The 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.
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