The New York Times reports that US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew the Appeal To Heaven flag outside his home, apparently for months. Alito displayed the flag after Christian Nationalist supporters of Donald Trump carried the symbol with them as they violently attacked the US Capitol building during the insurrection of January 6, 2021. Outside another one of his homes, Justice Alito displayed an upside down stars-and-stripes flag, another symbol of the January 6 attack against democracy.
At the very same time that Alito was publicly displaying these symbols of the January 6 insurrection, he was hearing cases related to the crimes of January 6 as a member of the Supreme Court. The flags were an obvious declaration by Alito that he has no intention of acting as a fair and neutral Supreme Court justice, but will use his power to advance the grip Christian Nationalism on the United States government and assist Donald Trump’s rise to power.
Samuel Alito is not the only government official to have used the Appeal To Heaven flag to signal his allegiance with Christian Nationalists who seek to overthrow American democracy. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has displayed the flag outside his office in the US Capitol, and other Republican members of Congress have followed suit. Across the country, Republican officials in state and local governments are unfurling the Appeal To Heaven flag to demonstrate that they support the insurrection of January 6.
The Appeal To Heaven Flag, also known as the Pine Tree Flag, is a pre-revolutionary emblem that was flown over a small fleet of ships in New England in 1775, a year before American independence was declared. The flag has never been an officially-recognized symbol of the government of the United States of America.
Over the last decade, the Appeal To Heaven Flag has been adopted as a symbol of Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalism is the assertion that the United States of America should no longer be a secular democracy, but must become an exclusively Christian nation. Under Christian Nationalist control, Christianity would become the official religion of the entire country, other religions would be suppressed, and the Bible would surpass the Constitution as the fundamental law of the land. Christian Nationalists seek to use the power of federal, state, and local governments to force all Americans to convert to Christianity and participate in Christian religious rituals.
The Appeal To Heaven movement explains that it is “gathering a network of fellow believers serving Christ in public office” and seeks to replace American democracy with a Christian Nationalist government. Under this Christian theocracy, Americans will be forced to be “wholly reliant upon heaven and the God Who reigns supreme”.
Appeal To Heaven activists never think to wonder why, if their god truly reigns supreme, he needs their help to destroy secular government and freedom of religion in the United States.
The Appeal To Heaven movement is not willing to accept elected officials who follow just any form of Christianity. They demand that political leaders adhere to evangelical ideology.
The movement states that its members are “elected officials who are believers in Jesus Christ, who regularly attend and display a commitment to an evangelical, Gospel-centered church and who will commit to live and govern based on biblical, constitutional and Federalist principles.”
At present, 40 percent of Americans are non-Christians. The Christian Nationalism of the Appeal To Heaven movement is not just an attack against atheists and other non-Christian Americans, however. The emphasis on evangelical theology in the Appeal To Heaven movement demonstrates that, if they gain power through the election of Donald Trump, Christian Nationalists will seek to enforce their own version of Christianity while cracking down on more liberal forms of the religion.
The government of the United States of America was established by the people, not by the churches. Democratic government exists to serve the human needs of the population, not the whims of any spiritual being. For the sake of humanity, it’s time to stand up to the extremism of Christian Nationalism.
To have a sitting member of the United States Supreme Court publicly support an insurrection against the federal government is too extreme an act to go unaddressed. Samuel Alito should resign from the Supreme Court immediately, and if he refuses to do so, he should be impeached by the United States Senate.