By Paul A. Djupe, Denison University

[Image credit: The Atlantic.]

Three years ago, protestors assembled on The Mall in support of the Big Lie that Trump lost the 2020 election because of fraud. They were then turned toward the Capitol with the inspiration from Trump to fight like hell or “you’re not going to have a country anymore.” At this point, of the 1,230 people charged, about 900 people have been found (170) or pleaded (730) guilty to charges related to the insurrection, including a number guilty of seditious conspiracy.

Acknowledging that January 6th was an insurrection, that Trump aided and abetted the insurrection, and that the electoral fraud claims are indeed lies are crucial steps to moving forward beyond that national nightmare – the only instance in American history of a sitting president contesting the peaceful transfer of power.

We saw the symbols and behavior demonstrated on January 6th that indicated that it was “as Christian nationalist as it gets.” And Jack Jenkins’ reporting has been essential to document the religious expressions of the insurrectionists on that day.

If Christian nationalism was an important motivator of January 6th given the threat of persecution that Trump promised Christians if he lost the White House, I wonder if that worldview continues to prop up the essential beliefs that continue to threaten democracy in America. I have access to data from March 2021 in the near aftermath of the Insurrection and March 2023. Both are surveys of several thousand adult Americans (3600 in March 2021; 2000 in March 2023) that are weighted to resemble the national adult population according to the Census Bureau.

Several cases involve Trump’s responsibility for the Insurrection, including the one in Georgia, the special counsel Jack Smith’s federal case, as well as the bids around the nation to exclude Trump from the ballot. In March 2021, we found that 30.6 percent disagreed that “Donald Trump bears responsibility for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.” After two years in March 2023, that figure was unchanged – 30.9 percent disagreed. That distribution is heavily skewed by partisanship, of course, with two-thirds of Republicans disagreeing (in March 2021) compared to 29 percent of Independents and just 8 percent of Democrats. By 2023 those figures hadn’t changed much – 8 percent of Democrats, 27 percent of Independents, and 59 percent of Republicans disagreed with Trump’s culpability.

Clearly Republican officeholders have thrown their lot in with Trump, but so have many conservative Christians such that one of the most important forces working to maintain the Big Lie is Christian nationalism. The figure below shows the relationship between Christian nationalism (the Baylor measures used by Whitehead and Perry) and attitudes about Trump’s responsibility for the Insurrection. Naturally higher levels of Christian nationalism are linked to greater level of disagreement and it is clear that the relationship really hasn’t changed from March 2021 to March 2023. The level of disagreement grows almost identically as Christian nationalism increases. Moreover, it is clear that disagreement is, as I’ve argued before, highly concentrated among (if not quite limited to) Christian nationalists.

That’s not the only evidence I have access to. These surveys also asked about warmth respondents felt toward the January 6th participants. Trump and other Republicans have made them out to be patriots, even claiming that they are being held unfairly and need to be liberated; Trump has promised to pardon them were he to win in 2024. Do Christian nationalists feel warmly toward the January 6ers? The trick here is that the answer depends on question wording as I’ve shown elsewhere. Posing their motivations as stopping the steal yields more positive evaluations than if they are posed to have “attacked the Capitol” or “waged insurrection.”

The figure below shows that warmth toward the January 6ers (people who waged insurrection) grows substantially as Christian nationalism increases (March 2023 data). That’s true regardless of partisanship, which is astounding to see. Those who reject Christian nationalism average close to 0 on the feeling thermometer, whereas the most ardent Christian nationalists come just shy of 50. That’s not exactly a big bear hug, but the difference across the CN scale is substantial.

The last piece of the puzzle is the Big Lie itself. What has happened to belief that Trump lost the 2020 election because of fraud? It is astounding that people still believe this given that Trump’s lawyers presented exactly no evidence supporting their fraud allegations, Fox has paid nearly a billion dollars about their fraud allegations levied at voting system companies, and Rudy Giuliani just was ordered to pay 148 million dollars to two Georgia election officials that he defamed. Perhaps they maintain this belief as symbolic of their Trump “tribalism.” Anyway, it’s no surprise that adoption of the Big Lie grows with Christian nationalism and, again, agreement is essentially limited to Christian nationalists (those scoring above .5). It grows at about the same rate across partisan identities, which highlights the power of this worldview that religious and partisan elites have cultivated.

Some elements of the 2020 election world have subsided a bit by 2023. As I reported recently, belief that Trump was anointed by God has dropped from its high of 30 percent of the population in October 2020 to 13 percent in March 2023. And belief in the QAnon conspiracy waned somewhat after 2020, though it appears to be making a comeback aimed at Etsy.

The essential beliefs and attitudes supporting the January 6th challenge to the continuance of American democracy are still in place in dangerous concentrations. Given that, it’s no surprise that Trump and others continue to put these notions out there – Trump recently said that if he loses in Iowa it will be because his Republican opponents cheated. I strongly suspect he will continue to tug on these threads as 2024 advances.

Professor Paul A. Djupe directs the Data for Political Research program at Denison University, is an affiliated scholar with PRRI, the series editor of Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics (Temple), and co-creator of religioninpublic.blog. Further information about his work can be found on his website and on TwiX.