On the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection event, when supporters of then-President Donald Trump broke into the U.S. Capitol, harming officers and challenging the nation’s peaceful transfer of power, churches and groups around the state of Massachusetts braved the cold to stand against Christian nationalism.

“Christian nationalists want their beliefs to be the official national religion that governs our laws, our education and our families,” said David Langston, deacon of First Congregational Church of Williamstown. “They would end the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, and as Christians and as citizens, we stand in opposition to forsaking both Christian teaching as well as the Constitution.”

“We need to have a countermovement in the country,” Langston said. “We want this to spread. We’d like every congregation in American to stand up and say, ‘Christian nationalism is not Christian.’”

“We are clear that Jesus condemned the use of force and violence in his name — in the garden at his arrest, at the cross — and that he did not demand that people believe in him before he taught them, healed them and ate with them,” said the Rev. Marisa Brown Ludwig, pastor at First Congregational Church of Lee. “We are Christians that cannot accept the idea of Christianity being used to exclude or force one way of being American in our land. We know that our freedom to follow Christ is only possible when other people can follow their conscience in freedom, too. We stand today as Christians against Christian Nationalism.”

The responsibility to vocalize an alternative, inclusive view of Christianity, in relation to the state, is a pressing issue within the Christian church, standout organizers believe. “Reclaiming Christianity as a religion of love and equity, inclusiveness and justice, is the job of congregations like our own,” said Sherwood Guernsey, an activist at the Williamstown church.

Read more at UCC.org.