Christian Nationalism and White Supremacy
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Christian Nationalism and White Supremacy
Christian nationalism is a broad term describing beliefs that Christianity should have a privileged relationship with a nation's identity, institutions, laws, or public culture. In the United States, a substantial body of historical, sociological, political-science, religious-studies, and journalistic research has examined the relationship between Christian nationalism and ideas about race. A major theme in this literature is the development of what researchers often call White Christian nationalism: a form of national identity in which Christianity, American identity, and assumptions about White cultural or political dominance become intertwined.
The relationship between Christian nationalism and white supremacy is complex. Christian nationalism is not necessarily identical to organized white supremacy, and researchers disagree about when the term White Christian nationalism should be used. Some studies find strong associations between Christian nationalist beliefs, White racial solidarity, racial resentment, opposition to immigration, perceptions of White victimhood, and support for social hierarchies. Other research finds that Christian nationalist ideas are also held by some Black, Latino, Asian American, and other non-White Americans, and that the political implications of those beliefs can vary considerably by racial group and by issue.
The historical record nevertheless shows repeated instances in which Christian language, racial hierarchy, and claims about America's national destiny have overlapped. These relationships have appeared in debates over slavery, Indigenous dispossession, segregation, immigration, citizenship, voting, education, policing, demographic change, and definitions of who qualifies as a "true American."
Defining Christian Nationalism, White Christian Nationalism, and White Supremacy
Christian nationalism generally refers to a political or cultural ideology that connects national identity with Christianity and seeks to give Christianity a preferred place in public institutions or national life. Definitions differ among scholars, religious leaders, political activists, journalists, and people who identify with the term.
White Christian nationalism is used more specifically to describe situations in which Christian national identity becomes connected with White racial identity, White cultural dominance, or a historical understanding of the United States as fundamentally a White Christian nation.
White supremacy is a broader racial ideology asserting or maintaining the superiority, dominance, or privileged social position of White people. Organized white supremacist traditions in the United States have included movements such as the Ku Klux Klan, Christian Identity organizations, neo-Nazi groups, and other explicitly racial movements.
These categories overlap in some historical movements but should not automatically be treated as synonyms. A Christian nationalist may not consciously advocate white supremacy, while explicitly white supremacist movements may or may not emphasize Christianity. Researchers therefore examine beliefs, institutions, historical networks, political behavior, and racial attitudes rather than assuming that one label necessarily implies another.
Historical Roots
Connections among Christianity, race, and American nationalism long predate the modern term Christian nationalism. European colonization of North America frequently relied on religious ideas about providence, chosenness, civilization, and territorial possession. Colonial expansion brought Christian missionary activity into direct contact with Indigenous societies and sometimes supplied religious justification for conquest, forced assimilation, and displacement.
Ideas that European settlers were establishing a divinely favored society became part of later American national mythology. These narratives could coexist with slavery and racial hierarchy. Biblical interpretation was used both to defend slavery and to attack it, demonstrating that Christianity itself did not produce a single political position.
After the Civil War, religious arguments were similarly employed on competing sides of struggles over Reconstruction, segregation, voting rights, and racial equality. White Protestant institutions in many regions accommodated or defended segregation, while Black churches and interracial Christian movements played major roles in abolition, civil rights activism, and campaigns for racial justice.
The result was not a single continuous Christian nationalist organization but a recurring pattern in which religious concepts could be joined to competing definitions of American identity and social order.
Christian Identity and Organized White Supremacy
One of the clearest historical intersections between Christianity and organized white supremacy is the Christian Identity movement.
Christian Identity emerged partly from British-Israelism, a movement teaching that Anglo-Saxon peoples descended from the biblical Israelites. American variants increasingly developed explicitly racist interpretations during the twentieth century. Some Christian Identity adherents taught that White Europeans were God's true chosen people and constructed theological explanations for racial separation and antisemitism.
Christian Identity became influential within portions of the organized American white supremacist movement and was associated with extremist organizations and individuals. Its history demonstrates that explicitly Christian forms of white supremacist ideology have existed in the United States.
Christian Identity, however, represents a much more explicit racial theology than the beliefs measured in most contemporary Christian-nationalism surveys. Scholars generally distinguish such organized racial doctrines from broader public attitudes about whether the United States should be considered a Christian nation.
White Identity and Racial Solidarity
Contemporary sociological research has increasingly examined whether Christian nationalist beliefs function differently among White Americans than among other racial groups.
Several studies find that Christian nationalism among White respondents is associated with stronger White racial identification or solidarity. Researchers have proposed that references to a Christian America can sometimes operate as indirectly racialized language because American Christianity has historically been imagined by many people through a predominantly White Protestant cultural framework.
Research has also connected Christian nationalism among some White respondents with beliefs about discrimination against White people, concerns about declining White or Christian cultural influence, and perceptions that traditional social hierarchies are under threat.
These findings do not establish that every person expressing Christian nationalist views consciously holds white supremacist beliefs. Instead, the research suggests that religious, racial, and national identities can become mutually reinforcing for portions of the population.
Race and Different Forms of Christian Nationalism
Christian nationalism is not limited to White Americans.
Survey research finds Christian nationalist beliefs among Black, Hispanic, Latino, Asian American, and other populations. Studies comparing racial groups have consequently challenged the assumption that all Christian nationalism should automatically be described as White Christian nationalism.
The effects of Christian nationalist beliefs can also differ across groups. Some research finds relatively similar relationships across racial groups on issues that are not strongly racialized, while substantial differences emerge on questions involving policing, immigration, racial discrimination, gun policy, or racial group interests.
This has led some scholars to describe Christian nationalism as a form of religious-national in-group protection rather than an exclusively White phenomenon. Others argue that the American historical meaning of "Christian nation" remains deeply shaped by White Protestant dominance even when people from different racial backgrounds adopt the language.
These perspectives represent an important continuing debate within the scholarship.
Slavery, Segregation, and the Religious Right
Studies of White Christian nationalism frequently examine its relationship to the history of slavery and segregation.
Pro-slavery Christians developed extensive biblical defenses of slavery before the Civil War. After emancipation, Christian institutions were often racially segregated, and religious arguments were sometimes used to defend Jim Crow laws and opposition to racial integration.
The twentieth-century emergence of the modern Christian Right also intersects with disputes about race. Historians have examined conflicts surrounding desegregation, private Christian schools, Bob Jones University, federal tax policy, abortion, feminism, sexuality, and changing cultural authority.
Scholars disagree over the relative importance of these issues in producing the religious conservative political movement. Some emphasize resistance to desegregation as an important catalyst. Others point to abortion, secularization, changing sexual norms, Supreme Court decisions, and broader conflicts over religious freedom and government authority.
The history therefore contains both racial and nonracial sources of conservative Christian political mobilization.
Immigration, Demographic Change, and National Belonging
Immigration is another major area in which Christian nationalism and racial identity intersect.
Studies have associated stronger Christian nationalist beliefs with more restrictive attitudes toward immigration, particularly when immigrants are perceived as culturally, racially, or religiously different from a traditional image of American society.
Mexican and Latino immigration has received particular attention in this research. Scholars have examined how religious identity, national identity, ethnicity, and assumptions about assimilation combine in attitudes toward undocumented immigrants and immigration enforcement.
More recent research also considers fears of demographic replacement. Some Christian nationalist narratives describe declining White or Christian population shares as evidence that a traditional America is being displaced. Researchers connect these beliefs with broader replacement theories that portray demographic change as an intentional or threatening transformation of the country.
Such arguments exist on a continuum. Concern about immigration or cultural change does not itself establish commitment to white supremacy, but explicitly racial replacement theories have also been central to modern white nationalist movements.
Confederate Symbols and Historical Memory
Confederate monuments and symbols provide another intersection among race, religion, nationalism, and historical memory.
Research has examined similarities between public displays of Confederate imagery and Christian monuments, particularly when both are presented as representations of traditional American identity.
Survey studies find relationships between Christian nationalism and attitudes toward Confederate memorials. Supporters may understand such monuments as heritage, regional identity, religious tradition, or resistance to changing interpretations of American history. Critics view many of the monuments as celebrations of slavery, segregation, and White political power.
These controversies demonstrate how disputes over Christian nationalism often involve competing interpretations of American history rather than only disagreements about contemporary religion.
Education and Historical Narratives
Education has become an important arena for debates over White Christian nationalism.
Researchers have studied Christian nationalist participation in school-board elections, curriculum disputes, library-book challenges, religious education, homeschooling, and debates about teaching race, sexuality, colonialism, and American history.
Some scholarship argues that campaigns opposing discussions of structural racism or minority histories can reproduce White Christian nationalist understandings of the country. Research has also examined the use of biblical language, persecution narratives, parental-rights arguments, and claims that Christianity is being excluded from public education.
Critics of the White Christian nationalism framework respond that opposition to particular curricula does not necessarily indicate racial nationalism and caution against applying the term so broadly that ordinary religious conservatism becomes indistinguishable from extremist ideology.
Education therefore illustrates the larger dispute over both the political influence of Christian nationalism and the proper boundaries of the concept.
Policing, Voting, and Racial Inequality
Research has identified relationships between Christian nationalist attitudes and opinions about policing, voting laws, government spending, racial inequality, and discrimination.
Some studies report that White respondents with stronger Christian nationalist beliefs are more likely to minimize claims of systemic anti-Black discrimination, perceive greater discrimination against White Americans, or support policies that critics argue disproportionately disadvantage racial minorities.
Research on policing has similarly found racial differences in how Christian nationalism relates to support for law enforcement and interpretations of racial disparities in police encounters.
Voting policy is another area of study. Some researchers find associations between Christian nationalism and support for restrictions on voting access, particularly among White respondents.
These findings describe statistical relationships within surveyed populations. They do not mean that every supporter of the relevant policies is motivated by Christian nationalism or racial prejudice.
January 6 and Political Extremism
The January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol generated extensive research and public discussion about Christian nationalism.
Christian symbols, prayers, crosses, flags, and biblical language appeared among participants. White supremacist, militia, conspiracy-oriented, and far-right symbols were also present. Scholars have studied how these different ideological currents interacted before and during the attack.
Researchers examining January 6 generally distinguish Christian nationalism from Christianity as a religion. Millions of American Christians rejected both the attack and efforts to use Christianity to justify political violence.
The event nevertheless demonstrated how Christian nationalist symbolism could coexist with conspiracy theories, election denial, militia politics, white nationalism, and anti-government extremism within parts of a broader political mobilization.
Debate continues over the extent to which Christian nationalism should be considered a primary cause of January 6 rather than one ideological component among several.
Churches and Christian Opposition to White Christian Nationalism
Christian communities are deeply divided over Christian nationalism.
Numerous Protestant, Catholic, evangelical, mainline Protestant, Black church, and ecumenical leaders have criticized Christian nationalism. Some explicitly use the term White Christian nationalism and argue that racial hierarchy has historically distorted American Christianity.
Organizations such as Christians Against Christian Nationalism and religious-liberty groups have developed campaigns opposing the fusion of Christianity with government power. Christian writers have also connected opposition to Christian nationalism with religious freedom, pluralism, racial equality, and democratic government.
Other Christians argue that the concept is defined too broadly. They contend that advocacy for Christian moral influence in public life, recognition of America's Christian history, or conservative political participation should not automatically be characterized as nationalism or white supremacy.
Some conservative Christian writers therefore accept the existence of explicitly racist Christian nationalism while disputing claims that the phenomenon accurately describes much of ordinary conservative Christianity.
The Debate Over Terminology and Measurement
A recurring theme in the research is disagreement about terminology.
Many surveys measure Christian nationalism through questions about whether the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation, whether American success is part of God's plan, whether Christian values should influence government, or whether Christianity should receive a privileged role in public life.
Critics argue that responses to these questions can capture several different ideas, including religious traditionalism, patriotism, biblical belief, cultural Christianity, political conservatism, or support for religious establishment.
Researchers have therefore developed increasingly detailed measures designed to separate Christian nationalism from ordinary religious practice and from other political ideologies.
The addition of racial analysis has created a second measurement question: when should Christian nationalism be called White Christian nationalism?
Some scholars argue that the racial history and contemporary associations are strong enough that White Christian nationalism is an analytically useful concept. Others caution that Christian nationalism appears in multiple racial communities and should not automatically be treated as a synonym for White identity politics.
Both approaches have produced empirical evidence, making the distinction an active subject of research rather than a fully settled question.
Distinguishing Association from Identity
The literature is especially important for understanding the difference between statistical association and individual identity.
When studies find that Christian nationalism correlates with racial resentment, White racial solidarity, authoritarianism, immigration restriction, or particular political policies, the finding applies to patterns within populations. It does not establish that every individual holding one belief necessarily holds all of the others.
Similarly, historical connections between Christianity and white supremacy do not mean Christianity itself is inherently white supremacist. Christianity has also supplied theological and institutional foundations for abolitionism, the Black freedom struggle, civil rights activism, immigrant advocacy, anti-racist movements, and opposition to Christian nationalism.
Understanding the subject therefore requires distinguishing among religious faith, political ideology, racial identity, nationalism, historical institutions, and explicitly supremacist movements.
Conclusion
The relationship between Christian nationalism and white supremacy in the United States is neither entirely separate nor completely synonymous.
Historical evidence documents explicitly Christian forms of white supremacy, including Christian Identity, as well as longer traditions in which Christian narratives were used to defend slavery, segregation, colonial expansion, and racial hierarchy. Modern social-science research also finds important relationships among Christian nationalism, White racial solidarity, attitudes toward immigration, perceptions of racial discrimination, demographic anxiety, historical memory, policing, and political power.
At the same time, Christian nationalism exists among Americans from multiple racial backgrounds, and research shows that its meaning and political effects can differ significantly across racial groups and issues. Scholars therefore continue to debate how broadly the term White Christian nationalism should be applied.
The most useful distinction is between Christianity as a religion, Christian political participation, Christian nationalism as an ideology linking Christianity and national identity, White Christian nationalism as a racialized form of that ideology, and explicitly white supremacist movements. These categories sometimes overlap historically and politically, but they are not interchangeable.
Examining where they intersect—and where they do not—provides a clearer understanding of the continuing relationship among religion, race, national identity, and political power in the United States.
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Public Opinion, Surveys, and Measurement
Studies how progressive Christians understand and organize around the term white Christian nationalism, including concerns about racial purity and replacement rhetoric.
Updates national data on religion in government and public life, including familiarity with and attitudes toward Christian nationalism across racial and religious groups.
Compares White, Black, and Hispanic Christian nationalists on immigration, ICE, enforcement practices, and perceptions of immigrants.
Maps Christian nationalist attitudes across all 50 states and compares patterns by race, religion, immigration views, authoritarianism, and replacement-theory beliefs.
Examines how Christian nationalist rhetoric can operate differently across racial groups in electoral politics.
Uses PRRI survey data to discuss the reach of White Christian nationalism and differences between its political influence and its level of support among the public.
Provides state-level data on Christian nationalism and compares White, Black, Hispanic, and other religious populations.
Reports survey findings linking Christian nationalism with attitudes toward Confederate monuments, racism, historical memory, and repair for past discrimination.
Finds a strong relationship among Christian nationalism, structural-racism measures, and attitudes toward Confederate memorials and public historical memory.
Discusses polling on Republican Christian nationalism, religious identity, prophecy, prosperity theology, and White evangelical political alignment.
Compares Black and White Christian nationalism supporters on immigration, replacement theory, White supremacy, and racial discrimination.
Presents survey research on white Christian nationalism, White identity, anti-Black sentiment, antisemitism, anti-Muslim views, immigration, authoritarianism, and political violence.
National survey report measuring Christian nationalism and its relationships with anti-Black racism, immigration attitudes, antisemitism, anti-Muslim views, gender roles, authoritarianism, and political violence.
Surveys Americans' views of the United States as a Christian nation and documents how respondents themselves connect Christian nationalism with racism, White supremacy, authoritarianism, and other concepts.
Presents Americans' own descriptions of Christian nationalism, including both favorable interpretations and associations with racism, White supremacy, and exclusion.
Race, Whiteness, and National Belonging
Reassesses the trajectory of White Christian nationalism and its changing place within American religion, politics, race, and national identity.
Tracks partisan and racial sorting of Christian nationalism from 1996 to 2022 and examines backlash on the White secular left and religious right.
Examines divisions among evangelicals over racial inequality and how education and Christian nationalism shape explanations of Black disadvantage.
Tests how Christian nationalism operates across White, Black, and Latino Christians and finds especially strong racial differences on explicitly racialized issues.
Examines how Christian nationalism may promote white supremacy by elevating White Americans as the prototypical national group and shaping racial stereotypes across groups.
Examines how white Christian nationalist ideology can combine racial hierarchy, patriarchy, and religious authority in ways that affect women's rights and social status.
Argues that Christian nationalism functions as a religion of White identity politics and finds strong links between Christian nationalism and White racial solidarity.
Studies Christian nationalism among Asian and Asian American adults in relation to perceptions of anti-Asian hate and White privilege.
Examines how race moderates the relationship between Christian nationalism and progressive social identities.
Analyzes challenges to mindfulness in public schools and argues they can reinforce Christian hegemony and a racial-religious vision of a White Christian nation.
Provides a glossary of Christian nationalist terms and discusses blood purity, dominionism, Christian Zionism, race, and religious-national identity.
Uses four experiments to test whether claims of anti-Christian bias can function as racial signals of anti-White bias among White Christians.
Uses ethnographic research on White conservative evangelicals to examine defensive racism, denial of anti-Black racism, and Christian righteousness.
Describes white Christian nationalism as a cultural framework involving power, control, hierarchy, and ideas about White Christian dominance.
Explores competing definitions of Christian nationalism, its relationship with White identity politics, and controversies involving explicitly white nationalist ideas.
Argues that white Christian nationalism is centrally concerned with preserving traditional racial, gender, and political hierarchy.
Explores Christian nationalism, race, assimilation, exclusion, and differing understandings of who counts as a legitimate American.
Finds Christian nationalism associated with nationalist pronatalism, perceived threats to Whites and Christians, and desires for ethno-cultural dominance.
Analyzes the increasing visibility of the Christian nationalist label and an ethnocultural conception of American identity centered on Christianity and whiteness.
Opinion analysis connecting Christian nationalist politics with racial grievance, White evangelical identity, and debates over systemic racism.
Describes white Christian nationalism as a political force combining white supremacy, patriarchy, militarism, exclusion, and religious domination.
Distinguishes nostalgic narratives of a White Christian nation from colorblind Judeo-Christian nationalism and analyzes how race and religion mark American belonging.
Discusses Christian fundraising for Kyle Rittenhouse and broader research on White religious imagery, racial hierarchy, and Christian nationalist symbolism.
Analyzes how Christian nationalism shapes views of police treatment of Black Americans and explanations for racial disparities in police shootings.
Examines Christian nationalism and White racial boundaries through opposition to interracial marriage.
White Supremacy, Extremism, and January 6
Examines hard-right influencers who frame empathy as a vice and connect biblical rhetoric with white nationalism and male supremacy.
Documents white supremacist Nick Fuentes's use of Christian nationalist rhetoric and his movement's vision of a White Christian America.
Interprets immigration enforcement and repression through a framework connecting American belonging with White Christian identity and exclusion of non-Christians.
Examines Christian nationalism after January 6, including White supremacy, replacement theory, anti-immigrant politics, and changing nationalist movements.
Provides a history of White Christian nationalism from Puritan ideas of chosenness through slavery, the Christian Right, Trump, and January 6.
Traces links between Christian nationalism and organized white supremacy through British-Israelism and Christian Identity in the twentieth-century United States.
Covers community responses to hate groups, far-right extremism, and organizations working against white Christian nationalism.
Compares contemporary White Christian nationalism with earlier White supremacist movements, including the Ku Klux Klan, while discussing continuity and differences.
Uses North Idaho to examine Christian nationalism, separatist politics, migration, and the region's history of white supremacist organizing.
Maps several strands of Christian nationalism after January 6, including networks containing figures associated with openly white supremacist and antisemitic rhetoric.
Traces the development of White Christian nationalism through segregationist theology, evangelical political mobilization, conspiracy culture, and January 6.
Examines concerns that the January 6 committee report did not fully explore Christian nationalism and its connections with white supremacist actors.
Uses the history of the “Judeo-Christian” idea to examine earlier resistance to the KKK, anti-Black racism, anti-Catholicism, and white Christian nationalism.
Argues that White Christian nationalism was an important ideological current in the buildup to and events of January 6.
Interviews Samuel Perry about the long history of White Christian nationalism, including Puritan warfare, slavery, race, voting restrictions, and January 6.
Covers a congressional briefing on Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism, race, and the January 6 insurrection.
Summarizes a multi-author report on Christian nationalism and January 6, including its treatment of race, White Christian identity, religious symbols, and political mobilization.
Reports on research into Christian nationalism's role in January 6, including historical links to slavery and white supremacy.
Reports on how Christian nationalism became a unifying language among parts of the post-January 6 extreme right, including white nationalists.
Reports on evangelical leaders condemning Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, racial prejudice, and political violence after January 6.
Explains the historical and ideological strands of white Christian nationalism visible during the January 6 Capitol attack.
Uses Christian heritage tourism and sacred-national geography to interpret why some January 6 participants viewed the Capitol as a site to reclaim rather than desecrate.
Interprets the religious, nationalist, Confederate, and white-supremacist symbolism displayed on January 6 through the framework of White Christian nationalism.
Analyzes the juxtaposition of Christian and white supremacist symbols during the January 6 Capitol attack.
Examines the resurgence of Christian nationalism and its overlap with white nationalist, militia, and far-right movements.
Discusses antisemitic violence and debates among evangelicals about acknowledging religious dimensions of White nationalist ideology.
Collects competing perspectives on whether violent White nationalism drawing on Christian civilizational identity should be described as Christian nationalism.
Argues that modern White Christian nationalism often functions as cultural Christian identity even when individual adherents are not especially religious.
Provides background on Christian Identity and its historical role in organized white supremacy and violent right-wing extremism.
Traces the origins of Christian Identity from British-Israelism and explains its development into a major religious current within organized White supremacy.
History and Development of White Christian Nationalism
Critiques historical narratives surrounding the U.S. 250th anniversary and their relationship to Christian nationalism, slavery, Indigenous history, and national mythmaking.
Connects whiteness, family norms, sexuality, and Christian nationalism within the broader history of privileged racialization.
Surveys the historical development, core narrative, and organizational structure of White Christian nationalism as a social movement.
Investigates a Liberty University maternity-home history through the lenses of race, class, adoption, reproductive control, and White Christian nationalism.
Examines the Social Gospel era and the simultaneous presence of progressive reform, White Protestant dominance, anti-immigrant prejudice, and Christian nationalism.
Traces the rise of the Christian Right, including the role of desegregation conflicts, Bob Jones University, civil-rights backlash, and Christian nationalist political networks.
Places white Christian nationalism within a longer history of colonialism, Indigenous dispossession, religiously grounded racism, and disputes over American historical memory.
Looks at Christian nationalism in the Jim Crow era and connects Christian-nation narratives with racial exclusion and segregation.
Analyzes White Christian nationalist rhetoric in education through concepts including dominionism, colonialism, grievability, and precarity.
Opinion column connecting contemporary Christian nationalism with segregation-era politics, white supremacy, and debates over democracy.
Explains how the historical “Appeal to Heaven” flag became associated with contemporary far-right and Christian nationalist movements.
Reviews the documentary Bad Faith and its argument about segregation, race, the religious right, voter suppression, and Christian nationalism.
Examines the history and contemporary manifestations of White Christian nationalism and their implications for religious minorities.
Interview connected to the documentary God & Country discussing white Christian nationalism, segregation, diversity, and the religious right.
Places Christian nationalism in historical context, including Puritan chosenness, slavery, racial hierarchy, and modern anti-immigrant politics.
Interview on J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, White evangelical leaders, anti-communism, race, and the construction of White Christian nationalism.
Traces the early drug war through Protestant temperance, racialized fears of Black and Asian communities, and narratives of a White Protestant nation.
Summarizes Lerone Martin's research on the FBI, White evangelicalism, race, religion, and the development of white Christian nationalism.
Discusses Lerone Martin's research on J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, White evangelicalism, race, and white Christian nationalism.
Presents an excerpt from The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover describing archival research into the FBI's relationship with White evangelicalism and Christian nationalism.
Catalogs Lerone Martin's research on how J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, and White evangelical and Catholic leaders promoted a White Christian national identity.
Examines the overlapping history of Confederate symbols and Christian religious displays as expressions of racial and religious hierarchy.
Highlights research on how J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, and White religious leaders helped shape modern white Christian nationalism.
Describes White Christian nationalism as a changing political ideology and traces its movement from historical narrative toward a more explicit political program.
Explains research on White Christian nationalism, including beliefs about Protestant founding myths and perceived threats from non-White, non-Christian, and immigrant Americans.
Introduces scholarship on White Christian nationalism and the historical relationship among Christian, Confederate, nationalist, and racial symbols.
Uses survey evidence to compare White and non-White Christian nationalism and explores racial discrimination, religious history, and ethno-national identity.
Defines White Christian nationalism as a national story and political vision involving White Protestant founding myths, hierarchy, freedom, order, and violence.
Interviews Philip Gorski about the origins, racial structure, political influence, and democratic implications of white Christian nationalism.
Argues that discussions of Christian nationalism and freedom require closer attention to whiteness, racial privilege, and historically unequal definitions of liberty.
Describes Lerone Martin's research into the FBI's role in reinforcing a White Christian vision of American identity and political order.
Considers how Christian supremacy can persist across political camps and places White Christian nationalism within a wider history of Christian cultural dominance.
Examines Indigenous dispossession, colonial violence, evangelical historical memory, and their relationship to narratives of White Christian nationhood.
Connects Christian nationalist rhetoric with voting restrictions, racial history, and the use of government religious symbolism.
Critiques Southern Baptist racial history and contemporary evangelical politics through the lenses of White supremacy and Christian nationalism.
Reviews scholarship and history on White Christianity, Christian nationalism, racism, xenophobia, and the maintenance of racialized social order.
Discussion with Jemar Tisby on Christian complicity in racism, Confederate monuments, racial hierarchy, and the history of Christian white supremacy.
Historical discussion of racism, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and the long overlap between American Christianity and racial hierarchy.
Considers whether white Christian nationalism should be understood as a distortion of Christianity or as one recurring form of Christianity historically entangled with oppression.
Politics, Democracy, Law, and Governance
Uses survey experiments to study how Christian nationalism and race shape contingent support for law enforcement.
Tests whether religiously inclusive orientations can reduce intolerance associated with Christian nationalism, including racial and political exclusion.
Examines the Roberts Court through a White Christian nationalism framework, emphasizing how race, religion, sexuality, and constitutional belonging intersect.
Analyzes ascriptive ideas of “true Americans,” Christian nationalism, racial hierarchy, and the populist right in the 2024 election context.
Reports on Christian nationalist figures in the federal government and expert concerns about privileging a particular form of Christianity in public institutions.
Examines Pete Hegseth's associations with Christian nationalist ideas and organizations, including debates about race, hierarchy, and political power.
Examines how elite cues can increase identification with Christian nationalism and discusses links with racialized policing, voting restrictions, authoritarianism, and political violence.
Compares Black church political activism in the 1960s with contemporary white Christian nationalism, emphasizing different approaches to democracy and racial power.
Examines how race moderates the relationship between Christian nationalism and opposition to requiring gun permits.
Provides experimental evidence about connections between racial attitudes and White support for Christian nationalism and civil religion.
Examines Speaker Mike Johnson's Christian-right networks and situates nostalgia for the pre-civil-rights social order within White Christian nationalist politics.
Reports James Carville's criticism of white Christian nationalism and discusses the political and religious views of House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Explores competing definitions of Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy, including arguments about Christian privilege and coercive political power.
Presents Philip Gorski's analysis of white Christian nationalism as a fusion of religious identity, racial hierarchy, national mythology, and political power.
Profiles religious-left resistance to white Christian nationalism, racism, patriarchy, and authoritarian politics.
Reviews white Christian nationalism as an ideology linking white supremacy, Christianity, American nationalism, exclusion, and anti-democratic politics.
Reviews developments involving White Christian nationalism, minority rule, election denial, courts, and authoritarian politics during 2022.
Examines explicitly anti-democratic arguments on the right and research connecting White Christian nationalism with authoritarian attitudes.
Examines how supporters and critics of Christian nationalism debate the label and how race, religion, and political power figure in attempts to define the movement.
Reports on a Yale conference examining White Christian nationalism, far-right politics, racial identity, authoritarianism, and the 2022 midterm environment.
Reviews The Flag and the Cross and evaluates its account of White Christian nationalism, racial hierarchy, religion, and democratic institutions.
Summarizes a Yale conference examining white Christian nationalism, race, authoritarianism, religion, extremism, and political mobilization.
Places American religious exceptionalism and Christian nationalism within broader comparative questions about nationalism, polarization, and democratic state-building.
Links Christian nationalism with support for restricting voter access and finds especially strong associations involving voter suppression among White respondents.
Finds racial resentment to be a strong predictor of Christian nationalist beliefs and examines differences between nationalist belief and political behavior.
Uses the Lafayette Square Bible photo opportunity to explain scholarship linking Christian nationalism with authoritarianism, militarism, nativism, and white supremacy.
Studies Christian nationalism and White attitudes toward racially coded government spending, linking religious-national identity with defense of racial advantage.
Education, Schools, and Curriculum
Studies school-board campaigns in West Michigan and White Christian nationalist efforts to exert control over literacy curriculum and book access.
Examines White Christian nationalism from the perspective of religious education and considers how educators can address its racial and political dimensions.
Introduces a special issue on White Christian nationalism and education, including disputes over race, sexuality, curriculum, school governance, and religious privilege.
Reviews the relationship between White Christian nationalism, authoritarian thought, and K-12 public education, including curriculum disputes involving race and minority histories.
Discusses White Christian nationalism, structural racism, dominionism, and threats to democratic pluralism through the lens of adult education.
Examines biblical proof-texting, White Christian nationalism, and disputes over literacy curriculum, library challenges, and religious interpretation.
Examines White Christian nationalism in relation to Black education and considers how racialized religious power enters educational spaces.
Studies a Pennsylvania school-board campaign and how candidates used persecution and voicelessness narratives associated with White Christian nationalism.
Traces Southern White evangelical discourse on race and connects contemporary history-curriculum battles with White Christian nationalist narratives.
Defines White Christian nationalism as a contemporary religiopolitical movement and examines its implications for public education, educational equity, curriculum, and research.
Explores Christian nationalist themes in some homeschooling materials, including narratives minimizing slavery and promoting a triumphalist Christian America.
Explores Christian homeschooling, slavery narratives, white supremacy, and competing versions of Christian national identity.
Immigration, Demography, and Citizenship
Examines hostility toward Indian Americans in Texas in the context of anti-immigrant politics, religious nationalism, demographic change, and recurring racial exclusion.
Interview discussing Christian nationalism, White evangelical support, immigration, authoritarianism, and Christian responses to political nationalism.
Analyzes Christian nationalism, political and ethno-racial identity, and distrust of immigrants, including differences across racial groups.
Distinguishes general pronatalism from selective pronatalism and links the latter to Christian nationalism, replacement theory, and demographic dominance.
Examines Oklahoma church-state conflicts and scholarship connecting Christian nationalism with fears of demographic, cultural, and racial change.
Compares Reagan-era religious nationalism with later White Christian nationalist politics and considers the role of race, immigration, and demographic anxiety.
Analyzes a campaign speech to religious broadcasters through the lens of White Christian nationalism, internal enemies, immigration, and religious-national identity.
Reports on Latino faith leaders responding to Christian nationalism, white supremacy, replacement theory, and far-right organizing.
Discusses white Christian nationalism, racial hierarchy, replacement theory, anti-democratic politics, and the ideological environment surrounding racist violence.
Presents a framework of American religious exceptionalism connecting religious nationalism with anti-immigrant sentiment, exclusion, and alternative attitudes toward democratic governance.
Studies how White Christian nationalism relates to perceptions of racial injustice, anti-Black discrimination, White victimhood, and policing.
Finds Christian nationalism associated with more negative views of undocumented Mexican immigrants while distinguishing nationalist ideology from ordinary religious practice.
Examines Christian nationalism, perceived threat, and attitudes toward immigrants and immigration restrictions.
Discusses distinctions and overlaps between Christian nationalism and white nationalism, including immigration, systemic racism, and racial hierarchy.
Studies anti-refugee politics and shows how racialized, religious, and national categories can reinforce white Christian nationalism.
Examines how Christian nationalism creates symbolic boundaries involving race, ethnicity, citizenship, immigration, policing, and religious diversity.
Reflects on White evangelical political priorities and how racial, immigrant, gender, and religious differences can be marginalized within single-issue politics.
Develops an early Christian-nationalism framework for understanding anti-immigrant attitudes and symbolic prejudice in American national identity.
Christian Theology, Churches, and Religious Responses
Reports how several Protestant denominations are studying Christian nationalism, including concerns over antisemitism, race realism, kinism, and ethnic superiority.
Uses ethnographic research to examine how racialized narratives in a White church can legitimize White Christian dominance and victimhood.
Covers debate over a national religious celebration criticized by opponents as White Christian nationalist and defended by organizers as Judeo-Christian civic renewal.
Reports on a Tennessee legislative invocation condemning White Christian nationalism and the political controversy that followed.
Reports on Christian leaders warning about White Christian nationalism, racial and ethnic exclusion, immigration policy, and authoritarian government.
Reports competing congressional claims about White Christian nationalism, religious freedom, Islam, and threats to constitutional governance.
Catholic discussion of White Christian nationalism, racial hierarchy, immigration, DEI policy, and Catholic social teaching.
Reports on a Presbyterian Church (USA) resource defining and opposing White Christian nationalism while also presenting criticism of the term from conservative Christians.
Collects Christian responses to weaponized Christian nationalism, emphasizing white supremacy, civil rights, democracy, religious freedom, and pluralism.
Uses the biblical story of Jonah to address race relations and the rise of White Christian nationalism from a womanist theological perspective.
Offers a conservative Christian critique disputing common claims about Christian nationalism and arguing that the label can be used too broadly.
Conversation on the making of white Christian nationalism and the political development of the New Right.
Offers a critical perspective on how the term Christian nationalism is sometimes used while acknowledging the separate problem of explicitly white Christian nationalism and racism.
Presents Voddie Baucham's skeptical view that “white Christian nationalism” is often defined too vaguely, providing a counterpoint to critical scholarship.
Examines Christian nationalism among Republican pastors and the conditions under which political force or coercion becomes more acceptable.
Reports on pro-Trump pastors and criticism from other Christian leaders that their organizing represents an overt embrace of white Christian nationalism.
Explores white supremacy, ethnic exclusion, and the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant power narrative within Christian nationalism.
Describes far-right and White nationalist currents in parts of American Orthodoxy and the backlash scholars can face when researching them.
Reports on a discussion with Jemar Tisby and Robert P. Jones about how racism can undergird white Christian nationalism.
Connects White Christian nationalism to biblical narratives of chosenness, conquest, land, and violence and urges closer examination of scriptural interpretation.
Defines Christian nationalism, distinguishes it from Christianity and patriotism, and discusses racial exclusion and its concentration among White Americans.
Discussion guide accompanying a webinar on how racism and white supremacy intersect with Christian nationalism.
Defines Christian nationalism and explains why the organization sometimes uses the term white Christian nationalism to emphasize overlap with white supremacy.
Addresses questions about nationalism, patriotism, racism, and the stated overlap between Christian nationalism and white supremacy.
General Analysis, Books, and Commentary
Tests predictors of Christian nationalism and cautions against treating Christian nationalism and White Christian nationalism as interchangeable categories.
Examines how the institutional culture of a conservative Christian school can make White Christian nationalist policies and political engagement more plausible.
Reports experimental research finding that messages about anti-Christian bias can increase perceptions of anti-White bias among White Christians.
Examines Christian nationalist politics in affluent Nashville suburbs alongside local concern about white supremacist activity.
Presents a skeptical perspective on expansive definitions of white Christian nationalism and questions how survey measures classify supporters.
Interviews Bradley Onishi about Southern California's role in the rise of the religious right and white Christian nationalism.
Introduces an interdisciplinary volume on the cultural logic of White Christian nationalisms, racism, populism, xenophobia, and modernity.
Critiques The Case for Christian Nationalism and examines its ideas about ethnicity, homeland, patriarchy, hierarchy, and political authority.
Discusses Christian nationalism, dogmatism, misinformation, victimhood, and confidence in beliefs about Christian cultural supremacy.
Examines Orthodox Christian participation in Stop the Steal politics and broader connections among religion, White nationalism, and the far right.
