This week’s episode: How the pandemic changed us

Racial justice, police accountability, mutual aid, climate activism, warp-speed vaccines – we look at ways our COVID-19 year changed American society.

How the Christian right helped foment insurrection

When supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, the crowd was full of people sporting Confederate flags, QAnon shirts and Make America Great Again hats. But there were also a lot of Christian symbols in the crowd: Rioters hauled a giant wooden cross in front of the Capitol; others carried Bibles and wore crusader-like crosses. Trump’s longtime spiritual adviser and White House adviser, the Florida televangelist Paula White, spoke to the crowd, calling on God to “give us a holy boldness in this hour.” 

Journalist Sarah Posner has reported on the religious right for years and is the author of the book “Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump.” For Reveal, she reported on how right-wing evangelicals fostered the violent Jan. 6 insurrection. She talked to Reveal host Al Letson on the episode “A transfer of power.”

Al Letson: Evangelicals have supported Trump because of his stand on abortion and for making good on his promise to put conservative justices on the Supreme Court. But many people wonder what else do evangelical Christians have in common with Trump?

Sarah Posner: Well, they're both hostile to democracy and democratic values. Trump campaigned for president running on a platform of antagonism toward democratic institutions and democratic values. This is what the religious right likes about Trump. Evangelicalism has been pervaded by this sort of magical-thinking prosperity gospel, the idea that God wants you to be rich. The idea that God will make you rich if you give money to a televangelist, if you sow a seed, that you'll get a supernatural return on your investment. Even if it means aligning with a figure like Donald Trump, who has many, many, many moral failings – it doesn't matter because they've convinced themselves that God might use an unlikely figure like Trump to carry out his purposes. Which in their view are restoring a White Christian America that has been lost to political correctness or other social changes that have taken place that they feel are an infringement on their rights or on their prominence in American public life.

Letson: You said something that's really interesting, but I don't feel like we talk about it enough out loud. You said "White Christian America." Now, this is really wrapped up in race as well. Like their view, it really is wrapped around the idea of White America as well.

Posner: Yes. Evangelicals talk often about the need to restore Christian America or that America was founded as a Christian nation and that liberals have ruined that with their various policies that go against what they believe is God's intention for a Christian America. So they more frequently point to things like LGBTQ rights, which they claim infringe on their religious freedom, or abortion, which they believe is a sin for which God will punish America. But when you look at the history of the modern religious right, the founding of the Moral Majority in the late 1970s – which is really the movement that we're talking about here, the linkage of White evangelicalism with the Republican Party – they were motivated not by their opposition to abortion, but rather by what school desegregation meant for their private Christian schools. So there's a lot of racial grievance that's wrapped up in the formation of the religious right from the late 1970s, early 1980s. And Donald Trump knew exactly how to tap into that.

Letson: What's going to happen in the long term with evangelicals? Are these grievances that Trump has stirred up going to fade away?

Posner: I am afraid not because they've been brainwashed with these false narratives about voter fraud. I fear that they're only going to become more angry and more aggrieved, feeling like the president that they believed was anointed by God to restore the Christian nation, Donald Trump, had the election stolen from him. So I fear that their grievances will become even more accentuated.

Read the story: How the Christian right helped foment the insurrection

Listen to the podcast: A transfer of power  

At Reveal, we pour the necessary time and resources into investigative reporting that consistently contributes to real-world impact. Because of the generosity of our members, we have the courage, freedom and independence to dedicate our entire newsroom to this work. Thank you for your support.

– Neal Gorenflo, executive director of the nonprofit Shareable, on the importance of mutual aid 

Listen to the podcast: How the pandemic changed us

In the Field 

Black History Month reading and listening list

February is Black History Month, a perfect time to dig deep into Reveal’s reporting on structural racism in the United States. 

Reveal Recommends 

Missa Perron leads Reveal’s membership program. Every time you donate, picture this face smiling.

Listening: I am inadvertently listening to “The History of Rome“ because I live in a 400-square-foot cottage with someone who is listening to it. As for what I’m intentionally listening to, I love our friends over at Radio Ambulante.

Reading: “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson is helping fill in egregious gaps in my understanding of the history of the Great Migration.  

Watching: I’ve been finding great comfort in the whimsy and imagination of Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli classics like “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Ponyo” and “Spirited Away.” 

Do you have feedback for Reveal? Send it over! This newsletter was written by Sarah Mirk, who will share your thoughts with the team.