I like many of you are struggling to put words to my feelings of the past week. While our focus was on many Christian nationalists storming and laying siege to the Capitol, the United States Senate gained a new Jewish Senator and a new African American Senator - from the state of Georgia, a state with a long history of white supremacy. This is the America that we hold in tension - on one hand white and Christian nationalism are growing stronger by the day, but in other corners of our nation, diversity is being celebrated.
While watching the Capitol protests quickly turn destructive and into a siege of the Capitol, I was personally shocked that they were able to penetrate so many security smoke screens. On the other hand, this was predicted as hatred and fear dominated our national political discourse. This was entirely foreseeable. I still want the world to go back to “normal”, but even normal was also just a smoke screen that covered up so many other forms of injustice.
Many people are responding in very different ways, and much of it comes to misunderstandings about what is happening in our world.
Civil disobedience is non-violent. As soon as you bring a gun to an event and are displaying it publicly, you have moved from non-violence into a threatening position. Non-violence requires people to be completely disarmed. Over the past few years we have seen clergy arrested regularly while in prayer. We have seen young black leaders arrested while on their knees with their hands up. We have seen tear gas launched at protestors disrupting traffic, locked arm-in-arm. But these are all acts of non-violence. When guns, bombs, zip ties come onto the scene, these individuals and the organizations went from American protestors into terrorists.
Disruption vs destruction: As mentioned above, we saw many non-violent protests over the summer. While these protests can disrupt (and are designed to disrupt) the status quo, they do not seek to destroy others. Even spray paint, or bloodied hand-prints on the Statehouse are only a disruption to bring people to be aware of the injustice that is done.
On January 6th, we saw an attempt to destroy the electoral college votes - literally pieces of paper in envelopes. The Senate Parliamentarian and her staff secured those ballots just before the Senate chambers were breached. Had those ballots been destroyed, America would have been in a Constitutional crisis. We need to disrupt the status quo, not destroy everything. Even the destruction of windows of a business do not destroy capitalism, but disrupt its activities for a few days.
The Response by law enforcement demonstrates the racism of America: It would be comical if not so pathetic. Police officers demonstrated great restraint on January 6th and even collegiality with some of the people engaging in the riot. There are images of the Capitol police taking selfies with people. When we contrast the police response to this attack on the US capitol to the militarized response to protestors for Black Lives, we can see that white bodies are deemed safe while black bodies speaking up for equal rights are a threat.
The substance of this coup was bad: There are compelling moments of world history where a violent revolution is the most just course of action. Many ethicists have written about this regularly. Bonhoeffer’s attempted assassination of Hitler is the easiest example to find. John Brown’s attempted coup against slavery is probably another moment where the oppression and harm done to people is so severe, that violence may be the least cruel option for the community. Violence and the destruction of the peaceful democratic transfer of power in the United States to preserve power for Donald Trump is not a justifiable reason for any violence.
But the cult of Donald Trump and the extremism of Christian nationalism are a threat to America. This is why the National Council of Churches and many of our national church partners have called upon the removal of President Trump from office.
We should have seen this coming: it wasn’t a surprise to see lynching ropes, and anti-semitic images portrayed. The White Christian nationalists have been allowed to dominate our congregations and faith discourse for years. We try to ignore them and their rhetoric to ‘maintain the peace.’ But peace without justice is no peace at all. America often holds itself above other nations. As if we are some specialized chosen one. As a Lutheran, I need to remind myself of our brokenness and sinfulness. We are in the same sandbox as everyone else. Throughout history, when hatred spreads unchecked, when dehumanization is allowed to dominate, it will eventually turn violent. God forgive us for not standing up sooner, but hopefully we will stand against bigotry now.
Where do we go from here? It is time that Christian Churches to actively challenge Christian nationalism. Many of my colleagues preached difficult sermons on Sunday and they received pushback. The pushback is because we don’t talk about difficult issues enough and our congregations are shocked when their pastors do. The Christian faith is more than moralistic therapeutic deism. It is a call to a way of love founded on God’s love - which includes our work for justice in the world. If we wait until the Christian nationalists strike again, it is too late.