In the wake of his 2016 election and throughout his presidency and most especially in the lead-up to and wake of the 2020 election, Donald Trump made near constant reference to ‘fake news’, ‘rigged’ outcomes and ‘stolen’ elections. His false claims about stolen elections predictably reached a crescendo when Joe Biden was elected as the forty-sixth President of the United States in November 2020. In early 2021, crowds of Trump supporters descended on Washington, DC, to protest against Congress's certification of the election results. On 6 January, with Trump's encouragement, thousands of those who had gathered in DC marched to the US Capitol grounds in an attempt to overturn the results of the election. Quickly overwhelming security, hundreds of the rioters broke into the Capitol building, which they occupied for much of the afternoon.

Republican Party lawmakers and donors, US military members and various rogue militia groups, QAnon supporters and other conspiracists, Proud Boys and Boogaloo Boys, along with an array of other far-right and white-nationalist groups, from neo-Nazis to neo-Confederates, were represented in the coalition that stormed the Capitol. So too were members of one of Donald Trump's most faithful and devoted groups of supporters: white Christians. Religious iconography in general and Christian imagery in particular were well represented. Flags, banners and posters bearing crosses and Christian messaging marched lockstep alongside the kinds of Norse mythological symbols often appropriated for contemporary white supremacist purposes; a variety of marchers wore clothing emblazoned with a range of racist and anti-Semitic slogans, memes and ideas.

When pressed, some of the white Christian leaders who otherwise supported Trump throughout his presidency and re-election campaign denounced and distanced themselves from the Capitol rioters. Others were either actually there or at least close by. Some supported the messaging but not the methods. As it became clear that Christianity was in some way implicated, some merely demurred for one reason or another.

Whatever else it might currently signify or encompass, white Christianity in the context of the contemporary USA cannot be divorced from its militantly ethno-nationalist representation, which was on display during the 6 January siege.