How the Christian Right Helped Foment Insurrection

Guno צְבִי

Guno צְבִי

We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
The January 6th Save America March, where then-President Donald Trump incited a crowd to attack the U.S. Capitol, opened with a prayer. Trump’s longtime spiritual adviser and White House adviser, the Florida televangelist Paula White, called on God to “give us a holy boldness in this hour.” Standing at the same podium where, an hour later, Trump would exhort the crowd to “fight like hell,” White called the election results into question, asking God to let the people “have the assurance of a fair and a just election.” Flanked by a row of American flags, White implored God to “let every adversary against democracy, against freedom, against life, against liberty, against justice, against peace, against righteousness be overturned right now in the name of Jesus.”

Within hours, insurrectionists had surrounded the Capitol, beaten police, battered down barricades and doors, smashed windows and rampaged through the halls of the Capitol, breaching the Senate chamber. In video captured by The New Yorker, men ransacked the room, rifling through senators’ binders and papers, searching for evidence of what they claimed was treason. Then, standing on the rostrum where the president of the Senate presides, the group paused to pray “in Christ’s holy name.” Men raised their arms in the air as millions of evangelical and charismatic parishioners do every Sunday and thanked God for allowing them “to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs.” They thanked God “for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/capitol-christian-right-trump-1121236/
 
White evangelical Christians must take responsibility for role in Capitol riot


On Jan. 6, pro-Trump domestic terrorists staged a political coup on our nation’s Capitol in an attempt to disrupt democracy and maintain power and control at any cost.

“They’re Antifa!” “They’re liberals causing chaos!” “They’re actors in costumes!” the threatened retort.

No. They are the result of the malicious, egocentric man put into office by white evangelical Christians.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/op...-responsibility-role-capitol-riot/4317095001/
 
Taking the white Christian nationalist symbols at the Capitol riot seriously

The attack exposed the comfortable juxtaposition of Christianity and white supremacy.

If there was one thing of value to come out of the shameful chaos of Wednesday’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, it’s that the horrific events made plain the powerful ideological and theological currents of American politics that often stay just under the surface. The emblems carried by the rioters — particularly the comfortable juxtaposition of Christian and white supremacist symbols — bear witness to these forces.

There were crosses, “Jesus Saves” signs and “Jesus 2020” flags that mimicked the design of the Trump flags.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that “the conflation of Trump and Jesus was a common theme at the rally” among people he interviewed. “It’s all in the Bible. Everything is predicted. Donald Trump is in the Bible. Get yourself ready,” one told him. “Give it up if you believe in Jesus!” said another, then “Give it up if you believe in Donald Trump!” — which elicited loud cheers from nearby rioters.

Comfortably intermingled with Christian rhetoric and these Christian icons were explicit symbols of white supremacy. Outside the Capitol, Trump supporters erected a large wooden gallows with a bright orange noose ominously dangling from the center. These Trump supporters managed to do something the Confederate army was never able to accomplish — fly the Confederate battle flag inside the U.S. Capitol. One widely shared image showed a rioter with the Confederate flag strolling past a portrait of William H. Seward, an anti-slavery advocate and Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, who was seriously wounded as part of the broad assassination plot in 1865 that killed Lincoln.

https://religionnews.com/2021/01/07...nalist-symbols-at-the-capitol-riot-seriously/
 
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