice of the Apostles” in places including Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Springfield, Missouri. Mike said he had seen an actual angel at one gathering and experienced a manifestation of the Holy Spirit he described as “like five fog machines, like a cloud just rolling into the room.” They went further: they saw the earth as the realm of spiritual warfare, with three distinct realms, the heavenly, the earthly, and the underworld. In that framework, Holy Spirit, angels, and believers form an army of God, while demons with names, ranks, and personalities can inhabit people, geographical regions, and even entire nations.

This is where Maryville gets interesting, and not in a metaphorical way. The church did not just preach spiritual warfare. When the Brewers asked God for their exact assignment, Mike said God told him, “I’m giving you and the Well a mandate for the full eradication of witchcraft and demonic activity in the region.” After returning from missions abroad, including time as missionaries to India and Haiti, they believed they had been hardened spiritual warriors. Then they “looked across the street one day” and concluded the demonic hub was Southland. Brewer’s public accusations turned a bookstore that sells everything from leather-bound Mark Twain to paperback Charles Bukowski, plus military history, mah-jongg flyers, trivia nights, readings, all-ages punk shows, and fundraisers (sometimes involving drag performances), into the kind of target that can mobilize crowds.

Misosky’s store was not new to controversy. A tobacco store partially blocked her full view of the church, but she could watch cars and trucks pull into the craggy parking lot on Thursdays and Sundays. Over three decades, she had built an institution in Maryville, even sometimes providing space for the local Democratic Party. What changed, she learned, was not the bookstore’s content so much as the intensity and specificity of the accusations: a man who introduced himself as Mike Brewer, the leader of an “apostolic hub” called the Well, told followers that a high-ranking demon named Lilith was involved and that Southland was being targeted for “strategic-level spiritual warfare.” That framing does not ask for patience. It implies urgency.

This movement did not stay inside a single storefront. The Atlantic notes a broader ripple effect in American politics and media. Donald Trump would later accuse the entire Democratic Party of being demonic. Tucker Carlson would claim he was mauled by a demon in his sleep. Steve Bannon would call Lutheran and Catholic activists who help immigrants demonic. A federal emergency-management official described being teleported to a Waffle House 50 miles away and said he was not sure whether the transporting forces were “good” or “evil.” J. D. Vance said of UFOs, “I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons.” And in a move that connects spiritual claims to political strategy, the same apostles and prophets who had said God anointed Trump to be president would encourage him to see his war with Iran as a cosmic showdown with a demonic entity known as the Prince of Persia.

Why should executives and boards care, beyond the local oddity of a bookstore vs. a church? Because this is how reputational risk and public-order risk can scale. Charismatic Christianity has drawn millions of Americans with promises of supernatural encounters and visions of cosmic battle. And a related stream, described here as the New Apostolic Reformation, helped normalize a new End Times logic: instead of retreating from the world while waiting for Jesus’s return, Christians should establish God’s Kingdom “right now, on Earth.” That shift reframes persuasion as action. It also turns cultural disagreements into spiritual triage, where “enemy removal” language can harden into harassment, pressure on local institutions, and escalating conflict around mundane community venues.

For leaders in the civic and commercial world, the second-order implications are clear: when “demonic strongholds” become a public organizing concept, decisions about safety, partnerships, communications, and even program sponsorship can become overnight strategic matters, not routine operations. Misosky’s story shows that the line between ideology and targeting can be drawn inside a neighborhood. For peers managing community-facing brands, workplaces, or nonprofits, the warning is not that faith exists, but that spiritual warfare language can come with a plan, a distance measurement, and a named target. In Maryville, that plan started with a storefront sign and a few videos. The rest is what happens when a belief system meets a local institution that cannot simply opt out.