In this Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 file photo, a man holds a Bible as Trump supporters gather outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The Christian imagery and rhetoric on view during the Capitol insurrection are sparking renewed debate about the societal effects of melding Christian faith with an exclusionary breed of nationalism. John Minchillo/AP
“Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be frankly historic. But just like [former Attorney General] Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, Mike, and I say it sadly ‘cause I like him, but Mike did not have the courage to act.”
“The election was perfect. And the Democrats are sitting back, saying ‘No way we’re going to impeach this guy.’ Nah, it’s terrible. But Mike was afraid of whatever he was afraid of. But, as you heard a year and a half ago, Mike Pence had absolutely no choice but to be a human conveyor belt – he was a human conveyor belt – even if the votes were fraudulent. They said he had to send the votes – couldn’t do anything.”
– Former President Trump at a Faith and Freedom event in Nashville, Tenn. on June 18, 2022
These are the words of a man who urged sedition – Donald Trump who led an insurrection and an attack on the U.S. Capitol based on his Big Lie that the 2020 election had been stolen. Despite his unsupported claims that the election was tainted by widespread voter fraud, federal and state elections officials never found substantial evidence of this.
In addition, dozens of legal challenges brought by the former president’s legal team to overturn the 2020 election results were largely unsuccessful.
And still, Trump won't stop pinning his own shortcomings on others like his own VP Mike Pence. His base – in this case, Christian nationalists – continue to believe in their “chosen one,” preferring to ignore the facts and blindly follow him in an attempt to regain power and seek vengeance. These true believers even have strange bedfellows like insurrectionist Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Boogaloo Boys, and QAnon theorists.
Trump is now busy positioning himself for a presidential run in 2024. His remarks about Pence are especially disgusting because in past years, this conference served as a celebration for the vice president as a top conservative Christian leader. Pence would attend the conference each year to address an audience of like-minded evangelicals who were eager to hear him speak and elevate him politically.
But things have changed for Pence since Trump left office. Last year, in the shadow of Jan. 6, Pence was jeered by the crowd and called a “traitor” while on stage. Now, when asked about what they think of Pence or how they view his political future, attendees sigh or visibly shrug.
This year, Pence has taken on a new persona among the crowd—a Trump era castoff who is probably better off not showing his face. And he seems to know it. The former veep was invited to the conference but decided not to attend. It was the first time Pence had missed the conference in five years.
(Meridith McGraw and Adam Wren. “Pence skips Faith & Freedom conference. Is attacked by Trump anyways.” Politico. June 17, 2022.)
At the Faith and Freedom Coalition event, Trump also indicated that he would pardon those charged and sentenced over the Capitol riot if he were to become president again.
Speaking in Nashville, Tennessee, on Friday, Trump claimed that January 6 defendants are "having their lives totally destroyed" and are treated "worse than terrorists and murderers."
"If I become president someday, if I decide to do it, I will be looking at them very, very seriously for pardons," Trump said.
(Alia Shoaib. “Trump said he would 'very seriously' consider pardons for his MAGA supporters found guilty of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 if he becomes president again.” Insider. June 18, 2022.)
Conclusion
On January 6, 2021, while Vice President Pence was presiding over the formal counting of Electoral College votes during the joint session of Congress, he and his family had to be whisked out of the Senate chamber to a safe location inside the Capitol complex as rioters rampaging through the building closed in on him. At one point, the angry mob was a mere 40 feet away from the vice president.
All the while, Trump tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done,” prompting rioters to chant “hang Mike Pence” and erect mock gallows.
Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney has described testimony from Trump aides saying he responded by saying Pence “deserves it.”
But, evidently that is just “perfect behavior” for the Trump faithful, including those in attendance at the Faith and Freedom event. In what I see as very un-Christian behavior, the crowd in Nashville rejected Pence, upheld Trump, and cheered for Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and others to now be pardoned – part of an angry mob that instigated critical breaches of the Capitol and who now face charges of seditious conspiracy.
I detest the Trump influence. Trump and henchmen who support far-right, Neo-fascism are serious threats to democracy. And yet here they are, poised to bring division into the 2024 election process. The Christian right – nationalists who believe American government should be wholly Christian – has become complicit in all of the damage done.
If anyone thought that Christian nationalism would decline with Trump out of power, they were mistaken. This movement of ultra-conservative, politicized churches on the march, though there are no firm numbers because the congregations are mostly nondenominational. The belief system provides a godly underpinning for right-wing activism in venues like school-board elections, anti-vaccine protests, and the Jan. 6 attack on the capitol.
"This is a spiritual battle. It's good versus evil," says Patriot Church congregant Jim Willis (Lenoir City, Tennessee). He's a 72-year-old retired army colonel and software salesman, who wears on his lapel an American flag inside of a Christian cross. "And, unfortunately, evil has taken charge."
(John Burnett. “Christian nationalism is still thriving — and is a force for returning Trump to power.” NPR. January 23, 2022.)
And, the GOP is all too happy to join the battle. In fact, one notable speaker at the Faith and Freedom conference was Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, niece of Utah Senator Mitt Romney. Earlier this year, the RNC passed a unanimous resolution declaring Trump’s coup “legitimate political discourse,” while at the same time censoring Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the only two elected Republicans serving on the House Select Committee on January 6.
Prior to Trump’s speech
at Faith and Freedom, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina –
effusive in his praise of Trump and his gangster persona – said …
“You know what I liked about Trump? Everybody was afraid of
him … including me.”
Yet, despite the love of the fearmonger, many church folks are falling away. Gallup has been polling Americans on their religious affiliations for 82 years, beginning in 1939. The polling company has been asking, "Do you happen to be a member of a church, synagogue or mosque?" And the answer went from 73% saying "yes" in the early 1940s to only 47% saying "yes" in the early 2020s. It's a staggering and monumental decline.
Have the Christian right nationalists damaged Christianity's brand by associating the faith with theocratic politics? I guess that depends on your view of positive belief systems. If you fall on the side of “Guns, God, and America First,” you too think people like the Christian Mike Pence are just “conveyor belts” and cowardly “pussies.” (I am quoting from sworn testimony, so don't blame me for the “kitty” content.)
As for myself, I smell a cat too – a treasonous polecat who stirs up conspiracy and insurrection. Why are the Christian nationalists blind to Trump's evil attempt to steal the 2020 election?
Mark Leuchter, Professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia, offers an explanation …
“People like conservative, evangelical Christian, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindel regularly affirmed Trump in quasi-divine and even messianic terms, joining conservative Christians across the country who viewed the Trump administration as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, with Trump spreading the MAGA gospel with every official pen-stroke.
“And this is where the belief in biblical inerrancy intersects with Lindell’s devotion to the Big Lie. Just as someone can never question the Bible’s inerrancy, one can never question the unassailable truth of Trumpism. To do so would be no less than to question the will of the deity who, for many conservative evangelicals like Lindell, directly chose Trump to lead and save the nation. In other words, the political landscape of Trumpist America was as binding as the Bible … both inerrant, both beyond question, both designed by God to favor the faithful.
“From this frame of reference, Trump’s decisive loss to Biden in the 2020 election was theologically intolerable. It not only challenged the inerrant reading of the political landscape, it challenged the holiness of the power structure resulting from it. Lindell has credited his own financial success to his religious beliefs.
“With Trump’s tenure in office built on the brand of the 'wealthy businessman' and the approval of the evangelical elite, wealthy Christian conservatives like Lindell were positioned as saintly figures who embodied a nationalist American holiness emanating from the Oval Office.
“An end to Trump’s political hegemony was also an end to access to that type of holiness – something that anthropologists of religion see in other cultures where shifting political tides threaten the holiness of saintly groups and demand desperate reactions.”
(Mark Leuchter. “Why Mike Lindell and the Majority of White Evangelicals Can’t Give Up On ‘The Big Lie.'” Religion Dispatches. June 9, 2021.)
Leuchter's conclusion: “Trump promotes a sacred counter-narrative spun from white Christian nationalist threads that rejects the merits of critical scrutiny and thus needn’t abide by it. Indeed, critical scrutiny is itself the enemy, and because the alternative threatens his theological framework as a Christian as much as it threatens his political framework as a Trumpist conservative, Mike Lindell (and Trumpers like him) must continue to push the Big Lie. From where he stands, his soul depends on it.”
(Mark Leuchter. “Why Mike Lindell and the Majority of White Evangelicals Can’t Give Up On ‘The Big Lie.'” Religion Dispatches. June 9, 2021.)
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