Christian Nationalism and Ethnonationalism

Christian nationalism and ethnonationalism are related but distinct ways of defining national identity. Christian nationalism joins national identity with Christian symbols, narratives, institutions, or claims about the religious character of the nation. Ethnonationalism defines membership in the nation more strongly through ancestry, ethnicity, language, culture, birthplace, or other inherited characteristics.

The research summarized here shows substantial areas of overlap between the two traditions, particularly when Christianity is treated not simply as a religious belief but as a marker of the people understood to constitute the authentic nation. In the American context, this overlap has often been discussed through the concept of white Christian nationalism, in which Christian identity, whiteness, national belonging, social hierarchy, and political authority become intertwined.

At the same time, the research cautions against treating Christian nationalism and white ethnonationalism as synonyms. Christian-nationalist beliefs occur among white, Black, Hispanic, and other populations, and their political meaning can differ considerably according to racial identity, historical experience, and the particular issue being considered.

Christian Nationalism and National Belonging

Christian nationalism generally presents Christianity as an important component of national identity. Its strongest forms may depict the nation as historically Christian, divinely favored, founded upon Christian principles, or properly governed according to Christian cultural values.

Such ideas can create symbolic boundaries between people considered central to the national community and those considered outsiders. The relevant boundaries may involve religion, race, ethnicity, immigration status, birthplace, language, or cultural conformity.

Research on American Christian nationalism frequently examines the question of who is imagined as a "true American." When Christianity becomes one of the criteria for authentic national membership, Muslims, atheists, religious minorities, immigrants, and people associated with unfamiliar cultural traditions may be viewed as more distant from the national ideal.

Ethnonationalism operates in a comparable way but places greater emphasis on ethnic ancestry and inherited culture. Studies of American ethnonationalism have examined criteria such as ancestry, birthplace, English-language use, and adherence to traditional customs as markers of authentic American identity.

The intersection of these two systems occurs when religious and ethnic boundaries reinforce one another.

Race and Christian Nationalism

Race is one of the most extensively studied dimensions of Christian nationalism in the United States.

Research among white Americans has found associations between Christian-nationalist beliefs and white racial consciousness, perceptions of discrimination against whites, skepticism concerning discrimination against Black Americans, opposition to some forms of racial integration, and conceptions of whites as prototypical Americans.

This research suggests that Christian language can sometimes provide a culturally acceptable vocabulary through which racialized ideas about national identity are expressed without explicit racial terminology. In this interpretation, references to a Christian nation may carry assumptions about race because American religious and racial identities developed historically alongside one another.

Other research complicates this interpretation by showing that Christian nationalism is not limited to white Americans. Black and Hispanic Americans may express similar levels of agreement with some Christian-nationalist survey statements while attaching different political and social meanings to them.

Consequently, racial identity is important not merely for determining who expresses Christian-nationalist beliefs but for understanding what those beliefs mean in different communities.

White Christian Nationalism

The term white Christian nationalism identifies a narrower historical and political formation in which Christian national identity becomes closely associated with whiteness, racial hierarchy, and an ethnocultural conception of American belonging.

Scholars using this concept trace its roots through several periods of American history, including European colonization, ideas of divine chosenness, Indigenous dispossession, racial slavery, territorial expansion, segregation, and later struggles over immigration and civil rights.

Within this framework, the ideal citizen has historically often been imagined as white, Christian, native-born, culturally traditional, and socially conforming. Groups outside those boundaries may be treated as guests, threats, dependents, or less authentic members of the national community.

Some scholarship argues that white Christian nationalism works not only through explicit racial hostility but through prototypicality: the assumption that white Christians represent the normal or archetypal American against whom other citizens are implicitly compared.

This makes white Christian nationalism an important bridge between religious nationalism and ethnonationalism.

Black, Hispanic, and Nonwhite Christian Nationalism

The existence of Christian-nationalist beliefs among nonwhite Americans presents an important challenge to any simple equation of Christian nationalism with white nationalism.

Studies comparing white, Black, and Hispanic respondents find that similar answers to Christian-nationalism questions can be associated with substantially different attitudes depending on the racial group and the issue involved.

Among some Black Americans, Christian-nationalist language may represent a claim to inclusion within the American nation rather than a defense of white racial hierarchy. Christianity has historically been deeply embedded within many Black American institutions and movements, producing conceptions of Christian America that differ substantially from white ethnonationalist traditions.

Research involving Black, Latino, and white Christians suggests that Christian nationalism may function partly as a form of religiously sacralized in-group protection. Its consequences therefore become especially different across racial groups when the political issue itself has strong racial implications.

On issues less directly structured by race, Christian-nationalist attitudes among different racial populations may be more similar.

These findings indicate that analysts must distinguish Christian nationalism as a general phenomenon from the more specific category of white Christian nationalism.

Immigration, Nativism, and Ethnic Boundaries

Immigration represents one of the clearest areas in which Christian nationalism and ethnonationalism can intersect.

Research in the source material associates stronger Christian-nationalist beliefs with greater distrust of immigrants, perceptions of immigration as a cultural threat, restrictive immigration attitudes, and concerns that established American traditions are being displaced.

These attitudes may combine religious, racial, ethnic, national, and civilizational categories. Immigration debates involving Muslim immigrants and refugees demonstrate particularly clearly how religion can become intertwined with ethnicity, foreignness, national security, and cultural identity.

The resulting distinction is not simply between citizens and noncitizens. It can become a distinction between people perceived as culturally belonging to the nation and people regarded as permanent outsiders regardless of their formal legal status.

Ethnonationalist research similarly finds that definitions of authentic citizenship based upon ancestry, birthplace, language, and inherited culture are associated with restrictive attitudes toward immigration.

Christian nationalism and ethnonationalism therefore intersect most clearly when national identity is understood as something inherited from a historically dominant religious and ethnic population rather than something available equally through citizenship.

Demographic Change, Replacement, and Pronatalism

Demographic change is another recurring theme.

Some research connects Christian nationalism with concerns that white Christians are losing numerical, cultural, or political dominance as the United States becomes more racially and religiously diverse.

These concerns can appear in rhetoric about immigration, declining birth rates, cultural replacement, or the disappearance of a supposedly traditional American population.

Research on nationalist pronatalism examines the belief that increasing births among members of the preferred national population is important for preserving the nation. Christian nationalism, perceptions of demographic threat, patriarchal attitudes, and concern about declining white or Christian dominance have all been examined as possible contributors to such attitudes.

More recent research distinguishes general support for having children from selective pronatalism, in which reproduction by particular demographic populations is considered more desirable because it is believed to preserve the nation's identity.

Replacement narratives provide one of the strongest points of contact between Christian nationalism and explicitly ethnonationalist politics because they define demographic change as a struggle over which population will inherit or control the nation.

Citizenship and the Meaning of a "True American"

Christian nationalism and ethnonationalism both raise questions about whether citizenship alone is sufficient for full membership in the national community.

A civic conception of nationalism generally defines membership through citizenship, constitutional principles, and political participation. An ethnonationalist conception places greater importance on ancestry, ethnicity, inherited culture, language, or birthplace.

Christian nationalism introduces another possible criterion: religious identity.

When these ideas overlap, a hierarchy of national membership can emerge in which some citizens are regarded as more authentically American than others.

Research in the source collection examines how Christian nationalism relates to symbolic boundaries surrounding citizenship, voting, political participation, immigration, and cultural assimilation.

This distinction between legal citizenship and cultural membership is central to understanding ethnonationalism. A person can possess full citizenship rights while still being regarded by others as outside the imagined ethnic, racial, or religious core of the nation.

Religious Minorities and Outsiders

Ethnonationalist boundaries may also be constructed through religion.

Research on Christian nationalism examines attitudes toward Muslims, Jews, atheists, and other populations considered outside a traditional Christian definition of American identity.

Antisemitism provides a particularly important historical example. Christian Identity and related movements combined racial nationalism, antisemitism, biblical interpretation, and claims of ethnic chosenness into a single ideological system.

Other forms of Christian nationalism do not necessarily contain these doctrines. Nevertheless, studies of contemporary attitudes examine whether defining authentic national membership in explicitly Christian terms can reduce the perceived legitimacy of non-Christian citizens.

This illustrates why religious nationalism can acquire ethnonationalist characteristics even when race is not explicitly mentioned.

Christian Identity, British-Israelism, and White Supremacist Movements

The clearest historical fusion of Christian nationalism and racial ethnonationalism appears in movements such as British-Israelism and Christian Identity.

British-Israelism promoted the belief that British or Anglo-Saxon peoples descended from the biblical tribes of Israel. Over time, some American variants transformed these ideas into explicitly racial doctrines.

Christian Identity developed an ideology in which white Europeans or Anglo-Saxons were identified with biblical Israel while Jews and nonwhite populations were assigned radically different religious and racial identities.

These beliefs became influential within parts of the organized American racist right during the twentieth century.

Historical studies of these movements demonstrate how religious ideas about covenant, divine election, biblical genealogy, and national destiny can be transformed into an explicitly racial theory of political membership.

They represent an extreme example rather than a definition of Christian nationalism generally, but they reveal the mechanisms through which religious nationalism can develop into racial ethnonationalism.

Religious Chosenness and National Destiny

Ideas of divine election long predate modern Christian nationalism.

Religious communities throughout history have sometimes interpreted themselves as chosen peoples with special covenants, missions, or destinies. Scholars of nationalism have examined how these religious concepts contributed to later theories of ethnic and national election.

American history contains repeated versions of this pattern. Puritan ideas about covenant, later doctrines of American exceptionalism, westward expansion, and religious interpretations of national destiny all contributed to narratives portraying the United States as possessing a distinctive providential mission.

Such narratives do not necessarily produce ethnonationalism. Their political implications depend on who is included in the chosen community.

When divine chosenness is attached to a particular racial, ethnic, or genealogical population, however, religious nationalism can become a powerful justification for ethnonationalism.

Comparative Christian Ethnonationalism

The relationship between Christianity and ethnonationalism is not unique to the United States.

Comparative scholarship examines Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa, where Calvinist religious narratives, racial classifications, national identity, and political authority became closely intertwined. Religious ideas were incorporated into ideological defenses of racial separation and apartheid.

British-Israelism also crossed national boundaries, connecting British imperial identity, Anglo-Saxon ancestry, biblical genealogy, and theories of national destiny.

These cases demonstrate that Christian symbols can be incorporated into very different nationalist projects.

They also show the importance of distinguishing Christianity as a religion from political ideologies that use Christian narratives to define ethnic or national membership.

Race, Policing, and Social Hierarchy

Christian-nationalist attitudes have also been studied in connection with policing, racial inequality, government authority, and interpretations of discrimination.

Research among white Americans has found relationships between stronger Christian nationalism and particular interpretations of police treatment of Black Americans, anti-Black discrimination, and perceived discrimination against whites.

Other studies examine whether Christian nationalism influences support for coercive government authority differently depending on the race of the people involved.

This research connects ethnonationalism to broader questions about hierarchy: not merely who belongs to the nation, but how political authority should operate toward different groups within it.

Political Violence and January 6

The January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol became an important subject in scholarship on Christian nationalism because participants displayed Christian symbols alongside American, nationalist, militant, and in some cases Confederate imagery.

Scholars have interpreted this mixture within longer traditions of Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism, American exceptionalism, and claims that the country has been taken away from its rightful cultural or religious owners.

The historical literature cautions against treating the events of January 6 as an isolated phenomenon. Some scholars place them within a much longer tradition of narratives involving national chosenness, threatened cultural dominance, religious authority, and hierarchical ideas about national membership.

At the same time, participation in Christian nationalism cannot by itself be equated with support for political violence. The relationship must be examined empirically rather than assumed from religious or nationalist identity alone.

Survey Research and Demographic Complexity

Large national surveys add important complexity to the relationship between Christian nationalism and ethnonationalism.

Survey research finds Christian-nationalist beliefs among Americans of multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds. White, Black, and Hispanic populations can display similar levels of agreement with some Christian-nationalist propositions while differing substantially in their political attitudes and interpretations.

This distinction is essential because the same survey response may carry different historical and social meanings for different populations.

Among white Americans, multiple studies connect Christian nationalism particularly strongly with white racial consciousness, perceived racial threat, and ethnocultural definitions of American identity.

Among Black and Hispanic Americans, the relationships can differ substantially.

Consequently, demographic prevalence and ideological meaning should not be treated as the same question.

Christian Nationalism Is Not Identical to Ethnonationalism

The accumulated research does not support treating Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism, white nationalism, and ethnonationalism as interchangeable terms.

Christian nationalism refers broadly to the fusion of Christian and national identity.

Ethnonationalism defines the nation substantially through ethnic ancestry, inherited culture, language, or related characteristics.

White Christian nationalism describes a more specific formation in which Christian-American identity is intertwined with whiteness, racial hierarchy, and ethnocultural national belonging.

White nationalism places white racial or ethnic identity itself at the center of national membership.

These categories can overlap substantially without becoming identical.

This distinction is especially important because Christian nationalism exists among nonwhite Americans and because its political consequences differ according to racial identity and issue context.

Conversely, ethnonationalism need not be Christian. Ethnonationalist movements around the world have developed within many different religious and secular traditions.

Conclusion

The relationship between Christian nationalism and ethnonationalism is best understood as overlapping, historically contingent, and strongly shaped by race.

Christian nationalism becomes most clearly ethnonationalist when Christianity functions not merely as a religious tradition but as a marker of an inherited national population. In those circumstances, religious identity can merge with ancestry, race, immigration status, cultural conformity, and ideas about who properly belongs to the nation.

American history provides numerous examples in which Christian identity and white racial identity were mutually reinforcing, contributing to the development of what scholars describe as white Christian nationalism. Contemporary research likewise finds strong relationships among Christian nationalism, white racial consciousness, immigration concerns, demographic threat, and ethnocultural definitions of national belonging among segments of the white population.

Yet the presence of Christian-nationalist beliefs among Black, Hispanic, and other nonwhite Americans demonstrates why Christian nationalism cannot simply be defined as white ethnonationalism. Research increasingly emphasizes that its meaning and consequences vary according to the racial identity of the people embracing it and the political issue under consideration.

The central analytical distinction is therefore between religion as a component of national identity and religion as a boundary defining an allegedly authentic ethnic nation. Christian nationalism can exist without becoming fully ethnonationalist, but history demonstrates that the two can become closely connected when race, ancestry, religion, demographic dominance, and political power are fused into a single conception of national belonging.