National Post (National Edition)
HIS PASTORS TRIED BUT FAILED TO STEER HIM AWAY FROM SOCIAL MEDIA RAGE
KENTUCKY HUSBAND AND DAD LED THE MOB WHEN IT STORMED THE CAPITOL
For weeks last spring and summer, Michael Sparks watched video of protests for racial justice around the U.S. with growing unease. He could not turn away from his phone, even as he feared it was changing him. He posted his outrage. He posted that he hated seeing what was happening to his country. He posted that it made him want to kill people.
The 43-year-old husband and father didn't believe he actually would, but he knew even just saying so fell short of his Christian values. His pastor at Franklin Crossroads Baptist Church in Cecilia, Ky., advised him to leave Facebook. He considered it. Instead, his rage led him to Washington, D.C., not long after the new year.
According to the FBI, Sparks was the first to enter the Capitol through a smashed window near the Ohio Clock Corridor. Wearing jeans, a light black jacket and eyeglasses, he crawled over broken glass to overturn a presidential election. In his booking photo from Kentucky's Oldham County Detention Center taken 13 days later, he is wearing a T-shirt that reads “Armour of God” and cites a Bible verse, Ephesians 6:11: “Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.”
The attack on the Capitol was for many a Christian insurrection, urged along by passages of scripture and culminating with prayers intoned in the occupied Senate. But as Sparks's story shows, his faith played a more complicated role in his journey to Jan. 6.
The tension of religious rhetoric as a goad to extremism on the one hand and community accountability as a safeguard against it on the other highlights the complex influence some churches have had in past months.
This account of one alleged rioter's path to the Jan. 6 insurrection is based on his Facebook posts, court documents and the recollections and social media messages of several people who know him. Reached by phone this week, Sparks, who was released after his Jan. 19 arrest, declined to comment.
He has been charged with nine counts of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and obstructing law enforcement. Each violation carries fines and up to five years in prison.
Not long after, he took his Facebook page down. Until then, his increasingly agitated comments mapped the mental landscape of someone falling down rabbit holes of groundless claims.
Early in 2020, his Facebook page showed simple, family-focused times — a profile picture of his twin toddlers sitting on a parked ATV; a banner photo of a fresh-caught fish wriggling on a line; his wife tagging him on a home for sale — but in his posts later in the year, misinformation about the election was punctuated only by misinformation about COVID-19. For the former, he urged friends and family to “Get rid of all news channels and go to NEWS MAX” (a conservative website); for the latter, he copied and pasted a mainstay of evangelical fears of one-world government known as Agenda 21, blaming the United Nations for this “this whole `RONa' bull crap.”
However, a 17-minute video he shared with his “church family” also presents a reflective man fearing what he was becoming.
Speaking into the camera in July, Sparks acknowledged his attitude online had become extreme. He recounted multiple attempts at community intervention and vowed to resist forces that ultimately would overwhelm him.
“As you know I consider myself a devout Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, and that's my passion,” he said. “As of late, with everything that's been going on, boy it's been a rough time for me, honestly. And I've been fighting really hard with anger. And seeing everything that's been going on — whew … it's eatin' my lunch.”
Much of his message was devoted to the importance of going to church, relying on others to keep one on the straight and narrow. He spoke of gratitude and love. But he could not let go of the notion of a world under siege.
The problem, as he saw it, began with Black Lives Matter. The protests following the death of George Floyd in police custody had driven him over the edge.
“I'm a patriot. I love the United States of America. I love our freedom,” he said in the video. “This is the greatest country in the entire world. And that being said, we are under attack. It's good versus evil now.”
But it wasn't just the fact of what was happening. It was also the way seeing it felt impossible to escape. “It has had me very angry,” he said in the video. “Because if you watch, Facebook is where they're feeding this anger and hatred. … They'll find out what you are for or against and they're gonna feed anger.”
That wasn't the reason for the video, though.
“I want to apologize,” he continued. “I have definitely not been showing godly things on there. You know, I've even said as far as I would shoot that person in the head, I would shoot this person in the head. Whether I would or not doesn't matter; I don't need to get on there and spread this because I'm not showing the love of Christ.”
Social media in Sparks's description is often a tormentor, an active force that may do some good but mostly means you harm. Facebook became for him the site of an ongoing clash with himself, a constant reminder that he was locked in a spiritual war with forces posing threats to his family and his country. He began to talk about forming a “patriot group,” gathering men together to offer protection in case “something does happen.”
But his friends list seemed to have dropped by half.
One who cut social media ties with Sparks was a relation by marriage, Gregg Seibert. “He was obviously following a lot of radical right-wing websites,” Seibert said. “Most of his posts were memes and stuff he found there. He was consumed by it.”
As Seibert recalls, Sparks was also upset by the coronavirus shutdowns, which had closed churches and pushed worship services online.
“That was a line in the sand for him,” Seibert said.
Members of his church began to call him out. According to Sparks, the church's office manager contacted him to let him know his online comments had gone too far. Feeling “angry and burdened,” he talked with his pastor, Mitch Whidden, and heard advice he knew he should take.
“Me and him agreed, I need to get off Facebook, get away from all this stuff,” Sparks said in the July video. “But I just couldn't let go, I feel like I need to see this stuff, like I need to be informed.”
A few weeks later, another pastor, Jeffrey Johnson, delivered a sermon that seemed aimed directly at him, reinforcing his concerns. The subject was Daniel in the Lions' Den, and Johnson put the story in terms that resonated with a man who had recently talked online about shooting people. “When Daniel's very life was threatened, he prayed.” Johnson said. “Daniel didn't draw a Glock 19.”
Messages left for Whidden, Johnson and the office manager were not returned.
“I'm sure many of us in here would do just about anything to protect our families,” the pastor continued. “I'm sure many of us have purchased firearms and spent money and time at the range practicing with them. … But guys, I gotta ask: Are we as invested, are we as equipped to defend our families from spiritual threats as we are physical ones? … People tell me, `Well, I don't have time to pray or read my Bible or memorize scripture,'” he preached. “But guys, we sure do have time to get on Facebook and trash talk.”
Sparks said in his Facebook video that the sermon caused him to swear he'd read more scripture and other spiritual pursuits.
“I've noticed that my phone has been in my hand more than my Bible,” Sparks confessed.
At the end of the video, he promised to make a change.
“I'm not going to let my anger overtake me anymore. I'm going to get in the word of God … and get back to the me that smiles more,” he said. “Because I got wrapped up in Facebook.”
This was a danger everyone faced, he argued. “Trust me, they know, they watch your posts. Whatever you're for, they're gonna send you something that you're against,” he said. “They're just feeding this hatred. They're turning people on each other.”
In the fall of 2020, however, his ire turned to the election, and then to the results, which he refused to accept.
“Biden,” he wrote on Nov. 8, is “an empty word politician that will never be president. They have promoted destruction for 4 years now tearing cities apart, supporting blm, antifa. Bogus impeachment on made up garbage, using covid as a political tool. Your dealing with strait evil who only think of the present and who don't acknowledge eternity.”
On Dec. 3, he praised Trump: “God has put you where you are. Stay strong and do great things for the American people in the next 4 years as president.”
On Dec. 16, he posted: “We're getting ready to live through something of biblical purportions be prayed up and be ready to defend your country and your family and the United States.”
When Trump made a Facebook post of his own on Dec. 30 that read, “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” Sparks shared it to his page, along with the comment “I'll be there.”
According to court records, not only was he there, he was part of what would become one of the day's most notorious incidents: when a gang of rioters chased U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up a flight of stairs.
“This is our America!” Sparks shouted during the confrontation, captured in videos. “This is our America!”
On Jan. 7, several acquaintances saw Sparks in pictures from the assault and contacted the FBI, according to charging documents. Along with screenshots of video from the siege, they sent his most recent Facebook posts, which he claimed would be his last.
“To all my family and friends I love you deeply,” he had written. “I love this country deeply. Many many brave men and women gave there very lives for OUR FREEDOM. That being said I would give my life to defend them and our country. I will never ever give up on the American people because we are strong and resilient. I have however give up on democracy and I believe we have lost it for quite some time.”
Last Wednesday, Sparks appeared before Judge Timothy Kelly in D.C. for his arraignment. He pleaded not guilty to all counts.
WE ARE UNDER ATTACK. IT'S GOOD VERSUS EVIL NOW.