By David W. Marshall
(Trice Edney Wire) – The obsession with the Confederate battle flag never ended. The Confederate battle flag is not just a generic flag. It is associated with those who sought secession from the Union for the purpose of defending slavery. It later became a prominent emblem of organized resistance to racial equality and desegregation.
While Confederate troops never captured or entered the U.S. Capitol during the Civil War, the first time the Confederate battle flag entered the halls of the U.S. Capitol was during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The image of the battle flag inside the Capitol building was an insult. Its presence during the Jan. 6 attack highlights the attack’s connection to the larger issue of America’s history of white supremacist violence, anti-democratic rebellion, and efforts to deny equal political power.
It didn’t end with the battle flag. Crosses, Christian flags, prayers, Bibles, religious slogans, and Christian-themed clothing were seen and heard throughout the Jan. 6 gathering and attack. The presence of a cross and makeshift gallows bearing a noose while the crowd chanted “Hang Mike Pence” was significant because together they merged religious symbolism, political violence, and a threat of execution.
The noose illustrates the ugly side of U.S. history. It evokes dark memories of lynching—the racial terror used for generations to intimidate, torture, and murder Black Americans, especially during and after the Jim Crow era. During that time, the noose functioned both as an immediate threat toward politicians branded as “traitors” and as a symbol with a long association with white-supremacist violence.
The Christian cross, as the primary symbol of Christianity, did not represent divine love and Christian discipleship in this hostile environment. Rather, the cross was used for political purposes. Scholars and religious-liberty advocates describe this as Christian nationalism: the belief that the United States is specially ordained as a Christian nation and that political power should preserve a preferred religious and cultural identity.
What exactly is a “Christian nation,” and how can people who chant, “USA,” turn around and target hatred toward their nation’s government? Distrust and hatred toward the federal government are not new.
Those who subscribe to the latest MAGA movement are the same group who previously supported the Tea Party, states’ rights, segregationists, the Dixiecrats, and Jim Crow. They are also the same group who support the idea of a Christian nationalist movement. When it relates to the term “Christian nation,” the nation they love is not a physical nation. In the Bible, “nations” generally refers to distinct ethnic groups, foreign peoples, or non-Jewish (Gentile) populations rather than modern political countries with fixed borders.
The confusion comes when people often interchange words such as nation, state, and country. A nation is a collective sociocultural group of people who share a common lineage, culture, or language and are united by a common identity. A state is a political and legal entity with a permanent population, defined borders, and an independent government. Everything about Christian nationalism, from its symbols, cultural identity, and violence, points back to its Confederacy roots.
There is a reason why the MAGA movement feels like a cult. Confederate Christianity fused Protestant faith with Confederate nationalism. Confederate Christianity is a term for the religious ideology that portrayed the Confederate States and its defense of racial slavery as compatible with—and even mandated by—Christian faith. It was a political theology promoted by many Southern clergy, politicians, and laypeople before and during the Civil War. Its central claim was that slavery was divinely sanctioned, biblically supported, and entrusted to white Southerners as a social order they were morally bound to preserve.
From this perspective, abolitionists were viewed not only as political opponents, but enemies of God’s intended order. Advocates commonly cited biblical passages that describe slavery or urge enslaved people to obey masters. They did this while minimizing or rejecting biblical themes of human equality, liberation, justice, and the moral authority of the Golden Rule, which the Black church has promoted throughout history.
Confederate Christianity is what we refer to today as Christian nationalism. Today’s Christian nationalists continue to carry the tradition of being hypocritical in their support of the Bible and the U.S. Constitution in its entirety. This is especially true when both documents speak up for justice and freedom for the marginalized. But in Texas, Christian nationalists are experiencing an identity crisis.
Texas Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate, James Talarico is showing white evangelical voters that Christians can be liberal. White evangelicals have been a solid voting bloc for Republicans because they have repeatedly been told that there is no such thing as a liberal Christian. Most white evangelicals believe you cannot ever vote for a Democrat because they hate you,” explained April Ajoy, a former Christian nationalist turned liberal Christian, on her YouTube channel.
The Republicans have a lot to be concerned about politically if Talarico can expose the myths and untruths behind white evangelicals putting away their Confederate flags in addition to voting for a Democrat. Will they see that before there was James Talarico, there was Raphael Warnock as a Black U.S. senator and pastor with the same Christian message and example?
David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization TRB: The Reconciled Body and author of the book God Bless Our Divided America.
