There’s an image that captures the
threat posed by the
White Christian nationalist movement — and how it could become even more dangerous over the next four years.
Taken during the
Jan. 6 insurrection,
the photo shows a solitary White man, his head pressed in prayer against a massive wooden cross, facing the domed US Capitol building. An American flag stands like a sentinel on a flagpole beside the Capitol under an ominously gray sky.
The photograph depicts a foot soldier in an insurgent religious movement trying to storm the halls of American power. What’s unsettling about the photo four years later is that much of the religious zeal that fed the insurrection is no longer outside the gates of power. Many of that movement’s followers are now on the inside, because
their Chosen One,
Donald Trump, returns this month to the Oval Office.
This is the scenario Americans could face in Trump’s second term. Under Trump,
Christian nationalists will have
unprecedented access to the power of the federal government. Trump’s GOP has unified control of Congress. And a conservative
supermajority, which has already
blurred the line between separation of church and state in a series of decisions favoring Christian interests, controls the US Supreme Court.
Trump has
not been shy about what comes next. He ran a presidential campaign that was
infused with White Christian Nationalist imagery and
rhetoric. He
vowed in an October campaign speech to set up a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias” and restore preachers’ power in America while giving access to a group he calls
“my beautiful Christians.”
“If I get in, you’re going to be using that power at a level that you’ve never used before,” Trump
told an annual gathering of National Religious Broadcasters in Tennessee during a campaign stop earlier this year.
Donald Trump’s second term will empower the White Christian nationalist movement, says scholar Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of “Jesus and John Wayne.” “It will transform our government,” she says. “They have seen their movement go mainstream, and now they have incredible access to power.”
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