This racism and mockery have certainly dented China’s image and drained its already meager soft power while the CCP tries to forge its soft power narrative of a “Community of Common Destiny for Humankind.” Such behavior will hurt its rise on the world stage.

One flag waving over the rioters at the US Capitol, emblazoned with a tree and the slogan “An Appeal to Heaven,” garnered particular attention as a symbol of so-called “Christian nationalism’s” effort to “take America back for God.”

As shocking as the January 6 lawlessness was, I was surprised how quickly people who should know better switched gears and called for some version of the Global War on Terror to be fought—not on some distant desert or foreign mountain top—but inside America against American citizens.

Washington is a waystation; Jerusalem is the destination. Only the King of Israel will decide when his kingdom will come. Until then we must live righteously, we must preach his kingdom, we must seek the peace of the city—but we must wait.

We comfort ourselves, saying, “This is not who we are.” But without deeper reflection, such pat answers are lies, strengthening the “vulgarized knowledge” that allow us to ignore the chasms that threaten to consume us.

The sad and lamentable truth is that indeed this is who we are, for it was members of our own body-politic who did this, and we cannot heal if we do not confront the uncomfortable facts as they are. It was sedition.

Perhaps the best description of the episode last comes from the Germans. It was a “putsch”: a disorganized, somewhat symbolic strike against legal authority, usually with a rightwing inflection.

January 6, 2021, shocked and sickened many of us. It was a terrible, shameful day for the American Republic—truly yet another day of infamy in America’s bruised and bloodied history.

The insurrection on Epiphany reveals essential tasks—for America to prevent another attack and for the church to respond properly to the misuse of its symbols.