Matt Braynard, right, speaks during a candlelight vigil associated with the “Justice for J6” movement in support of the so-called political prisoners of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, at the Washington Central Detention Facility where several are being held, Jan. 6, 2022, in Washington. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins
As Witthoeft passed out pamphlets that referred to people charged in connection with the insurrection as “political prisoners,” she was asked whether faith informs her activism.
“I don’t claim any particular faith: I love God, I love Jesus Christ, I love America, and I miss my daughter,” she said.
She then accused the officer who shot her daughter, who was cleared of any wrongdoing after an internal investigation by U.S. Capitol Police, of murder.
Asked about the event’s religious elements, vigil organizer Matt Braynard likened his support for insurrectionists to causes such as the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement and the fight to end slavery.
“All of them were driven by a religious conviction,” said Braynard, who added that he is Catholic.
The event contrasted sharply with yet another vigil convened outside Luther Place church in downtown Washington on Thursday morning. The surge of reporters that later orbited the “Justice for J6” vigil was nowhere to be seen as the group at Luther Place quietly gathered in the snow. They assembled not only to mark the insurrection anniversary, but also to recall the interfaith vigil assembled in the same location one year prior.
The original interfaith prayer vigil constituted one of the only counterprotests against Trump supporters as they descended on the city on Jan. 6, 2021. At the time, the group of primarily clergy had gathered around a church-owned Black Lives Matter sign that had replaced a separate banner destroyed weeks earlier when members of the extremist group Proud Boys marauded through the streets of Washington, tore Black Lives Matter signs off churches and set one ablaze.
Upon seeing the vigil that day, a few passersby in Trump gear responded by barging into the middle of the prayer circle and mockingly reenacting the murder of George Floyd.
On Thursday, clergy at the anniversary vigil recalled the incident as a moment of trauma and lamented the attack on the Capitol that took place later that same day. They decried insurrectionists, with one speaker blasting those who attacked the Capitol and those who vandalized the sign as white supremacists and devotees of Christian nationalism.
But the group remained defiant in their pursuit of prayerful activism. The Rev. Karen Brau, pastor of Luther Place, suggested neither the harassment nor the insurrection would cow them.
“Our praying did not cease,” she said.
This article originally appeared here.
