In the crowd of insurrectionists who seized the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Christian imagery was rife. Alongside Confederate flags and white supremacist symbols, protesters shouldered crosses, waved “Jesus Saves” signs, and hung oversized “Jesus 2020” banners. One rioter who made it inside the building carried a “Christian flag.” Outside, on the National Mall, people chanted, “Christ is king.” As the reporter Jack Jenkins noted, some in the crowd referred to the neo-fascist Proud Boys as “God’s warriors.”
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There was no denying the religious right’s role in Wednesday’s events. In the aftermath, many evangelical leaders condemned the violence rarely to a warm reception. Prominent Donald Trump supporters who offered stronger denunciations of the events were met with accusations of “too little, too late” from liberals and charges of abandoning their president and their principles from conservatives. And not all leaders took that tack: A smalle
In the lead up to the 2020 election, white evangelical leaders were at a crossroads. While the majority of white evangelicals voted for President Donald
A prominent Southern Baptist calls on Trump to step down.
Russell Moore has been consistently critical of President Trump.Credit.Mark Humphrey/Associated Press
Jan. 8, 2021
Russell Moore, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s influential public-policy arm, is joining the calls for President Trump to resign.
“There are 12 dangerous days for our country left,” Mr. Moore wrote in a Twitter post addressed to the president on Friday morning. “Could you please step down and let our country heal?”
Mr. President, people are dead. The Capitol is ransacked. There are 12 dangerous days for our country left.
Could you please step down and let our country heal? https://t.co/wP3niITQv6 Russell Moore (@drmoore) January 8, 2021
President Donald J. Trump walks from the Oval Office to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2021, en route to Joint Base Andrews, Md. to begin his trip to Georgia. | White House/Joyce N. Boghosian
Though dismayed by the “American nightmare” that took place on Capitol Hill, Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler said he stands by his vote for President Donald Trump, as he “could not” vote for Joe Biden in a binary system.
“I stand by the comments that I ve made at every point,” Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told The Houston Chronicle on Wednesday evening. “If I could rewind history and know then what I know now, we’d be talking about a different kind of judgment. But we have to live life in a temporal line and seek to be faithful in those moments.”