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The flags emblazoned with “Jesus 2020” and the cross, the most easily recognizable symbol of Christianity, were hard to miss amid the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6. But they weren’t the only religious symbols that appeared during the siege.

One of the most photographed rioters was a shirtless man wearing fur, horns, and red, white, and blue face paint. Jake Angeli, better known as the “QAnon Shaman” or “Q Shaman,” also sported several tattoos of symbols associated with Norse paganism, known as heathenry.

For decades, the redbrick Gothic Revival church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached has been a monument to the history of Black Americans’ fight for civil rights and the legacy of an activist icon.

But it was a high-stakes Senate race and a Trump-era cultural debate that thrust Ebenezer Baptist Church into the center of the current political debate.

On the morning of January 6, a small, interfaith prayer circle surrounded a Black Lives Matter sign, created to replace similar banners repeatedly stolen and destroyed by the far-right Proud Boys in December. 

Then, near the end of the service, a gaggle of men adorned in patriotic clothing and “Make America Great Again” hats approached. One walked into the middle of the circle, pretended to fall, and laid on the ground while another man knelt on his neck—an apparent attempt to mock the 2020 killing of George Floyd at the hands of police.