How Researchers Measure Christian Nationalism
How Researchers Measure Christian Nationalism
Christian nationalism is studied as a set of beliefs connecting Christianity with national identity, political authority, public institutions, and ideas about the historical or divinely ordained character of the nation. Researchers generally agree that the phenomenon involves some relationship between Christianity and national identity, but there is considerably less agreement about exactly how that relationship should be measured.
Much of the empirical literature treats Christian nationalism as a measurable political and religious orientation derived from survey responses. Researchers have developed multi-item scales, single-question indicators, categorical classifications, latent classes, factor-based measures, direct self-identification questions, and experimental approaches. These different methods do not necessarily identify the same people as Christian nationalists.
Consequently, debates over Christian nationalism increasingly concern not only what the movement believes, but also what researchers are actually measuring when they use the term.
The Baylor Religion Survey Six-Item Scale
One of the most influential approaches emerged from the Baylor Religion Survey and became widely associated with the research of Andrew Whitehead, Samuel Perry, and other scholars.
The conventional six-item approach asks respondents about ideas such as whether:
- the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation;
- the federal government should advocate Christian values;
- the federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state;
- Christian symbols should be permitted in public spaces;
- the success of the United States is part of God's plan; and
- the federal government should allow prayer in public schools.
Answers are combined into an index representing increasing support for Christian-nationalist ideas.
Researchers have used this scale to investigate relationships between Christian nationalism and voting behavior, gun policy, immigration, race, gender attitudes, policing, religious freedom, COVID-19 policy, science, conspiracy beliefs, voting rights, political violence, and numerous other political and social attitudes.
The scale became important partly because it allowed researchers to distinguish Christian nationalism statistically from conventional measures of religiosity, church attendance, evangelical identity, party identification, and political ideology.
However, its widespread use also generated an extensive methodological debate.
Questions About What the Scale Measures
Critics have questioned whether the traditional scale measures one coherent ideology.
Some researchers argue that its questions combine conceptually different beliefs. Support for public prayer, belief that America has a divine purpose, attitudes toward church-state separation, and support for government promotion of Christianity may not represent exactly the same political orientation.
Factor analyses have suggested that the conventional measure may contain more than one dimension. One influential interpretation distinguishes between Christian Statism—support for government privileging Christianity—and Religious Traditionalism—broader traditional religious beliefs and symbols.
Other researchers have used latent-class analysis rather than adding responses into a single numerical scale. These studies identify groups of respondents who may reach similar numerical scores through substantially different combinations of answers.
This creates an important methodological problem: two individuals with identical total Christian-nationalism scores may not necessarily hold the same worldview.
Psychometric research has also questioned the assumption that increases in a Christian-nationalism score represent equal increases in the underlying ideology. Political effects may sometimes emerge at particular thresholds rather than increase smoothly with every additional point on a scale.
These debates have encouraged researchers to distinguish more carefully among religious belief, Christian political privilege, civil religion, opposition to secularism, national identity, and explicit Christian-nationalist identity.
The PRRI Five-Item Scale
The Public Religion Research Institute developed another widely used measurement system.
PRRI's approach uses five statements concerning the relationship between Christianity and American government and identity. They address ideas including:
- whether the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation;
- whether American laws should be based on Christian values;
- whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should remain one;
- whether being Christian is an important part of being truly American; and
- whether God intended Christians to exercise dominion over society.
Responses are combined into an index ranging from low to high support for Christian nationalism.
PRRI then places respondents into four interpretive categories:
Adherents strongly embrace Christian-nationalist ideas.
Sympathizers generally support them but less consistently.
Skeptics generally reject Christian-nationalist propositions.
Rejecters strongly reject them.
This classification system has been used in large American Values Atlas surveys to compare Christian nationalism across states and demographic groups and to examine relationships with voting, immigration, authoritarian attitudes, gender roles, conspiracy theories, democratic norms, and other political issues.
Because PRRI has repeated essentially the same questions across large surveys, its measure also allows researchers to examine geographic and temporal patterns.
At the same time, converting a continuous numerical measure into four categories introduces another methodological decision: researchers must determine the thresholds separating an Adherent from a Sympathizer or a Skeptic from a Rejecter.
Pew and Direct-Question Approaches
Pew Research Center has frequently taken a somewhat different approach.
Rather than automatically treating Christian nationalism as a single latent ideology measured through one composite scale, Pew often asks respondents separately about specific beliefs.
These include whether:
- the United States should be a Christian nation;
- Christianity should have greater influence in government;
- the government should promote Christian values;
- Christianity should become the official religion;
- church and state should remain separate;
- America has received special divine favor; and
- respondents themselves view the term "Christian nationalism" favorably or unfavorably.
Pew has also asked respondents what they believe the term means in their own words.
These studies demonstrate an important distinction between support for ideas associated with Christian nationalism and willingness to identify explicitly as a Christian nationalist.
A person may support some form of Christian influence in public life without recognizing or accepting the Christian-nationalist label. Conversely, attitudes toward the label itself can be affected by how the term is defined or presented.
Survey experiments comparing phrases such as "Christian nation" and "Christian nationalism" further indicate that question wording can influence responses.
Thus, estimates of the number of Christian nationalists can vary depending on whether researchers measure beliefs, policy preferences, national identity, or explicit self-identification.
Christian Nationalism as a Social Identity
An emerging branch of research treats Christian nationalism not simply as a collection of policy preferences but as a social identity.
Instead of inferring identity exclusively from answers about government or religion, researchers can ask how strongly people identify with the Christian-nationalist label and how important that identity is to them.
Experimental studies show that willingness to identify as a Christian nationalist can change depending on how the concept is defined and how political leaders discuss it.
This distinction is significant because ideological agreement and group identification are not necessarily the same thing.
Someone may agree with several ideas commonly associated with Christian nationalism while rejecting the label. Another person may embrace the label because of partisan, cultural, or group identity even when that person's views do not perfectly correspond with a conventional survey scale.
Newer measures therefore sometimes combine belief questions with direct measures of identity.
Latent Classes, Factor Analysis and Alternative Scales
Researchers have developed several alternatives to conventional additive scales.
Latent-class analysis groups respondents according to patterns in their answers rather than assuming that everyone falls along a single continuum from low to high Christian nationalism.
Factor analysis examines whether survey questions actually represent one underlying concept or several distinct dimensions.
Christian Statism measures focus more specifically on government establishment or political privileging of Christianity.
The Neighborly Faith approach was designed to measure political privileging of Christianity more directly rather than relying on older questions originally developed for somewhat different purposes.
Researchers have also constructed three-item, two-item, and five-item versions when datasets or survey space do not contain the complete conventional battery.
Historical studies sometimes use a single recurring question—such as whether being Christian is important to being "truly American"—because the same question is available across decades of survey data.
These abbreviated indicators make long-term historical analysis possible, but they measure a narrower aspect of Christian nationalism than comprehensive multi-item scales.
Reliability and Construct Validity
A central challenge in this literature is construct validity: determining whether a survey instrument actually measures Christian nationalism rather than something related to it.
Researchers attempt to separate Christian nationalism from:
- personal religiosity;
- evangelical Protestant identity;
- biblical literalism;
- church attendance;
- political conservatism;
- Republican partisanship;
- patriotism;
- civil religion;
- racial attitudes;
- authoritarianism; and
- opposition to secularism.
Many studies find that Christian-nationalism measures continue to predict political and social attitudes even after statistically controlling for these related characteristics.
That finding supports the argument that Christian nationalism is analytically distinct from religiosity or political conservatism alone.
Nevertheless, critics argue that correlations with other political attitudes do not by themselves prove that every survey item captures the same underlying construct.
Researchers have therefore increasingly supplemented predictive tests with factor analysis, qualitative interpretation, latent-profile analysis, experiments, and direct identity questions.
Race and Measurement Invariance
Race presents another significant methodological issue.
Some studies report that Christian-nationalism measures have different political associations among White, Black, Latino, and other respondents.
The same numerical score may therefore have different social or political meanings depending on the respondent's racial and historical context.
For example, support for Christianity in American public life may carry different implications within Black Christian traditions than within White conservative Protestant political movements.
Researchers consequently examine measurement invariance—whether a scale measures the same underlying construct in the same way across different groups.
Studies comparing alternative measurement systems have also found that changing the measurement method can alter conclusions about the racial composition of Christian nationalism.
This debate is particularly important because Christian nationalism is often discussed alongside White identity politics. Research showing racial variation suggests that scholars must distinguish between the measurement of Christian nationalism itself and the political consequences that Christian-nationalist beliefs may have within different racial groups.
Survey Experiments and Causal Research
Traditional surveys mainly identify statistical relationships. More recent research increasingly combines Christian-nationalism measures with randomized experiments.
Researchers may first measure a respondent's Christian-nationalist beliefs and then expose the respondent to different political messages, racial cues, descriptions of Christian nationalism, policing scenarios, or institutional situations.
Such experiments help examine whether Christian-nationalist attitudes condition responses to particular circumstances.
Researchers have used this approach to study subjects including:
- application of the rule of law;
- policing and punishment;
- racial cues;
- political leadership;
- elite rhetoric;
- democratic norms;
- voting behavior; and
- willingness to identify explicitly as a Christian nationalist.
Experiments also reveal that researchers themselves can affect measurement through definitions and wording. If respondents become more or less willing to adopt the Christian-nationalist label after receiving a particular description of it, self-identification cannot automatically be treated as a fixed characteristic.
Distinguishing Christian Nationalism From Religiosity
A recurring finding in the literature is that Christian nationalism should not simply be equated with Christianity or personal religious commitment.
Researchers routinely include measures of church attendance, prayer, biblical beliefs, religious tradition, and religious identity alongside measures of Christian nationalism.
The resulting analyses often find different relationships for religiosity and Christian nationalism.
For example, conventional religious commitment and Christian nationalism can have different associations with attitudes toward immigrants, science, political participation, government authority, social welfare, racial issues, and political violence.
This distinction is methodologically important. A Christian-nationalism scale is intended to measure beliefs connecting Christianity to national political identity and authority, not Christianity itself.
It also explains why researchers may identify Christian-nationalist attitudes among individuals who are not highly active in churches and why highly religious Christians may strongly reject Christian nationalism.
Measuring Political Consequences
Researchers frequently evaluate Christian-nationalism measures by testing whether they predict attitudes or behavior outside the scale itself.
The literature examines relationships with:
- presidential voting;
- voter-access restrictions;
- election confidence;
- political violence;
- democratic norms;
- civil liberties;
- policing;
- immigration;
- racial inequality;
- gun policy;
- gender roles;
- reproductive politics;
- taxation;
- economic inequality;
- conspiracy theories;
- science;
- public health;
- religious freedom; and
- attitudes toward religious and nonreligious minorities.
These studies contribute to measurement debates because a useful political construct should generally have observable relationships with theoretically relevant attitudes and behavior.
At the same time, predictive power does not settle disagreements over definition. Two different scales may both predict political outcomes while identifying somewhat different populations.
Cross-National Measurement
Christian nationalism is especially difficult to measure comparatively across countries.
American measures frequently contain specifically American concepts, such as whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation or whether Christianity is necessary for being "truly American."
Those questions cannot simply be transferred unchanged to another national setting.
Cross-national researchers therefore substitute country-specific religions and national identities or construct broader measures concerning:
- religious belonging;
- national identity;
- religious influence over government;
- religious law;
- political leadership; and
- the relationship between the dominant religion and authentic national membership.
Studies using Afrobarometer data, for example, reconstruct measures of Christian-nationalist attitudes from questions available in African public-opinion surveys.
Pew's international research on religious nationalism similarly uses criteria designed for comparison across countries rather than simply exporting an American Christian-nationalism scale.
This research emphasizes that Christian nationalism is part of the broader phenomenon of religious nationalism but that its precise political meaning depends heavily on national history and institutions.
Why Different Measurements Produce Different Estimates
There is no single answer to the question "How many Americans are Christian nationalists?" unless the measurement method is specified.
One study may classify people according to a six-item additive scale. Another may use PRRI's four categories. Another may ask directly whether America should be a Christian nation. Another may measure whether respondents actually identify themselves as Christian nationalists.
Each approach answers a somewhat different question.
Estimates can therefore change depending on:
- which questions are included;
- how questions are worded;
- whether negative questions are reverse-scored;
- how missing responses are treated;
- whether answers are added into a continuous scale;
- where classification thresholds are placed;
- whether Christian nationalism is treated as one dimension or several;
- whether researchers measure beliefs or identity;
- whether demographic groups interpret questions similarly; and
- whether respondents are given a definition of Christian nationalism.
Measurement decisions are therefore not simply technical details. They can influence conclusions about how widespread Christian nationalism is, who supports it, and what political consequences are associated with it.
Conclusion
Research on Christian nationalism has evolved from reliance on a small number of influential survey scales toward a much broader methodological debate about ideology, identity, classification, validity, and context.
The Baylor-derived six-item measure remains foundational and has generated a large empirical literature. PRRI's five-item scale provides another widely used system and facilitates large-scale geographic and longitudinal comparisons. Pew's research demonstrates the value of examining individual beliefs, direct questions, open-ended responses, and attitudes toward the Christian-nationalist label separately.
More recent scholarship increasingly uses factor analysis, latent classes, alternative scales, identity measures, survey experiments, measurement-invariance testing, abbreviated historical indicators, and cross-national comparisons.
Taken together, this research suggests that Christian nationalism is measurable but that no measurement system is neutral or definitive. Different instruments emphasize different aspects of the phenomenon and can produce different estimates of its prevalence, composition, and political consequences.
The strongest interpretation of the literature is therefore not that researchers have discovered one universally accepted Christian-nationalism scale, but that measurement itself has become an important field of inquiry. Understanding a claim about Christian nationalism requires asking not only what a study found, but also how the study defined and measured Christian nationalism.
Measurement, Conceptualization, and Validation
1. | Jesse Smith | Religious Studies Review | September 2026
On Christian Nationalism. The review devotes substantial attention to measurement controversies, including whether commonly used questions actually measure Christian nationalism, general religiosity, civil religion, or opposition to secularism.
2. | Donald P. Haider-Markel et al. | Public Opinion Quarterly | July 4, 2026
Christian Nationalism as a Social Identity. Uses established social-identity measures alongside Christian-nationalist worldview questions to test whether Christian nationalism should be understood as an ideology, identity, or both. Survey experiments show that self-identification depends partly on how respondents are told to understand the term.
3. | Jesse Smith and George Yancey | Review of Religious Research | May 21, 2025
Measurement and Conceptualization of Christian Nationalism: A Critical Examination and Alternative Approach. Smith and Yancey directly test how Christian nationalism should be measured, using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to compare a new Neighborly Faith scale with the established Baylor Religion Survey measure. They argue that the alternative scale shows stronger construct validity and more directly measures support for Christian nationalism.
4. | Joshua B. Grubbs et al. | Public Opinion Quarterly | May 13, 2025
White or Woke Christian Nationalists? How Race Moderates the Link Between Christian Nationalism and Progressive Identities. Introduces a measure combining ideological statements with direct Christian-nationalist self-identification. The resulting index has high internal reliability and illustrates an alternative to the traditional Baylor scale.
5. | Political Behavior | 2025
“We Should All Be Christian Nationalists”: Elite Influence on Identification with Christian Nationalism. Uses PRRI measurement items before experimental treatments and then measures direct identification with the Christian-nationalist label, allowing researchers to distinguish beliefs from identity.
6. | Jesse Smith and Gary J. Adler Jr. | Socius | 2022
What Isn't Christian Nationalism? A Call for Conceptual and Empirical Splitting. The authors argue that the conventional six-question measure combines several distinct attitudes toward religion, politics, and public life. Their latent-class analysis identifies six different response patterns rather than assuming every respondent falls along a single Christian-nationalism continuum.
7. | Xiaoling Li and Paul Froese | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | 2023
The Duality of American Christian Nationalism: Religious Traditionalism versus Christian Statism. Using multiple Baylor Religion Survey waves and Pew data, the authors find that the conventional Christian-nationalism scale contains two underlying dimensions: Christian Statism and Religious Traditionalism.
8. | Sean F. Everton | Frontiers in Social Psychology | 2024
Not All Christian Nationalists Are White (and Not All White Christians Are Christian Nationalists): Exploring the Predictors of Christian Nationalism. Compares three approaches to identifying Christian nationalists: the Whitehead-Perry additive scale, Smith-Adler latent-class analysis, and Li-Froese Christian Statism measure. The study demonstrates that estimates of who qualifies as a Christian nationalist vary substantially depending on the measurement method.
Baylor Religion Survey Six-Item Scale
9. | Zachary D. Broeren and Paul A. Djupe | Politics and Religion | December 4, 2023
The Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate of Christian Nationalism: Experimental Evidence about the Implementation of the Rule of Law. Uses the six Baylor-style questions converted into a 0–1 Christian-nationalism index.
10. | Multiple Authors | PLOS ONE | 2023
Who Bought a Gun During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States? Includes a six-item Christian-nationalism scale with reported reliability, illustrating its adoption beyond sociology-of-religion research.
11. | Multiple Authors | PLOS ONE | 2023
Who Bought a Gun During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States? Publisher version of the study describing use of a six-question Christian-nationalism scale.
12. | Samuel Stroope, Heather M. Rackin, and Paul Froese | Socius | 2021
Christian Nationalism and Views of Immigrants in the United States: Is the Relationship Stronger for the Religiously Inactive? Explicitly describes the six-item measure involving a Christian nation, Christian values, church-state separation, religious symbols, divine national destiny, and school prayer.
13. | Samuel L. Perry et al. | Sociology of Religion | 2021
Save the Economy, Liberty, and Yourself: Christian Nationalism and Americans' Views on Government COVID-19 Restrictions. Measures Christian nationalism with the familiar six-item battery and compares its effects with personal religiosity and political orientation.
Culture Wars and COVID-19 Conduct: Christian Nationalism, Religiosity, and Americans' Behavior During the Coronavirus Pandemic. Uses the standard six-item additive measure and reports strong internal reliability.
15. | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Canadian Review of Sociology | 2019
Is a “Christian America” a More Patriarchal America? Religion, Politics, and Traditionalist Gender Ideology. Employs the Christian-nationalism scale to distinguish nationalist beliefs from conventional religiosity and political ideology.
God's Country in Black and Blue: How Christian Nationalism Shapes Americans' Views about Police (Mis)treatment of Blacks. Uses the established Christian-nationalism index to investigate how Christian-nationalist beliefs relate to perceptions of racialized policing.
17. | Andrew L. Whitehead, Landon Schnabel, and Samuel L. Perry | Socius | July 23, 2018
Gun Control in the Crosshairs: Christian Nationalism and Opposition to Stricter Gun Laws. Uses the Baylor Religion Survey multidimensional scale to quantify respondents' adherence to Christian-nationalist ideas.
Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. One of the foundational quantitative studies using the Baylor Religion Survey items as a multidimensional Christian-nationalism scale.
PRRI Five-Item Christian Nationalism Scale
19. | Public Religion Research Institute | PRRI | 2026
Christian Nationalism Research Collection. Central repository for PRRI surveys and methodology using the five-item Christian-nationalism measure.
20. | Public Religion Research Institute | PRRI | February 17, 2026
Mapping Christian Nationalism Across the 50 States: Insights from PRRI's 2025 American Values Atlas. Continues the same five-item instrument, enabling researchers to compare Christian-nationalism scores geographically and over time.
21. | Public Religion Research Institute | PRRI | February 2025
Christian Nationalism Across All 50 States: Insights from PRRI's 2024 American Values Atlas. Repeats the standardized five-item scale in a sample exceeding 22,000 adults and provides updated state comparisons.
22. | Andrew L. Whitehead | Nations and Nationalism | 2025
Christian Nationalism and the Vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential Election: A State-Level Analysis. Uses PRRI American Values Atlas state-level estimates derived from the five-item Christian-nationalism scale.
23. | Public Religion Research Institute | PRRI | February 28, 2024
Support for Christian Nationalism in All 50 States: Findings from PRRI's 2023 American Values Atlas. Applies the five-question PRRI scale to a large national dataset, providing state-level estimates and reporting very high internal reliability.
24. | Public Religion Research Institute | PRRI | February 2024
Measuring Christian Nationalism. Methodological documentation explaining how responses to PRRI's five questions are scored from zero to one and converted into four Christian-nationalism categories.
25. | Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings Institution | PRRI | February 2023
A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture. Introduces PRRI's five-item measure covering Christian government, Christian laws, Christian foundations, Christian American identity, and Christian dominion. Respondents are categorized as Adherents, Sympathizers, Skeptics, or Rejecters.
Pew, Direct-Question, and New Survey Approaches
26. | Gregory A. Smith et al. | Pew Research Center | May 14, 2026
How Americans Feel About Religion's Influence in Government and Public Life. Pew measures several attitudes associated with Christian nationalism separately, including establishing Christianity as the official religion, promoting Christian values, church-state separation, belief in divine national favor, and favorable or unfavorable identification with the term itself.
27. | Pew Research Center | May 14, 2026
Favorability Toward “Christian Nationalism,” 2022–2026. Tracks explicit positive and negative identification with the term and demonstrates why self-label measures can produce much smaller estimates than belief-based scales.
28. | UMass Poll | University of Massachusetts Amherst | April 2026
Views on the Nation and What Makes Us American as the U.S. Approaches 250. Uses five Christian-nationalism statements covering official Christian status, Christian values, church-state separation, divine purpose, and Christian founding, alongside a conjoint experiment measuring conceptions of American identity.
29. | Laura Silver et al. | Pew Research Center | January 28, 2025
How Important Is Following a Specific Religion to National Belonging? Measures the religious-national-identity component of nationalism by asking whether membership in the historically predominant religion is necessary to be “truly” part of the nation.
30. | Laura Silver et al. | Pew Research Center | January 28, 2025
Religious Nationalism Around the World. Creates a four-condition classification rather than averaging responses into a conventional additive scale, an important alternative strategy for identifying religious nationalists.
31. | Pew Research Center | January 28, 2025
Methodology: Comparing Levels of Religious Nationalism Around the World. Explains why Pew rejected a simple averaged index and instead required respondents to meet several simultaneous criteria for classification as religious nationalists.
32. | Laura Silver et al. | Pew Research Center | January 28, 2025
Comparing Levels of Religious Nationalism Around the World. DOI version of Pew's 36-country study, useful for examining question wording, country-specific religious substitutions, reliability tests, and cross-national comparability.
33. | Chip Rotolo, Gregory A. Smith, and Jonathan Evans | Pew Research Center | March 15, 2024
Christianity's Place in Politics, and “Christian Nationalism.” Measures familiarity and favorability toward the explicit label while separately measuring substantive church-state attitudes, illustrating the difference between ideological beliefs and self-recognition of a political term.
34. | Pew Research Center | October 27, 2022
45% of Americans Say U.S. Should Be a “Christian Nation.” Pew uses direct questions asking whether respondents think the United States should be a Christian nation, rather than automatically defining all respondents through a multidimensional scale.
35. | Pew Research Center | October 27, 2022
Views of the U.S. as a Christian Nation and Opinions about Christian Nationalism. Distinguishes support for the phrase “Christian nation” from familiarity with and evaluations of the label “Christian nationalism.”
36. | Pew Research Center | October 27, 2022
In Their Own Words: How Americans Describe “Christian Nationalism.” Uses open-ended responses to examine what respondents themselves think the term means, an important qualitative alternative to researcher-defined scales.
Identity Versus Ideology
37. | Donald P. Haider-Markel et al. | Public Opinion Quarterly | July 4, 2026
Christian Nationalism as a Social Identity. Applies established social-identity measurement techniques and experiments with different definitions of Christian nationalism to distinguish worldview from identity attachment.
38. | Paul A. Djupe and Brooklyn Walker | Politics and Religion | March 26, 2026
The Weakness of Anti-Christian Nationalism: When Religiously Inclusive Orientations Can't Increase Tolerance. Develops and pilots an “anti-Christian nationalism” battery, offering a rare attempt to measure the ideological opposite of Christian nationalism directly.
39. | Amy Brooke Grauley | Political Behavior | September 29, 2025
“We Should All Be Christian Nationalists”: Elite Influence on Identification with Christian Nationalism. Compares pre-treatment PRRI belief scores with respondents' willingness to explicitly identify as Christian nationalists following positive, negative, or neutral elite cues.
Patterns of Christian Nationalist Engagement and Connections to Spirituality. Uses latent-profile analysis rather than only continuous scale scores to identify heterogeneous patterns of Christian-nationalist engagement.
41. | Nilay Saiya | Politics and Religion | May 13, 2025
The Varieties of American Christian Nationalism. Challenges treatment of Christian nationalism as a single homogeneous category and distinguishes ideologically different pathways toward the desire for a Christian nation.
42. | Joseph A. Wagoner et al. | Political Psychology | February 28, 2025
Different Images of God Predict Religious Nationalism Among Christians. Measures religious nationalism alongside respondents' images of God, showing how psychological religious constructs can be separated empirically from nationalism itself.
43. | Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead | Review of Religious Research | January 9, 2025
Character Matters? Christian Nationalism and Insistence on Ethical Political Leaders. Uses Christian-nationalism scores alongside measures of political ethics to test the predictive validity of the construct in judgments about leadership.
44. | Corwin E. Smidt | Religions | November 10, 2024
Christian Nationalism, Civic Republicanism, and Radical Secularism in Contemporary American Politics over Time. Conceptually separates Christian nationalism from civic republicanism and radical secularism and examines how these orientations change across time.
Alternative, Abbreviated, Historical, and Dataset-Specific Measures
45. | Samuel L. Perry | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | September 11, 2026
Cognitive Ability and Christian Nationalism. Uses General Social Survey indicators rather than the Baylor battery, including Christian identity as a requirement for being truly American and support for Christian exercises in public schools.
46. | Frontiers in Political Science | 2026
Two-Item Christian-Nationalism Index. Combines support for Christian control over national institutions with belief that the Bible should form the foundation of the legal system.
47. | Jesse Smith | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | December 26, 2025
Partisan and Racial Sorting of Christian Nationalism, 1996–2022. Builds a historical indicator from questions available repeatedly across national datasets, enabling trend analysis impossible with newer six-item scales.
Order Begins at Home: Christian Nationalism and Control over Children. Compares Christian-nationalism indicators from different General Social Survey years, illustrating how researchers sometimes rely on single or abbreviated indicators when full scales are unavailable.
Not Paying unto Caesar: Christian Nationalism, Politics, Race, and Opposition to Taxation. Explicitly compares single-item and multi-item measurement traditions and uses Christian-nationalism indicators available in multiple national datasets.
50. | Politics and Religion | 2024
Which Political Entities Are “Friendly” to Religion? Uses a direct binary question—whether the United States should be a Christian nation—as a deliberately simple measure with strong face validity.
51. | Social Science Quarterly | 2024
Christian Nationalism, Religious Struggles, and the Structural Amplification of Emotional Distress. Uses a three-item Christian-nationalism scale and confirms its measurement properties through confirmatory factor analysis.
Race and Measurement Invariance
52. | Samuel L. Perry and Joshua B. Grubbs | Social Forces | February 23, 2025
The Religion of White Identity Politics: Christian Nationalism and White Racial Solidarity. Uses a newer, explicitly validated Christian-nationalism measure while testing whether its effects differ between White and non-White Americans.
53. | Multiple Authors | Perspectives on Politics | 2025
Religion Is Sometimes Raced: Christian Nationalism as In-Group Protection. Examines Christian-nationalism scale reliability and political effects separately among White, Black, and Latino respondents.
54. | Brooklyn Walker and Donald P. Haider-Markel | Politics and Religion | June 5, 2024
A Colorblind Christian Country? How Racial Attitudes Affect Support for Christian Nationalism and Civil Religion. Uses racial-prime experiments to distinguish Christian-nationalist responses from broader civil-religious sentiment.
55. | Multiple Authors | Ethnic and Racial Studies | 2024
Intersecting Identities, Diverging Visions: Christian Nationalism, Race, Gender, and Prioritizing Equality or Liberty. Tests robustness of results when controversial scale items, including church-state separation, are removed.
Race over Religion: Christian Nationalism and Perceived Threats to National Unity. Tests ostensibly race-neutral Christian-nationalism indicators across racial groups and shows that identical scores can have racially contingent political meanings.
57. | Samuel L. Perry et al. | Social Forces | November 11, 2021
Divided by Faith (in Christian America): Christian Nationalism, Race, and Divergent Perceptions of Racial Injustice. Demonstrates that the relationship between a common Christian-nationalism scale and racial attitudes varies significantly by respondent race.
Applied Studies, Predictive Validity, Democracy, and Public Attitudes
58. | PRRI | September 24, 2026
Resistance to Christian Nationalism in All 50 States. Reverses the usual analytic focus by examining Rejecters and Skeptics, helping test whether the low end of the scale represents coherent pro-democratic orientations.
59. | Samuel L. Perry et al. | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | September 17, 2026
Christian Nationalism, the Antisocial Gospel? Attitudes on Charity and Justice in the Kingdom of God. Measures Christian nationalism separately from theological and religious commitments in examining conceptions of Christian social responsibility.
60. | Christopher H. Seto | Criminology | August 6, 2026
Christian Nationalism, Race, and Contingent Support for Law Enforcement: Results from Two Survey Experiments. Combines measured Christian-nationalist attitudes with experimental manipulations involving race and policing.
61. | Social Forces | April 24, 2026
Culture Wars and Classism: Christian Nationalism, Economic Position, and Americans' Approval of Inequality. Uses General Social Survey measures to extend Christian-nationalism measurement into research on economic attitudes.
62. | Brooklyn Walker and Kevin J. Mullinix | Political Science Quarterly | April 9, 2026
An Eye for an Eye? The Conditional Punitiveness of Christian Nationalists. Uses survey measurement to assess Christian nationalism and experimentally investigates circumstances in which it predicts punitive attitudes.
63. | Samuel L. Perry | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | March 14, 2026
The Right Kind of Children: Christian Nationalism, Religiosity, and Support for Selective Versus General Pronatalism. Separates Christian-nationalism measurement from religiosity and replacement-theory beliefs in models of pronatalist attitudes.
64. | Multiple Authors | Injury Epidemiology | 2025
The MAGA Movement and Political Violence in 2024. Measures agreement with several Christian-nationalist statements alongside QAnon and political-violence measures in a nationally representative survey.
65. | Perspectives on Politics | 2025
Religion Is Sometimes Raced: Christian Nationalism as In-Group Protection. Reports reliability of the six-item Christian-nationalism measure separately for White, Black, and Latino respondents, an important test of measurement consistency across racial groups.
Not Paying unto Caesar. Provides a useful discussion of how Christian nationalism has been operationalized through both single-item indicators and larger indexes.
67. | Multiple Authors | Politics and Religion | 2024
Christian Nationalism and Support for Leaders Violating Democratic Norms During National Emergencies. Uses a Christian-nationalism scale as a predictor of support for suspending elections, suppressing opponents, and disregarding institutional checks.
68. | Joshua T. Davis, Samuel L. Perry, and Joshua B. Grubbs | Sociology of Religion | 2024
Liberty for Us, Limits for Them: Christian Nationalism and Americans' Views on Citizens' Rights. Tests construct validity across numerous conceptions of constitutional rights rather than relying on a single democracy outcome.
69. | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | 2024
In God We Distrust: Christian Nationalism and Anti-Atheist Attitude. Uses Baylor Religion Survey data and its established Christian-nationalism battery to distinguish nationalist ideology from religiosity.
70. | Brooklyn Walker | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | May 8, 2023
Christ, Country, and Conspiracies? Christian Nationalism, Biblical Literalism, and Belief in Conspiracy Theories. Separates Christian nationalism from biblical literalism to determine whether the two independently predict conspiracy thinking.
71. | Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua B. Grubbs | Sociological Forum | January 3, 2022
“I Don't Want Everybody to Vote”: Christian Nationalism and Restricting Voter Access in the United States. Uses a multidimensional Christian-nationalism measure in nationally representative survey data.
72. | Miles T. Armaly, David T. Buckley, and Adam M. Enders | Political Behavior | January 4, 2022
Christian Nationalism and Political Violence: Victimhood, Racial Identity, Conspiracy, and Support for the Capitol Attacks. Operationalizes Christian nationalism quantitatively and examines how its relationship with political violence changes in conjunction with racial identity and perceived victimhood.
Historical Fundamentalism? Christian Nationalism and Ignorance About Religion in American Political History. Uses panel data to distinguish Christian-nationalist narratives from religiosity in predicting historical misconceptions.
74. | Samuel L. Perry | Nations and Nationalism | August 31, 2021
Christian Nationalism, Perceived Anti-Christian Discrimination, and Prioritising “Religious Freedom” in the 2020 Presidential Election. Separates Christian nationalism from perceptions of Christian persecution in statistical models.
The Devil That You Know. Uses panel measurement to determine whether Christian nationalism predicts changes in intended presidential voting behavior rather than merely cross-sectional correlation.
76. | Samuel Stroope et al. | Sociological Forum | February 21, 2021
Unchurched Christian Nationalism and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Tests interaction between Christian-nationalism scores and church attendance, demonstrating that nationalist beliefs are analytically distinct from institutional religious involvement.
77. | Joseph O. Baker, Samuel L. Perry, and Andrew L. Whitehead | Sociological Forum | 2020
Crusading for Moral Authority: Christian Nationalism and Opposition to Science. Models Christian nationalism separately from religious practice, biblical literalism, and other religious variables to assess discriminant validity.
78. | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Canadian Review of Sociology | 2019
Is a “Christian America” a More Patriarchal America? Demonstrates that a Christian-nationalism index captures attitudes not reducible to evangelical identity or frequency of religious participation.
Cross-National and Comparative Measurement
79. | John Ishiyama | Politics and Religion | September 15, 2025
Christian Nationalism and Attitudes about Democracy in Africa. Uses Afrobarometer Round 7 questions to construct measures of Christian-nationalist attitudes outside the United States, showing how measurement must be adapted to different national contexts.
80. | Nilay Saiya | Review of Faith & International Affairs | 2023
Christian Nationalism's Threat to Global Democracy. Discusses Christian nationalism as a transnational phenomenon and highlights the difficulty of transferring U.S.-specific definitions and indicators to other political environments.
Books and Foundational Measurement Discussions
81. | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | March 19, 2020
Introduction: A House Dividing. Introduces the authors' conceptual definition of Christian nationalism and explains why they use a multi-item measurement strategy.
82. | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | March 19, 2020
Order. Demonstrates how scale categories are used to compare Christian-nationalist orientations regarding gender, sexuality, marriage, and family life.
83. | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | 2020
Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Major book-length treatment of Christian nationalism based heavily on quantitative survey measurement.
84. | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | 2020
Taking America Back for God. The book popularizes four interpretive categories—Rejectors, Resisters, Accommodators, and Ambassadors—derived from respondents' locations on a Christian-nationalism scale.
