Somehow, in 2015, “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,” though soapy and somewhat cartoonish in its populist portrait of American believers, didn’t feel confrontational, menacing or even all that exclusionary. (When pressed by Jon Stewart on whether Huckabee believed that “the Bubbas are better than the Bubbles,” Huckabee said, “No, different.”)
In contrast, the new right’s variations of “God and Guns” bumper stickers, T-shirts, yard signs and rallying cries can feel today like an actual threat, one that sometimes even implies violence.
The insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was in many ways a Christian nationalist event. Crosses, Christian banners and signs reading “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president,” were unavoidable. Michael Sparks, charged by the FBI for entering the Capitol through a broken window, wrote on Facebook that “Trump will be your president four more years in Jesus’ name.” Many touted Jesus — and Trump — as their reason for being there.
The “QAnon Shaman,” having breached the Senate chamber, led a group in prayer thanking “Heavenly Father” for allowing them to “send a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs.”
The threatening rhetoric has permeated parts of Congress, where posing with guns, often in the name of Christianity, has become de rigueur for far-right electeds and candidates. Last year Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert traded Christmas cards on Twitter with their arsenals of firearms.
In 2020, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posed on Facebook with a gun and images of three Democratic members of Congress, writing, “We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart.” Facebook removed the post for violating its policies.
Meanwhile, in Texas, the state Republican Party is voting on a new platform, which puts God and guns front and center.
Surely, there are atheists in Congress and running for Congress, just as there are atheists everywhere else in America, even if they remain closeted. With the right using God to coax the party into regressive, punitive and at times increasingly scary places, here’s hoping they’ll finally have the courage to come out of the shadows.