I was at the Capitol Jan 6

Witnessing the return of Christian Nationalism

I.

I was at the Capitol on January 6 and saw with my own eyes the MAGA riots that attempted to overturn the results of the presidential election. To be clear, I did not enter the building, I am a resident of Washington DC who went to the Capitol grounds to witness the events.

photo by Edward Dodge

What I saw was a Fort Sumter for our times. Fort Sumter is, of course, the location where the first shots were fired in the US Civil War. Similar to our current events, the attack on Fort Sumter came in the aftermath of an election. The slave-holding south was not happy to see Abraham Lincoln ascend to the White House, and so they resorted to “politics by other means,” as war has been famously described. 

Today’s Trumpers are the ideological heirs to the Confederacy and there were plenty of Confederate flags flying on January 6. But there are important differences between the MAGA movement and the Confederate secession. The US Civil War of the 1860s was fought over land and a specific matter of law: slavery. The Southern states seceded from the Union to preserve the institution of slavery within their territorial borders. The rebels were willing to trade a smaller, weaker, country for the right to own other human beings. 

Today’s MAGA movement is not fighting over geography or any specific set of laws or policies. Today’s fight is over identity and cultural hegemony, there is no territory at stake. On one side we have the reactionary forces of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and their conservative allies seeking to preserve “traditional values” and the last vestiges of white supremacy. On the other side we have the progressive left who have a long list of passionate causes, but no cohesive ideology.

The MAGA Neo-Confederacy believes in “God and Country,” just like other rising religious nationalist movements around the world. Throughout Europe, the Islamic world, Israel, and India, religious nationalism in various forms has come to dominate the political right. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism are all being wedded to intolerant nationalist movements that seek to impose a narrow cultural identity on their broader societies at the expense of everyone else.

The cultural schism we are seeing today has more in common with the Reformation and centuries of bloody conflict between Protestants and Catholics than it does with the US Civil War. The Civil War featured two distinct armies on the field of battle. Whichever army prevailed in the military conflict was going to be the winner. Today’s culture war is not so clearly defined, nor will its outcome be so decisive. The conflict is between two-sets of irreconcilable worldviews, and which group will possess the power to set the tone for law and culture for the entire country.

Today’s conflict cannot be described as religious just yet, as the political left does not subscribe to a religious identity, and most on the left probably do not even believe a religious identity is necessary. But every culture in human history has had a religious identity at its heart that provides a cohesive worldview, codified beliefs, and community, and the left today is fractured precisely because it lacks it.

The left of today does not have a religion that suits their values to organize around and build communities, and maybe they need one. The social conflict we are in is one of ideology and cultural hegemony and it won’t be decided quickly. Like the bloody conflict between Catholics and Protestants for religious and cultural authority, the fight can last decades, centuries even. The left needs to define what it stands for, not just what it opposes, or else it risks losing the conflict to its better-organized rivals.

II.

America was founded by White Anglo Saxon Protestants who came to the New World in the 1600s in hopes of finding religious freedom and escape from Catholic authorities. Fortunately, the Protestant Reformation also gave birth to the Enlightenment and secular values. One aspect of religious freedom was freedom from religion and the right to be a non-believer or to even invent new religions.

Protestantism became the dominant religion and culture in America, but the country was built on secular governance and always contained a certain amount of multiculturalism and religious pluralism. This status quo worked for the WASPs as long as they held the dominant cultural position, but that dominance is now breaking down, challenged by black civil rights, feminism, gay marriage, and other progressive, non-Christian social trends.

White Anglo Saxon Protestants invented the concept of racism as a pseudo-scientific rationalization to justify their colonial subjugation of colored people around the world and attempt to construct a racial caste society in America. Whiteness was seen as signifying their closeness to God and their intrinsic genetic superiority. 19th-century evangelicals spoke openly that America was God's chosen country, his new Israel, and that it was to be WASP dominated.

White supremacy is not just an ideology, it has been the global political, economic, military, and colonial reality for the last 400 years. White Europeans dominated the entire planet through their far-flung colonial empires that brought great wealth back to Europe and America at the expense of the native peoples being colonized. This dominance is coming to an end as demographic and military trends accelerate the rise of China and the hollowing out of American and European power. Soon, white people will no longer be the majority population in America.

The forces of white supremacy took power globally by force, and they won’t give up their position without a fight. Every time in American history that an alliance of colored folks and white allies attempted to break the power of the white supremacists they were met with violence. We have seen this history repeated many times since the Civil War, through Reconstruction, the KKK, Jim Crow segregation, and the Civil Rights movement. The disgusting list of murderous crimes, lynchings, and domestic terrorism committed by WASPs is well known and far too long to list here. 

Not all white Christians or Protestants are white supremacists, that would be a gross mischaracterization. The Quakers came to America in the 1650s and they were consistently on the side of abolition and racial reconciliation. Many white Christians worked to end slavery and many whites allied with the Blacks in the struggle for Civil Rights. Many modern, liberal Christians support immigration, gay rights, and oppose Trump.

The current social conflict is as much a battle for the soul of American Christianity as it is for American culture. That said, reactionary Christian nationalism is the driving force behind MAGA and the connecting thread that brings non-whites into the MAGA tent.

III.

The conflict over religious nationalism has been in America since the start. Before race became the dominant cultural schism in America, the original social conflict was between the Christians and the Heathens, as the white counter-culture used to be known. Thomas Jefferson was the “Heathen-in-Chief'' according to his political rivals because of his strenuous efforts to separate church from state. Jefferson’s fight to disassociate the Anglican church as the state church of Virginia and forever end the state sponsoring of churches was the hardest fight he ever fought. Jefferson said it was more challenging than the revolution against England. 

There were English colonists from the earliest days who opposed the white-supremacy project and favored racial reconciliation and cohabitation with the native American Indians. At the same time that the first African slaves were brought to North America, Thomas Morton led the successful Merrymount colony in 1620s Massachusetts. The Pagan pilgrim, Morton was a blood rival to the deeply religious Puritans at the now-famous Plymouth colony from whom we get our Thanksgiving traditions.

Morton was a self-described Infidel who was friendly to the natives and held them in deep respect. He encouraged his men to marry native women and sold the Indians guns. The libertine Merrymount colony engaged in a thriving fur trade with the natives and were getting rich while the Plymouth colony nearby was nearly starving to death.  

In 1627, Morton erected an 80 foot tall Maypole that was visible from shore, marking the location of the colony for passing ships. Morton threw a huge May Day festival in the spring and invited all his native American friends to come eat, drink, and be merry. The following year when he sought to throw another big party, the Puritans showed up and had Morton arrested, ostensibly for the crime of selling guns to the Indians. Morton was sent back to England to face trial but was acquitted and returned to America. 

In 1630, the Plymouth Puritans burned down Merrymount and scattered the residents. They could not stomach the existence of a rival colony that held an oppositional worldview. Even worse, the Merrymount colony was making a lot of money with their heretical beliefs and practices. Unhappy colonists were leaving the authoritarian Puritan colony and joining the more prosperous and fun-loving settlement, so the supposedly religious leaders of Plymouth torched the place.

The burning of Merrymount would not be the last time that the self-identified good and moral people of America used violence to shut down their rivals. In 1921, White folks burned down the prosperous Black community in Tulsa, OK for no other reason than the Black folks were doing well.

IV.

The events of January 6, 2021, were shockingly lawless and a genuine assault on democracy, the Constitution, and our civic institutions. But far from being ashamed or contrite, the grassroots MAGA supporters have been reveling in their moment. You can’t call it a victory since the rioters did not achieve their stated goal of overthrowing the election results and keeping Trump in office. Moreover, many of the rioters are now facing serious criminal charges, forcing everyone who participated to lie low until the legal storm blows over. 

photo by Edward Dodge

But the fact that Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial and grassroots Republicans have rallied to his support, working quickly to punish and censure any Republican officeholders who dared to criticize Trump at all, much less vote to convict, is a powerful signal that the God & Country right does not feel an obligation to defend democracy and the Constitution.

The Republicans are saying out loud now through their words and actions that their electoral strategy going forward is to actively undermine any expansion of voting rights and access. Republicans have been practicing voter suppression for a long time, it is not a new strategy, but in the past they were quiet about it. Now, no one is even attempting to deny the obvious. MAGA Republicans acknowledge that they are a minority in the USA and all the demographic trends are working against them. 

MAGA Republicans know that their coalition of WASPs + allies is a sure loser in free, fair, and popular elections. Rather than try and modify their political positions to expand their coalition and broaden their tent, MAGA Republicans will try to use any trick they can, like stacking the courts with friendly judges, to achieve permanent minority rule. If democracy itself becomes a hindrance to minority rule, then they will burn democracy down. The events of Jan. 6 and the reaction to them are all the proof we need. If the MAGA movement felt any shame they are certainly not showing it. 

Trump’s ill-conceived and shambolic attempts to overthrow the election never had a chance because he did not do the work to foment a real coup. For that, he would have needed support from within the military and law enforcement, as well as a plan to seize the media and arrest the opposition. Trump did none of these things because he is lazy and stupid, but imagine someone else with greater cunning and strategic thinking. Give it a few more years of heated social conflict and anything is possible. Rome was a Republic for 500 years before it became an empire. 

Democracy is flammable. When the MAGA folks start hailing the virtues of Julius Caesar watch out.