As senators droned on Capitol Hill last Wednesday in a formal attempt to confirm the electoral college votes from each state in favor of President-Elect Joe Biden, a crowd of Trumpers broke through barriers, scaled walls, broke windows, and occupied senator’s offices within the capital building in what has been called an insurrection.

The flags brandished by protestors only reinforced the interpretation of a Republican coup. Within the crowd, a variety of flags bore Trump’s face or name. Yet incendiary flags waved as well: from the Gadsden Flag (the one with the rattlesnake and the classic phrase from the American Revolution, “Don’t Tread on Me”), the Confederate battle flag, and a white flag bearing a green pine tree over the slogan “An Appeal to Heaven,” recalling the Pine Tree Riot, a colonist revolt which predated the Boston Tea Party by two years.

More disconcerting to me personally was the Christian imagery that appeared throughout the riot. The crowd held up Christian symbols of all stripes. A large sign read “Jesus 2020.” Self-proclaimed evangelists and pastors wore sweatshirts proclaiming, “Jesus saves!” And the contradiction of a noose erected alongside a wooden cross, both symbols of execution with opposing aims, disturbed the religious and irreligious alike.

Unnoticed by most, however, was the protestor inside the building who brandished the Christian flag like a weapon. The Christian flag had been falling into obscurity before conservatives resurrected it during the Obama presidency. The design is simple enough: a white field for purity, a blue canton in the left-hand corner for baptism, and the red Latin cross blazing in the center of the blue square, representing Christ’s blood. 

The history of the symbol is fuzzy, but seems to have originated with Charles C. Overton, a New Yorker who was superintendent of Brooklyn’s Sunday Schools in the late nineteenth century. He once filled in for a no-show itinerant preacher, waxing on the symbolism of the American flag that draped the podium, when an idea struck to create a flag for Christians to match their national banner.

But the symbol found an audience because Overton used his influence as a political organizer to spread its gospel far and wide. He had founded a club to support the first-ever Republican candidate for president, John C. Frémont, and he used the methods of political campaigning to market the Christian flag. According to the April 3, 1898 edition of the Kansas City Journal, “So greatly interested is he [in the cause of the Christian flag] that he has had a large quantity of little buttons made similar to those so frequently seen during political campaigns, each containing on its surface a miniature reproduction of the flag.”

Overton understood, as Trump supporters do now, that Christianity exerts a hold over the people who claim it, much like a government over its citizens. Vexillographers (flag designers) often create designs based upon existing designs. Flags are said to come from “families”; in other words, designs that share distinguishing features, that bear a resemblance to each other. The Christian flag fits within a clear family: its parent is the red, white, and blue. 

It is also a familiar symbol to me. My parents sent me to an east coast private Christian school from fifth through eleventh grade. We, the Christian teenagers of suburban Maryland, wore polo shirts, oxfords, sweater vests, and past-the-knee plaid skirts as a uniform; we played lacrosse and ate Chick-fil-a chicken sandwiches; and we pledged allegiance to the Christian flag in homeroom each morning.

The Christian flag hung beneath the American flag on our pole, and I learned to associate the two. The two flags always appeared more alike than different to my eye, sharing the same colors and basic shapes. I learned that patriotism went both ways: as long as America prospered, so would Christians; as long as Christianity thrived, so would America. At 18, I became a one-issue voter, and I voted red, like my parents, like my teachers, like my pastor. I was a model evangelical.

But I did not understand the full significance of the similarities between the two flags until our 45th president stepped into the oval office. To many of those protesting the outcome of the 2020 election, to pledge themselves to Christianity meant to pledge themselves to Trump’s America. As they marched, the American flag and the Christian flag flew side by side. 

American nationalism and Christianity have, of course, always held hands. The allegiance that these symbols make clear—the Confederate flag, the Trump banners, the revolutionary symbols, and the Christian flag—is an inextricable link between Christianity and an American dream that began at the Revolutionary war and ends with Trump. It binds a false Jesus—a Jesus not pictured in the Christian scriptures—to politics in knots that will be hard to undo. The Christian flag at the rally joined, like a family member, every other standard flown above that crowd and brought into the Capitol.

I no longer call myself an evangelical. I no longer vote Republican. I no longer pledge allegiance to the white, blue, and red cross, as if proclaiming my loyalty to Jesus’s next political campaign. I’m certain Jesus would never run in the first place.