There isn't much evidence that Sinclair Lewis said or wrote that "when Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Whether Lewis is the author or not, the statement itself is tragically prescient.
Evangelical white Christians have been a core constituency of the Republican Party for decades. But, today their fidelity to the Republican Party has been eclipsed by their near worship of Trump himself. Trump seems an unlikely vessel for such adulation, but despite his obvious lack of faith and his long history of serial violations of a large number of Commandments, faith in Trump has become a cult like obsession among many evangelicals.
Some of the insurrectionist that pillaged and defiled the United State Capitol last Wednesday carried the banners of both Jesus and Trump. Some of them were likely also participants in the Jericho March, a series of marches on state capitols that culminated in Washington last Wednesday as the MAGA mob attacked our country.
...“Shout if you love Jesus!” someone yelled, and the crowd cheered. “Shout if you love Trump!” The crowd cheered louder. The group’s name is drawn from the biblical story of Jericho, “a city of false gods and corruption,” the march’s website says. Just as God instructed Joshua to march around Jericho seven times with priests blowing trumpets, Christians gathered in D.C., blowing shofars, the ram’s horn typically used in Jewish worship, to banish the “darkness of election fraud” and ensure that “the walls of corruption crumble.”
The founders of the Jericho March include Robert Weaver, who was selected by Trump to head the Indian Health Services. Weaver withdrew from consideration when serious questions arose regarding the veracity of his resume and multiple financial improprieties. Arina Grossu co-founded the Jericho March movement with Weaver. She is a prominent voice in the Family Research Council, a right wing Christian organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. She has been outspoken in her belief that Trump won the 2020 election, parroting Trump and his lawyers' lies in multiple interviews. Considering its singular purpose, it could be said that the Jericho March is basically a right wing astroturf operation designed to promote Trump's "stolen election" fiction by wrapping a Trump flag around the cross and calling it a religious crusade.
The Jericho March is evidence that Donald Trump has bent elements of American Christianity to his will, and that many Christians have obligingly remade their faith in his image. Defiant masses literally broke down the walls of government, some believing they were marching under Jesus’s banner to implement God’s will to keep Trump in the White House.
What is difficult and painful for many Americans of faith is the extent to which a large segment of Christians have been lead to believe that Trump's Christianity is somehow greater than the faith of the country's voters, election official and elected representatives. If Trump says something that is verifiably false these followers of Christ are compelled to say that his statement is true and that anyone who doesn't believe Trump has failed to do God's bidding.
On Wednesday, the Jericho March account tweeted a screenshot of Trump condemning Vice President Mike Pence for not stopping the certification of the Electoral College votes. “A sad day in America,” it said, along with prayer-hands emojis. The march organizers were not mourning the attack on the Capitol. They were mourning the vice president’s refusal to help the president overturn the election.
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