A new Pew study was conducted earlier in the week. foundThe share of Americans who believe Donald Trump is largely responsible for Jan. 6, 2021 violence has fallen by almost 10 percent in the past year. However, the percentage of Americans who think he is not responsible has increased by almost the same amount. The Freedom from Religion Foundation and Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty published a new report on Wednesday. reportThis helps to explain why: The same Christian nationalism which served as the unifying principle behind this shift. Jan. 6 insurrectionThe faithful are also trying to rewrite history.
As two of the report’s contributors, scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, co-authors of Taking America Back for GodIn a launch event on Wednesday, Perry noted that Christian nationalist support for Jan. 6, rioters has increased by 20% in the past year while support for prosecuting those involved in rioting has fallen by 20%. That suggests, said Perry, “that this ideology is powerfully connected to a reinterpretation of these events” in a way that could become “a powerful motivator for future potential violence.”
At more than 60 pages and drawing on the work of a number of academics, journalists and researchers, “Christian Nationalism and the January 6 Insurrection” is the most comprehensive account to date of the role of the movement in the attack. America is a unique place within the political and cultural world of Christian nationalism. It was founded as a Christian nation, and its founding documents were divinely inspired. Christianity should and must have a privileged position in public life, and “true Americans” are understood to be “white, culturally conservative, natural-born citizens.”
That ideology, argues the report, served both as the unifying theme for the various factions that joined in the assault on the Capitol as well as the “permission structure” that allowed participants to justify their violence. It is misleading to call these fringe ideas fringe ideas. Surveys repeatedly reveal that almost half of the country supports fusion of Christianity and civic life.
According to the report, Christian nationalism is also compatible with a number other convictions. Surveys from early 2021 showed strong associations between Christian nationalism views. For example, the proposition that the federal government should declare America to be a Christian nation and a wide range of far-right beliefs, but not directly linked to faith. These include the disproven claim that Antifa and Black Lives Matter were responsible for Jan. 6’s violence, while Donald Trump was innocent; support of various white supremacist or antisemitic beliefs; even a willingness accept the absurd premises of QAnon.
Two-thirds of white Americans who strongly support Christian nationalist ideology believe that the 2020 election was rigged; 40 percent of them think that violence from patriotic Americans might be necessary to save the country; and more than 40 percent are convinced that Democrats are engaged in “elite child trafficking,” said Whitehead.
The report includes some meditations on the movement’s origins as well. Anthea Butler, a Penn religion scholar, is the author of White Evangelical Racism, writes that white Christian nationalism began moving more firmly into the mainstream after 9/11, as the “Holy War” coding of the “War on Terror” helped popularize its ideology, laying the groundwork for Trump’s rise. The seemingly contradictory beliefs of Christian nationalism — that America is the greatest nation on earth thanks to its foundation in Christianity, and also that America has been overtaken by alien and even demonic enemies — only serves to keep the movement in a state of tense mobilization, observed journalist Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers.
“It’s astonishing to so many of us that the leaders of the Jan. 6 attack styled themselves as patriots,” Stewart added at Wednesday’s event. “But it makes a glimmer of sense once we start to understand that their allegiance is to a belief in blood, earth and religion, rather than to the mere idea of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Andrew Seidel is a constitutional lawyer at Freedom from Religion Foundation. He also wrote the majority of the report. The Founding Myth. It consists of a meticulous accounting, drawing on hundreds of hours of video footage, of Christian nationalism’s ubiquitous role in the lead-up to Jan. 6 and its execution. There are the flags, the signs, the cross and gallows that we’ve all seen.
There are also less familiar pieces of evidence such as the 50-member Christian Choir singing about swords and claiming the land during the attack. Multiple rioters recounted how God’s hand or voice had urged them to enter the capital. One white supremacist confessed to having convinced his parole officer to allow him to travel to Washington that week to distribute Bibles. And then there’s the man who broke down Nancy Pelosi’s office door, believing that “the crowd would tear her ‘into little pieces,’” and later testified in court that God had been on Trump’s side: “And if patriots have to kill 60 million of these communists, it’s God’s will.”
Seidel also describes how the events of the previous two months — including the Million MAGA March in November, and the Jericho March events on Dec. 12 and Jan. 5 — served as test runs for Jan. 6 and a broader “permission structure that gave the insurrectionists the moral and mental license that they needed,” through the promise that they were doing the Lord’s work.
There’s an exhaustive list of such examples. Paula White, “faith adviser” to the Trump White House, recorded nightly prayer videos calling on God to smite Trump’s enemies. The Proud Boys prayed in the street and were “hailed as God’s warriors.” Evangelical speaker Lance Wallnau told his massive following, “Fighting with Trump is fighting with God,” and said that angels were looking for some “risk takers” and “wild cards that are gonna go start something up.”
“They marched around government buildings in state capitals and in D.C., including the Capitol and the Supreme Court, blowing on shofars and claiming to know God’s will,” said Seidel. “Sometimes I wonder how could we possibly have been surprised by the violence that day.”
The panelists stated that Christian nationalists are still marching under slightly different banners a year later. They are leading efforts to suppress voting rights via gerrymandering, new legislation, and new legislation that would require everything, from lifetime disenfranchisement for convicted felons to Jim Crow-style civics testing for would-be voters. Jemar Tisby is president of The Witness, a Black Christian organization and author of The Color of CompromiseAccording to him, Christian nationalism is also driving many state and local conflicts, including culture-war battles such as the manufactured debate over critical races theory and efforts to silence dissenting Christians.
“Even the religious voices within the church are being labeled as critical race theory, as too liberal or progressive to be trusted, and even the communist and Marxist labels are being used,” said Tisby.
Perry pointed out the mixed blessing in recent polling, which suggests that Christian nationalist ideas have lost some support nationally since Jan. 6. He added that the other side to this is that groups that are more isolated tend to become more militant. According to Seidel, researchers have observed an increase in Christian nationalist pastors openly and proudly accepting the label.
Relegating Christian nationalism back to the margins, say the report’s authors, will not be easy. This would require a national recommitment towards the separation of church/state, countering historical myths that support Christian nationalist ideology, as well as coalition work between secular-religious allies.
“I don’t really know if people understand how close we were to losing America that day,” said Seidel. “If they decide to get a little more serious next time, we are in big trouble.”
“America is really a shared ideal, and Christian nationalism refuses to share,” said Seidel. “That’s the choice we face: Christian nationalism or America. Because we can’t have both.”
