found<\/a> that while Trump left office with his lowest overall favorability rating since his 2016 campaign \u2013 31% \u2013 his approval rate was twice as high among White evangelicals.<\/p>The Sunday after the insurrection, Trump\u2019s spiritual adviser Paula White was back in the pulpit at City of Destiny, the church she pastors in Apopka, Florida. Trump and White have been friends since the mid-2000s, when he invited her for a meeting after he spotted the blond televangelist while channel surfing. White briefly condemned \u201clawlessness,\u201d but then mounted a strong defense of free speech rights and assured her congregation that \u201cGod is still at work.\u201d She recounted the story in the first Book of Samuel, in which the Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant. In the biblical story, the ark is considered too holy for the apostate Philistines, \u201cthe eternal enemies of God,\u201d as White described them, to handle, and God returns it to the Israelites \u2013 evidence that, in White\u2019s view, God will restore America to its rightful inheritors, too.<\/p><\/div>
Pastor Paula White, Donald Trump\u2019s longtime spiritual adviser and a White House adviser, attends a National Day of Prayer event at the White House Rose Garden in May 2020. Credit: Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>Other evangelical leaders sought to deny reality, blaming the violence of that day on antifa or Black Lives Matter protesters who they falsely claimed had posed as Trump supporters. Michele Bachmann, the former Republican congresswoman who is now a dean at Regent University, had been inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 siege. Speaking to a prayer call with other Christian-right leaders that evening, she said: \u201cYou know the kind of people that we were with. The nicest, friendliest, happiest \u2013 it was like a family reunion out there. It was incredible, it was wonderful, and then all of a sudden, this happens.\u201d Of the rioters at the Capitol, Bachmann insisted that \u201cthis wasn\u2019t the Trump crowd, this didn\u2019t look anything like the Trump crowd or the prayer warriors.”<\/p>
Lance Wallnau, a popular evangelical author, speaker and Trump loyalist who attended the Jan. 6 protest, echoed that same theme. \u201cThis is not your typical evangelical, I’m telling you right now,\u201d he told Metaxas on his radio program the day after the insurrection, \u201cand they’re banging on the hoods of the police and they\u2019re creating a scene, I said, \u2018This is the local antifa mob and this is like from the playbook 101.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>
By Jan. 8, the Jericho March had posted a statement denouncing violence and scrubbed any reference to Stop the Steal\u2019s Jan. 6 protest.<\/p>
Accountability for the former president was not on the table. Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas has been close to Trump for years, as one of the first evangelical leaders to endorse his candidacy in 2016. He condemned the violence but stopped short of blaming it on Trump, telling Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting that while he accepts the election results, Trump \u201chas a right to believe\u201d that it was stolen.<\/p>
Another influential Trump ally, Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, sent an unmistakable signal to Republican lawmakers that their White evangelical base would not tolerate a second impeachment. In a Facebook post<\/a>, Graham compared the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump to Judas, whose betrayal of Jesus led to his crucifixion. \u201cIt makes you wonder,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwhat the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi promised for this betrayal.\u201d<\/p>Meanwhile, the Christian right is readying its troops for an escalation of the culture war: a campaign to delegitimize not only Biden\u2019s presidency, but any Democratic election victory. Bachmann, during the prayer call just hours after the insurrection, claimed that Democrats also \u201cstole\u201d control of the Senate when Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won their seats in Georgia \u2013 a development Bachmann repeatedly called a \u201ccoup.\u201d<\/p>
That narrative means that Republican lawmakers can rest assured that their most loyal base will have their back as they reject Trump\u2019s second impeachment, obstruct the Democratic legislative agenda and refuse to accept the legitimacy of the Democratic president and Democratic leadership of Congress. The movement\u2019s new jeremiad, a battle against the democratic process itself, is just getting started.<\/p>
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a terrorism advisory bulletin<\/a> that warned of the potential costs of the false claims at the heart of that battle: \u201cInformation suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.\u201d<\/p>This story was edited by Esther Kaplan and Matt Thompson and copy edited by Nikki Frick.<\/em><\/p>Sarah Posner can be reached at sarahposner1@gmail.com<\/a>. Follow her on Twitter: @sarahposner<\/a>. <\/em><\/p><\/div><\/div>