Christian nationalism played a central role in fueling the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol five years ago, the Freedom From Religion Foundation reminds the public. And its embrace in the current Trump administration continues to pose an existential threat to American democracy.

FFRF is highlighting its landmark 2022 report, “Christian Nationalism and the January 6, 2021, Insurrection,” which it produced in partnership with the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. The report documents how religious nationalist ideology helped motivate, justify and sanctify the violence aimed at overturning a democratic election.

“Too many discussions of Jan. 6 still treat Christian nationalism as incidental or even ignore its role,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We cannot fully understand what happened that day without confronting the religious ideology that framed the attack as divinely sanctioned and patriotic.”

The report brought together leading scholars and experts on Christian nationalism, including Anthea Butler, Samuel Perry, Andrew L. Seidel, Katherine Stewart, Jemar Tisby, Amanda Tyler and Andrew Whitehead. It traced the history of white Christian nationalism, mapped the well-funded networks that sustain it, and documented its visible presence during the Jan. 6 attack through prayers, symbols, signage and rhetoric invoking a Christian nation under threat.

The ideology examined in the report, far from fading, has captured key portions of the federal and some state governments, fueling efforts to merge religious doctrine with government power. This ranges from cabinet officials advancing explicitly Christian theology within the federal government to state laws privileging Christianity in public institutions.

In recent months, FFRF has rebuked a governor for instructing state employees to spend a government-mandated holiday “giving thanks for Christ’s birth,” warned that a deeply troubling directive issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi appears to target non-Christians, nonreligious Americans and disfavored viewpoints, criticized a Religious Liberty Commission hearing in Dallas for advancing a distorted, partisan and theologically driven view of religious freedom in the U.S. military, and documented how the Trump administration crossed constitutional lines with its sectarian Christmas messages. Together, these actions reflect the same core belief exposed in the Jan. 6 report: that the U.S. government should actively promote a particular religious identity at the expense of constitutional neutrality and equal rights.

In response, the state/church watchdog has vowed to challenge ongoing efforts to establish publicly funded religious charter schools and, most recently, filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to block Texas from forcing public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. FFRF has also previously called “unconscionable” President Trump’s pardon of nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants — an encouragement to white supremacist, Christian nationalist and paramilitary movements.

“The conspiracy theories and the lies about a ‘stolen election’ continue to stoke hate,” Gaylor adds. “In remembering Jan. 6, we must recognize the forces that made it possible and refuse to normalize them going forward. Christian nationalism blessed and sanctified the horrible actions that day. It is a political ideology that threatens religious freedom and democratic governance alike.”

The full report on the Christian nationalist underpinnings of the Jan. 6 insurrection is available here.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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