A Peaceful January 6th Offers Little Reassurance about Our Democracy

PLUS, my interview about January 6th with Paul Raushenbush on The State of Belief

On September 11, 2024, two months prior to the 2024 election, the Secretary of Homeland Security designated January 6, 2025, as a “National Special Security Event.” The press release announcing this decision explained that this designation had been made based on recommendations from the House Select January 6 Committee, the Government Accountability Office, and the DC mayor’s office. It also somberly noted, “This marks the first time a National Special Security Event designation has been granted for a Certification of Electoral Votes.”

The need for this new designation is, of course, the direct result of the attempted violent insurrection four years ago today led by Donald Trump in a desperate attempt to stay in office after losing the 2020 election. The violence Trump encouraged and unleashed that day resulted in the death of one protester and injured 138 police officers, 15 of whom where hospitalized. In an interview with the New York Times, a Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson described the brutal injuries from the hand to hand combat: “I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake.” Four police officers took their own lives in the months following their experience of being attacked by their fellow citizens.

Trump’s behavior that day are a national disgrace and provide one of the clearest windows into the character of the man the American people have chosen to put back into power. Here are three disturbing reminders of Trump’s documented actions that day.

• Trump had planned a television backdrop of about 50,000 supporters for his infamous January 6 Ellipse speech, but it was only partially filled because about half of his supporters refused to be screened for weapons, a requirement for entry. According to testimony by Cassidy Hutchins, Trump was furious. “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons,” he screamed. “They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Take the fucking mags away”

• During his hour-long speech, Trump tells his supporters to prepare to fight: “If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore....We're going to try and give them [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country...”

• Even after Trump knows the protesters have attacked Capitol police and breached the security perimeter, endangering Mike Pence, members of Congress, and their staff, and while reportedly watching the attacks from the White House on Fox News, he tweets: “Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

Most disturbingly, Trump has never conceded his loss in the 2020 election. He has not only continued to promote that falsehood throughout his campaign but has also now made belief in that Big Lie a litmus test of loyalty and a precondition for joining his administration. And among his followers, he has largely succeeded in inserting his lie into their accepted reality: PRRI’s 2024 American Values Survey found that 62% of Republicans continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Moreover, he has convinced nearly half (46%) of Republicans that “the people convicted for their role in the violent January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol are really patriots who are being held hostage by the government.”

While Trump was impeached (the second time) for “incitement of insurrection” for his role that day, he of course was not solely responsible for the violence. I was also deeply disturbed by the white Christian nationalists who participated in the insurrection that day. After watching the disturbing television coverage on January 6, 2021, I stayed up late that night and wrote a piece for Religion News Service, which was published the next morning.

Source: “Jesus and Trump Flags in Front of the Breaching of the Capitol.” Uncivil Religion archive.

I wrote in part:

If there was one thing of value to come out of the shameful chaos of yesterday’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.

Some of the participants, organized as part of a “Jericho March,” blew shofars — Jewish ritual horns — as they circled the Capitol, reenacting the siege of the city of Jericho by the Israelites described in the Book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible. And one video showed the Christian flag — white, with a blue canton containing a red cross, used by many white evangelical churches — being paraded into an empty congressional chamber after the doors had been breached and members of Congress evacuated….

If we are to understand the events of yesterday, and the challenges ahead for us as a nation, we must take these symbols and this rhetoric seriously, not in isolation, but in combination and conversation with each other.

This seditious mob was motivated not just by loyalty to Trump, but by an unholy amalgamation of white supremacy and Christianity that has plagued our nation since its inception and is still with us today.

You can read the full piece I wrote on January 6th, 2021, here:

I am grateful that we are unlikely to experience another assault on the U.S. Capitol building today. I am grateful that our local hospitals will not be filled with the battered bodies of police officers who showed up to work to ensure our elected representatives could perform a routine but vital task of certifying the electoral college vote. I am grateful that the only thing shutting down our offices in DC today, which are just a few blocks from the White House, is a gentle snow storm.

But the peaceful certification of the results of a free and fair election this January 6th offers little reassurance about the future of our democracy. It is merely the contingent result of the victory of the man and the party who would undermine democracy over the woman and the party who would uphold it.

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January 6th: Bad Theology, Bad Day for Democracy

Check out my recent conversation with Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush on The State of Belief, where we talk about the rewriting of history around the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol and trends in religion and politics at the start of 2025.

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A Cache of Christian Images from January 6, 2021: The Uncivil Religion Project

Finally, I’m sharing a link to the Uncivil Religion Project, an important collaborative endeavor by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama and the Museum of American History at the Smithsonian. This website contains the largest public archive of religious images and videos from the January 6th insurrection.

Here’s what you can find on this site:

Religious symbols, rituals, identities, banners, signs, and sounds suffused the events surrounding the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This project begins to trace the thread of religion that wound throughout that day through pieces of digital media. It does this in two ways. First, there is a collection of essays that analyze individual pieces of media from January 6 in order to explain the role religion played that day. Second, there is a series of galleries that contain pieces of media that represent the variety of ways religion "showed up" on January 6.

Here are just a few examples of still shots and a video from the Uncivil Religion archives.

Source: “God, Guns, and Trump Hat.” Uncivil Religion archive.

Source: “Crucifix.” Uncivil Religion archive.

Source: “Jericho Cross.” Uncivil Religion archive.

Source: “Jericho Marchers Blow Smoke out of Shofars.” Uncivil Religion archive.

Finally—don’t miss this one—here’s a video of a group singing “We are the People of the Lord,” a contemporary Christian chorus that is popular in white evangelical churches.

Here are the lyrics.

There is one body.
We have one Lord.
United in the spirit,
We are going forth
With His praises on our lips
And a sword in our hands,
We are marching on with power
As we possess this land.

We are the people of the Lord.
We're a holy nation,
A chosen generation,
Called to show forth His praise.
We are the people of the Lord.
We're a holy nation,
Believers in Jesus,
Lifting up our voices to the Lord.

In these few bars, we hear the corrosive Christian nationalist claims of domination and chosenness. In a single frame, we also see the ubiquitous Trump flags and clothing, the racist “Blue Lives Matter” flag (center right), and the Christian flag (center left). And we hear the refrain—“with His praises on our lips and a sword in our hands, we are marching on with power as we posses this land”—sung against the backdrop of the National Museum of the American Indian, a monument to the people on whose lands they are standing.

More than ever, I am convinced that this unholy amalgamation of white supremacy and Christian dominionism presents the most dire threat to the American ideals of democracy and pluralism we face today.