January 6 hearings include appearances of Christian nationalism

The influence of Christian nationalism was evident in images shown and statements made during this summer’s hearings on the January 6 attack.

The House of Representatives established the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol last year, designed to investigate and report on the facts, circumstances and causes relating to what happened on January 6, 2021.

After starting its work in the summer of 2021 with interviews and depositions, the committee held high-profile public hearings this summer, each involving in-person testimony, clips of video depositions and video from the day of the attack. According to news reports, the committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people.

While Christian nationalism has not been called out by name during the hearings, the ideology and its impact did make many appearances.

For example, at the end of the first prime-time hearing on June 9, video shown of the attack included an attacker waving the Christian flag. During the June 13 hearing, a person interviewed in video footage was wearing a shirt that said, “I stand for the flag, I kneel for the cross.”

The idea that the U.S. Constitution has been “divinely inspired” was mentioned several times.

During his testimony on June 21, Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers said a tenet of his faith is “that the Constitution is divinely inspired,” calling it one of his most foundational beliefs. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., repeated the idea in her closing remarks as vice chair of the committee. She thanked Bowers for reminding everyone that “our Constitution is indeed a divinely inspired document.”

Greg Jacob, who served as the top White House lawyer to Vice President Mike Pence, noted during his June 16 testimony that the vice president talked about a conversation he’d like to have with the Framers when he gets to heaven. While the conversation would focus on the lack of detail written in the Constitution about the vice president’s role in overseeing the electoral count, it would include telling them, “The work that you did in putting together our Constitution is a work of genius. Thank you. It was divinely inspired.”

As BJC Executive Director Amanda Tyler wrote on Twitter in response to using such religious terms for a secular document, “Let’s hope for less of this rhetoric in upcoming hearings, especially when Christian nationalism helped drive and intensify the January 6th attack.”

Tyler also submitted testimony on behalf of a number of Christian leaders to the committee, naming the role Christian nationalism played in emboldening and justifying the attack. She and several others have spoken publicly in the media, too, about the importance of discussing Christian nationalism when taking a look at January 6.

“I hope that the committee members will name instances of Christian nationalism and explore how that ideology inspired the violence,” Tyler wrote in an op-ed published by Religion News Service. “How did white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys use the language of Christian nationalism to attract more support for their extreme views? How did political leaders such as President Donald Trump and Mark Meadows conflate religious authority with political authority in their communications?”

BJC and the Freedom From Religion Foundation released a comprehensive report in February 2022 on the role of Christian nationalism in events leading up to January 6 and the attack itself.

At the very first public gathering of the committee on July 27, 2021, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges testified, “It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians,” noting he saw the Christian flag and a flag saying “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” in the hands of the attackers as he and his colleagues defended the Capitol.

The committee’s next round of hearings is scheduled to begin September 28.

This article first appeared in the fall 2022 edition of Report from the Capital. You can download it as a PDF or read a digital flip-through edition.