As I’ve written about elsewhere, “Deus Vult” has been hurled by supporters of Bolsonaro at leftists in Brazil, by anti-abortion activists in the United States at Planned Parenthood clinics, and then of course by Trump supporters against Democrats in the nation’s capital. The phrase and symbol serve as convenient shorthand for a wider Manichean war, whose roots seem to reach back into the Middle Ages and whose branches canopy “the West” to this day. The Deus Vult flag (and other apparel) that appeared on Janumatters because it demonstrates the terms of the bearers’ engagement. In other words, it was for them a way to showcase their Islamophobic bigotry, a historical “justification” for what they saw to be an ongoing, existential religious war in which “the West” faces off against its “enemies.”
In 2016, President Obama mentioned the Crusades as an act of religious intolerance and violence (it was) at the National Prayer Breakfast but this led to a full-throated defense of the phenomenon as a necessary war against Islamic aggression - one that can’t be forgotten or disparaged, even after 800 years, because that war is still ongoing. Indeed, that event certainly contained explicit evocations of medievalism that merged apparently seamlessly with Confederate nostalgia and modern Nazi imagery.īut it is often forgotten that the American right had been defending (indeed lionizing) the Crusades for more than a year beforehand. The symbols wielded by the white nationalist attendees elided the 12th century with the 19th and 20th. One might, for example, think of a precursor to the events of Januas being the white supremacist riot of August 11-12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. It alerts us to the fact that the actual past is secondary in meaning to a nostalgic reflection upon it, how it weaves together modern politics, religion, and culture to convey a particular meaning much divorced from medieval Europe. It’s certainly not a revelation to note that the American right relies heavily upon historical nostalgia to justify its current politics and policy goals. But the fact that this phrase and this symbol are found in combination in the nation’s capital, at an event that became an attempt to overthrow American democracy, should give us pause. The red cross on a white field was supposedly the uniform of the medieval Christian crusaders, exemplified perhaps best in the military religious order of the Knights Templar - a group founded in the early 12th century as a kind of permanent warrior class to defend the frontiers of Christendom against its perceived enemies. The phrase “Deus Vult” (Latin for “God wills it”) was supposedly uttered first in response to Pope Urban II’s call for holy war in 1095 CE. The phrase and associated imagery are a nostalgic reflection of medieval Europe. Among them, however, captured by Andrew Beaujon of The Washingtonian Magazine flew a white flag with Greek Cross in red and gothic lettering beneath, saying “Deus Vult.” The flag wasn’t the only instance of this imagery the red cross on a white field seen on t-shirts, and the phrase “Deus Vult” appeared on other insurrectionists’ clothing. Some were to be expected: Trump 2020, Blue Lives Matter (ironically), the Gadsden Flag used by the Tea Party movement, etc.
The crowd that stormed the Capitol on January 6 carried with them a panoply of flags. Altman and Jerome Copulsky Interpretive Essays Essays from scholars of religion interpreting digital media from the events of January 6 Media Galleries Curated galleries of images, videos, and documents that represent the variety of ways people deployed religion on January 6 About Uncivil Religion A collaborative digital resource A Collaboration Between the Department of Religous Studies at the University of Alabama & The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History The Deus Vult Cross 1 media/407.jpg T20:23:32+00:00 Mike Altman e6623ac9f0060a5259a1f3e57929e1199d11e0e8 1 7 Matthew Gabriele image_header T19:15:58+00:00 Mike Altman e6623ac9f0060a5259a1f3e57929e1199d11e0e8
Uncivil Religion : JanuMain Menu Introduction:Ī Religious, Yet Religiously Incoherent Event Michael J. Please enable Javascript and reload the page. This site requires Javascript to be turned on.
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