One year on from the riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, Nominated Fellow Professor Theodore Louis Trost of the University of Alabama contributes to the Uncivil Religion project on Christian Nationalism with his piece The Lion, The Crowd, and Amazing Grace. You can read the full blogpost at https://uncivilreligion.org/home/the-lion-the-crowd-and-amazing-grace.
Uncivil Religion is a collaborative digital project between the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History: "Religious symbols, rituals, identities, banners, signs, and sounds suffused the events surrounding the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This project begins to trace the thread of religion that wound throughout that day through pieces of digital media. It does this in two ways. First, there is a collection of essays that analyze individual pieces of media from January 6 in order to explain the role religion played that day. Second, there is a series of galleries that contain pieces of media that represent the variety of ways religion "showed up" on January 6."
The camera pans left and downward over a large crowd to focus momentarily on an opened door at ground-level through which various individuals pass. Some in the crowd are singing the first verse of the hymn "Amazing Grace." The camera pans back to the right to include numerous banners intermingled with American flags and an array of partisan placards. Abruptly the camera zooms in on the image of a lion. Emblazoned above the lion's head is the name "Trump"; below his mane is written "Proverbs 30:30"—a biblical reference that some in the crowd might recognize as containing the words "The lion in you never retreats." The camera angles farther to the right, then upward and brings into view a multitude on the scaffolding across the way. As the gathered celebrate this "festive" moment, some seem also to encourage their groundling peers to press onward with their forcible incursion into the breached edifice of representative democracy. Meanwhile, those singing "Amazing Grace" have reached the end of the first verse and are struggling to recall the words to the second. "Nobody knew the words," a voice from the fractured chorus declares. As if to punctuate or to justify the hymn's ignominious demise, a voice adds, "Ah! Something's burning my eyes."
Read more here.