Last week a D.C. jury deliberated the case of 71-year-old Rebecca Lavrenz, one of 16 Coloradans arrested for participation in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She was found guilty of four misdemeanor charges, including “disorderly conduct inside a restricted building with the intent to disrupt government proceedings.”
In her own words, Lavrenz followed the mob inside to bring God’s “presence into the Capitol building … to reconfirm the covenant which was set forth in the year 1620 by our pilgrim forefathers, that this country was established ‘…for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.’”
Her website provides updates on the case, scripture references, pictures with former President Donald Trump, an opportunity to donate money for legal bills, and her mission: “restoring our nation back to God’s original intent.”
The day her trial began, Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, launched the “God Bless the USA Bible” with a “Let’s Make America Pray Again” announcement on social media. The book comes with a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance and the lyrics to Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA” for only $59.99.
Days before at a Freedom Night in America event at a California church, conservative activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk said “If you vote Democrat as a Christian, I think you can no longer call yourself a Christian. You have to call yourself something else. I do not think you can be a Christian and vote Democrat.”
The pastor on the stage encouraged attendees to share their faith with these wayward “Christians.” Kirk’s Turning Point USA Faith initiative endeavors to “empower the American Church to counter falsehoods and illuminate the inextricable link between Faith and God-given Liberty.”
These moments are not isolated events; they are part of a broader sociological pattern — religious nationalism. Like other identitarian political movements around the world and throughout human history, American Christian Nationalism fuses identity, politics, and religion. The roots of the movement go back to the late 1970s according to Tim Alberta, writer for The Atlantic and author of the recently published, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.”
Christian nationalism is not the same as Christian involvement in politics. In a democratic republic, people of all faiths and no faith have the right to practice their religion, run for office, advocate for policies, seek legal protections for the vulnerable, talk about their faith, advocate for religious freedom, and seek guidance from their sacred texts and prayer. No faith is legally privileged over another and citizenship is not intertwined with faith identity.
Religious nationalism is about power and identity. It’s more the norm than the exception in human history. Under movement pressure and to further their own ambitions, governments privilege a particular faith tradition in law or a nation’s constitution, enact legal restrictions on religious conversion and intermarriage, impose bans on religious expression, tolerate and even encourage mob violence against religious minorities, close places of worship, imprison believers, force conversions, expel communities, and engage in genocide.
Historical examples such as the European wars and persecutions in the 16th Century, the Boxer Rebellion, the Armenian Genocide, and the Holocaust come to mind, but contemporary examples abound.
Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill provides spiritual cover for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and sacralizes his war on Ukraine. Since taking power in 2014, the Hindu Nationalist government in India has passed new laws targeting Muslims and Christians while mobs vandalize churches and mosques and beat up faith leaders.
The atheist communist government in China mercilessly persecutes Muslims and to a lesser degree Christians.
In Pakistan and some other Muslim-majority countries, non-Muslims, Muslim minorities, and converts from Islam to other faith traditions face legal inequality and mob violence. Meanwhile, leaders of the Buddhist nationalist 969 Movement fueled violence against Muslims in Myanmar.
The current Christian nationalist movement in the U.S., sold by politicians and activists and bought by believers like Colorado’s Lavrenz, may seem minor by comparison.
But the fusion of national identity, religion, and political ambition imperils religious freedom and true faith. It creates a bitter us versus them dynamic that lays a foundation for future legal persecution and violence done in the name of religion.
Krista L. Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post opinion columnist, adjunct professor of communication, journalism, and political science, and a frequent radio and television commentator.
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