“The shepherds will have nowhere to flee, the leaders of the flock nowhere to hide.” Jeremiah 25:35
The Capitol Riot of January 6, 2021 was propelled by dominating Christian imagery that three years later remains unexamined by the majority of the American populace. This was noted by New Yorker journalist Luke Mogelson, who captured footage from the interior of the Capitol during the storming when he told Andrew Seidel, “The Christianity was one of the surprises to me in covering this stuff, and it has been hugely underestimated.”
January 6 was the most visible salvo from a faction that felt the United States was a once Christian nation that had been hijacked from these spiritual roots by conniving communists, globalists, and evildoers who also had stolen the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The Christian element from January 6 — made visible by the ubiquitous references to Jesus, the Bible, and other Christian symbolism and iconography — appears ancillary at first glance, actions one might expect from typical Trump-supporting, QAnon-believing white Christians.
But religion was far from ancillary on that day. It was vital, the lifeblood that transubstantiated the crowd from marchers into insurrectionists. But for what end? To somehow take vengeance on the “traitors” who refused to collude with Trump, such as tearing Nancy Pelosi to shreds or hanging Mike Pence? Rather, January 6 was an opportunity to make America born again. Invoking language of Christian spiritual warfare — “Put on the armor of God” from Ephesians 6 — those who infiltrated the Capitol, surrounded by billowing flags reading “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President,” “JESUS 2020,” and “Trump is president, Christ is king,” only a few of many, many examples, appeared poised to baptize anew the United States; to consecrate it under the mantle of the God of Jesus Christ, something that had never specifically been done either in the Capitol Building or any other seat of federal government.
Outside, shofars blew and a chant emanated from a swath of the crowd: “The blood of Jesus covering this place.” Joshua Matthew Black, an invader of the Senate chamber, explained in a video confessional, “I just wanted to get inside the building so I could plead the blood of Jesus on it. That was my goal.”
The crusaders had arrived.
While the biblical battle of Jericho from the Book of Joshua served as a thematic reference to the January 6 advocates and participants, so much so a pro-Trump faith-based organization, Jericho March, was cobbled together in the aftermath of purported election “irregularities” claims, another and perhaps more appropriate conflict in Christian history echoed across the centuries: the siege of Jerusalem, the decisive battle of the First Crusade.
The entire point of the medieval crusades had been to reconstitute Palestine as a decidedly Christian (Catholic) territory. In 1099 the crusader armies, having arrived at the Jerusalem walls from the road to Jaffa, split up for the siege, pitching camps at various parts of the city walls. After the first attempt to scale the city walls failed, the crusaders devised not a military strategy but a spiritual one — a barefoot procession of prayer and supplication replete with hymnal chanting around the 2½ mile wall in an act of penance and fasting.
“We were advancing in open file as the clergy are wont to march in processions,” chronicler Raymond of Aguillers recalled. “And verily we had a procession! For the priests and many monks, dressed in white robes, went in front of the lines of our knights, chanting and invoking the name of the Lord and the benediction of the saints.”
“And when the lines had gone forth the priests, with bare feet and garbed in their priestly vestments, stood on the walls of the city, calling upon God to defend His people, and through the victory of the Franks in this battle to afford a testimony hallowed by His blood.”
Godfrey of Bouillon and his troops were the first to scale the Jerusalem wall; he led his men with an object believed to be a relic of Christ, the True Cross, a golden cross which bore an image of Christ. Here this battle standard rallied fellow knights and soldiers in the same way the plethora of Christian objects were hoisted above the crowd scaling the Capitol.
Prior to the successful taking of the city by the Latins, crusade leadership argued about how Jerusalem would be ruled — whether by the Church through a religious order, or by a temporal king: the issue of dominum mundi, the medieval concept of universal power. It was a debate by Catholics over whether Church or State would rule the Holy Land. Godfrey was elected guardian of Jerusalem; he preferred the title “advocate of the Holy Sepulchre” rather than “king,” referring to the empty tomb of Christ, Christendom’s most hallowed ground.
Both the fighting that occurred within Jerusalem and Jericho were bloodbaths. The victorious crusaders, having rampaged through the city in a violent final assault, placed their bloodied hands on the Holy Sepulchre, weeping at reaching their goal after four long years.
Deus vult (God wills it), a popular phrase associated with medieval militancy, if not supremacy, emerges time and again, from Norway in 2011, Charlottesville in 2017, and again on January 6. In his book The Storm Is Here, Luke Mogelson recalls Roger Stone’s appearance at the December 12 Jericho March rally when a flag with a cross and Deus Vult scrawled on it billowed in front of Mogelson, blocking his view. The phrase re-appeared in the march to the Capitol in the forms of more flags and t-shirts on January 6.
This imagery is synonymous with the Knights Templar, the Catholic military-religious-monastic order founded two decades after the siege of Jerusalem to protect Christendom and its pilgrims from infidels. Despite their mythical status in pop culture, the Templars were a lost cause of history, suppressed by the pope in the early 14th century. But the notion of a lost cause itself factors into this neo-medieval worldview prevalent in our own time, as if there is some kind of nobility in a Pyrrhic victory. Both the Templars and the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem faded in due time. But those who sought to overturn the Congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election were convinced that no matter the outcome, God was on their side — God willed it — just as the United States is one nation under God, which numerous banners and speakers proclaimed on January 6.
As one Christian prince after another (more often than not a Frankish nobleman) was hoisted upon the Jerusalem throne during the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s theocracy, Christian nationalism, the overriding ideology behind the Capitol Riot, also advocates the return of a Christian prince, according to Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism. And if there was any lingering doubt about how deeply the Capitol Riot and its buildup rallies were imbued with a certain flavor of Christianity, one need only review the prayer for the December 12 Let the Church ROAR/Stop the Steal rally submitted by Catholic archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former apostolic nuncio to the U.S., now favorite of the Catholic far right after attempting to topple the pontificate of Pope Francis in 2018:
O Almighty God, who many times hast manifested the power of Thy right hand at the side of Christian armies, place Thyself at the head of this army of Thy children. Let the prayer we address to Thee through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of the Americas, rise up to Thee, so that we may attain the freedom and peace that Thou hast promised us.
And just as in the time of Joshua, raise up holy heroes and courageous witnesses of the Faith, so also today hear the prayer we raise to Thee, and break down the walls of the City of darkness, granting victory to those who serve under Thy holy banner. Amen.
GOD BLESS OUR PRESIDENT
GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ONE NATION UNDER GOD
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
In a post-riot video reviewing January 6 as she saw it, West Texan florist Jenny Cudd concluded:
“To me, God and country are tied — to me they’re one and the same. We were founded as a Christian country. And we see how far we have come from that. … We are a godly country, and we are founded on godly principles. And if we do not have our country, nothing else matters.” In American Gospel (2006), however, Jon Meacham noted otherwise: “Despite…efforts to amend the Constitution to include Jesus or to declare that America is a ‘Christian nation,’ no president across three centuries has made an even remotely serious attempt to do so.”
The Let the Church ROAR Rally of December 12 was the clarion call for spiritual combat to rid the country of the evil spirits prowling around to prevent a second Trump term. Speaker after speaker unabashedly called on the power of God, from Alex Jones to a female Trump supporter who exclaimed, “We have to align our spirituality to our politics!”
This, of course, is not the language of the Constitution, but rather the hope of patriot crusaders, pinning their lost cause on an autocratic demagogue beloved by the populists. At least, that’s how Senator Mitt Romney characterized Trump and his base.
The Christian nationalism on display in full force on January 6 is the spiritual descendant of the same ideology espoused in the 20th century by Louisiana preacher Gerald L.K. Smith’s Christian Nationalist Crusade, a vehicle for Smith to publish and promote antisemitic rhetoric such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “We believe that the inspiring dynamic out of which this country grew is Christianity,” Smith pronounced in a recording, “This is Christian Nationalism.” The movement manifested itself as a political party (1948–1956), preceded by another Smith-founded party, America First (1943–1947). Of its ten principles as outlined by Smith, the Christian Nationalist Crusade’s main priority was to “Preserve America as a Christian nation.”
“[T]his [country] was established as a white, Christian country,” Smith told the New York Times in 1964. “I’m against permitting Jews to dilute our Christian tradition. I don’t think our country should be mongrelized by the weaker elements.” Smith produced a monthly newspaper, The Cross and Flag, one of the largest racist and antisemitic publications in the country. A fellow traveler with Smith was another extremist preacher, former rifle instructor for the Ku Klux Klan Wesley Swift, who hoped to merge a “Black Shirt fully armed Fascist-like organization” with Smith’s America First Party, according to the FBI. Swift was the chief proponent in America at the time of Christian Identity, the theology of white supremacy: according to Swift, the white race was the true heavenly race sent by God to manifest the Kingdom of God on Earth. White people, then, were the real Chosen People. Black people, according to Swift, arrived on the planet by way of a space fleet organized by Lucifer.
Swift was formulating end times language and imagery here — Armageddon stuff. Indeed, America itself “is portrayed in the 12th chapter of Revelation…as being the opposition to the powers of evil and the forces of Lucifer,” according to Swift. In California, Swift founded the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian, an offshoot of which would later rise to notoriety — the Aryan Nations. Ana Bochicchio, professor at the University of Buenos Aires, believed Swift’s influence continued after his death (in 1970) that would influence radical right movements into our time. Bochicchio saw this expunged for the world to see on January 6, but noted the Trump phenomenon much earlier embraced millenarism politics based on old Christian and nationalist traditions, namely, QAnon. What Smith advocated from the pulpit now became political gospel.
Syracuse University professor emeritus Michael Barkun saw six tangible political avenues pushed by Christian Identity adherents, two of which were that biblical law inform the U.S. legal system and the pushing forward of certain political candidates. The other actions involve domestic terrorism, white separatism, and forming isolated, self-sufficient communities championing local government over federal and state.
While these actions can be seen unfolding in real time — Swift’s Christian Identity and Smith’s Christian Nationalist Crusade as spark plugs for today’s radical right — scant attention to the power of the radical right in Smith’s and Swift’s heyday continues to be given. If it it was taken more seriously in relation to, say, the assassination of President Kennedy, perhaps its creeping influence would have been shattered far before Timothy McVeigh, Dylann Roof or Enrique Tarrio.
Yes, I’m going there — the assassination of JFK. Southern radical right wingers loathed Kennedy and his efforts to desegregate the South with the Civil Rights Act. They were Christian nationalists, white supremacists, some in the KKK, proponents of Swift’s Christian Identity and subscribers to Smith’s The Cross and Flag. Their front was rabid anti-communism, Smith’s second principle of the Christian Nationalist Crusade. Many of the figures in question are featured in Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) — Guy Banister (Ed Asner), Jack Martin (Jack Lemmon), David Ferrie (Joe Pesci). But all of this is left out of Stone’s film in favor of a CIA/military-industrial complex conspiracy theory. Among this group was Lee Harvey Oswald, a wayward young man from a family of racists who freely took orders out of Guy Banister’s office to infiltrate Communist circles. If these champions of the lost cause could convincingly sell the public that school integration and general dismantling of Jim Crow was a Communist conspiracy, well, segregation might not be a bad thing after all now, would it? In this way, Oswald became the perfect patsy, which he claimed he was up until the end.
Instead, crusaders march on, having licked their wounds these last three years after their defeat at the hapless yet deadly Siege of Washington on January 6. If Wesley Swift believed whites were the true Jews and the United States the true Israel, Washington, D.C. is the new Jerusalem.
And those crusaders still yet remain camped outside the walls of the Holy City.
