WHY I’M HOPEFUL: A RESPONSE TO THE INSURRECTION AT THE CAPITOL
Leah Millis - Reuters
This was written for United Church on 01.07.2021, the day after the Capitol Insurrection, and originally appeared on the church’s blog. It was our response to the events of that day, a response of possibility, of hope and of challenge to live differently as a church. [NOTE: Churches and individuals removed their financial support from our church due to this article.]
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”
- George Orwell -
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Like many of you, I sat glued to the news on Wednesday as insurrectionists stormed the gates of the United States Capitol. I watched as rioters in Kevlar and T-Shirts that read “MAGA Civil War, January 6, 2021” marched through the halls of our government, terrorizing civil servants, adorning a statue of Gerald Ford with a MAGA hat and a Trump 2020 flag and then climbing on to pose for a selfie. Insurrectionists stealing mail and podiums, looting offices, scaling walls and shouting from the dais the conspiracy theories they’d swallowed whole; offered up through a steady diet of lie soaked tweets and speeches, message boards and Q-Drops, just moments before reinforced by the President and his men at a rally.
And while these images of the Capitol being ransacked, our elected Representatives sheltering in place, officers building barricades from whatever they could get in order to secure the doors of the House and Senate Chambers, guns drawn and aimed at the ready—while all of these images were terrifying and disturbing to the core there was one image that sent my heart through the floor.
It was an image of a man walking the floor of the Senate with a Christian Flag.
I know.
There’s a Christian flag.
It’s true.
Growing up, the Christian Flag always stood opposite of the American Flag on the stages at church, always slightly lower to honor the American Flag code and maintain its prominence in our places of worship. At youth groups and Vacation Bible School (a week-long summer program for kids centered around a theme or Biblical story) we would begin the day with the pledge of allegiance to the American Flag and then immediately follow it up with the pledge to the Christian Flag.
I know.
There’s a pledge to the Christian flag too.
It’s true.
We’d then continue to stand and sing. We’d often sing out of hymnals: Amazing Grace, I Surrender All, Trust and Obey, you know—the hits!—and regularly follow it up with Onward Christian Soldier.
Onward Christian soldiers!
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
Going on before
Christ, the royal Master,
Leads against the foe;
Forward into battle,
See, His banners go!
I watched the Christian flag parading around the floor of the Senate during an insurrection, carried by a man who too probably grew up singing Onward Christian Soldier at church where the American flag and Christian flag were focal points in worship, melding the message of Christianity, and America into one [1]. My heart dropped through the floor. I know this man. Not this one man in particular, but men and women like him. Men and women who have inseparably melded the message of Christianity and America into one. And they were willing and eager participants and cheerleaders of the insurrection on Wednesday.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic interviewed the insurrectionists as they marched towards the Capitol:
One man. . . told me that the country was coming apart, and that this dissolution presaged the End Times. ‘It’s all in the Bible,’ he said. ‘Everything is predicted. Donald Trump is in the Bible. Get yourself ready.’
The conflation of Trump and Jesus was a common theme at the rally. ‘Give it up if you believe in Jesus!’ a man yelled near me. People cheered. ‘Give it up if you believe in Donald Trump!’ Louder cheers.
These are the seeds of Christian nationalism. A new term for some but one that has been on the radar of sociologists and some theologians for several decades. Christian nationalism is an ideology that fuses together Christianity and American civil life, that everything should “always be distinctively ‘Christian’ from top to bottom—in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values, and public policies [2].” Christian nationalism holds that America has always been and should always be a Christian nation, and those who stand in the way of that ideology are unpatriotic enemies of Christianity and America.
Onward Christian Soldier.
This is part of the reason why 81% of White Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2015 and 76% in 2020. This is part of the reason why ~30-40% of the United States has never wavered in their support of him. And this is part of the reason why they assaulted the Legislative Branch of our United States Government on Wednesday.
There is a disease hiding in plain sight in the White Evangelical Church. A disease that plagues the Church of my youth, and the Church of my present [3]. Christian nationalism must be called out for what it is: an evil distortion of Jesus and his message. It must be rooted out, and it must be destroyed.
And here’s the thing. This can be done. You can call me an optimist, but I believe it because this is actually a foundational part of the Jesus movement.
You see, when Jesus called together his band of disciples, the twelve. He chose a couple of nationalists, a couple of violent insurrectionists to join his mission. He chose a couple of men who carried weapons, little daggers that they would use to attack and kill Roman soldiers, authorities, or officials in the name of Judaism a Judeo-Nationalism of sorts.
For three and a half years Jesus discipled these men. Showing them a new way of being, a new way of living. He showed them what the kingdom of God was all about and truly like. And we know that one of those men, in those three and a half years, never dropped that dagger. He could never give it up. We know this, because on the night that Jesus was betrayed, Peter drew that dagger on a soldier and cut off his ear.
Jesus, on the verge of execution by the State, on the eve of his arrest, rebuked the insurrectionist, nationalist Peter and showed him the way of the Kingdom once again. He healed the man’s ear.
Peter never drew his dagger again. And from that moment: “Christ, in disarming Peter, disarmed every Christian... the Lord has abolished the sword” remarked the early Church father Tertullian. Nearly a century later, Athanasius would say, “Christians, instead of arming themselves with swords, extend their hands in prayer.” Peter, the most ardent insurrectionist and nationalist of the Twelve was changed.
Discipleship is the antidote to the Christian nationalism that plagues the White Church today. It’s the antidote for everything that ails the Church today.
This is why I’m hopeful. I believe a Re-Jesus-ing [4] of the Church is both necessary and past due. It’s why as a church, we’re refocusing on this work for the next year, an intentional pursuit towards knowing and understanding this wild Messiah named Jesus.
Change begins with us. And this in and of itself is a revolutionary act that can make waves.
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I make this insinuation because in every church I have ever attended growing up or worked at, save the two that I planted, these two flags occupied space on the stage. (And got in trouble at the churches I worked at every time I hid them!)
Yes despite it all, I have not yet been able to abandon the Evangelical Church despite what many may believe. I am a product of this Church movement, and I feel a deep responsibility towards its reform—I may go down with the ship if I have to, unless I’ve already been surreptitiously thrown overboard (which is quite possible!)
To borrow a phrase from Mike Frost and Alan Hirsch from their book ReJesus