A new survey finds white evangelicals are far more likely than most other religious groups to blame left-wing activists for the 6th January insurrection at the US Capitol.
Other white Christian groups are split on the question, which allowed for multiple answers, while Black Protestants are more likely to point to white supremacists and former President Donald Trump.
Supporters of President Donald Trump rally at the US Capitol on Wednesday, on 6th January 2021, in Washington. PICTURE: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana.
According to a survey released by the Public Religion Research Institute on Thursday, small minorities of white evangelical Protestants said Trump (26 per cent) and Republican leaders (16 per cent) bear “a lot” of responsibility for that attack.
Slightly more were willing to point to white supremacist groups (37 per cent) and conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (34 per cent) as the cause for the assault.
Meanwhile, white evangelicals were the faith group most willing (57 per cent) to blame “liberal or left-wing activists (eg Antifa)” for the attack, referring to left-wing anti-fascist or “antifa” groups. This conspiracy theory was repeated in the days after the attack by evangelical Christian leader Rev Franklin Graham and by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani but has been refuted by FBI officials and the rioters themselves.
Support for the idea appears to have increased since the conservative American Enterprise Institute conducted a separate poll in February, which found that 49 per cent of white evangelical Protestants believed the antifa claim was completely or mostly true.
In the PRRI poll, very few evangelicals blamed white Christian conservative groups (eight per cent) for the attack, despite the preponderance of Christian imagery and religious expression visible during the insurrection.
Their views most closely resembled that of Republicans overall. A majority (61 per cent) blame liberal or left-wing activists for the attack, whereas minorities of the group blame white supremacist groups (30 per cent), conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (27 per cent), Trump himself (15 per cent), Republican leaders (nine per cent) or white conservative Christian groups (eight per cent).
The results were roughly reversed among Democrats, 89 per cent of whom blamed Trump.
White non-evangelical Protestants, who are also categorized as mainline Protestants, were more split on the question of who was responsible for the insurrection. Roughly half (49 per cent) blamed white supremacist groups, with slightly less pointing to conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (45 per cent), liberal or left-wing activists (44 per cent) and Donald Trump (43 per cent).
White Catholics were similarly divided, with a slight majority saying the cause was white supremacist groups (54 per cent) and conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories and misinformation (54 per cent). Exactly half (50 per cent) cast blame on Trump, and 44 per cent listed liberal or left-wing activists as culpable.
The responses differed sharply from that of Black Protestants, a full 80 per cent of whom blamed white supremacists for the insurrection. So too did majorities of Hispanic Catholics (73 per cent), Hispanic Protestants (59 per cent), Jewish Americans (69 per cent), religiously unaffiliated Americans (65 per cent) and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (56 per cent).
Black Protestants were also the religious group most likely to lay responsibility for the attack at the feet of Trump (79 per cent). They were followed by other Christians (74 per cent), religiously unaffiliated Americans (69 per cent), Hispanic Catholics (69 per cent), Hispanic Protestants (64 per cent), other non-Christian religious Americans (64 per cent) and Jewish Americans (57 per cent). Latter-day Saints were split, with 48 per cent blaming Trump.
Several groups were keen to blame the attack on conservative media platforms that spread conspiracy theories – namely, religiously unaffiliated Americans (67 per cent), Black Protestants (66 per cent), other Christians (65 per cent), Hispanic Catholics (59 per cent), other Protestants of colour (58 per cent), Jewish Americans (55 per cent) and Latter-day Saints (51 per cent).
The only religious category to resemble the white evangelical tendency to accuse liberal or left-wing groups for instigating the insurrection were other Protestants of colour (54 per cent), but that group was even more likely to blame Trump and white supremacist groups (65 per cent).
