Chaucer’s Books will host Bradley Onishi, author of “Preparing for War: The Extreme History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next” in a book talk with Al Silva, 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 20.

Watching the footage of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Onishi, a University of San Francisco professor, wondered: “If I hadn’t left evangelicalism, would I have been there?”

The attack on U.S Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a white evangelical subculture’s preparation for war.

In “Preparing for War,” Onishi, a religion scholar and former insider, maps the origins of White Christian nationalism and traces its offshoots.

Combining his own experiences in the youth groups and prayer meetings of the 1990s with a look at the steady blending of white grievance politics with evangelicalism, Onishi crafts an account of the years-long campaign of White Christian nationalism that led to Jan. 6.

How did the rise of what Onishi calls the New Religious Right, between 1960 and 2015, give birth to violent White Christian nationalism during the Trump presidency and beyond?

What propelled some of the most conservative religious communities in the country — communities of which Onishi was once a part — to ignite a cold civil war? 

Through chapters on White supremacy and segregationist theologies, conspiracy theories, the Christian-school movement, purity culture, and the right-wing media ecosystem, Onishi reveals a subculture that birthed a movement and has taken a dangerous turn.

Onishi traces the migration of many White Christians to Idaho, Montana and Wyoming in what is known as the American Redoubt.

Onishi is a social commentator, scholar, writer, teacher, coach, and co-host of the “Straight White American Jesus” (SWAJ) podcast. He often speaks about topics related to the radical conservatism and extremist religions that shape the world, some of it right in our own neighborhoods.