Conservative Christians, and white evangelicals in particular, have always striven to project an image of orthodoxy, claiming that their literal interpretation of the Bible and the resulting beliefs they hold about matters of theology and ethics are the best understanding of God’s will.  They often claim to adhere to “sound doctrine” and have refused to blame any evil done by their membership on any aspect of their teaching.  For example, evil associated with slavery and racism was blamed on bad individuals rather than a conservative Christian culture.  Accordingly, they invented the unbiblical notion (Ezekiel 14:12, 16:49) that there is no such thing as group sin, a notion they are using today to support their rejection of critical race theory.

Following their acceptance of a highly immoral individual named Trump as their leader, and given their refusal to denounce any misconduct associated with that leader – many actually have been emulating his behavior – they have come under greater scrutiny in recent years.  For example, books have been written to examine the role played by white supremacy in shaping conservative American Christianity.  Examples of such books are White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, written by Robert P. Jones, and White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America, by Anthea Butler.

Of course, it is important to recognize that not all white evangelicals and not all white conservative Christians are white supremacists.  Recently, there has been a focus on Christian nationalism and its role in American politics.  It has become apparent that the January 6 attack against the Capitol was not only a political, but also a religious undertaking.  Work done by social scientists has shown a strong correlation between adherence to Christian nationalism and support of views that create harmful tensions in American civic life.  Surveys show that white evangelical Protestants, by a large majority, tend to be Christian nationalists.  This suggests that white supremacy is an important factor in both white evangelicalism and Christian nationalism.

The link between white evangelicalism and white supremacy is not subtle.  The Southern Baptist Convention was born in 1845 as a result of a secession from the American Baptist denomination which refused to accept slaveowners as missionaries.  Similarly, the Methodist Episcopal Church split over slavery in 1844.  So did the Presbyterians in 1861.

Southern churches that wanted to maintain slavery fully supported the Confederacy during the Civil War.  They also initiated a serious effort to justify their position using the Bible.  They claimed that Black people were the descendants of Cain who, according to Genesis 4, killed his brother Abel and was marked by God with a dark skin after he killed his brother Abel.  Since the Bible says nothing about the mark itself, their ability to distort the facts to promote their interests is obvious.  That intellectual dishonesty is further apparent in their reference to the curse of Ham: They claimed that Ham was the dark-skinned son of Noah who was cursed because he looked at his father’s nakedness (Genesis 9).  In fact, there is no indication in the story that Ham was dark-skinned, and the curse itself was pronounced against the descendants of Ham’s son Canaan.  There is no indication that the Canaanites were black.

Reverend Basil Manly Sr was one of the leading evangelical thinkers who worked out a theological justification of slavery.  In addition to biblical references, he used entomological findings of the day, declaring that God’s natural order was seen in the way ants were divided into two groups: workers (smaller ants) and supervisors (bigger ants).  Similarly, he declared, humans were naturally divided into blacks, who were inferior and incapable of governing themselves, and whites who were, by divine mandate, meant to lead.  Manley’s efforts to provide theological legitimization of slavery made him an important contributor to evangelical thought.  He even was the driving force behind the creation of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1859.

One of the worst initiatives that fully reveal the intellectual dishonesty of the slave-owning evangelicals was the creation of a slave Bible, a copy of which is on display today in the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC.  The originators of this Bible removed from it all references to liberation struggles.  An example of such references is the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, which happens to be a defining moment in the history of Israel, a nation destined, according to Moses, to be a “kingdom of priests.”  The removal of such passages from the Bible served the purpose of keeping slaves obedient and subservient.  And today, evangelicals who denounce the so-called evils of critical race theory continue to claim that black grievances associated with civil rights are against biblical teaching.  Which Bible are they referring to?

The above considerations show that white supremacy was a deeply ingrained conviction in Southern evangelicalism rather than an error to be blamed on poor practitioners of the faith.  When Robert P. Jones defines white supremacy, he notes that it should not be reduced to its extreme form as seen in organizations like the KKK or other similar hate groups. He explains:

“Even rearranging the words—from ‘white supremacy’ to ‘supremacy of whites’—gets us closer to a clearer meaning: the continued prevalence of the idea that white people are superior to, or more valuable than, black and other nonwhite people. And, most important, this subtle transposition gets us to what’s really at stake: that white people’s superior nature thus entitles them to hold positions of power over black and other nonwhite people.”

Ironically, testimony left by former slaves such as Frederick Douglass indicates that slave owners who were known to be very religious treated their slaves, against every expectation, with more cruelty than less religious slave masters did.  Perhaps religion reinforced their conviction that they had a divine mandate to deal firmly with lesser humans.  Obviously, they paid no attention to the parts of the Bible that describe God as compassionate and slow to anger.

After the Civil War, white Christians in the South strongly resisted attempts to bring about equality for blacks, and the practice of lynching became a way of expressing their resolve on the matter.  Good “Christian folks” would even participate in a highly entertaining lynching activity immediately after Sunday church services and feel no guilt whatsoever about it.

The end of the Civil War and the defeat of the Confederacy did not lead to the fading away of a southern culture deeply influenced by white supremacist views.  Efforts to explain the defeat of the South gave birth to the “Religion of the Lost Cause” which emphasized that the cause pursued by the Confederacy remained a just one even though it had not been immediately rewarded with victory.  Evangelical leaders, like the Old Testament Israelites, had expected to win the war because they believed God was with them.  After their defeat, they revised their theology, finding a model in the New Testament: Jesus had been crucified by his enemies even though his cause was just.  But he rose again, and similarly, southern culture, with its strong religious grounding, was going to rise again and prevail.

The Religion of the lost cause led to a new focus on rehabilitating and maintaining southern culture through the building of monuments celebrating heroes of the Confederacy and through the dissemination of literature to promote the culture.  These efforts were successful in the South and elsewhere, helping bring together northern and southern white Christians.  Furthermore, evangelical Christianity experienced remarkable growth from the late 19^th century to the mid-twentieth century, becoming a very important part of American Christianity.

Surprisingly, even though northern abolitionists had taken a stand against the institution of slavery, they did not necessarily support equality with black people.  Charles Finney, the great revivalist associated with the Second Great Awakening, was an abolitionist.  But when confronted with the issue of integration in his church, he wrote:

“You err in supposing the principle of abolition and amalgamation are identical. Abolition is a question of flagrant and unblushing wrong. A direct and outrageous violation of fundamental right. The other is a question of prejudice that does not necessarily deprive any man of any positive right.”

This kind of logic enabled white Christian churches to agree with each other on matters of white supremacy.  As Robert P. Jones puts it,

“Thus, with the question of slavery off the table, the distance between many southern and northern white Christians actually closed, bridged by the continued shared commitment to white supremacy and segregation.”

Jones provides numerous examples to show that mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, in parts of the country other than the South, were very much involved in the fight against integration at the end of the 19^th century and into the 20^th century.  Indeed, white supremacy was an integral part of white Christianity.

A report describing Christian nationalism and its impact on the events of January 6, 2021, and the days before those events, was released earlier this year.  The motivation behind it is the need to advocate for separation of government and religion, and it was sponsored by a religious organization, Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC), and a non-religious one, Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).

In the report, social scientists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry make it clear that Christian nationalism and Christianity are not the same thing.  They state the following:

“Survey after survey finds that close to half of Americans are at the very least supportive of the fusion of Christianity with American civic life. These Americans believe that Christianity should influence our public policies, sacred symbols, and national identity. Scholars find, however, that the ‘Christianity’ of Christian nationalism brings with it a host of other assumptions about who are true and rightful citizens. Namely, that true Americans are white, culturally conservative, natural-born citizens.”

This statement implies that the movement sees itself as Christian and that its goal is to control all of American culture and politics.  However, its brand of Christianity is very much influenced by a belief in white supremacy.  This conclusion is further supported by the definition of Christian nationalism provided by Anthea Butler in the same report:

“Understanding this phenomenon requires an understanding of the basic ways white Christian nationalism has worked as a unifying theme for a particular type of narrative about America. That narrative can be summed up as follows:

1. America is a divinely appointed nation by God that is Christian.
2. America’s founders, rather than wanting to disestablish religion as a unifier for the nation, were in fact establishing a nation based on Christian principles, with white men as the leaders.
3. Others (Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and immigrants) would accept and cede to this narrative of America as a Christian nation, and accept their leadership.
4. America has a special place not only in world history, but in biblical Scripture, especially concerning the return of Christ.
5. There is no separation between church and state.”

From the above, it is clear that Christian nationalism is very similar to white evangelicalism as described in the previous section.  It is fair to say that white evangelicals (and other white conservative Christians) who do not endorse white supremacy are also the ones who will denounce Christian nationalism.

Whitehead and Perry provide some data showing interesting information on attitudes held by Christian nationalists about the January 6 riot.  The chart below shows that Americans who hold Christian nationalist views are more likely to embrace debunked conspiracy theories that put the blame on Black Lives Matter and Antifa for the violence during the January 6 riot.

The next chart shows that Americans who hold Christian nationalist views are more likely to exculpate former President Trump from charges related to violence during the January 6 event.

The last chart below shows that Christian nationalists are also less likely, against all available evidence, to agree that misinformation from Trump and his supporters played an important role in the violence associated with the riots.

Their tendency to disregard factual information and, instead, embrace misinformation is consistent with the tendency of white evangelicals to misrepresent Scripture in support of white supremacist beliefs, as discussed in the previous section.

Whitehead and Perry also explain that various surveys show how Christian nationalists contribute to the political polarization seen today through their positions on various issues of current interest.  As they put it,

“White Christian nationalism is vital for making sense of the various touchstones for the ongoing culture wars. For instance, Americans who embrace white Christian nationalism are more likely to:

• eschew safe behaviors and participate in incautious behaviors related to the pandemic.
• want to protect the economy and liberty over the vulnerable during the pandemic.
• oppose any federal gun control restrictions due to belief that the Second Amendment is divinely inspired.
• hold anti-vaccine attitudes.
• distrust science and scientists and are scientifically illiterate toward religiously contested scientific claims.
• support Trump and Trumpism in the last two national elections.
• fear immigrants and endorse anti-immigrant policies.
• endorse ‘traditional’ gender roles where men lead and women follow.
• oppose same-sex marriage and transgender rights.
• hold anti-democratic attitudes favoring restricting the vote and denying the existence of voter suppression.”

One might add to this list the strong support by Christian nationalists of the Supreme Court ruling to repeal Roe v. Wade in an effort to restrict a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.  But perhaps that falls under the “traditional gender roles” category which is already listed.

According to the last item on the list above, Christian nationalists are intent on restricting voting rights for nonwhites.  This is nothing new: The 15^th Amendment, ratified in 1870 after the Civil War, stated the following:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

White supremacists reacted to the amendment by enacting discriminatory measures such as poll taxes, literacy tests, felony disenfranchisement laws, grandfather clauses, and even resorted to intimidation to keep black people from voting.  Legal barriers preventing black people from exercising their right to vote were not removed until the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress in 1965 following tremendous activism by the civil rights movement.

Today’s efforts by Christian nationalists to restrict voting rights are merely the continuation of the activity of white supremacists.  But it also points to an important difference between white and black evangelicals: even though they may share a great deal in their interpretation of the Bible and their approaches to theology, they differ sharply on the role of Christianity in upholding basic human rights.  In other words, while white evangelicals who also happen to be white supremacists believe nonwhites should accept a subservient position as mandated by God, black Christians find themselves in the silly position of having to assert that they are equal to whites in God’s eyes, a fact that should be trivial to any true Christian.

As pointed out by Anthea Butler in her book, this difference is illustrated by the opposing views held by Billy Graham and Martin Luther King.  Graham emerged in the 20^th century as one of the most respected evangelical leaders in America and a revivalist who dedicated his life to bringing souls to Christ.  He was also known for his warnings against the threat of evil communism to the American (Christian) way of life.  While King dedicated himself to the liberation of fellow blacks from oppression, Graham saw the civil rights movement as a communist endeavor and did not support it.

Reacting to King’s I have a dream speech, Graham said: “Only when Christ comes again will little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little Black children.”  In other words, any struggle for civil rights is futile since the salvation of individual souls is the only thing that matters.  The oppressed must accept their condition and only focus on hope for the afterlife.  Clearly, this is teaching from a disfigured Bible from which all references to liberation have been removed.  But Graham apparently believed the civil rights movement was dangerous since he and other evangelical leaders associated it with communism.

I am not saying here that Graham does not deserve any of the praise he received from fellow Christians for his accomplishments: Black Christians said good things about him.  But I am saying that he was the product of a culture that can be traced back to the white supremacist roots of American evangelicalism.  Martin Luther King’s activity was more consistent with the spirit of New Testament Christianity which unapologetically advocates for justice for the poor, the widows, the orphans, the disenfranchised, the foreigners, the “least of these.”

In his contribution to the report on Christian nationalism, Jemar Tisby contrasts the Christian nationalist approach to patriotism, which is strongly colored by white supremacist views, to the patriotism of black Christians:

“The Black church tradition, however, presents another version of patriotism. In contrast to white Christian nationalism, Black Christians have historically tended to embrace a kind of patriotism that leads to an expansion of democratic processes, the inclusion of marginalized people, and a call for the nation to live up to its foundational ideals.”

Black people under oppression were not duped into believing the distorted biblical teaching they received from their masters.  They saw, for example, a similarity between their situation and that of the Israelites under Egyptian rule.  Furthermore, they understood that the appeal to universal human rights by the American patriots in the Revolutionary era was relevant to their own situation.  According to Tisby,

“Black Christians in the Revolutionary era found resonance with words in the Declaration of Independence, which referenced being ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.’

The freedom that enslaved people advocated was the abolition of slavery and the basic right to be treated as equal citizens and human beings alongside white people. Enslaved Black people in the Revolutionary era understood that the same principles that led the patriots to rebel against Britain could also be used to make the case for emancipation.

These women and men believed in a form of freedom that would lead to greater dignity for all people. It is a freedom from oppression in order to pursue individual and community flourishing.”

Oppressed blacks also used arguments grounded in the Bible itself in addition to their references to the language of the American Revolution.  Tisby mentions the work of Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta who became an activist fighting for voting rights and to relieve poverty for fellow blacks in the 1960’s.  Hamer’s expression of patriotism came from her understanding of the Bible:

“She often appealed to the idea of patriotism by calling out the corrupt system that barred Black people and others from voting and securing their civil rights.

Hamer’s Christian faith taught her that all people were created equal in God’s sight, so no one should be denied the right to vote or the opportunities of full civic participation based on race. She often referenced Acts 17:26, which says God ‘has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth.’

She also adapted Mark 3:25, which says, ‘If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.’ Hamer applied that same biblical principle of human unity to the struggle for civil rights saying, ‘That same thing applies to America.’

Hamer’s notion of patriotism derived from her understanding of Christianity’s teaching that all people were created with equal dignity by God. She applied this understanding of human equality to injustices such as segregation and white supremacy.”

Clearly, Hamer’s patriotism aimed at making America a nation that would be more aligned with God’s will because it treats all its citizens with dignity.  The fact that oppressed black Christians, unlike their privileged masters, were able to more correctly discern the substance of New Testament teaching illustrates Jesus’ declaration that the rich will find it very difficult to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:23-24).  Indeed, the rich will be more likely to misrepresent God’s will in order to justify their advantages in society.

The display of religious symbols, the prayers and the appeals to Jesus’ name during the January 6 riot may have been surprising to observers who thought of the event as political protest.  But those who study Christian nationalism see this mixing of politics and religion as an inherent characteristic of the movement, and January 6 was actually preceded by a sequence of events of a strong religious character.  Andrew Seidel’s contribution to the report on Christian nationalism discusses in detail a variety of religious activities that took place between the election in November, 2020, and the riot on January 6, 2021.  I will only briefly mention some of them.

After election night, Paula White, a Trump spiritual adviser, preached a sermon in which she spoke in tongues and made utterances such as ““angels dispatched from Africa right now. Africa right now. Africa right now. From Africa right now.”  She also conducted prayer sessions.  Reports about the sessions indicate that

“’White and fellow prayer warriors called on God to smite the president’s enemies—his political opponents, anyone standing in the way of a second term, and anyone interfering with their vision of national and global dominion,’ explained one observer. On the second night of prayer, White preached that ‘God, we declare that you will keep the POTUS [sic] in his purpose and in his position,’ and, ‘We override the will of man for the will of God, right now.’”

Lance Wallnau, called the father of American Dominionism, started inciting people to violence with statements such as “Fighting with Trump is fighting with God,” or “We got to get some of that energy over there on our side. Because we need a couple of risk takers, and, you know, stir-things up evangelists and revivalists and prophets, because I’m telling you, these angels want something to do, and they’re looking for some wildcards that are gonna go start something up.”

On November 14, 2020, a major rally, The Million MAGA March, was held in Washington D.C., with participation from the Proud Boys who were seen kneeling in prayer.  This rally set the tone for subsequent events before January 6.  A prayer said by one of the leaders, Ed Martin, is particularly interesting:

“Today, Lord, we gather in this hallowed place, we make it holy right now, in your name because we ask you, Lord, bless us in our work. Our nation, Lord, you gave it to us as a gift and you said you will have this nation, founded on Judeo-Christian principles and framed by a declaration and a constitution. You will not be led by CNN or cable news or fake news. [CHEERS] Lord, you said to us, ‘If you take this American nation’ — Lord, you said to us — ‘and you serve me in righteousness, I will give you prosperity and joy, and I will give you for the world, a light, a beacon on a hill.’ And we say, ‘Thank you, Lord.’ And now Lord, we ask you for this today, to strengthen us like our founding fathers had, and like our president has. We ask you Lord, strengthen us in the fight because the powers of darkness are descending. They’re saying, ‘concession, not Constitution.’ … Finally, Lord, we ask you to expose the fraud.”

It is not surprising that people who have convinced themselves that they have a divine mandate to hold power become impervious to factual evidence that contradicts their desires.  Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been lately, along with Lauren Boebert, openly promoting Christian nationalism, was in attendance and urging the participants to march to the Capitol on January 6.

The Jericho March initiative organized, in partnership with the Stop the Steal movement, several events throughout December, including a prayer rally named “Let the Church Roar” on December 12, 2020.  In the Old Testament book of Joshua, the Israelite army marched around the city of Jericho before its walls were brought down by God.  The city was then destroyed by the Israelites.  One of the leaders of Jericho March claimed that God, in a vision, told him to “let the church roar.”  He explained that God wanted Americans to march around the “spiritual walls” of the country.

Also on December 12, 2020, Women for America First ended a nationwide bus tour, begun after the November 14 march, with a rally at Freedom Plaza near the White House.  This initiative also had ties with Stop the Steal.

The above summaries merely provide a flavor of the numerous events and rallies held during the period leading to January 6, including numerous marches and rallies everywhere on January 5.  During those events, participants were assured that they had a divine mandate to shake up the nation, and violence was encouraged.  These events and the preparatory work associated with them show that the violence seen in the January 6 riot did not simply occur because peaceful demonstrators accidentally lost control.  It was planned and strongly promoted by Christian nationalists who wanted to “take back their country.”