What Place Did Jesus Have at the Capitol Hill Riot?
Pastors who preached Christian nationalism and Trump’s promise from God are complicit in this violence
It’s not by chance that banners with Jesus’ name flew above this week’s insurrection on Capitol Hill.
On Wednesday, armed domestic terrorists scaled the United States Capitol building against the backdrop of a makeshift scaffold with a dangling noose. Rioters clambered up walls, broke windows, pawed at congressional offices, killed a Capitol Police officer, and planted explosive devices. It was a scene some have likened to the fall of Rome.
Among the Confederate flags and Trump banners, the bare-bellied New Age shaman costumes, and anti-Semitic shirts and hoodies, were signs of Jesus: “Jesus Saves.” “Jesus 2020.” “Make America Godly Again.” Since when did a violent insurgency against our halls of government have anything to do with Jesus?
Really, it’s been this way for a long time.
According to the Pew Research Center’s 2018 data on religious typologies, 12% of Americans surveyed considered themselves “God and country Christians” for whom American conservative values and national Christianity were most important. Sociologists like Andrew Whitehead have been studying this segment of American Christians for years; they believe the United States, like Old Testament Israel, must maintain cultural purity through conservative policies that reflect a brand of strict, white Protestantism to fulfill God’s will.
Commonly, these beliefs get folded in with a nativist view that includes white supremacy, authoritarianism, patriarchy, and militarism. If you can accept all that, it isn’t a great leap to believe our country is under assault by atheists, feminists, and Muslim immigrants. Your pastor might preach that the defense of your country is your religious duty.
Donald Trump, by appealing to these fears and bemoaning a loss of American Christian heritage at his big-tent rallies, became a figurehead for accelerating Christian nationalism’s gospel distortion. Comfortable in a worldview that reveres authority like his, the president legitimized their fears, telling his followers at the January 6 “Save America Rally,” “If you don’t…
