The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry David M. Krueger Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 176. $21.95. The concept of Christian nationalism has long been used by scholars to analyze the intersection of religion and politics, but, in the last few years, the term has surged in public use. In 2022, some U.S. politicians such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green openly declared themselves to be Christian nationalists. In their book, Gorski and Perry argue that Christian nationalism was largely invisible both to conservative Christians because it was simply “in the air they breathe” and to secular progressives because they viewed the beliefs to be fringe. The Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, and its distinct Christian imagery are what brought Christian nationalism into mainstream consciousness. There has been a flood of scholarship on the topic in recent years. Gorski and Perry’s book has synthesized this material in a compelling and succinct manner, while also illuminating the grave threats that Christian nationalism poses to a religiously and racially diverse democracy. The authors offer their book as “a primer on white Christian nationalism,” with its chapters organized around the questions of what it is, when it emerged, how it works, and where it is headed. At its core, white Christian nationalism is framed by a “deep story” asserting that the United States was founded by white [End Page 131] Christian men guided by Christian principles, who saw the nation as chosen by God for a special purpose, but ever at risk due to “un-American influences both inside and outside our borders.” Drawing on their own sociological research, Gorski and Perry identify “seven indicators of Christian nationalism,” such as believing the nation’s founding documents were divinely inspired and that the federal government should advocate Christian values, allow prayer in public schools, and mandate a strict separation between church and state. While many white and Black Christians score high on their assessment, the data show that the higher the level of adherence to Christian nationalism, the higher the tendency for whites to claim they are discriminated against, to mistrust experts and mainstream media outlets, to support the use of violence to maintain order, and to uphold personal liberty and economic prosperity—even if the vulnerable in society suffer. The same correlations were not present for Black respondents. Many academic and popular treatments of Christian nationalism do not include “white” as an adjective, but the authors craft a persuasive genealogy that centers on race. Gorski and Perry craft a historical narrative to demonstrate that white Christian nationalism is not new but is “one of the oldest and most powerful currents in American politics.” The authors begin their genealogy, not in 1619 with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia, but in 1690 when religion and nationalism became fused with the concepts of whiteness and order. They identify other key inflection points such as the nation’s turn toward empire in 1898 and the embrace of libertarianism as a subtler way to encode race in social policies. Along the way, the authors emphasize the contingencies of each moment and the ways that various actors exerted their agency. The final chapter offers a warning that the January 6th insurrection was not an isolated incident but was the product of “subterranean forces that had been building for some time.” As such, the event ought to be seen as a harbinger of a potentially larger and more violent event that could imperil the future of American democracy. The authors offer a dire warning about what the future may hold, asserting that a “Trumpist America” would not necessarily become “Hitler’s Germany” but could share a resemblance to “Putin’s Russia.” This is an entirely fair claim and perhaps a wake-up call for some readers, but the book’s brief three pages on “what can be done” is insufficient to meet the challenge. In summary, Gorski and Perry call on the...