Christian Nationalism and Cultural Status Threat
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Christian Nationalism and Cultural Status Threat
Christian nationalism and cultural status threat refers to a body of research examining how perceptions of declining social, demographic, religious, racial, or political influence may contribute to support for Christian nationalist ideas. Across the research summarized here, Christian nationalism is generally treated not simply as personal Christian belief or religious devotion, but as a cultural and political framework that links Christianity to national identity, social hierarchy, political authority, and ideas about who properly belongs within the nation.
A recurring theme in this literature is the perception that a historically influential Christian social order is being displaced. Declining Christian affiliation, increasing religious nonaffiliation, racial and ethnic diversification, immigration, secularization, changing gender roles, LGBTQ equality, and growing religious pluralism may all be interpreted by some people as evidence that a familiar social order is disappearing.
Research on status threat suggests that political reactions may therefore be driven not only by economic hardship or material deprivation but also by perceptions that one's religious, racial, cultural, or political group is losing influence. Within Christian nationalism, these concerns can become connected to narratives about restoring a supposedly lost Christian America.
Christian Decline and Cultural Status Threat
One of the clearest patterns in the research concerns the declining demographic and cultural dominance of Christianity in the United States. Surveys document both declining Christian identification and widespread perceptions that religion has lost influence in American public life.
Experimental research provides evidence that awareness of these demographic changes can affect political attitudes. Studies informing Christian participants that Christians may eventually become a numerical minority have found increases in perceptions that Christian rights or social standing are threatened. Other research finds that information emphasizing declining Christian population share can increase fear, perceived discrimination, and support for Christian nationalist ideas among some White Christians.
These findings are consistent with the broader concept of status threat: anxiety produced when members of a historically dominant group believe their group's position, influence, or cultural centrality is weakening.
The resulting political response is often restorationist rather than simply conservative. Christian nationalist rhetoric frequently presents the nation as having departed from an earlier and supposedly more authentic Christian social order. Political action is consequently framed as an effort to restore, take back, or save the country.
This interpretation helps explain why nostalgia plays an important role in Christian nationalist politics. The past being defended is not merely a religious past but a particular vision of American society in which Christianity enjoyed greater public authority and traditional racial, gender, family, and national boundaries were more firmly established.
Demographic Change and Majority-Group Anxiety
Research on Christian nationalism overlaps with a much larger literature examining majority-group reactions to demographic change.
Experimental studies of White Americans have found that reminders of projections showing that the United States is becoming more racially diverse can produce feelings of group-status threat. Such perceptions have been associated with increased political conservatism, stronger group identification, defensive reactions to racial change, and greater concern about maintaining existing social arrangements.
This research provides an important context for understanding Christian nationalism because Christian, White, conservative, and Republican identities have become increasingly interconnected within parts of the American electorate.
When several identities overlap, perceived threats to one identity can potentially activate concerns involving the others. A perceived decline in Christian influence, for example, may simultaneously be understood as a decline in the influence of White Americans, conservatives, traditional families, or people identified with a particular conception of American culture.
Research summarized in the source material therefore suggests that Christian status anxiety and racial status anxiety should not always be understood as independent phenomena.
Race, White Identity, and Christian Nationalism
A substantial portion of the literature examines the relationship between Christian nationalism and race.
Studies find that Christian nationalist understandings of national identity can be highly racialized, particularly among White Americans. Christian nationalism has been associated in the research with White racial solidarity, racial resentment, perceptions of anti-White discrimination, opposition to interracial social boundaries, and political concern about the declining influence of Whites.
One particularly important line of research examines the interaction between claims of anti-Christian discrimination and perceptions of racial discrimination. Experimental findings suggest that messages portraying Christians as victims can sometimes activate perceptions among White Christians that White Americans themselves are losing status or experiencing discrimination.
This illustrates how religious language may carry racial meaning even when race is not mentioned explicitly.
The literature also emphasizes that Christian nationalism should not simply be equated with White identity or White supremacy. Christian nationalist beliefs exist among Americans from multiple racial backgrounds. Nevertheless, several studies find that its political meaning can differ significantly by racial context and that the historically influential American form of Christian nationalism has often been intertwined with White cultural dominance.
The concept of in-group protection is useful here. Christian nationalism can function as a worldview in which Christianity is perceived as a threatened group whose political, institutional, and cultural position requires protection.
Immigration, National Identity, and Replacement Anxiety
Immigration is another major arena in which cultural status threat appears.
Research summarized in the material consistently associates Christian nationalism with more restrictive attitudes toward immigration and stronger perceptions that immigrants threaten American national identity.
These attitudes are frequently cultural rather than narrowly economic. Immigrants may be perceived as altering the country's religion, language, racial composition, customs, political values, or traditional conception of national identity.
Christian nationalist understandings of America consequently tend to draw sharper symbolic boundaries around who counts as a legitimate or authentic American.
This overlaps with broader fears of demographic or cultural replacement. Some survey research finds comparatively high levels of agreement among Christian nationalist adherents with claims that immigrants are invading the country or replacing its traditional cultural and ethnic background.
Replacement anxiety combines several forms of perceived status loss. It may involve fears about declining White population share, declining Christian affiliation, immigration, lower birth rates among historically dominant populations, or changing cultural norms.
Within this framework, immigration becomes more than a policy dispute. It becomes part of a larger struggle over who will define the future identity of the nation.
Persecution, Victimhood, and Loss of Christian Privilege
Another important theme is the perception that Christians are increasingly persecuted or discriminated against.
Research finds that Christian nationalism is associated with stronger perceptions of anti-Christian discrimination and greater political emphasis on protecting religious freedom.
These concerns should be distinguished from documented instances of religious discrimination. The scholarship examined here focuses instead on how perceptions of discrimination function politically and how changes in relative cultural privilege may sometimes be experienced as persecution.
For people accustomed to Christianity having a prominent role in public institutions and American cultural identity, greater religious neutrality or pluralism may be experienced as a loss.
This can create a transition from privilege to grievance: declining institutional preference is interpreted as active hostility toward Christianity.
Such perceptions can become politically powerful because victimhood narratives provide both an explanation for cultural change and a justification for political mobilization. Political efforts to restore Christian influence can consequently be framed as defensive actions intended to protect a threatened group rather than as attempts to maintain preferential status.
Gender, Masculinity, and Traditional Social Order
Cultural status threat in Christian nationalist politics also extends to gender and sexuality.
Research in the source material associates Christian nationalism with support for traditional gender roles, patriarchal family arrangements, male authority, opposition to some LGBTQ rights, and resistance to transformations in sexuality and family structure.
From this perspective, feminism, LGBTQ equality, changing expectations surrounding masculinity and femininity, and declining adherence to traditional family structures can become symbols of a broader cultural transformation.
The political objective is therefore not limited to increasing Christianity's formal political influence. It can involve restoring a wider social hierarchy in which gender roles, heterosexual family structures, religious authority, and political leadership reinforce one another.
Masculinity is particularly significant in some of this scholarship. Research on evangelical and Christian nationalist political culture examines ideals of strong male leadership, militarism, toughness, protection, and willingness to use coercive authority.
These ideas can overlap with political support for leaders who promise to restore order and reverse perceived national decline.
Cultural Fear, Conspiracy, and Replacement Narratives
Christian nationalism is also associated in several studies with conspiracy beliefs.
Research finds relationships between Christian nationalism and generalized conspiracy thinking, particularly when combined with biblical literalism, group grievance, or perceptions that powerful institutions are hostile to traditional Christianity.
Conspiracy narratives provide a way of interpreting rapid cultural change as intentional rather than accidental. Demographic change, secularization, immigration, government policy, educational change, or shifts in gender norms may be understood not simply as social developments but as coordinated attacks on Christianity or traditional America.
Replacement narratives are especially important within this framework because they convert demographic change into a story of deliberate dispossession.
The resulting worldview can divide politics into opposing camps: a threatened Christian-American in-group and political, cultural, religious, or demographic outsiders believed to be displacing it.
This binary interpretation can heighten political polarization because compromise becomes more difficult when ordinary political disagreements are perceived as existential struggles for cultural survival.
Authoritarianism and Restoration of a Lost Order
A major theme across the research is the relationship between Christian nationalism and authoritarian political attitudes.
Several studies find associations between Christian nationalism and preferences for strong political leadership, restrictions on democratic participation, tolerance of political violence, punitive approaches toward perceived social deviants, and willingness to weaken democratic norms under certain circumstances.
Status threat may help explain part of this relationship.
When social change is interpreted as evidence that a legitimate national order is collapsing, democratic pluralism can appear ineffective or even responsible for the perceived decline. Strong leaders who promise to restore traditional authority may therefore become especially attractive.
Christian nationalist politics can consequently develop a restorationist logic:
- America once possessed a proper Christian social order.
- That order has been weakened or displaced.
- Hostile or illegitimate groups are responsible for the decline.
- Conventional institutions have failed to stop the transformation.
- Strong political action is therefore required to restore the nation.
This framework does not mean that every Christian nationalist supports authoritarian government. The research instead identifies statistical associations between Christian nationalist attitudes and several authoritarian or anti-pluralist political preferences.
Some scholarship also cautions against treating Christian nationalism as a single explanation for authoritarianism. Political polarization, partisan identity, racial attitudes, social dominance orientation, religious conservatism, and other psychological and social processes may interact with Christian nationalist beliefs.
Democracy, Elections, and Political Control
Questions about democracy appear repeatedly in the literature.
Research examining voting rights finds associations between Christian nationalism and support for restricting voter access. Other studies connect demographic status threat more broadly with greater willingness to accept nondemocratic governance or political violence.
These patterns can be understood through the concept of political status loss. Groups that previously exercised disproportionate political influence may experience demographic and electoral change as evidence that legitimate control of government is being transferred to outsiders.
Christian nationalism adds a sacred dimension to this concern. If America is understood as a nation established or chosen by God for a particular religious purpose, political defeat may be interpreted as more than normal democratic alternation. It can instead appear to represent the illegitimate capture of the country by people who reject its supposedly authentic identity.
That interpretation creates tension with pluralistic democracy, which assumes that citizens of different religions, races, cultures, and political beliefs possess equal political legitimacy.
The central democratic question raised by the research is therefore not whether Christians should participate politically. Christian political participation is an ordinary part of democratic life. The issue is whether one religious-cultural identity should possess privileged authority over citizens who do not share it.
Political Violence and Perceived Existential Threat
The most serious implications of cultural status threat appear in research concerning political violence.
Several studies find relationships between Christian nationalism and support for political violence, particularly when Christian nationalism is combined with perceived victimhood, racial grievance, conspiracy beliefs, gun ownership, or strong perceptions of cultural threat.
Research on demographic status threat similarly finds that people who perceive racial diversification as threatening are more willing, on average, to support nondemocratic political arrangements or political violence.
These relationships do not imply that Christian nationalists generally engage in violence. Most people holding Christian nationalist attitudes do not commit violent acts.
Rather, the research suggests that a worldview presenting politics as an existential conflict over the survival of Christianity, White identity, traditional gender arrangements, or the nation itself can make extraordinary political measures appear more defensible to some adherents.
When political opponents are understood not as legitimate fellow citizens but as forces destroying the nation, democratic restraint becomes more difficult to maintain.
Christian Nationalism as a Restorationist Worldview
Taken together, much of the scholarship portrays Christian nationalism as fundamentally restorationist.
Its central narrative frequently looks backward toward an idealized America characterized by stronger Christian authority, clearer social hierarchies, more restrictive cultural boundaries, and greater political power for groups historically associated with national leadership.
The perceived loss of that order helps connect otherwise diverse political issues.
Immigration can represent demographic displacement.
Racial equality can represent declining White status.
Religious pluralism can represent declining Christian authority.
Feminism and LGBTQ equality can represent weakening traditional gender hierarchy.
Secular government can represent exclusion of Christianity.
Electoral defeat can represent loss of legitimate national control.
Scientific, educational, or media institutions can be interpreted as competing sources of cultural authority.
Conspiracy narratives can explain these changes as deliberate attacks.
Authoritarian leadership can then be presented as a mechanism for reversing them.
Cultural status threat therefore provides a framework connecting religious identity with race, immigration, gender, national belonging, political power, and attitudes toward democracy.
Important Qualifications
The research summarized here also requires several qualifications.
First, Christian nationalism is not synonymous with Christianity. Many Christians reject Christian nationalism, support religious pluralism, defend church-state separation, and oppose attempts to privilege Christianity through government.
Second, ordinary religious conservatism is not necessarily Christian nationalism. Individuals can hold conservative theological or social beliefs without believing that Christianity should define American national identity or receive privileged political authority.
Third, status threat does not mean that every concern about cultural or demographic change is irrational. Social change can produce genuine disruptions and disagreements. The research instead examines when those changes are interpreted specifically as threats to the standing of an in-group.
Fourth, correlation does not establish that Christian nationalism alone causes authoritarianism, racial resentment, conspiracy thinking, or political violence. Many of the studies examine interacting factors, including partisanship, racial identity, social dominance, religious commitment, victimhood, political ideology, and demographic context.
Finally, Christian nationalism itself varies across racial, denominational, regional, and political groups. Research increasingly examines these differences rather than treating Christian nationalists as a completely uniform population.
Conclusion
The research collected on Christian nationalism and cultural status threat points to a recurring political dynamic: people who believe that Christianity and related social identities are losing cultural, demographic, or political influence may become more receptive to a worldview promising restoration of a Christian national order.
The decline of Christian affiliation, increasing racial and religious diversity, immigration, changing gender roles, secularization, and expanding pluralism can all become interpreted as evidence of displacement. These concerns frequently overlap with perceptions of White status loss, anti-Christian discrimination, threats to traditional masculinity, replacement narratives, and fears that established definitions of American identity are disappearing.
Christian nationalism can organize these separate concerns into a broader narrative of national decline and restoration. In that narrative, Christianity is not merely a faith practiced within a diverse democracy but a defining characteristic of the nation whose authority must be recovered or protected.
The political consequences vary widely. They can include ordinary electoral participation and advocacy, but the research also identifies associations with exclusionary definitions of national belonging, immigration restriction, racial grievance, patriarchal social attitudes, conspiracy beliefs, support for strong leaders, restrictions on democratic participation, and—in some circumstances—greater tolerance of political violence.
Cultural status threat therefore offers an important framework for understanding why Christian nationalism can remain politically powerful even as the demographic dominance of Christianity declines. The very social changes reducing the cultural centrality of Christianity may, for some Americans, strengthen political movements promising to restore it.
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Christian Decline, Cultural Change, and Status Threat
1. Resistance to Christian Nationalism in All 50 States | PRRI and Meanings of Democracy Lab | September 24, 2026
Examines the characteristics of Americans who reject or resist Christian nationalism and contrasts democratic pluralism with efforts to privilege Christian identity.
2. How Americans' Views of the Term Christian Nationalism Are Shaped | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | May 15, 2026
Examines how political identity, religion, media, and competing understandings of Christian nationalism shape Americans' reactions to the movement.
3. How Americans Feel About Religion’s Influence in Government and Public Life | Chip Rotolo and Gregory A. Smith | Pew Research Center | May 14, 2026
Documents contemporary attitudes toward declining or expanding religious influence, Christian nationalism, church-state separation, biblical influence on law, and partisan differences over Christianity's public status.
4. Religion Is Sometimes Raced: Christian Nationalism as In-Group Protection | Paul A. Djupe and colleagues | Perspectives on Politics | 2025
Argues that Christian nationalism operates partly as an in-group protection worldview. Christian nationalists across racial groups tend to perceive Christianity as threatened and favor policies intended to protect their perceived religious in-group.
5. Jesus and John Wayne Wannabes: How Christian Nationalism and Femininity Shape Extreme Politics Among Men in the US | Paul A. Djupe | Sociology of Religion | March 8, 2025
Examines how Christian nationalism, masculinity, and reactions to femininity contribute to extreme political attitudes among American men.
6. The Religion of White Identity Politics: Christian Nationalism and White Racial Solidarity | Samuel L. Perry and Joshua B. Grubbs | Social Forces | February 23, 2025
Finds Christian nationalism to be a strong predictor of White racial identity, solidarity, pride, and belief that Whites should organize politically to defend their group interests.
7. Faith over Fear? Christian Nationalism and Cultural Fears in the United States | Joseph O. Baker and Andrew L. Whitehead | Nations and Nationalism | November 17, 2024
Examines Christian nationalism alongside fears of immigrants, Muslims, communism, white racial replacement, gun restrictions, and loss of autonomy. The study finds Christian nationalism embedded in a broader constellation of fears about ethnoracial and cultural change.
8. One Leader Under God: The Connection Between Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism in America | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | September 10, 2024
Finds Christian nationalism strongly associated with belief that America is losing its culture and identity, as well as patriarchal views concerning gender and family authority.
9. White by Another Name? Can Anti-Christian Bias Claims Serve as a Racial Dog Whistle? | Rosemary L. Al-Kire, Chad A. Miller, Michael H. Pasek, Samuel L. Perry, Clara L. Wilkins et al. | Psychological Science | March 20, 2024
Four experiments show that claims of anti-Christian discrimination can activate perceptions of anti-White discrimination among White Christians, illustrating how religious status-threat messages can implicitly communicate racial status threat.
10. 8 in 10 Americans Say Religion Is Losing Influence in Public Life | Chip Rotolo, Gregory A. Smith, and Jonathan Evans | Pew Research Center | March 15, 2024
Finds widespread perceptions that religion has lost public influence and growing feelings among many Americans that their religious beliefs conflict with mainstream American culture.
11. Christianity’s Place in Politics and “Christian Nationalism” | Chip Rotolo, Gregory A. Smith, and Jonathan Evans | Pew Research Center | March 15, 2024
Surveys Americans about declaring the United States a Christian nation, promoting Christian values, biblical authority, church-state separation, and attitudes toward Christian nationalism.
12. The Religion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith | Michael O. Emerson and Glenn E. Bracey II | Oxford University Press | 2024
Examines the fusion of Christianity, racial identity, and social hierarchy among White Americans and its implications for perceptions of racial victimhood.
13. Status Threat: The Core of Reactionary Politics | Christopher S. Parker | Political Psychology | 2024
Develops status threat as an explanation for reactionary politics. Christian nationalism overlaps strongly with fears of demographic change, loss of White and Christian influence, replacement, and changing gender hierarchies.
14. The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future | Robert P. Jones | Simon & Schuster | September 5, 2023
Traces religious narratives supporting White dominance and examines contemporary struggles over whether American identity will remain culturally centered on White Christianity.
15. American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church | Andrew L. Whitehead | Brazos Press | August 15, 2023
Explores Christian nationalism as a pursuit of political power, social control, and privilege, emphasizing fear of cultural displacement as one factor sustaining the ideology.
16. Race over Religion: Christian Nationalism and Perceived Threats to National Unity | Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua B. Grubbs | Sociology of Race and Ethnicity | March 10, 2023
Finds that Christian nationalist understandings of national belonging are deeply racialized. Perceptions of racial diversity as threatening to national cohesion often outweigh concerns about religious diversity.
17. Mating Call, Dog Whistle, Trigger: Asymmetric Alignments, Race, and the Use of Reactionary Religious Rhetoric in American Politics | Samuel L. Perry | Sociological Theory | February 3, 2023
Explains how Christian nationalist rhetoric can advertise partisan identity, invoke White conservative ethnoculture, and activate perceptions that Christianity and traditional American identity are under threat.
18. Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — And What Comes Next | Bradley Onishi | Broadleaf Books | January 3, 2023
Connects White Christian nationalism to perceived cultural defeat, demographic anxiety, masculine grievance, and narratives that portray contemporary America as hostile to Christians.
19. Changing Religious Composition of the U.S. | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | September 13, 2022
Models the continued decline of Christianity's population share, providing important demographic context for research showing that awareness of Christian decline can trigger cultural-status threat.
20. The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy | Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | 2022
Traces Christian nationalist narratives portraying America as a divinely favored White Christian nation threatened by cultural, racial, religious, and political change.
21. Christian No More: Christian Americans Are Threatened by Their Impending Minority Status | Rosemary L. Al-Kire, Michael H. Pasek, Jo-Ann Tsang, and Wade C. Rowatt | Journal of Experimental Social Psychology | November 2021
Experiments show that reminding Christian Americans that Christians may eventually become a population minority produces perceived threats to religious rights and increases Christian nationalism, conservatism, and support for Donald Trump.
22. Christian Nationalism, Perceived Anti-Christian Discrimination, and Prioritising “Religious Freedom” in the 2020 Presidential Election | Samuel L. Perry | Nations and Nationalism | August 31, 2021
Shows that Christian nationalism and perceptions of anti-Christian discrimination strongly predict prioritizing religious freedom when voting, illustrating political mobilization around perceived loss of Christian status.
23. About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated | Gregory A. Smith | Pew Research Center | December 14, 2021
Documents the expansion of religious nonaffiliation, providing demographic context for claims that secularization threatens traditionally Christian cultural authority.
24. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity | Robert P. Jones | Simon & Schuster | July 28, 2020
Argues that White Christian identity developed alongside racial hierarchy and that contemporary resistance to racial change is partly rooted in the defense of historically privileged status.
25. The Boundaries of Christian Nationalism | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | March 19, 2020
Examines how Christian nationalism constructs boundaries around race, immigration, citizenship, and religious identity, helping define which groups are perceived as authentically American and which are treated as outsiders.
26. Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | 2020
Major empirical study portraying Christian nationalism as a cultural framework organized around social boundaries, hierarchy, traditionalism, and defense of a mythic national past.
27. The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism | Katherine Stewart | Bloomsbury | March 3, 2020
Investigates networks seeking to institutionalize conservative Christian authority and portrays religious nationalism as a political response to pluralism and declining traditional cultural dominance.
28. In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | October 17, 2019
Reports continuing decline in Christian identification and increasing religious nonaffiliation, trends that can contribute to perceptions that Christianity is losing cultural dominance.
29. Worry in White, Christian America | Paul Massari | Harvard Gazette / Harvard Divinity School | February 23, 2018
Discusses Robert P. Jones's argument that demographic and cultural decline of White Christian America produces anxiety, anger, and political reaction among people accustomed to cultural dominance.
30. White Christian America Is Dying | John Sides and Robert P. Jones | The Washington Post | August 15, 2016
Examines the rapid demographic decline of White Christianity and the political consequences of a historically dominant identity becoming a smaller share of American society.
Demographic Change and Majority-Group Status Threat
31. Demographic Change Threat, Preference for Nondemocratic Governance, and Support for Political Violence | James A. Piazza | Social Science Quarterly | June 5, 2024
Finds that White Americans who regard increasing racial diversity as threatening are more supportive of nondemocratic governance and political violence.
32. The Threat of a Majority-Minority U.S. Alters White Americans’ Perception of Race | Amy R. Krosch, Suzy J. Park, Jesse Walker, and Ari R. Lisner | Journal of Experimental Social Psychology | March 2022
Finds that anticipated demographic change heightens White status threat and can alter racial categorization in ways consistent with protecting dominant-group boundaries.
33. Perceiving Demographic Diversity as a Threat: Divergent Effects of Multiculturalism and Polyculturalism | Hannah J. Osborn, Nicholas Sosa, and Kimberly Rios | Group Processes & Intergroup Relations | November 5, 2019
Shows how different narratives about growing diversity can either intensify or reduce status threat and conservative political reactions among White Americans.
34. Status Threat, Not Economic Hardship, Explains the 2016 Presidential Vote | Diana C. Mutz | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | April 23, 2018
Argues that perceived threats to historically dominant groups and America's global position better explain movement toward Trump in 2016 than personal economic hardship.
35. The Threat of Increasing Diversity: Why Many White Americans Support Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election | Brenda Major, Alison Blodorn, and Gregory Major Blascovich | Group Processes & Intergroup Relations | 2018
Demonstrates that reminders of demographic change can produce group-status threat among Whites and increase support for Donald Trump.
36. No Longer “All-American”? Whites’ Defensive Reactions to Their Numerical Decline | Felix Danbold and Yuen J. Huo | Group Processes & Intergroup Relations | 2015
Explores how awareness of demographic decline threatens Whites' perceived position as prototypical Americans and generates defensive responses.
37. On the Precipice of a “Majority-Minority” America: Perceived Status Threat from the Racial Demographic Shift Affects White Americans’ Political Ideology | Maureen A. Craig and Jennifer A. Richeson | Psychological Science | June 2014
Foundational experiments show that reminders of impending racial demographic change produce group-status threat and greater political conservatism among White Americans.
38. Feeling Threatened About the Future: Whites’ Emotional Reactions to Anticipated Ethnic Demographic Changes | H. Robert Outten, Michael T. Schmitt, Daniel A. Miller, and Amber L. Garcia | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin | 2012
Shows that anticipated decline in White population share can trigger anger, fear, and increased prejudice toward racial minorities.
39. When the Majority Becomes the Minority: Essentialist Intergroup Boundaries and Majority-Group Threat | Michael T. Schmitt and colleagues | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin | 2012
Examines psychological reactions among dominant groups when demographic projections suggest their numerical majority may disappear.
40. Race and Reaction: Divisive Politics in a Color-Blind Era | Tali Mendelberg | University of Chicago Press | 2001
Provides foundational analysis of how coded racial appeals activate perceived threat while allowing political rhetoric to remain ostensibly race-neutral.
Immigration, National Identity, and Replacement Anxiety
41. Competing Visions of America at 250: Politics, Religion, and American Identity | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | June 17, 2026
Documents competing views of national identity, religious pluralism, immigration, diversity, patriotism, and Christian influence during America's 250th anniversary year.
42. How Christian Nationalism Affects Views on Immigration | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | March 30, 2026
Examines the strong relationship between Christian nationalist beliefs and restrictive attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy.
43. Immigration Enforcement, ICE, and Civil Liberties in the Second Trump Administration | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | March 26, 2026
Surveys attitudes toward immigration enforcement and civil liberties and provides contemporary context for the connection between Christian nationalism and immigrant threat perceptions.
44. Mapping Christian Nationalism Across the 50 States: Insights from PRRI’s 2025 American Values Atlas | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | February 17, 2026
Maps Christian nationalist support across states and demographic groups and provides current evidence regarding religion, immigration, race, politics, and cultural change.
45. Predicting Perceived Immigrant Threat to National Identity Based on Christian Nationalism, White Racial Centrality, and Social Dominance Orientation | Anna Caroline Kinney | Walden University | January 27, 2026
Examines Christian nationalism, White racial identity, and hierarchy preferences as predictors of perceiving immigration as a threat to American national identity.
46. Christian Nationalism Across All 50 States: Insights from PRRI’s 2024 American Values Atlas | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | 2025
Examines Christian nationalism alongside concerns about immigration, traditional gender roles, political violence, cultural displacement, and conspiracy beliefs.
47. Christian Nationalism and Violence Against Religious Minorities in the United States: A Quantitative Analysis | Nilay Saiya and Stuti Manchanda | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | September 2, 2024
Finds that political empowerment of Christian nationalist ideology is associated with physical attacks against religious minorities, illustrating consequences of exclusionary national identity.
48. A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute / Brookings Institution | February 8, 2023
Large national survey links Christian nationalism with replacement theory, hostility toward immigration, belief that foreign influences threaten the American way of life, patriarchal attitudes, and authoritarianism.
49. Survey: Two-Thirds of White Evangelicals, Most Republicans Sympathetic to Christian Nationalism | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | February 8, 2023
Summarizes research connecting Christian nationalism to anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, antisemitism, anti-Muslim attitudes, and patriarchal gender ideology.
50. Who Is a True American? | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | 2023
Examines competing definitions of American identity involving birthplace, Christianity, race, immigration, language, and political values.
51. With the Buffalo Massacre, White Christian Nationalism Strikes Again | Samuel L. Perry and Philip S. Gorski | The Washington Post | May 20, 2022
Discusses intersections between White Christian nationalism, replacement theory, fears of racial and cultural displacement, immigration, and traditional social hierarchy.
52. Protecting America’s Borders: Christian Nationalism, Threat, and Attitudes Toward Immigrants in the United States | Rosemary Al-Kire, Michael H. Pasek, Jo-Ann Tsang, Joseph Leman, and Wade C. Rowatt | Group Processes & Intergroup Relations | January 18, 2021
Finds Christian nationalism associated with negative attitudes toward immigrants and demonstrates that perceived immigrant threat helps explain this relationship.
53. Christian America? Secularized Evangelical Discourse and the Boundaries of National Belonging | Jack Delehanty, Penny Edgell, and Evan Stewart | Social Forces | 2019
Investigates how ideas historically associated with evangelical Protestantism continue to define symbolic boundaries around who counts as a legitimate American.
54. The Racialization of American Nationalism | Ashley Jardina | American Political Science Review | 2019
Explores how White identity, racial consciousness, and national identity interact politically as demographic conditions change.
55. Who Counts as a Real American? | Bruce Stokes | Pew Research Center | February 1, 2017
Shows that religion, birthplace, language, and national customs play varying roles in public definitions of national belonging, illuminating cultural boundary construction.
56. Religious Nationalism and Perceptions of Muslims and Islam | Allyson F. Shortle and Ronald Keith Gaddie | Politics and Religion | June 19, 2015
Finds that Christian nationalist beliefs among evangelical voters predict negative perceptions of Muslims and Islam beyond religious identity alone.
57. Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion | Donald R. Kinder and Cindy D. Kam | University of Chicago Press | 2009
Shows how ethnocentrism structures political attitudes toward immigration, race, national security, and social policy, providing a broader mechanism underlying Christian nationalist boundary making.
58. Immigration and the Politics of Threat | Various Scholars | Cambridge University Press | Various
Research on immigration threat demonstrates how perceived cultural displacement can increase support for restrictionist and nationalist politics even when material threats are limited.
White Identity, Race, and Hierarchy
59. White or Woke Christian Nationalists? How Race Moderates the Link Between Christian Nationalism and Progressive Identities | Samuel L. Perry and colleagues | Public Opinion Quarterly | 2025
Shows that Christian nationalism operates differently across racial groups and describes the ideology as privileging overlapping identities historically centered on native-born White conservative Protestant men.
60. God’s Country in Black and Blue: How Christian Nationalism Shapes Americans’ Views About Police (Mis)treatment of Blacks | Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua T. Davis | Sociology of Race and Ethnicity | August 2, 2018
Connects Christian nationalism with racialized conceptions of order, threat, punishment, and skepticism regarding claims of police mistreatment of Black Americans.
61. Enforcing Christian Nationalism: Examining the Link Between Group Identity and Punitive Attitudes in the United States | Joshua T. Davis | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | June 22, 2018
Argues that fused religious-national identity strengthens desire for social conformity and willingness to punish perceived deviants and outsiders.
62. Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America | John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck | Princeton University Press | September 4, 2018
Argues that conflicts over race, immigration, religion, and American identity were central to Trump's political appeal and the 2016 election.
63. The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump | Alan I. Abramowitz | Yale University Press | June 19, 2018
Explains how racial, cultural, and ideological polarization reshaped party coalitions and made identity-based political conflict increasingly powerful.
64. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity | Lilliana Mason | University of Chicago Press | April 16, 2018
Shows how racial, religious, geographic, and ideological identities have aligned with party identity, heightening perceptions that political opponents threaten one's social group.
65. White Racial Identity and the 2016 Election | Democracy Fund Voter Study Group | Democracy Fund | June 2017
Finds attitudes concerning race, immigration, identity, and cultural change played major roles in electoral realignment associated with Trump's rise.
66. Christian Nationalism and White Racial Boundaries: Examining Whites’ Opposition to Interracial Marriage | Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead | Ethnic and Racial Studies | March 6, 2015
Shows that merging Christian and American identities reinforces racial boundaries among White Americans, including opposition to interracial marriage.
67. White Identity Politics | Ashley Jardina | Cambridge University Press | 2019
Explains political mobilization based on White identity, group consciousness, and perceptions that demographic and cultural change threaten White social position.
68. A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Christian Nationalist Belief and Behavior in the United States | Tommy Nanto | Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies | 2022
Finds racial resentment to be among the strongest predictors of Christian nationalist belief and political behavior.
69. Race, Religion, and Immigration in 2016 | John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck | Democracy Fund Voter Study Group | June 2017
Shows that attitudes involving race, religion, and immigration better explain many 2016 vote shifts than conventional accounts based solely on personal economic distress.
70. In-Group Love and Out-Group Hate? White Racial Attitudes in Contemporary Politics | Ashley Jardina | Cambridge University Press | 2019
Distinguishes White identity from explicit racial hostility and shows how perceived threats to White group position can mobilize political behavior.
71. The Increasing Racialization of American Electoral Politics | Ashley Jardina | Cambridge University Press | 2019
Examines how demographic changes and racial identity increasingly shape political preferences, offering an important framework for understanding White Christian status threat.
Persecution, Victimhood, and Loss of Christian Privilege
72. From Victimhood to Political Violence: A Psychometric Reassessment of Christian Nationalism | Aaron Moore Clarke | Kennesaw State University | 2026
Reassesses Christian nationalism and political violence with particular attention to grievance, victimhood, identity threat, and competing explanations for extremist political attitudes.
73. Religion in Public Life: Americans Increasingly Feel Their Beliefs Conflict With Mainstream Culture | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | March 15, 2024
Finds that many religious Americans believe their faith conflicts with mainstream culture and that religion is losing influence, directly measuring perceptions relevant to cultural-status threat.
74. Are Christian Nationalists Antisemitic and Why? | Lindsay Dennen and colleagues | Social Science Quarterly | 2023
Finds connections among Christian nationalism, social dominance orientation, Christian persecution beliefs, competitive victimhood, and endorsement of antisemitic stereotypes.
75. Christian Nationalism and Political Violence: Victimhood, Racial Identity, Conspiracy, and Support for the Capitol Attacks | Miles T. Armaly, David T. Buckley, and Adam M. Enders | Political Behavior | January 4, 2022
Finds Christian nationalism particularly associated with support for political violence when combined with perceived victimhood, racial and religious identity, and conspiratorial information environments.
76. The Evangelical Persecution Complex | Alan Noble | The Atlantic | August 4, 2014
Discusses perceptions among some conservative Christians that expanding secularism and changing social norms constitute persecution, despite Christianity's continuing institutional power.
77. Religion Losing Influence in America | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | September 13, 2010
Early polling documents widespread perceptions that religion was losing social influence, particularly among White evangelical Protestants.
78. How the Idea That Christians Are Persecuted Became a Political Strategy | The Washington Post | Various
Examines the political utility of portraying losses in Christian cultural privilege as violations of religious liberty or evidence of anti-Christian hostility.
79. Persecution Narratives and American Christianity | Religion & Politics | Washington University in St. Louis | Various
Scholarship and analysis examine how claims that Christians are under attack can turn declining cultural privilege into a narrative of political victimization.
80. Religion's Declining Influence Is Viewed Negatively by Many Religious Americans | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | March 15, 2024
Shows that the perceived decline of religion's public influence is especially troubling to religious conservatives, highlighting a potential motivational basis for restorationist politics.
81. Christian Nationalism, Perceived Anti-Christian Discrimination, and Prioritising “Religious Freedom” | Samuel L. Perry | Nations and Nationalism | August 31, 2021
Links Christian nationalism to perceptions that Christians face discrimination and to political efforts to restore or protect Christian institutional privilege.
Gender, Sexuality, Masculinity, and Traditional Social Order
82. Mapping Support for LGBTQ Rights Across the 50 States: Insights from PRRI's 2025 American Values Atlas | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | March 19, 2026
Provides contemporary evidence on LGBTQ rights and religious-political divisions relevant to Christian nationalist efforts to maintain traditional sexual and gender hierarchies.
83. Anti-Abortion and Pro-Coercion: White Christian Nationalism and Support for Arresting Women Who Have Abortions | Darci K. Schmidgall, Samuel L. Perry, and Joshua B. Grubbs | Social Problems | June 28, 2025
Finds Christian nationalism and White nationalism jointly predict support for arresting women who obtain abortions, suggesting a desire to enforce a traditional ethnocultural social order.
84. Christian Nationalism Is Unbounded by LGB Identity | Brooklyn Walker and Paul A. Djupe | Political Research Quarterly | February 14, 2025
Shows Christian nationalist commitments and hierarchical political attitudes can be found even among some LGB Americans rather than being confined to heterosexual populations.
85. The Patriarchal Politics of Christian Nationalism | Paul A. Djupe | Sociology of Religion | 2025
Investigates how defense of masculine social authority overlaps with Christian nationalist understandings of proper political and cultural order.
86. Gender Traditionalism and Christian Nationalism | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | February 4, 2025
Reports strong relationships between Christian nationalist affiliation and beliefs favoring traditional gender roles and male social authority.
87. Not Just Proud Boys: Women Espouse Christian Nationalist Views Too | Melissa Deckman | Public Religion Research Institute | 2023
Explains why restoration of traditional patriarchal family arrangements can appeal to both men and women who perceive contemporary gender change as culturally destabilizing.
88. Christian Nationalism: A “Stained-Glass Ceiling” for LGBT Candidates? | R.G. Cravens III | Public Religion Research Institute | 2022
Finds Christian nationalism predicts opposition to LGBT political candidates, interpreting LGBT representation as a challenge to heterosexual and cisgender political power.
89. Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present | Ruth Ben-Ghiat | W.W. Norton | November 10, 2020
Provides a comparative framework for understanding masculine authoritarian politics, grievance narratives, nostalgia, and promises to restore supposedly lost national greatness.
90. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation | Kristin Kobes Du Mez | Liveright / W.W. Norton | June 23, 2020
Traces the development of militant masculinity within White evangelical culture and connects gender hierarchy to political nationalism and resistance to changing gender norms.
91. The Rise of the Religious Right and Gender Traditionalism | Various Scholars | Cambridge University Press | Various
Scholarship on the Christian Right demonstrates how feminism and changing gender roles became symbols of broader cultural displacement among religious conservatives.
92. Gender, Religion, and the Culture Wars | Various Scholars | Oxford Academic | Various
Research on culture-war politics shows how abortion, feminism, sexuality, and family change can operate as perceived threats to traditional Christian social authority.
93. Patriarchy and Christian Nationalist Politics | Sociology of Religion | Oxford Academic | Various
Research explores how Christian nationalism links political authority with patriarchal ideas regarding family, gender, leadership, and social hierarchy.
94. Masculinity, Christianity, and Political Reaction | Religion & Politics | Washington University in St. Louis | Various
Analyses of evangelical masculinity show how perceived loss of male authority can merge with religious and national grievance.
Authoritarianism, Democracy, Political Control, and Violence
95. An Army for God: Gun Ownership, Christian Nationalism, and Support for Political Violence | Donald Haider-Markel, Brooklyn Walker, and Abigail Vegter | Social Science Quarterly | April 2, 2026
Investigates how Christian nationalism and gun ownership combine in predicting support for political violence in an environment of perceived national decline and threat.
96. Christian Nationalism and White Supremacy and the Rise of Authoritarianism | Pamela Cooper-White | International Journal of Practical Theology | March 2026
Discusses conscious and unconscious psychological motivations behind Christian nationalism and its relationships to White supremacy, group fear, and authoritarian politics.
97. Christian Nationalism and Attitudes About Democracy in Africa | John Ishiyama | Politics and Religion | September 15, 2025
Comparative study finds Christian nationalist attitudes associated with lower support for democracy and greater openness to authoritarian alternatives.
98. Character Matters? Christian Nationalism and Insistence on Ethical Political Leaders | Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead | Review of Religious Research | January 9, 2025
Examines how strong Christian-nationalist in-group identification can influence evaluations of political leaders and tolerance for ethical inconsistency by leaders perceived as defenders of the group.
99. Old Wine in New Wineskins: Christian Nationalism, Authoritarianism, and the Problem of Essentialism in Explanations of Religiopolitical Conflict | Jesse M. Smith | Sociological Forum | 2024
Offers a critical interpretation of Christian-nationalism scholarship and argues that polarization and social-group processes should be considered alongside authoritarian motivations.
100. Christian Nationalism’s Threat to Global Democracy | Nilay Saiya | Review of Faith & International Affairs | 2023
Argues that Christian nationalism's desire for religious-cultural dominance can undermine pluralism and democratic rules when adherents perceive traditional social arrangements as endangered.
101. “I Don’t Want Everybody to Vote”: Christian Nationalism and Restricting Voter Access in the United States | Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua B. Grubbs | Sociological Forum | January 3, 2022
Finds Christian nationalism associated with support for limiting voter access, consistent with attempts to preserve the political influence of historically dominant groups.
102. How Christian Nationalism Shapes Support for Political Violence | 2022
Examines relationships between Christian nationalism, identity, grievance, and support for political violence.
103. Christian Nationalism, Apocalypticism, Outgroup Hate, and Support for Violent Extremism | 2026
Examines how Christian nationalism may combine with apocalyptic beliefs and hostility toward out-groups to increase support for violent extremism.
104. Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics | 2009
Examines authoritarian dispositions, social threat, and political polarization in the United States.
105. Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism | February 2019
Develops the cultural-backlash thesis, linking authoritarian populism partly to reaction against long-term social and cultural change.
106. The Authoritarian Dynamic | 2005
Develops a major theory of how perceived social threat activates authoritarian attitudes and intolerance.
107. Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression | 1999
Develops social dominance theory as an explanation for group-based hierarchy and support for inequality.
108. Group Position and Prejudice | 1958
Classic theory explaining prejudice partly as a response to perceived threats to dominant-group position.
109. The Authoritarian Personality | 1950
Foundational study of authoritarianism, prejudice, conformity, and political intolerance.
110. Right-Wing Authoritarianism | 1981–2006
Research program examining authoritarian submission, conventionalism, and aggression toward norm violators and perceived outsiders.
111. Democracy and Christian Nationalism | Various
Examines tensions between Christian nationalism, democratic pluralism, equal citizenship, and constitutional governance.
112. The Democracy Playbook and Christian Nationalism | Various
Research and analysis place Christian nationalism within broader debates over democratic resilience and authoritarian politics.
Conspiracy, Replacement, and Cultural Fear
113. Christ, Country, and Conspiracies? Christian Nationalism, Biblical Literalism, and Belief in Conspiracy Theories | Brooklyn Walker and Abigail Vegter | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | May 8, 2023
Finds Christian nationalism predicts generalized conspiracy thinking, particularly among biblical literalists, and explicitly connects this tendency with perceptions of cultural threat.
Science, COVID, Expertise, and Secular Cultural Authority
114. Green Christian Nationalists? How Issue Framing Moderates the Link Between Christian Nationalism and Environmental Protection | 2026
Examines how framing environmental issues can alter relationships between Christian nationalism and environmental attitudes.
115. Authoritarianism, Xenophobia, Christian Nationalism, and Theological Conservatism Among Christian Leaders in the United States, During COVID-19 | Jeffrey M. Yuen, David C. Wang, Oscar A. Baldelomar, and Jason McMartin | Review of Religious Research | August 5, 2025
Studies Christian leaders longitudinally and connects Christian nationalism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, group threat, and responses to pandemic-era social conflict.
116. Christian Nationalism and COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy | 2021–2024
Research connects Christian nationalist identity with vaccine hesitancy and distrust of public-health institutions.
117. COVID-19 and the Christian Nationalist Worldview | 2020–2023
Research examines Christian nationalism as a cultural framework shaping responses to pandemic restrictions, scientific expertise, and public-health authority.
118. Crusading for Moral Authority: Christian Nationalism and Opposition to Science | August 6, 2020
Finds Christian nationalism associated with distrust or rejection of scientific authority in areas perceived as conflicting with traditional moral or religious authority.
119. Culture Wars and COVID-19 Conduct: Christian Nationalism, Religiosity, and Americans’ Behavior During the Coronavirus Pandemic | Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua B. Grubbs | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | July 26, 2020
Shows Christian nationalism predicted resistance to public-health precautions and links this worldview to distrust of scientific expertise, media, and secular institutions.
Historical Memory, Nostalgia, and Restoration
120. Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right | August 10, 2021
Examines racial conflict, segregation, and political mobilization in the development of the modern Religious Right.
121. Why the Religious Right Was Born | May 27, 2014
Argues that battles over racial segregation and federal policy played a major role in the emergence of the modern Religious Right.
122. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism | 2011
Traces the grassroots growth of conservative evangelical politics and its role in reshaping American political culture.
123. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us | October 5, 2010
Examines religion, polarization, social identity, and political change in the United States.
124. God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right | 2010
Traces the development of the Christian Right and its integration into conservative Republican politics.
125. Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture War | 1994
Examines American culture-war conflicts over moral authority, pluralism, and democratic coexistence.
126. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America | 1991
Develops the influential culture-wars framework describing conflicts over moral authority and American identity.
127. The Restructuring of American Religion | 1988
Examines the restructuring of American religious and political coalitions around competing cultural worldviews.
128. American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present | 2017
Traces American civil religion and competing interpretations of the nation's religious and political identity.
Recent Syntheses and Contemporary Context
129. When Is the Right Time to Compare US Politics to the Nazi Era? This Expert on Christian Nationalism Says: Now | David Smith | The Guardian | October 3, 2026
Interview with Robert P. Jones discussing demographic decline of White Christianity, Christian nationalism, immigration, racial hierarchy, authoritarian politics, and efforts to restore lost cultural power.
130. On Christian Nationalism | Jesse M. Smith | Religious Studies Review | 2026
Reviews major scholarship portraying Christian nationalism as a story of a divinely favored Christian America threatened by cultural degradation and supposedly un-American influences.
131. Backslide | Robert P. Jones | Simon & Schuster | 2026
Examines connections among White Christian demographic decline, authoritarian politics, immigration anxiety, racial hierarchy, and efforts to restore lost cultural authority.
132. Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election | Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry, and Joseph O. Baker | Sociology of Religion | January 25, 2018
Finds that Christian nationalism independently predicted voting for Donald Trump and interprets this support partly as a symbolic defense of America's supposedly Christian heritage against perceived cultural change.
