BJC’s Tyler to CBS News: Christian nationalism continues to fuel former President Trump’s Big Lie

Last week, former President Donald Trump revisited dangerous themes of Christian nationalism in a speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference, attacking the Select Committee investigating January 6. BJC Executive Director Amanda Tyler spoke to CBS News about the ways Christian nationalism “absolutely was on display” during the former president’s remarks and the insurrection itself.

[W]e’ve seen how Christian nationalism shows up… appeals to God, or equating God and Trump, or … that somehow Trump’s reelection was preordained or part of God’s bigger plan – how these helped feed and sustain the Big Lie and how former President Trump continued along those lines [at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference] as he was appealing to familiar incantations of Christian nationalism, saying that our founding documents were divinely inspired or that our civil rights and liberties came directly from God, or – in one of the biggest applause lines of the day – when he said, “in America we don’t worship government, we worship God.”

 

Of course, the problem is that no single religion has ever united Americans. Instead, what unites Americans is our commitment to religious freedom for all, and former President Trump’s continuing appeals to Christian nationalism threaten that value.

You can watch the entire news segment featuring Tyler at this link or in the video below:

Unfortunately, even the hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol have not been immune to similar expressions of Christian nationalism. As Tyler tweeted, “So far … Greg Jacob, Rusty Bowers & Liz Cheney have talked about the Constitution as ‘divinely inspired.’ Let’s hope for less of this rhetoric in upcoming hearings, especially when #ChristianNationalism helped drive and intensify the January 6th attack.”

For more on how Christian nationalism played a role leading up to and during the January 6 attack on the Capitol, see the report issued earlier this year by BJC and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. To make your voice heard on this critical issue, join the tens of thousands of Christians who have signed on to the Christians Against Christian Nationalism statement and access resources there.