Joshuas ‘Preparing for (Civil) War’

Review by Bill Doughty––

They carried Trump banners, Gadsden and Confederate battle flags, and a sea of red-white-and-blue symbols on January 6, 2021. Some angry protesters-turned-rioters carried Bibles, crucifixion crosses, and signs that read “Jesus Is My Savior, Trump Is My President,” “Jesus Saves,” and “Gods, Guts, Guns.” Others carried Mary and Jesus statues and a picture of Nordic Jesus wearing a MAGA hat.

Also making an appearance among the icons, idols, and images: the red and white Deus Vult flag –– a symbol of the Christian Crusades. “Onward Christian soldiers…”

“Some of the most violent perpetrators wore vest patches with a portion of Psalm 144 that read ‘Blessed by God, My Rock Who Trains My Hands for Battle, My Fingers for War,” according to Dr. Bradley Onishi, author of “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism –– What Comes Next” (Broadleaf Books, 2023).

“The Christian flags, symbols, rituals, and Bible verses gave the rioters’ actions a sense of divine permission, reassuring them that the desacralization of the Capitol was actually a sanctification of the American way. Through rituals of their White Christian nationalist faith, many insurrectionists rendered the profane act of desecrating the Capitol into a sacred act of reclamation on behalf of real Americans.”

Onishi, a scholar of religion, sees a strong likelihood for a violent future in the United States in the wake of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol in which insurrectionists fought with law enforcement and threatened to assassinate the vice president and speaker of the house. But could he be wrong?

Host of the Straight White American Jesus podcast, Onishi can be considered “born-again-again.”

Like Dan Barker, Seth Andrews, Ryan Bell, Jerry DeWitt, Fred Phelps, Carter Warden, Jim Palmer, Daniel Miller, and Charles Templeton, Onishi is a former pastor or fundamentalist believer who turned away from religion and placed his faith in science, reason, and critical thinking.

Onishi’s book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the intrusion of religious fundamentalism in the form of white Christian nationalism into American institutions, including the military and government itself.

“January 6, 2021, is a day of infamy, a day that marks a Before and an After in American history, similar to the bombing of Pearl Harbor or 9/11,” Onishi says. “The difference with J6 is that the attack was a mob of Americans incited by the sitting president rather than a foreign enemy.”

“Recent data show that over 80 percent of white evangelicals are Christian nationalists, to some degree,” Onishi writes. “Not being willing … to separate cross and flag is Christian nationalism in a nutshell.” As has been said, not all Republicans, evangelicals, and Trump supporters are white Christian nationalists, but nearly all such believers are Republican Trump supporters.

”Americans have long conflated the kingdom of God and the nation state,” he says, citing the roles of Barry Goldwater, the John Birch Society, Reagan-era “Religious Right,” Pat Buchanon, Michael Flynn, Alex Jones, Russia’s Putin and Hungary’s Orbán, and Donald Trump, who embraces support of white Christian nationalists, calls a Ashli Babbitt a martyr, and promises to pardon J6 insurrectionists.

Tuberville with Marines at Quantico, 2021

In 2023 the United States military has been gut-punched by one senator who, in the name of his Christian beliefs, has held up hundreds of general and flag officers’ promotions and assignments because of abortion, adversely impacting military women’s access to reproductive health care. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) previously refused to renounce white Christian nationalism, and he is against the DoD policy of allowing women service members to take leave and be reimbursed for abortions in a post-Roe-v-Wade world. Earlier this week, the three military service secretaries –– leaders of the Navy, Air Force, and Army –– addressed the issue in a Washington Post opinion piece, calling Tuberville’s obstruction a threat to national security. Regrettably, to date, Tuberville is refusing to back down on his impact to military readiness.

Tuberville is a vocal critic of what he calls a "woke" culture in the military. He and other far-right senators and representatives have called for a halt in rooting out extremists in the services' ranks. Last Wednesday, in an interview on FOX, Tuberville called out Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, to "get wokeness out of our Navy,” adding “We got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over a loudspeaker.” Tuberville's condescending view of poetry notwithstanding, at least one observer noted "The Star-Spangled Banner" was written on a warship.

“Preserving the holy trinity of family, god, and nation might be with the sacrifice of democracy itself,” Onishi warns. For “white Christian nationalists …the goal is domination, not dialogue or debate –– much less democracy.” In addition to an examination of the history of the movement, Onishi explores the roles of myths and conspiracies in white Christian nationalism.

“Unfortunately, conspiracy is now a mainstay in American politics,” he observes. Belief in the existence of a fundamentalist biblical god/angels, satan/demons, and heaven/hell, according to Onishi, is the ultimate conspiracy.

There is a similarity between the Big Lie (of a stolen election), Lost Cause (of North’s persecution of the South), and post-WWI Germany (of grievance and victimization) leading to Nazism. Violence against scapegoats, whether democrats, blacks, or jews, is part of a myth/conspiracy validation for violence.

As other examples, Shia identity is based on victimhood; Shia followers blame Sunni believers for the killing of Mohammed’s grandson Husayn in the seventh century, just one example of infighting in the Abrahamic religions based on grievance, superstition, and mythology. Even Buddhists and Muslims violently attack each other in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. And in 1923, Japanese people scapegoated and massacred thousands of people of Korean ethnicity in the wake of the Great Kantō earthquake.

Seeing other people as "Others," less than human, is at the root of biblical justification for slavery, Hutu/Tutsi violence, and countless other forms of genocide and inhumanity.

Shofar

In recent U.S. history, white Christian nationalists participated in Jericho Marches preceding the J6 attack. Some evangelicals who believe in myths and conspiracies, including the Big Lie, gathered –– blowing shofars (ram horns), and “marching as to war.” They praised the Bible story of Joshua. In that story, God supposedly ordered Israelites to kill Canaanites (men, women, and children) who didn’t believe in the same god, also commanding them to steal valuables for Him.

Joshua 6:19: “But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord.” Joshua 6:21: “And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.” Joshua 6:27: “So the Lord was with Joshua; and his fame was noised throughout all the country.” (KJV)

“Any honest accounting of the January 6 insurrection –– one that takes seriously the religious symbols and language of the rioters –– must reckon with the very real sense in which many of the rioters … were reenacting key parts of the Jericho narrative,” Onishi writes. He reminds us how the Proud Boys gathered in prayer outside the Capitol and how QAnon Shaman Jacob Anthony Angeli Chansley led rioters in a Christian prayer in the Senate chamber.

“In essence, the January 6 insurrection was a religious ritual carried out by the Americans who believe they have a God-given right to rule the country. For them, a siege of the most important space in United States government was a crusade against the enemies of the United States. The framework that guided them was Christian nationalism. And the story of Jericho provides a window into the spiritual mechanics of the most traitorous attack on the country in modern history.”

Onishi takes a pessimistic view of what is yet to come.

“We now face a stark question: What if January 6 was not the end of an era but the beginning of one.” J6, he says, “was not the last stand of a dying faction. It was the first violent battle in what they foresee as the coming civil war.”

Parallels can be found in Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and her warnings of “the banality of evil.” Similar warnings about the rise of white Christian nationalism are found in works quoted throughout “Preparing for War” and in its extensive notes: “The Power Worshippers” by Katherine Stewart, “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristin Kobes du Men, and “How Civil Wars Start” by Barbara Walter.

Onishi also sees a sociological parallel in the Great Migration of the last century, in which black Americans left the South, migrating North and westward, away from persecution and discrimination. He recommends Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.” Today, many white Christians are moving to the “American Redoubt:” Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, eastern Washington, and eastern Oregon, with Christian nationalist enclaves in Boise, Moscow, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Could it be that such self-segregation will actually result in marginalization?

Tarrio

There are also some good reasons for optimism about the future and a return to reason: The changing of names of military bases and getting rid of Confederate monuments, the election of Georgia Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock on January 5, 2021, and the arrests of more than one thousand J6 insurrections. Indictments have been handed down on alleged coup plot leaders, including the former president. Just this week, the leader of the so-called Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio received a 22-year sentence for his role in the January 6 coup attempt. Grand juries, made up of U.S. citizens, have passed judgment against those who threaten democracy. There are active calls for more ethics enforcement, even within the Supreme Court and the president's family.

Yesterday, thirteen presidential libraries and foundations –– from Hoover through Reagan, Carter, both Bushes, and Obama –– made an unprecedented joint appeal on behalf of democracy, calling for more civility, respect for diversity, and protection of voting rights and representative government. The statement reads, in part:

"As a diverse nation of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, democracy holds us together. We are a country rooted in the rule of law, where the protection of the rights of all people is paramount. At the same time, we live among our fellow citizens, underscoring the importance of compassion, tolerance, pluralism, and respect for others...

"Each of us has a role to play and responsibilities to uphold. Our elected officials must lead by example and govern effectively in ways that deliver for the American people. This, in turn, will help to restore trust in public service. The rest of us must engage in civil dialogue; respect democratic institutions and rights; uphold safe, secure, and accessible elections; and contribute to local, state, or national improvement."

Perhaps there is reason for hope that more Americans will reject patriarchal authoritarianism and embrace free-thinking democracy, rule of law, accountability, and the ideals put forth in the United States Constitution.

“Onishi takes us on a sweeping yet personal journey through modern American religious and political history to understand the violent, extremist strains of white Christian America that led to the January 6th insurrection. With insight from hundreds of interviews, deep scholarship, and his own escape from white Christian Nationalism, Onishi’s Preparing for War is a clear account of what happened and clarion warning about what is coming. Compelling and timely.” – Andrew Seidel, Constitutional Lawyer at Americans United and author of "American Crusade: How the Supreme Court Is Weaponizing Religious Freedom."