The CBC reports that supporters of President Donald Trump were confronted by Capitol police officers outside the Senate Chamber in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.
https://i.cbc.ca/1.5865340.1610055659!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_1180/aptopix-electoral-college-protests.jpg
Emma Green writes in the Atlantic that many of those who mobbed the Capitol on Wednesday claimed to be enacting God’s will. She suggests that many of the mob have reshaped their Christianity in Trump’s image.
The Jericho March is evidence that Donald Trump has bent elements of American Christianity to his will, and that many Christians have obligingly remade their faith in his image. Defiant masses literally broke down the walls of government, some believing they were marching under Jesus’s banner to implement God’s will to keep Trump in the White House... This realization has shaken Christian leaders. “I certainly did not believe, or have any anticipation, that [Trump] would take matters to the extent that have become clear over the last few weeks,” Albert Mohler, the head of an influential evangelical seminary in Kentucky who hopes to be the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told me. Mohler opposed Trump in 2016, citing what he saw as the candidate’s poor character. But last spring, he publicly declared that he would support Trump in 2020 and vote for Republican presidential candidates for the rest of his life. “We are undoubtedly in an agonizing moment, in which evangelical Christians who supported Donald Trump now find ourselves in the position of being tremendously embarrassed by this most recent behavior,” he told me.1
In an opinion piece in the Blog - Premier Christianity, Brian D. McLaren, a Christian author, activist and former pastor, is especially grieved by the role Christians have played in Trump’s con artistry.
As a Christian, I am especially grieved by the role Christians have played in Trump’s con artistry. The words, silence, and example of well-known Evangelical leaders like Robert Jeffress and Albert Mohler (both leading Southern Baptists), Paula White, Bill Johnson and Pat Robertson (charismatics with large followings), Eric Metaxas, Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham have led Christians to love and support Trump as an almost messianic protector and liberator. Notable Catholic leaders have also declared their faith in Trump including Texas bishop Joseph Strickland. But the silence of tens of thousands of pastors, priests, and bishops may be even more damning: by going about their business as if a slide towards authoritarianism were not worth addressing strikes me as the mark of hirelings, not true shepherds. In a recent extended essay The Second Pandemic, and my newest book Faith After Doubt (Hodder & Stoughton) I summarised recent research into authoritarianism and how authoritarian attempts work. Social psychologists, following the work of Bob Altemeyer, have found that about a third of all human populations can be described as potential authoritarian followers. In the presence of stress, shame or fear, they can be activated. Race and religion play a significant role in their activation.2
Christians will hopefully reevaluate support for political leaders who have strayed from the role of being good shepherds of their flock.
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