A year after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, Southern Baptists continue to debate what to say about Christian nationalism

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Six months after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the Southern Baptist Convention wrestled with how it should address the event, given its significance for contemporary American evangelical Christianity. 

Some rioters at the Capitol displayed Christian symbols. Many saw it as a clear example of Christian nationalism, a term commonly used today to refer to the marriage of certain right-wing political and religious viewpoints. 

How should the nation's largest Protestant denomination respond? Should messengers, the voting delegates from Southern Baptist churches, vote on a resolution at their annual meeting in Nashville and take a firm stand?

Those were some of the central questions facing the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention in June, just months after the events of Jan. 6. 

The SBC's resolutions committee drafted Resolution 7, which denounced the Capitol riots. But due to technical reasons, Resolution 7 ultimately didn’t move forward for a vote before the full convention.

Its failure left the conservative network of churches, one of the most influential within American Christianity, without a model to discuss Christian nationalism and how to appropriately express one's national and religious identities, Southern Baptist messengers, pastors and observers said in interviews.

But the conversation isn't going away and some feel there's even more of a need now than before to develop that model. The next SBC annual meeting is in June in Anaheim.

“I think it would have been more powerful about the insurrection last year,” said Brian Kaylor, editor-in-chief of Word & Way, a Christian news and commentary publication. “I think them being late to the game this year almost means the resolution has to be stronger than it would have been last year to really speak into this moment."

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A failed attempt to denounce Jan. 6

Even before Jan. 6 and the 2021 annual meeting, SBC leaders were thinking about ways to address Christian nationalism.

“We should probably make plans to have some kind of resolution that addresses nationalism, both an appropriate patriotism as well as its idolatrous perversions. If not, I think it will be seen as a glaring omission," wrote then-SBC president J.D. Greear to James Merritt, chair of the 2021 resolutions committee, on Dec. 13, 2020.

A copy of Greear's email was included in a binder that once belonged to Merritt that The Tennessean obtained.

Ultimately, the committee drafted Resolution 7 calling the Jan. 6 riots "inconsistent with faithful Christian citizenship." It also said that "every idolatrous expression of love for our country as inconsistent with our ultimate loyalty to Christ," according to a copy posted in a bulletin ahead of the 2021 annual meeting.

Kaylor and Southern Baptist pastor Dwight McKissic felt that Resolution 7 was effective because its focus on Jan. 6 provided a concrete illustration of Christian nationalism.  

“I think had that resolution been adopted, it would have removed all doubt or at least given a sufficient answer that the SBC, in no way, support or embrace or have any sympathy towards what took place on January 6,” McKissic, who is from Texas, said in an interview.

McKissic submitted resolutions ahead of the 2021 annual meeting on Christian nationalism and QAnon conspiracies that influenced Resolution 7, according to copies of McKissic's submissions in Merritt's binder. 

"We knew from pre-filed amendments that Resolution 7 would need ample discussion time and there were only a couple of minutes remaining," Merritt said in a statement last week, explaining the resolutions committee's decision. "It was to our regret that we ran out of time, as we really did want to present it." 

Kaylor, who is formerly Southern Baptist and a vocal critic of Christian nationalism, doesn't think the committee's explanation for its decision is sufficient for the consequence he saw come from it. 

“I think Greear’s comment about a ‘glaring omission’ (in the Dec. 13 email) is in fact an indictment on the 2021 annual meeting,” Kaylor said.

'A big tent' of political perspectives

Since before the 2021 annual meeting, the more public conversation in the SBC on Christian nationalism has involved relatively moderate leaders calling out Christian nationalism, and more conservative voices pushing back or dismissing the seriousness of the issue.

The Gospel Coalition, a relatively moderate organization and publication, published “Christian Nationalism vs. Christian Patriotism" by a Baylor University professor on Dec. 18, 2020. Three days later, Capstone Report, a more conservative publication, published “Christian Nationalism is not heresy.”

On the anniversary of Jan. 6 earlier this month, Russell Moore, former president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, cautioned in Christianity Today against the amalgamation of far-right politics and evangelicalism. Capstone Report responded by attacking Moore's use of the word "insurrection."

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“The Southern Baptist convention is such a big tent,"  said John Fea, the author of "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?" and a historian at Messiah University, an evangelical college in Pennsylvania. "And you are probably going to find all kinds of nuanced positions on this.”

To Fea, there are those in the SBC who he considers "overt" or "soft" Christian nationalists, such as those who believe the U.S. was founded as, and should be, a Christian nation. 

More conservative groups in the convention, including the Conservative Baptist Network and Founders Ministries, have faced scrutiny for promoting ideas or figures who some consider Christian nationalist. 

Mark Hall, a political science professor at George Fox University in Oregon, is warier about the label.

"We should be scared to death if that’s the case, if these guys are a bunch of racist, sexist, militarist. But I don’t think they are," said Hall, author of "Did America Have a Christian Founding?"

Mike Stone, a leader with the Conservative Baptist Network, said he prefers to "simply call myself a Christian who lives in America."

"I love my country in a special way," he said in a statement.

If someone believes "one must be an American to be a Christian," then that's problematic, said Stone, who made an unsuccessful bid for SBC president in 2021. 

Stone's definition of Christian nationalism may differ from that of Fea, Hall and others, but there is some agreement the idea can be problematic. 

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Along with the danger it poses to non-Christians, Christian nationalism runs the risk of contradicting the tenet of religious freedom, a core idea to Baptists, said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit. 

Religious freedom means "the state doesn’t try to do the job of the church and the church doesn’t try to do the job of the state," Tyler said. "That’s exactly what Christian nationalism furthers."

The SBC helped form the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in 1936, though the denomination discontinued its support in the 1990s, Tyler said.

In 2019, the group organized Christians Against Christian Nationalism, an initiative involving a statement that 24,000 people, some of whom are Southern Baptist, have signed support for.

Helpful frameworks and an eagerness for discourse

Though some Southern Baptists have developed strong opinions about Christian nationalism, others have not. 

"Most people are in the middle and are just trying to live their life, and work and pay the bills and go to church," said Adam Wyatt, a Southern Baptist pastor from Mississippi and a member of the SBC executive committee, which handles convention business outside of the annual meeting.

Wyatt has sought to meet those individuals who are in the middle with his new book, "Biblical Patriotism: An Evangelical Alternative to Nationalism." 

"I think it’s totally appropriate for us to love our country and respect it, as long as it doesn’t become an idol. Which clearly can become the case," Wyatt said, explaining the difference between patriotism and nationalism. 

Meanwhile, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty created a free curriculum on Christian nationalism tailored for church groups, a setting that Wyatt agrees is most effective for discussing the topic. 

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Regardless of where or how many, Southern Baptists remain eager to have conversations on the topic. 

Though Resolution 7 failed at the 2021 annual meeting, Southern Baptists approved Resolution 1 titled, "On Baptist unity and maintaining our public witness." The content of Resolution 1 and Resolution 7 were based on 10 submissions the resolutions committee received, including McKissic's two, on ideological and political discourse, according to copies in Merritt's binder. 

One of the 10 submissions, titled, "On charity in speech towards fellow Southern Baptists," said, "Conflict and division within the convention has led to slander, misrepresentation, and bad faith engagement from many within the Southern Baptist Convention and on all sides of a wide array of issues."

The 10 submissions didn't call for Southern Baptists to resolve those differences; just for productive conversations about them. Or, as the submission, "On charity in speech towards fellow Southern Baptists" put it, "guided by a yearning for biblical justice, clarity of terms, and a rejection of fearmongering and confusion."

Follow Liam Adams on Twitter @liamsadams.