When Mr. Zacharias died of cancer in May at age 74, he was one of the most revered evangelists in the United States. Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at his memorial service in Atlanta, calling him “a man of faith who could rightly handle the word of truth like few others in our time” and comparing him to Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis.

(...)

Mr. Zacharias, it says, “warned her not ever to speak out against him or she would be responsible for the ‘millions of souls’ whose salvation would be lost if his reputation was damaged.”

The law firm also found a pattern of intimate text and email-based relationships with women. In reviewing his electronic devices, they found the phone numbers of more than 200 massage therapists and more than 200 selfies, some of them nudes, from much younger women. Mr. Zacharias also used the nonprofit ministry to financially support some of his long-term therapists. The report also reveals that he owned two apartments in Bangkok, where he spent 256 days between 2010 and 2014. One of his massage therapists stayed in the other apartment.

Mr. Zacharias said in 2017 that in 45 years of marriage, “I have never engaged in any inappropriate behavior of any kind.”

The level of distrust among Republicans evident in the survey was such that about eight in 10 said the current political system is "stacked against conservatives and people with traditional values." A majority agreed with the statement, "The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it."

“The biggest thing against humanity and our country is this attack through these machines,” Lindell said in opening the documentary. “What you’re going to watch during this show is 100 percent proof that the big thing was the fact by these other countries that came in to attack our country through these machines that are made to steal elections. … This is an attack not only (from) those other countries with communism, but they had domestic traitors right here in our country. Whatever is going on right now, we’re seeing it, they’re suppressing. Cancel culture, they’re trying to cancel us all out. I’ve just seen churches, the Christian church, they’re being attacked right now. People on social media, anyone that speaks up, they’re going, ‘You can’t say that. You’re gone.’ It’s like they’re doing whack-a-mole because they knew they were so close, so close that we would never know in history what happened. But guess what? Now we do know.” (...)

Also featured was retired Gen. Thomas McInerney, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who urged Trump to impose martial law, cancel the inauguration, and arrest Democrats for treason for allegedly stealing the election. He told Lindell that the election was stolen by “globalists” intent on creating a “communist world.”

“President Trump, who won 79 million votes in the election to 68 million for Biden—we have, and you’ve seen those exact numbers—he dominated,” McInerney claimed. “It was an awesome victory, and yet they turned it around—foreigners.”

“You’ve all seen absolute proof of the biggest cyber-attack in history,” Lindell declared at the end of his movie. “It’s a takeover of our country. We all see it happening. And now you see the proof of where it came from and what happened.”

“What’s going to happen now is going to change the course of our world and our country forever,” he continued. “I want to say that God has had his hand in all of this. This has been on God’s timing. And when we get through all this, we will once again be one nation under God.”

It’s impossible to understand the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol without addressing the movement that has come to be known as Christian nationalism.

Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, professors of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the University of Oklahoma, describe Christian Nationalism in their book “Taking America Back for God”:

It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious. Understood in this light, Christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively ‘Christian’ from top to bottom — in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values and public policies — and it aims to keep it this way.

In her recent book, “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” Katherine Stewart, a frequent contributor to these pages, does not mince words:

It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power. It does not seek to add another voice to America’s pluralistic democracy, but to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded on a particular version of Christianity, answering to what some adherents call a ‘biblical worldview’ that also happens to serve the interests of its plutocratic funders and allied political leaders.

This, Stewart writes, “is not a ‘culture war.’ It is a political war over the future of democracy.”

While much of the focus of coverage of the attack on the halls of the House and Senate was on the violence, the religious dimension went largely unnoted (although my colleagues Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham made the connection). (...)

I asked Philip Gorski, a professor of sociology at Yale and the author of the book “American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion From the Puritans to the Present,” if supporters of Christian nationalism were a dominant force in the Jan. 6
assault on Congress. He replied:

Many observers commented on the jarring mixture of Christian, nationalist and racist symbolism amongst the insurrectionists: there were Christian crosses and Jesus Saves banners, Trump flags and American flags, fascist insignia and a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ hoodie. Some saw apples and oranges. But it was really a fruit cocktail: White Christian Nationalism.

Paul D. Miller, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, reasons along parallel lines:

Christian nationalism is the pursuit of tribal power, not the common good; it is identity politics for right-wing (mostly white) Christians; it is the attempt to ‘own and operate the American brand,’ as someone else wrote; it is an attitude of entitlement among Christians that we have a presumptive right to define what America is. I oppose identity politics of all kinds, including the identity politics of my tribe.

(...)

Sean Feucht, a religious-right musician and missionary who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year as a pro-Trump culture warrior in Northern California, gave followers suggestions this week on how “believers” should “respond to a Biden presidency.” In an email, blog post, and related Facebook video he posted on Inauguration Day, Feucht encouraged people to turn off the news and turn on worship music, and to pray for President Joe Biden and other political leaders as the Bible instructs. But Feucht also made it clear that he believes Biden is advancing a satanic agenda. His email to supporters said, “The enemy is launching an all out attack on truth, attacking the Bible, and God’s sacred design for the family, sexuality and gender.”

He reiterated that point in the Facebook video, in which he said, “This administration, I believe, is carrying some of the most anti-Christ agenda and philosophy that maybe we have seen in the history of America.” He warned, “There is a mob spirit that wants us to bow down to the gods of secular liberalism … and if we don’t bow, we’re gonna be bullied, harassed, and threatened. We’re going to be censored. We’re going to banished from speaking in the public square.”

Feucht said it breaks his heart to see Christians celebrating the historic swearing-in of Vice President Kamala Harris, saying, “you’re placing race, you’re placing gender above the values and the biblical and theological foundation that we believe in.”

Wells, who said he is a "Jesus guy" as opposed to someone motivated by politics, likened the decision to host campaigns for groups or people that some may find unsavory to a missionary looking to save souls in a brothel."

As best we can, we're going to represent the hope of Jesus in every situation to people who use our platform," Wells said. "We're going to cover it all with grace."

Before self-proclaimed members of the far-right group the Proud Boys marched toward the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, they stopped to kneel in the street and prayed in the name of Jesus.

The group, whose participants have espoused misogynistic and anti-immigrant views, prayed for God to bring “reformation and revival.” They gave thanks for “the wonderful nation we’ve all been blessed to be in.” They asked God for the restoration of their “value systems,” and for the “courage and strength to both represent you and represent our culture well.” And they invoked the divine protection for what was to come.

Then they rose. Their leader declared into a bullhorn that the media must “get the hell out of my way.” And then they moved toward the Capitol.

The presence of Christian rituals, symbols and language was unmistakable on Wednesday in Washington. There was a mock campaign banner, “Jesus 2020,” in blue and red; an “Armor of God” patch on a man’s fatigues; a white cross declaring “Trump won” in all capitals. All of this was interspersed with allusions to QAnon conspiracy theories, Confederate flags and anti-Semitic T-shirts.

The blend of cultural references, and the people who brought them, made clear a phenomenon that has been brewing for years now: that the most extreme corners of support for Mr. Trump have become inextricable from some parts of white evangelical power in America. Rather than completely separate strands of support, these groups have become increasingly blended together.

This potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support among a wide swath of Trump loyalists, many of whom describe themselves as participants in a kind of holy war, according to interviews. And many, who are swimming in falsehoods about the presidential election and now the riot itself, said the aftermath of Wednesday’s event has only fueled a deeper sense of victimhood and being misunderstood. (...)

When it comes to religious affiliation, the 117th U.S. Congress looks similar to the previous Congress but quite different from Americans overall.

While about a quarter (26%) of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – just one member of the new Congress (Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz.) identifies as religiously unaffiliated (0.2%).

Nearly nine-in-ten members of Congress identify as Christian (88%), compared with two-thirds of the general public (65%). Congress is both more heavily Protestant (55% vs. 43%) and more heavily Catholic (30% vs. 20%) than the U.S. adult population overall.