Christian Nation Research Articles

Words and Attitudes of the Heart: The Emotional Content of Christian Nationalist Communications

Christian nationalism has emerged as an important component of the relationship between religious identities and political attitudes. While several studies have analyzed the constellation of Christian nationalist elites and the effects of Christian nationalist orientations on public opinion, to date no study has explored how Christian nationalist elites message to the public or what effects these messages have. Moreover, the current literature lacks comparisons of Christian nationalism to other similar orientations. This study uses content analysis to compare the content and use of emotion language of Facebook messages of Christian nationalist, Christian Christian nationalism (CN) opposition, and patriotic groups. I find that these groups focus posts on issues that are stereotypical to the group identity, and that the use of emotion language differs by topic and group type. Additionally, groups’ use of emotion language shifts the emotional responses of readers, especially in Christian nationalist groups. This study adds to our understanding of the role of emotion in social media communications and the effects of social media communications on readers.

Lay down your sword? Christian nationalism, race, and opposition to requiring gun permits

ABSTRACT Christian nationalism and race are both important predictors of firearm policy preferences in the United States, and a growing body of research argues that ideas about gun control tend to be racially coded. Building on these findings, we use data from the 2021 General Social Survey to examine how race and ethnicity moderate the association between Christian nationalism and firearm policy preferences – specifically requiring a police permit to purchase a gun. Analyses show strong, racially divergent associations between Christian nationalism and opposition to requiring gun permits. Christian nationalism is associated with higher opposition to requiring gun permits for non-Hispanic White Americans, but lower opposition for non-Hispanic Black Americans. Moreover, accounting for biblical literalism attenuates the association for White Americans but amplifies the association for Black Americans. These findings support the conceptualization of Christian nationalism as a racialized ideology, i.e. one which has different meanings and effects across ethno-racial identities.

Problems and Prospects of Developing Covenantal Pluralism in Zambia, a “Christian Nation”

This paper explores the possibility of covenantal pluralism in Zambia: Is it possible to develop a new approach for living together in a country with both religious and ethnic differences? Theoretically, it seems likely that Zambian citizens would likely benefit from expanding covenantal pluralism. However, while the paper discovers empirical evidence of popular support for key conditions and propositions of covenantal pluralism, progress seems slow. The paper uncovers little evidence that Zambia’s government diligently pursues covenantal pluralism, arguably because it might undermine a key source of governmental legitimacy—Zambia as a “Christian nation.”

The reincarnation of the Asian Buddhist peril: White Christian nationalism and contestations of mindfulness in K-12 public schools

This article explores legal contestations to school based mindfulness programs in the context of an increasingly overt White Christian nationalist agenda in the United States. By illuminating the force and logic of White Christian nationalism in education, I demonstrate that though Christian organizations’ legal opposition to mindfulness is framed around defending First Amendment Establishment Clause protections in schools, their ultimate objective is to safeguard Christian hegemony and structurally reinforce a racial-religious belief of the US as a White Christian nation. Interrogating the discursive invocation of Buddhism as a “danger” helps to reveal this intention, and its exclusionary function. In this light, I trace how the claims of Buddhist treachery recall and reaffirm 19th century White Christian nationalist imaginations of Asian immigrants as embodying dangerously foreign religions and inassimilable behaviors in order to facilitate their legal exclusion from the nation. Understanding this historical context sheds light on the ways these Christian legal contentions of mindfulness attempt to maintain a historical racial-religious subjugation of Asians as a “Yellow Peril” and inculcate anti-Asian phobias of national invasion. Thus, I also argue that the current legal disputes over mindfulness are not new assertions of White Christian nationalism. Rather, they illuminate the ongoing legacy of White Christian nationalism, and represent attempts to maintain the structure’s hegemonic positioning in the 21st century. In highlighting these arguments, this article demonstrates that we cannot understand the debate around mindfulness in schools (and secular mindfulness programs themselves) without understanding the White Christian nationalist history of Asian racial-religious exclusion in the US.

Sociology and Its (Limited) Publics: The Case of “Christian Nationalism”

Sociology and Its (Limited) Publics: The Case of “Christian Nationalism”

Cities on a Hill: American Religious Exceptionalism and White Christian Nationalism

Abstract Scholarly attention has shifted from a focus on white evangelicals and the Christian Right to the more pressing threat of white Christian nationalism. In The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics, Eric L. McDaniel, Irfan Nooruddin, and Allyson F. Shortle explore the antecedent ideology of American religious exceptionalism. They report that many elements of this ideology are present across the political spectrum, but the strongest believers are distinctive in many ways. American religious exceptionalism can be a basis for a variety of political mobilizations, but it has most recently been used primarily in an effort to deliver Christian nationalist votes to Republican candidates, including Donald Trump.

Antisemitism as an integral part of anti-bias educational policies and practices

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show how the impact of White Supremacy and Christian hegemony on the educational system. By highlighting interconnectedness across targeted groups, the authors assert that through coalition building, groups are stronger than they would be working alone. Solidarity gives hope to combating hatred of all kinds. Learning that there is a long history of antisemitism is an important component of fighting bias. With book banning and controversy over teaching critical race theory in schools, it is important that educators reflect on their social justice education.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyze the definitions and enactment of multicultural, culturally responsive and anti-bias education as well as critical theory. They then investigate how antisemitism is of concern to all identities targeted by White Supremacy and Christian Nationalism (LGBTQIA+, minoritized races, non-Christians, etc.) and the importance of education in fighting hate and influencing policy and practice.FindingsAlthough 2 % of the US population identifies as Jewish, 11% of incidents educators reported were classified as antisemitic. Education is the key to fighting antisemitism and Holocaust denial (Greene et al., 2021; Stanton and Marcus, 2019). The authors make recommendations for addressing antisemitism, including addressing antisemitic incidents, the importance of Holocaust studies, the need for religious literacy, fighting the banning of books and narrowing the school curriculum. The authors ended by reinforcing the need for Jewish people to be included in multicultural, culturally responsive, anti-bias education and the need for “Heb-crit” as a sub-study of critical race theory.Social implicationsAnti-bias education must include antisemitism and show how connected hatred is rather than having groups compare their struggles. The authors explained the diversity among Jewish people to highlight the complexity of an identity group that is often inaccurately oversimplified.Originality/valueThere is a need for scholarship on modern-day antisemitism and internalized antisemitism and reflective narratives as commonly used in Black and Latinx studies (Rubin, 2020). With the rise in Holocaust denial and antisemitic groups (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2024), it is important to advocate and teach about these topics, which are not often discussed in PK-12 or Schools of Education (Muller, 2022).

Holy Nations: How White Racism Boosts Black Support for Christian Nationalism

Holy Nations: How White Racism Boosts Black Support for Christian Nationalism

The Reliant (2019) and the rhetoric of necropolitical Christianity

ABSTRACT This essay examines the manufactured controversy over the independent Christian film The Reliant (2019), a film advertised as a pro-gun action-adventure. Despite receiving virtually no attention from the political left, the filmmakers’ engaged in a public relations campaign to spotlight the putative opposition to the film as evidence of a broader effort by secular progressives to persecute Christian ideas and values. In this essay, we argue that such manufactured controversies are a rhetorical strategy of contemporary Christian nationalists to construct progressive secularism as a mortal threat to the survival of Christianity. Analyzing the promotional materials and staged events surrounding this film, we illustrate how Christian nationalism increasingly relies on contrived public controversies and faux outrage against its products, policies, and discourses to craft a warped impression that Christians face violent enmity and persecution at every turn. We advance the concept of necropolitical Christianity to name how Christian nationalists mimic forms of state sovereignty premised on the right to kill or maim in the name of collective self-defense. We conclude that manufactured enmity conjures a violent Other who despises and persecutes conservative Christians to bolster the case for more radical measures to ensure the defense and survival of the Christian nation.

A far cry from greatness: Christian fundamentalism, liberty porn and the ‘good people’ of Trump’s America in Far Cry 5

This article offers a close reading of Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5 (FC5) (2018) in the context of apocalyptic rhetorics and evangelical Christian nationalism during the Trump Era. Building upon my previous work with video game chronotopes (2021) and Sören Schoppmeier’s analysis of the retrotopic, ‘nostalgia time’ in the game (2022), I analyse the doubled temporality of nostalgia time and apocalyptic time as deployed spatially in the game in combination with the game’s wanton use of ‘liberty porn’: undisciplined appeals to liberty and freedom through narrative, iconography and cutscene to instil respect and favour for the largely imagined plights of the right-wing inhabitants of the game’s fictional Hope County. Drawing heavily on examples of right-wing violence, attacks on civil rights and Christian fundamentalism during the Trump Era, this article draws concerning parallels between FC5’s rhetorical achievement and Trump’s embrace of white supremacist narratives – like ‘replacement theory’ – and militia groups, fashioning them as ‘good people’, a rhetoric similarly deployed throughout the game. Ultimately, this article argues for more corporate responsibility among game studios when it comes to deploying right-wing narratives and a bolder refutation of such reactionary games by game studies scholars, especially when parodic value is limited or largely absent.

A colorblind Christian country? How racial attitudes affect support for Christian nationalism and civil religion

AbstractCan racial primes influence support for public expressions of religion? While a growing body of research demonstrates correlations between racial attitudes and support for public religion among White Americans, experimental tests of subconscious connections between the two concepts have been lacking. We utilize a novel survey experiment to prime racial considerations, and we find that Black racial primes raise support for Christian nationalism and civil religion among White Americans, compared to White racial primes. Moreover, our analysis indicates that these effects are attributable to racial animus, namely the evaluation that Black Americans are not prototypical members of the national community. The findings suggest that the preference for a Christian/religious America and a White America are subconsciously interwoven for many White Americans, providing the first experimental evidence, to our knowledge, of this relationship.

A political theology for the Ghanaian context from Christ’s perspective

One of the key challenges facing contemporary Ghana is ineffective political structures and leadership. Leadership failure is the main reason why Ghana continues to experience socio-economic challenges such as poverty, hunger, poor education system, poor road networks, injustice, high unemployment rate, human right abuse, and local currency depreciation despite the country’s vast natural resources. Ghana’s socio-economic problems continue to attract scholarly attention and yet, the problems persist. As a predominantly Christian nation, the church has a major responsibility to engage the country’s political space by analysing and scrutinising political structures with the effect of chatting a new path of socio-economic and political developments. This research was, therefore, conducted to contribute to the ongoing discussion by exploring how a contextual application of political and leadership lessons embedded in Jesus’s teaching in Mark 10:35–45 might address the Ghana’s political needs. The article is a qualitative research that analysed data collected from books, Bible commentaries, journal articles, and dissertations.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This research involves systematic and/or political theology, New Testament studies, and leadership and/or governance. It argues that for Ghana to overcome her political challenges, leadership must be seen as a position of service rather than an opportunity to amass wealth at the expense of others. The article contributes to the field of political theology in the Ghanaian setting.

Unmasking Southern White evangelicalism in U. S. history education: Racialized theopolitical discourses at work

White evangelical churches and organizations play a significant role in mobilizing congregants as participants in the white Christian nationalist movement. This fusion of faith and politics has made white evangelicals “ambassadors” of white Christian nationalism (Miller, 2022). This paper interrogates the history, theology, and politics of white Christian nationalism to understand its influence in the U. S. educational system, specifically its implications for K-12 history curriculum in public schools. Beginning with current legislation around critical race theory, this paper traces the intersection of evangelical and conservative discourse in the Southern United States. This historical analysis shows how the white, Southern evangelical record on race and racism accommodates the theopolitical ideology of the white Christian nationalist movement. This paper argues the current white evangelical challenges to critical race theory and demands to teach “alternative histories” about America’s racial past not only limits discussions around race and power in classrooms but distorts the curriculum with white Christian nationalist tenets disguised as truth.

Conservative Christianity, Anti-Vaccination Activism, and the Challenge to Secularism in Singapore

Abstract A culture war has been brewing in Singapore since 2009 when a conservative Christian group conducted a reverse takeover of a feminist civil society organization and was subsequently expelled from the organization in a publicized meeting between the two groups. Since then, the state has mediated the contestation of values between religious conservatives and liberal groups allied around issues of gender and sexuality. The culture war between the two sides has revolved around creative protests that have evaded state prohibitions against public contestations over what is legally considered private beliefs and affairs. They involve innovative hybridizations of American discourses on values and rights mixed with Asian emphases on family traditions and sentiments. The COVID-19 pandemic has, however, laid bare the adaptation of the American culture war into the Singaporean public sphere. This article looks at and analyzes COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among conservative Christians in Singapore and their incorporation of anti-vaccination views from American Christian nationalism into secular framings, invoking legal rights and responsibilities aligned with the state’s nationalist discourse. I argue that this represents a new phase of contestation by conservatives, refashioning their religious views into secular frames of public good and morality serving the secular nation. By doing so, they implicitly challenge the state’s regulation of religion as private interests and beliefs. This altered religious activism has shifted the terms of secularism and loosened the hegemony of the state in defining these terms.

Emergent forms of ‘Dark Green Religion’ and the (ecofascist) future of environmental education in the United States

What is the future of environmental and climate change education in the United States given the emergence of neofascist and Christian Nationalist political movements during a time of social secularization? In this essay we discuss the politically heterogenous appeal of environmental concern in America, the tenuous nature of environmental education’s current Left-liberal political valence, and implications for climate change education amidst ongoing culture wars. We proceed by examining Bron Taylor’s influential typology of Dark Green Religions and consider how the American political Right may emerge as having their own Dark Green Religious movement. We are concerned that the field of environmental education remains ideologically blinkered toward other normative educational projects on the political Right, a situation that leaves us unprepared for how projects such as climate change education can be appropriated for reactionary and sometimes violent ends. We argue that the field of environmental education needs to pay greater attention to the multifarious political and cultural conditions that shape its enactment and develop considerations for an anti-fascist environmental education accordingly.

POLITICAL MENTALIZATION OF THE FRENCH RULING ELITES: A POLITICAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ESSAY

The study focuses on the main stages of the historical past of French civilization, in the depths of which the political mentality of the ruling elites was formed. The authors explore the mental and civilizational results of the five-hundred-year Romanization of Gaul. The role of Christian proselytism in the formation of a monotheistic mentality and the political role of the Church of Gaul are revealed. The thesis about the mental heritage of the Roman Empire in the formation of the foundations of the new Christian nation is revealed. As a result of the convergence of Roman culture and barbaric cults, an original mental space was formed, where Catholicism became the state religion of the Frankish Empire. The conclusion is made about the historical and mental-political significance of chivalry not only for France, but also for Europe. Next, the authors turned to the topic of the influence of the Renaissance on the elites, who, having assimilated the mental models of the Italian Renaissance, built their national identity on their basis. In the Renaissance epoch, the centuries-old theologo-political nature of French political power was transformed into a subject-pragmatic system of absolutism. For the first time in the history of Europe, politics was separated from religion. Christian dogmas as the basic mental attitudes of the elites have given way to the sense-generating primacy of secular principles of real politics. During this period, anti-absolutist and anticlerical mental and political attitudes emerged in the elite environment on the soil cultivated by the Renaissance, which determined the course and nature of the revolutionary events of the 18th-19th centuries. During the period of the Consulate and the First Empire, Napoleon I and then his followers pursued a policy of mental reconstruction of the elites. The final two sections talk about the philosophical, theological and scientific heritage of the great intellectuals of France, the power activities of its outstanding rulers, who had a significant impact on the evolution and development of the political mentality of modern French elites.

Making White Christian nationalism plausible: Examining the institutional logic of a conservative Christian school

Over the last several years, enrollment at Conservative Christian schools has risen noticeably due to a response to COVID-19 regulations and culture wars being played out within primary and secondary schools. Alongside this trend, there has also been a significant rise in White Christian nationalism during the early part of the 21st century. Using data gathered through an ethno-case study of a Conservative Christian school, I examine the institutional logic that animated and guided the way the school socialized students to think about their civic and public life. I describe this logic as a theo-political logic that manifested itself symbolically through the language and theory of the Christian worldview which was not only taught by faculty but also helped to organize the curriculum and pedagogy of the school. Building on this description of the theo-political logic and using Peter Berger’s (1967) notion of plausibility structures, I argue that while conservative Christian schools may not explicitly support White Christian Nationalism, the theo-political logic that organizes and dominates the school helps develop plausibility structures that allow students, faculty, and staff to support policies and public engagement that align with White Christian nationalism.

Rescuing Maritain from His Reception History: A Reappraisal of William T. Cavanaugh’s Critique in Torture and Eucharist

The influential writings on church and state of philosopher Jacques Maritain, who died in 1973, possessed a mid-twentieth century hopefulness about a new birth of freedom and a lay-led Christian humanism. In light of the next twenty-five years of experience—particularly that of the regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile—William T. Cavanaugh, in his 1998 book Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ, argued that Maritain’s work facilitated the marginalization of the faith in the modern nation-state. Another quarter-century later, this essay reappraises Cavanaugh’s criticisms of Maritain’s views on the nature of the Church, the role of the laity, and the power of the state. It argues that while Cavanaugh’s concerns about sovereignty, subsidiarity, and formation have been vindicated, a careful reading of Maritain’s lesser-known and later works suffice to justify Maritain’s views of the laity and the church. Maritain remains a vital resource for theologians who seek to avoid both, on the right hand, a resurgent integralism and Christian nationalism and, on the left hand, a relativizing of the Gospel in what Maritain called “kneeling before the world.

A Kingdom of This World

Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism and Patrick Deneen’s Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future express dissatisfaction, even anger, with contemporary America and the liberal tradition. Both authors believe America is fundamentally broken, and they appeal to pre-American sources to construct their alternative visions. Their alternatives, however, exhibit nostalgia for a past that arguably never existed, suffer from significant internal problems, and suggest ominous means to attain their respective ideals.

Fear and Loathing: How Demographic Change Affects Support for Christian Nationalism

Abstract Christian nationalism, the fusion of religious and national identities, has emerged as an important factor shaping public opinion on a range of issues. However, debates in the existing literature on the motivations behind support for Christian nationalism remain unresolved: Is Christian nationalism a response to secularization and/or a cover for discomfort with racial diversity and equality? Is Christian nationalism rooted in fear of social change, disgust about social change, or something else? We use an experiment embedded in a national survey of adults to isolate the effects of knowledge of both religious and racial demographic change among White Christians. Our analysis suggests that exposure to religious demographic change shifts support for Christian nationalism and perceptions of discrimination against Whites and Christians, but exposure to racial demographic change has limited impact. This effect is mediated by emotion—religious demographic change increases fear and disgust, which then influence support for Christian nationalism and perceptions of discrimination against Whites and Christians. Although our treatment suggesting exposure to racial demographic change had null effects, we note that racial attitudes do independently influence support for Christian nationalism and perceptions of discrimination against Whites and Christians.