Christian Nationalism and the January 6th Insurrection

This was the cover story for the March 2022 issue of the Oklahoma Observer.

By Dr. Bruce Prescott

I grew up in an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church – the J. Frank Norris and Jerry Falwell kind of Baptist churches. The kind of Baptists that I heard snidely call Billy Graham a graham cracker because he preached to audiences of mixed races. I have known about the racist roots and the enduring influence of what is now being called white Christian nationalism all my life. Recently, however, I was surprised to learn how deeply involved the white Christian nationalist movement was in orchestrating, organizing, and participating in the January 6th insurrection at our nation’s capital.

First, a little background about myself. From the time that I was a teenager I was opposed to what is now known as white Christian nationalism. To me this heritage is clearly ignoring the teachings of Jesus and runs counter to the entire thrust of the gospels and the New Testament. So, shortly after I got a driver’s license, I left the Independent Baptist church I was attending and joined a Southern Baptist Church (SBC). I knew the denomination began by defending the institution of slavery, but I also knew that the Southern Baptist Convention of the late 1960’s and 70’s had repudiated that legacy, was then opposed white Supremacism and was promoting a Baptist legacy worth preserving. I was most proud of the historic Baptist heritage as champions of religious liberty for all and as advocates for separating church and state in the U.S. constitution. It seemed like the right place for me to be -- for a time.

After I got my college degree, I went to seminary and entered the Christian ministry. Before I finished my graduate degrees, the white Christian nationalists within the SBC had organized themselves to take over the denomination and were well on their way to making it a base for the “religious right” wing of the Republican party. I noted that the beginning of this takeover movement coincided with Jerry Falwell’s launch of the Moral Majority. The Moral Majority was prompted by an ultimately unsuccessful IRS challenge to an Independent Fundamental Baptist school’s tax-exempt status. The challenge was due to a Bob Jones University policy that prohibited interracial dating among students. The policy was based on a white racist interpretation of 2 Corinthians 6:14. The Carter administration favored the ruling. Reagan was against it and SBC takeover leaders helped Falwell and others get the vote out for Reagan. The rest is history. Ten years later, when the takeover of the SBC was complete, Falwell disbanded the Moral Majority saying it was no longer needed. He had his church write a check to the SBC making it a member church.

After seminary I became the pastor of a Baptist church in Houston where Louis Beam, the KKK and Aryan Nations leader who coined the term “leaderless resistance” to thwart FBI attempts to infiltrate subversive organizations, had once been a member. While there I discovered that one of the church’s Sunday School teachers was peddling white supremacist Christian Identity theories akin to those in the Turner Diaries that inspired Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. I also learned about the Christian Reconstructionist movement and the teachings of Rousas Rushdoony and his son-in-law Gary North. Houston appellate court judge Paul Pressler, mastermind of the takeover of the SBC, introduced me to that movement. Once Pressler’s cabal of preachers had complete control of the SBC, he was a guest on Gary North’s radio program where he unveiled the strategy behind the takeover of the SBC. Throughout the interview, North held Pressler’s strategy up as a model for how Reconstructionist Christians could takeover a political party as a prelude to taking over civil government.

Shortly after listening to a recording of the North-Pressler interview I got a video tape in the mail at my church from a Christian Reconstructionist organizer, The title of the video was, “Restoring America: How You Can Impact Civil Government.” It was from a Dr. Steven Hotze, an allergist in Houston. The tape was filmed at an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church in my neighborhood. The pastor and his wife were participants in a video that revealed how churches could organize to takeover a political party precinct meeting and influence the party’s platform. Months later, many of the leaders of Republican party precincts in Harris County Texas lost elections in their precincts to authoritarian Christians. They wasted little time before stripping all the meaningful responsibilities from the county’s duly elected party chair and handed them over to none other than Steven Hotze.

I left Houston in 1998 and came to Oklahoma to lead Mainstream Baptists in opposing the influence of Christian nationalism and Christian Reconstructionism in Baptist life and to promote the Baptist legacy separating religion and government in civil society. The most public example of my efforts was as a plaintiff, along with Baptist layman James Huff, now deceased, opposing the erection of a ten commandments monument at the Oklahoma State Capital. Ten Commandments monuments are viewed as one of the primary symbols for the union of church state by Christian nationalists and Christian Reconstructionists. Fortunately, the Oklahoma state constitution explicitly rejects any union of religion and government and the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled in favor of our complaint.

Meanwhile, the program of Christian Reconstructionism has been popularized under the label of “Christian Dominionism.” The strategy of the movement is for authoritarian Christians to take control of the seven mountains of dominant influence in culture and society – government, business, education, arts and entertainment, family, media, and the church. Oklahomans who take the time to investigate this movement will find an uncanny resemblance between their objectives and what has been quietly happening in the culture of this state, particularly in the legislature and state capital, over the past few decades. It is all laid out openly on the website for The Oak Initiative (https://www.theoakinitiative.org/strategy-and-objectives). The Oak Initiative was founded by Norman attorney Marc Nuttle who unsuccessfully ran as a candidate for Oklahoma’s 4th U.S. Congressional District in 2002 and recently served as the head of the Governor’s transition team when Gov. Stitt was elected in 2016.

I share this long story about my experiences with Dominionism and Christian nationalism to demonstrate how seriously I take these movements to be a threat to democracy. I try to keep informed about their leadership and their activities. That is why I was taken aback recently when I attended a webinar on the role of Christian nationalism in the January 6th insurrection. The webinar was sponsored by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC). BJC is a non-profit organization founded by Southern Baptists in 1936 (but no longer supported by them) to preserve the Baptist legacy of religious liberty for all and to defend the separation of church and state.

Anyone who has seen video footage of the January 6th insurrection at our nation’s capital could see the plethora of Christian flags, crosses and signs that many of the insurrectionists carried. I thought most of them were misguided souls who got caught up in the emotional heat of the moment, and no doubt, many of them were. Perhaps a lot of them were little more than pawns being manipulated by religious leaders and others that they trusted, but those bold enough to fight capital police and enter the capital building were certainly very willing pawns.

What I did not realize until I heard the speakers in the webinar and read their report was that some key Christian nationalist and Dominionist leaders worked for months before the election to undermine confidence in the election results. After the election, these leaders helped orchestrate and plan for an insurrection by broadcasting and spreading lies about the election being stolen, then, in the weeks before January 6th, they feverishly created and promoted several rallies and protests with increasingly militant rhetoric, some of which involved post rally acts of violence. Ultimately, they were preparing their followers to join cadres of organized and armed militants in storming the capital with its horrendous and deadly levels of violence. Their goal was to obstruct the peaceful transfer of executive power by threatening and intimidating the Vice President and Congress enough to convince them to deny the certification of the lawfully elected President. Or else, some of them made a gallows after an incendiary speech by Roger Stone at a pre-insurrection rally held on January 5th.

I was dumbfounded at what I learned on the webinar and in this report. Don’t take my word for it. View a video of the webinar and read the 66 page report for yourself. Here are the links:

Report: https://bjconline.org/jan6report/

Webinar (One hour): https://youtu.be/U3aA19cwI3s