A recent attempted examination of the supposed connection between ‘Christian nationalism’ and January 6 falls short in its analysis.
A recent attempted examination of the supposed connection between ‘Christian nationalism’ and January 6 falls short in its analysis.
T he Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) recently released a lengthy document titled “Christian Nationalism and the January 6, 2021, Insurrection.” The report is intended to fill a perceived gap in studying “the role that Christian nationalism played in bolstering, justifying, and intensifying the attack on the U.S. Capitol,” writes BJC executive director Amanda Tyler. Even within a week of its release, it is already being received as an authoritative resource on the question; for example, David French at the Dispatch linked to it without comment in a recent Sunday newsletter.
The report deserves scrutiny. Its provenance alone raises questions: a Baptist religious-liberty organization is teaming up with a group notoriously hostile to religion in order to warn against Christian nationalism? The intended impression is that these are two otherwise divergent groups joining together to provide a common front in the face of a national threat. But this is highly misleading.
The BJC advertises itself as a religious-liberty organization, insisting that “government must not interfere with matters of faith” and that “every American has, and will always have, the right to follow his or her spiritual beliefs.” So it is strange to learn that the organization decided that these noble sentiments have not applied to the Little Sisters of the Poor, Trinity Lutheran Church, Kendra Espinoza, Jack Phillips, or Catholic Social Services. In each case, the BJC publicly stood against the religious party seeking to exercise its rights. From this dismal record of recent Supreme Court advocacy (0-for-5), it seems religious liberty has an elusive definition in the BJC lexicon.
Why does a religious-liberty organization consistently oppose actual religious liberty? Because on this matter there is very little ideological daylight between the BJC and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Neither seems interested in protecting churches and believers from government intrusion (i.e., the First Amendment’s purpose); instead, they wish to protect the government from the intrusion of believers. Tyler writes that the two organizations “both advocate for the separation of the institutions of government and religion, albeit from two very different perspectives.” Notice that she does not say separation of church and state, but rather the separation of government and “religion.” Simply put, BJC and FFRF share the premise that religious faith, as such, has no place in civic life.
It is thus no surprise that the ubiquitous Christian imagery on display on January 6, 2021, caused special alarm for these groups. These two organizations have been warning of a coming “right-wing theocracy” for decades, and the rioters handed them a gift. Just when all the Handmaid’s Tale predictions might have grown tired, they were re-energized by violence wrapped in Christian flags.
This is not to suggest there is no cause for alarm. A wide array of Christian leaders and pundits (present writer included) were repulsed by the syncretism that would somehow tie the victory or defeat of the kingdom of God to the electoral fortunes of Donald J. Trump, the often violent and irresponsible rhetoric, the conspiratorial thinking, the rank opportunism displayed by a variety of hucksters, and, certainly not least, the violence that actually erupted. But there can be different reasons for alarm, and the report displays no awareness of any except the one that happens to correspond to the raison d’être of its sponsoring organizations. There is plenty of important work to be done in diagnosing and correcting what ails portions of the Evangelical right — extreme polarization, political idolatry, susceptibility to demagoguery, etc. — but the BJC/FFRF report is of no help in that endeavor.
The most glaring problem is that the report is largely not a “report,” a term that suggests a setting forth of events — who, what, when, where, how, and why. Of its seven chapters, five are little more than highly partisan opinion editorials of the sort one might find in the most leftward of publications.
For example, contributor Anthea Butler’s opening premise is that white Christian nationalism was at the core of these events, and so, unsurprisingly, racism is her only explanatory category. Her essay consists of a historical survey that finds exactly what she sets out to find: Racism is and has been behind every political idea to the right of where she stands. Republican policy stances on immigration, crime, and more are all racist tools to get white voters to the polls. She reports as a “fact” that the Tea Party of 2009 “found its purpose in racial animus” against President Obama, and she concludes by suggesting that the horrific shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015 was directly linked to the fact that the day before, Donald Trump had announced his candidacy. The only thing this essay “reports” is the highly partisan and racially charged political views of its author.
Sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry present polling data and charts aimed at identifying the “indicators” of Christian nationalist ideology. Their chapter is replete with vague and useless correlations taken as causations. For example:
Indicators of Christian nationalist ideology (specifically, believing the founding documents of the United States are divinely inspired or that the federal government should declare the U.S. a ‘Christian nation’) were strongly associated with white Americans believing that Black Lives Matter and Antifa started the violence and that President Donald Trump was not to blame for the riots.
But there is something else that is “strongly associated” with believing that BLM and Antifa started the violence on January 6 and that Trump was not to blame: belief in Donald Trump’s lie that a U.S. election had just been stolen. That Venn diagram would be a single, decisive circle, but the authors instead go on a needless search for a deeper, more nefarious explanation for why someone would blame Antifa and let Trump off the hook.
Whatever appearance of objectivity Whitehead and Perry may have had falls away when they then provide a laundry list of political positions that are “more likely” to be held by white Christian nationalists, including mask and vaccine skepticism, “distrusting science,” endorsing “traditional gender roles,” opposing gay marriage, and so forth. They then conclude: “It is the cultural influence of white Christian nationalism inclining many Christian and religious Americans toward beliefs and behaviors that harm minorities, democracy, and broader measures of social safety.” That does not even follow as a logical matter (there are no other possible explanations?), but the insinuation is that if one has any of these “indicators” — of which many are mainstream conservative views — one is therefore influenced by Christian nationalism. This is crass guilt-by-association masquerading as a scientific finding.
Jemar Tisby’s chapter is a textbook illustration of how someone well-schooled in critical race theory might interpret the events of January 6, but he inadvertently seems to forget the assignment. He contrasts white Christian nationalism with the historic “patriotic witness of Black Christians” and writes:
Today the movement continues as Black Christians such as the Rev. Raphael Warnock serve both in the pulpit and in Congress as a seamless integration of the Christian faith and the patriotic effort to ‘form a more perfect union.’ . . . Black Christians throughout U.S. history have often hearkened back to the nation’s stated commitment to freedom and democracy to fight for greater inclusion. They saw this form of patriotism as a coherent, integrated expression of their Christian faith. (Emphases added)
Perhaps the editors at BJC and FFRF momentarily forgot that the report is supposed to present “seamless integration” of faith and politics as the primary threat to democracy. But here we discover that it is perfectly acceptable, so long as one shares the politics of Senator Warnock.
Whatever legitimate substance there may be in this report is difficult to discern in these partisan essays that contain little of value in “reporting” on the influence of Christian nationalism on the events leading up to and including January 6, 2021. They certainly do not deserve deference as some kind of standard reference work documenting Christian nationalism.
And that leads, finally, to the sole valuable contribution of the report, two chapters written by Andrew Seidel. While not entirely free of similar editorializing, Seidel does at least compile a vast and helpful anthology of events, key figures, speeches, quotes, and eyewitness accounts of January 6. The problem is his conclusion, which is not supported by careful analysis of the evidence or rational argument, but rather by sheer announcement: “Yes, the groups were diverse,” he writes, “but it was the Christian nationalism that united them that day.” He then quotes Luke Mogelson, a New Yorker journalist:
The Christianity was one of the surprises to me in covering this stuff, and it has been hugely underestimated. That Christian nationalism you talk about is the driving force and also the unifying force of these disparate players. It’s really Christianity that ties it all together.
Is it not more likely that something else was the “unifying force” behind a collection of Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, QAnon, Neo-Confederates, and Evangelical Christians? Could it not be that all of these people are political partisans who genuinely believed the false stolen-election narrative, and that many of them — but by no means all — conflated this with their religious convictions?
The report would have us believe that on January 6, 2021, politics showed up at what was really, deep down, a sinister religious event. It is far more likely — and explanatory — that religion showed up, alongside other motivations, at what was really, deep down, a sinister political event.
The task of defining and addressing “Christian nationalism” is an important one and should be high on the priority list for pastors and Christian leaders. But this report does little to nothing to illuminate the topic.