Esther and Gideon Moments of Christian Nationalist Violence
Just a few days before the attempted coup d’etat by Christian Nationalists on January 6, 2021, Doug Mastriano attended an organizational meeting for the insurrection. The meeting was set up by Jim Garlow of the New Apostolic Restoration. The New Apostolic Restoration is a Christian Nationalist movement that aims to overthrow American democracy and replace it with a Christian dictatorship that forces all Americans to convert to Christianity.
Who is Doug Mastriano? At the time, he was a Pennsylvania state senator who was working with Donald Trump to try to overturn the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, where the majority of people had voted for Joe Biden. Now, Doug Mastriano is the Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania.
At that meeting, Doug Mastriano was given the floor to make the following prayer:
“God, we come before you in Jesus’s name and… god, I ask that you help us roll in these dark times, that we fear not the darkness, that we will seize our Esther and Gideon moments, that we will stand in the gap, that when you say ‘Who shall I send?’ we will say, ‘Send me.’… I know we are surrounded by wickedness and fear and dithering and inaction, but that’s not our problem. Our problem is following your lead… God, you’re calling forth modern day Esthers and Gideons, and I pray that you will give us the courage to do so. We think about our elected officials in Pennsylvania who have been weak and feckless… I pray that we will take responsibility. We’ll seize the power given to us by the Constitution and as well by you, providentially. I pray also for the leaders in the federal government on the sixth of January that they will rise up with boldness. You’ll bless these letters that President Donald Trump asked me this morning to send to Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy outlining the fraud in Pennsylvania, and this will embold them to stand firm and disregard what has happened in Pennsylvania until we have an investigation. God, we pray truth will go forth, and victory, and that your truth will go marching on in Jesus’s name, Amen.”
The context of this prayer is that Doug Mastriano had sent a letter asking Republican leaders in Congress to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election by ignoring the votes of citizens in Pennsylvania and a few other states where the majority of voters had chosen Joe Biden over Donald Trump. On January 6, congressional leaders did indeed attempt to execute Doug Mastriano’s plan to keep Trump in the White House in defiance of Joe Biden’s victory in both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
On that same day, a huge crowd of Christian Nationalists violently stormed the U.S. Capitol with the encouragement of Donald Trump and several Republican members of Congress. Doug Mastriano was a part of that insurrectionist crowd. Mastriano has so far refused to comply with congressional subpoenas requiring him to testify about his role in the attempted violent revolution.
In this prayer, we see that Doug Mastriano was involved in behind-the-scenes organization of the attempted insurrection of January 6. We see that Mastriano was working with extremist Christian Nationalists who have openly declared that their goal is to end American democracy. We see Mastriano knew ahead of time about Christian Nationalist plans to attack the US government. He knew that January 6 was more than the date of a peaceful protest.
It's especially important to pay attention to two phrases in Mastriano’s prayer. He said, “We will seize our Esther and Gideon moments,” and “God, you’re calling forth modern day Esthers and Gideons, and I pray that you will give us the courage to do so.
Esther and Gideon moments? What are those?
You might be unfamiliar with this biblical reference, but members of Christian Nationalist extremist militias understand exactly what Doug Mastriano was saying. Doug Mastriano was calling for political violence by Christian Nationalists on January 6, 2021.
Esther is a character from the Christian bible who orchestrated the murder of her political enemies, who followed a different religion from hers.
Gideon is also a character from the Christian bible. Gideon organized an army to engage in a massive slaughter of neighbors who refused to follow his religious beliefs. Gideon also engaged in genocidal attacks against villages of people who resisted his attempts to steal their food.
The only thing that Esther and Gideon had in common is that they engaged in political killings of people who followed different religions.
When Mastriano prayed that the Christian Nationalist mob of January 6, 2021 would become “Esthers and Gideons”, he was sending a thinly-coded message to the organizers of the Stop The Steal insurrection. Mastriano was announcing that people should prepare to commit acts of political violence in the name of Christianity in Washington DC on January 6.
The insurrection of January 6 wasn’t just a spontaneous riot by a crowd of protesters who got out of control. It was an act of planned political violence organized by Christian Nationalists with the intention of overthrowing American democracy in order to create a new theocratic government led by Donald Trump that would target non-Christian Americans.