National Healing and the January 6th Committee
Crowd of Trump supporters marching on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
The January 6th Committee may turn the tide of former President Donald Trump's popularity and make it possible that Trump could be prosecuted without some other kind of uprising. But what about everyone else? What will the January 6th Committee results do for the average Jane and Joe who voted for Donald Trump but did not storm the Capitol? What about your neighbor or co-worker who proudly flies a Let's Go Brandon flag and shares Newsmax articles but can admit that Donald Trump was out of line? If all that comes of these hearings is that Trump is convicted or barred from holding office, we should breathe a sigh of relief, but we should not rejoice, for a chasm of work would yet be done.
On The Bulwark podcast and ABC's This Week, Rep. Adam Kinzinger said that he expects it will be hard to find anyone who will admit to supporting Trump five years from now. I hope for something more. Five years from now I hope people who supported Trump admit it, and continue to do the work of lamenting, repenting, and reconciling all that became broken because he was given more power than reasonable or wise. I hope it is socially acceptable to admit that people made a mistake in backing Trump, but they are working on learning to move forward in a way that benefits all Americans.
Kinzinger's prediction, no one admitting they voted for Trump, merely means that support for Trump will have gone underground to fester and rot. Trump has diseased our politics and our culture. It is not enough to bury that disease and hope it never returns. Anyone who has seen or read a horror story, and America has certainly felt like a bad psychological thriller since November 2016, knows that burying the big baddie only lets it lick its wounds and come back again and again.
No, we must expose Trump supporters to the healing light of Truth, but we must do so with care and grace. And not a cheap grace of just saying the right words, but the hard-fought grace of doing the work to reconcile what has been made wrong. It is only by graciously accepting Trump voters out of the madness that Trump has called them into that we can have any hope of moving forward. That would be a true success for the January 6 Committee; unfortunately, I think it is also out of the scope of what the Committee can do. This means it falls to you, me, and organizations like American Values Coalition to begin the work of grace and reconciliation.
4 More Things
1) NBC news has an excellent and thought-provoking article by Whitney Phillips at the University of Oregon, Mark Broadway at Syracuse University, and Abby Ohlheiser, senior editor of MIT Technology Review. In short, the article traces how secular messengers and messages have worked with Christianity to create what the authors call a shadow gospel. This shadow gospel is 1) not the gospel of Jesus Christ and 2) tied to Christianity in name only. Instead, it finds its message by blending anticommunist rhetoric and fundamentalist parachurch groups. The article is well worth reading.
2) Jemar Tisby, in his excellent Footnotes newsletter, has a message that we should all be able to get behind: it's time for White Evangelicals to go to the mattresses for democracy. Tisby notes that White Evangelicals largely support the Big Lie, so it is the duty of those of us who do not stand up and shine a light on the lies, bringing out the truth whatever the cost may be.
3) The New York Times' First Person podcast (a transcript is also available) has an interview with former pastor Dan White Jr chronicling how he discovered that his time in ministry caused him to experience PTSD and CTSD. When he sought help, finding anything that met his needs and desires was difficult, so he started his own "Betty Ford Clinic" for pastors. This clinic exists to help pastors who have been harmed by the near-constant battle of fighting church members and leaders over politics, Covid, and any number of issues. If you are a pastor struggling with ministry, please consider reaching out for help from either Dan or a counselor or therapist in your area. Your work is good and needed, but not at the expense of your mental, physical, and emotional health.
4) Have beliefs in conspiracy theories increased over time? That's the title of a new study from PLOS ONE. The study finds that while common wisdom would say conspiracy theories have increased, the evidence does not back this up. The study finds that the internet is less hospitable to conspiracy ideas instead of being a hotbed of pro-conspiracy thinking. In many ways, this is good news. If conspiracy theories and thinking are not as widespread as we think, they should be easier to counter. Change can happen, and there may be an end to this present conspiratorial darkness.