Calendar of Events

Thomas Lecaque: Professing Faith, Parading Power: Far Right and Christian Nationalist Marches in America

Associate Professor of History, Grand View University Thomas Lecaque is an associate professor of history at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. He specializes in the nexus of apocalyptic religion and political violence, from medieval Europe to modern America. In addition to academic work on the crusades, game studies,and early America, he has written for public outlets like the Washington Post, Religion Dispatches, Dame Magazine, Foreign Policy, and The Bulwark, among others.

In this talk, we will examine contemporary far right and Christian nationalist groups, like Patriot Front, Jericho March, or Rod of Iron Ministries, and the way they use and manipulate parades and processions as religious and political statements. This is part of a long tradition of liturgical violence and statements of Christian power through processions, from late antique Rome to medieval Constantinople to the crusades, that also has a long history in the Americas: from liturgical processions in Quebec City during the French and English wars to parades celebrating the Revolution to the marches of the Second Klan in the 1930s.

This event will take place in Kesler Auditorium in Hickok Hall and is free to the public.

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