Reporter's Notebook: Reflecting On The Capitol Riot And Racial Reconciliation
Protesters who believed the U.S. 2020 election was “stolen” stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Creative Commons photo.
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(OPINION) On Jan. 6, 2021, I parked about three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. It was the morning after Democratic candidates Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won the Georgia seats in the U.S. Senate, and Congress was gathered in a joint session to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
But at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, former President Donald Trump had stirred up a crowd of thousands who were marching onto the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, some waving Trump posters and even a large “Jesus 2020” poster and a large wooden cross. At first it looked like a religious political rally, but when the crowd walked up to the east front of the Capitol building, I noticed there were no barricades like there had been during the memorial for former Rep. John Lewis.
Read Hamil R. Harris’ Jan. 6, 2021 reporting for Religion Unplugged on the Capitol siege here: Biden Certified President After Mob Carrying Christian Symbols Storm Capitol
Most people in the crowd told me they were simply exercising their constitutional rights. Most were peaceful. But then there was an explosion, screams, racing police cars and ambulances and a U.S. Capitol Police bus headed away from the building very fast that afternoon.
“They shot the lady,” I heard a man say. Another man was waving a Confederate flag. I didn’t see many police on the east front, and there were two U.S. Supreme Court officers on the side of their building. As the sun set, I learned that officers had been hurt and people had died. I reported and shot cellphone video as best I could.
One year later, I’m in Florida preparing to bury my mother. But in Washington, House Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, issued a statement:
On January 6th, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), which is funded by taxes paid by D.C. residents, who are denied voting representation in the House and Senate and lack full self-government, voluntarily saved the lives of members of Congress and congressional staff, the Capitol and democracy itself. Yet House Republicans thanked D.C. by voting against the D.C. statehood bill only a few months later.
On this January 6th anniversary, Americans should remember that D.C., our capital, does not have full control over its public safety agencies. The attack highlighted the importance of my longstanding bill to give the D.C. mayor control over its own National Guard. The governors of states and territories control their National Guards, while the president controls the D.C. National Guard. This year, for the first time, the House passed my bill to give the D.C. mayor control over the D.C. National Guard. The bill was included in the House’s fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) but it was removed from the final NDAA by Senate Republicans.
Decades ago my mother, Barbara Rodgers, confronted racism as a music teacher at Century High School in Century, Florida. On the first day of school, somebody wrote the N-word on the board. Mother didn’t flinch. “I don’t care what you call me because I am here to teach,” she said.
About 55 years later, my brother, sister and I were in Holy Cross cemetery to choose a grave. My mother died Dec. 26 and will be buried Jan. 15 in Pensacola, Florida. One of the men who works in the graveyard, a bearded White man, asked about a photo of the Black man with the gray hair and nice haircut because, he said, “I cut the grass around here, and I see his photos.” I said, “Eddie Rodgers was my step father.”
My brother and the man struck up a conversation. He said 90 people had been buried in the cemetery in December 2021, compared to about 30 in December 2020. Then he joked about going to the H and O Cafe, a soul food restaurant we all liked to go to that is now closed. Many changes and improved race relations will not come through Congress but through everyday people.
One year later, we remember and hold onto hope
On Jan. 6, 2022, a diverse group of pastors gathered in Washington for an intercessory prayer vigil, led by the Rev. Eugene Rivers, a Boston pastor who was part of former President George W. Bush’s faith-based advisory panel.
“Our backs are against the wall — we have to do something,” Rivers said in an interview. “Partisan politics will not get it done because they don’t have the vision. In Ephesians 6, it says that without a vision, people perish.”
Read: 'We Must All Repent': Pastors Address Their Flocks After Capitol Siege
Rivers is a conservative leader in the Azusa Christian community and is affiliated with the Seymour Institute for the Black Church and Policy Studies.
In a statement, Rivers said:
We, the church, have a moral responsibility to stand up against violence and confusion and be salt and light in this time of crisis. Though some were white supremacists, many of the people who stormed the Capitol last year were acting out of a sense of betrayal by their country, anger at economic loss and dismay at being ignored by political, cultural and religious elites.
In response to this event, church leaders are meeting in intercessory prayer for healing — which, as a society and culture, we so desperately need.
The leaders of this prayer vigil include prelates from the predominantly Black, 6 million-member Church of God in Christ and the Assemblies of God, which has more than 3 million members. Both denominations are global organizations with a worldwide reach.
Among the participants, the presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ, J. Drew Sheard, and the general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, Doug Clay, will lead the prayer service. Scott Hagan, president of North Central University in Minnesota, a leading Assemblies of God university, will moderate.
The Rev. Henry P. Davis, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Highland Park, said, “I think we have to be optimistic. I believe not all evangelicals are on the same page. I’m encouraged by voices that I hear.”
For example, he said, the National Community Church in Washington has a big movement for racial reconciliation.
But not everyone is so optimistic.
“People of faith need to honestly look at what transpired,” said Terry Lynch, executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, an ecumenical coalition of congregations in Washington. Lynch said that one year later, “not much has changed for people who supported and listened to (Trump) as his closest supporters. Today they are not ready to recognize and accept the truth as to what happened. They rather (believe) what President Trump tells them.”
Lynch commemorated the lives lost on Jan. 6, 2021, in a statement this year.
“Tragically the president and many of his followers twisted American values to serve their selfish purpose,” Lynch added in an interview. “We must continue to bring forward the truth of what happened that day and continue to address the causes of division in this country such as racism, hatred and bigotry. I am on the street that day and was horrified.”
Rivers said he hopes that more deliberate engagement of majority Black and White congregations will heal political and theological divisions and unite Christians over what they have in common.
“Today what we are doing is launching a new movement of faith conscious to teach the nation about the political theology of principalities,” Rivers said. “Challenging the Black and White churches to advance a vision of truth and reconciliation.”
Senior contributor Hamil Harris is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and has been a lecturer at Morgan State University. Harris is minister at the Glenarden Church of Christ and a police chaplain. A longtime reporter at The Washington Post, Harris was on the team of Post reporters that published the series “Being a Black Man.” He also was the reporter on the video project that accompanied the series that won two Emmy Awards, the Casey Medal and the Peabody Award. In addition to writing for ReligionUnplugged, Harris contributes to outlets such as The Washington Post, USA Today, The Christian Chronicle and the Washington Informer.
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As the mob swarmed the Capitol steps, climbed the inaugural scaffolding and even scaled the building like it was a gym climbing wall, the now commonplace red, white and blue “Trump 2020” and “Make America Great Again” flags flew alongside flags and banners with a range of Christian symbols, including a white flag with a pine tree inspired by the Old Testament and used in the Revolutionary War.
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Mike Lindell, MyPillow CEO and now-popular Trump supporter, appeared on the Eric Metaxas Radio Show to discuss more “proof” he’d discovered about widespread election fraud. “God’s got his hand in all of this,” he said.
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(ANALYSIS) In the months since the election, the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family has regularly provided election skeptics with plentiful ammunition and has embraced men and women in Congress who voted to overturn state election results. Meanwhile, Focus’s partner organization in Washington, D.C., the Family Research Council, continues to claim the election was stolen, and that Antifa—not Trump supporters—may have caused the Capitol attack on Jan. 6.
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(OPINION) Conservative Christians propose that the final day of Trump’s campaign to overturn President Biden’s Electoral College victory involved religious "heresy" or "apostasy." A survey by the conservative American Enterprise Institute shows 63% of White evangelicals think Biden’s win was illegitimate, despite the numerous federal and state court rulings that found no evidence for Trump’s claim of a "sacred landslide." But to what extent were Christians implicated in the Capitol mayhem?
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