Christian Nationalism and Same-Sex Marriage

Christian nationalism and same-sex marriage have become closely connected subjects in research on religion, national identity, sexuality, and American politics. Christian nationalism is generally understood by scholars as an ideology or cultural framework that seeks a close relationship between Christianity and American national identity and often favors a privileged public role for Christianity. It is distinct from Christianity itself, evangelicalism, religious observance, or ordinary participation by Christians in politics.

Research conducted since the early twenty-first century has consistently found an association between stronger Christian-nationalist beliefs and opposition to legal recognition of same-sex relationships. The relationship remains visible even as American public opinion toward same-sex marriage has changed substantially. The legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 did not end the political conflict. Instead, many disputes shifted toward religious exemptions, public-accommodation laws, government employees, adoption and foster care, expressive services, and questions about whether Obergefell could someday be reconsidered.

The history also illustrates an important distinction between Christian nationalism and conservative Christianity more broadly. Opposition to same-sex marriage has existed among many Catholic, evangelical Protestant, Latter-day Saint, Orthodox, and other religious communities, while some Christian denominations and religious organizations support same-sex marriage. Christian nationalism therefore represents one component of a much larger religious and political debate rather than a description applicable to all religious opposition to same-sex marriage.

Scholarly Research on Christian Nationalism and Same-Sex Marriage

One of the most influential studies directly connecting Christian nationalism with attitudes toward same-sex relationships was Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry's 2015 study, A More Perfect Union? Christian Nationalism and Support for Same-sex Unions. Using national survey data, Whitehead and Perry found that greater adherence to Christian-nationalist ideas was associated with lower support for both same-sex marriage and civil unions, even when other variables such as political ideology and religiosity were considered.

This finding helped establish same-sex marriage as one of the policy areas through which researchers could examine the political consequences of Christian-nationalist beliefs. Subsequent research has continued to distinguish Christian nationalism from conventional measures of religiosity, biblical belief, evangelical identity, political conservatism, and church attendance.

Research by Jesse Smith and Gary J. Adler Jr. has emphasized the importance of separating Christian nationalism conceptually from other forms of religious conservatism. Their work argues that the term should not simply become a label for every conservative Christian belief or political position. This distinction is especially important when studying same-sex marriage because opposition to same-sex marriage can arise from theological, moral, political, constitutional, or cultural considerations that do not necessarily constitute Christian nationalism.

Research concerning religion and same-sex marriage more generally provides additional context. Darren Sherkat and other scholars have documented the importance of religious affiliation, religious participation, political identity, and intersecting social identities in shaping marriage attitudes. Samuel Perry has examined the relationship between biblical authority, conservative religious identity, and attitudes toward same-sex marriage. Jojanneke van der Toorn and colleagues have explored the relationships among religiosity, ideological conservatism, traditionalism, sexual prejudice, and opposition to marriage equality.

Together, this scholarship indicates that religion and same-sex-marriage attitudes are multidimensional. Christian nationalism is an important predictor in some studies, but it operates alongside denomination, theology, partisan identity, ideology, race, generation, education, personal relationships, and changing cultural norms.

Christian Nationalism and Public Opinion

Public opinion concerning same-sex marriage has changed considerably since the early 2000s. Pew Research Center, Gallup, and the Public Religion Research Institute have documented a broad increase in support for allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally.

Religious differences nevertheless remain substantial. Historically, white evangelical Protestants have been among the major American religious populations least supportive of same-sex marriage, while religiously unaffiliated Americans, Jewish Americans, mainline Protestants, and several other groups have generally reported higher levels of support. Attitudes within most traditions have also changed over time, demonstrating that religious affiliation does not produce a fixed or uniform political position.

PRRI's American Values Atlas provides particularly useful information because it measures both attitudes toward same-sex marriage and adherence to Christian-nationalist ideas. Its 2025 survey, published in 2026, reported that 65 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage. Support varied sharply according to PRRI's Christian-nationalism classifications: approximately 93 percent of Christian-nationalism Rejecters supported same-sex marriage, compared with 73 percent of Skeptics, 46 percent of Sympathizers, and 22 percent of Adherents.

These differences are among the clearest empirical connections between Christian nationalism and contemporary attitudes toward marriage policy. Earlier PRRI surveys found a similar pattern.

At the same time, these categories should be interpreted carefully. They describe responses to a group of survey questions rather than formal organizations or identities necessarily adopted by respondents themselves. They also do not establish that Christian nationalism alone causes an individual's opinion about same-sex marriage. Political affiliation, religious tradition, theological beliefs, demographics, and other factors overlap with Christian-nationalist attitudes.

The Christian Right and the Politics of Marriage

Opposition to same-sex marriage became a significant issue for the American Christian Right before scholars widely adopted the contemporary term Christian nationalism.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, organizations associated with conservative evangelicalism, Catholic activism, and the broader Religious Right promoted laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Organizations involved in these campaigns included the Southern Baptist Convention, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the National Organization for Marriage, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, commonly known as DOMA, represented a major federal development. DOMA defined marriage for purposes of federal law as a relationship between one man and one woman and allowed states to decline recognition of same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, several Christian Right organizations supported a proposed federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as opposite-sex. The proposal did not receive the congressional supermajorities required for a constitutional amendment, but marriage amendments were adopted in numerous states.

Religious organizations also participated heavily in state campaigns. California's Proposition 8 became one of the most prominent examples. In 2008, California voters approved a state constitutional amendment limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples after a California Supreme Court decision had recognized same-sex marriage. Evangelical Protestants, Catholics, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and other religious groups participated in the campaign, while other religious organizations opposed Proposition 8.

These campaigns helped make marriage a prominent component of America's broader political conflicts involving religion, sexuality, family, and national identity.

DOMA, Windsor, and Obergefell

The legal environment changed rapidly during the early 2010s.

In United States v. Windsor in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated DOMA's federal definition of marriage. On the same day, the Court's ruling in Hollingsworth v. Perry left in place a federal district court decision invalidating California's Proposition 8.

Two years later, the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges. On June 26, 2015, the Court held that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry and that states must recognize lawful same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

Obergefell transformed the political environment surrounding marriage. Preventing same-sex couples from obtaining marriage licenses was no longer a viable state policy while the ruling remained controlling constitutional law.

Conservative religious responses varied. Some organizations continued to argue that marriage should legally be defined as male-female. Others increasingly emphasized protection for individuals and institutions that maintained traditional religious teachings concerning marriage.

The shift from preventing legal recognition toward seeking accommodations for religious dissent became one of the most important developments in post-Obergefell politics.

Religious Liberty and Same-Sex Marriage

Legal recognition of same-sex marriage produced a series of disputes concerning the interaction between LGBTQ civil rights and religious freedom.

These controversies have involved several different situations and should not be treated as legally identical. They include clergy and houses of worship, religious nonprofit organizations, government employees, adoption and foster-care agencies, schools, employers, commercial businesses, and individuals providing expressive wedding services.

Clergy and churches generally possess strong constitutional protections concerning religious doctrine and participation in religious ceremonies. More difficult disputes have arisen when religiously motivated individuals or organizations participate in commercial markets or government programs governed by nondiscrimination requirements.

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission involved a Colorado baker who objected on religious grounds to creating a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The Supreme Court ruled for the baker in 2018 on relatively narrow grounds, concluding that the state civil-rights commission had failed to demonstrate constitutionally required neutrality toward his religious beliefs.

Fulton v. City of Philadelphia concerned Catholic Social Services and Philadelphia's foster-care system. In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled for Catholic Social Services under the particular contractual and Free Exercise circumstances involved in the case.

303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, decided in 2023, concerned a website designer who argued that Colorado could not compel her to produce expressive wedding websites conveying messages with which she disagreed. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibited the state from compelling that expression. The decision centered principally on freedom of speech rather than establishing a general religious exemption from public-accommodation laws.

These cases demonstrate that the post-Obergefell controversy involves several constitutional principles, including free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, government neutrality toward religion, equal protection, and enforcement of nondiscrimination laws.

Competing Approaches to Religious Accommodation

Legal scholars disagree about how conflicts between same-sex-marriage rights and religious objections should be resolved.

Douglas Laycock, Thomas Berg, Robin Fretwell Wilson, and other scholars have explored arrangements intended to protect legal recognition of same-sex marriage while preserving meaningful space for religious dissent. Some argue that carefully limited exemptions can reduce social conflict without substantially interfering with same-sex couples' access to goods, services, or government benefits.

Other scholars argue that broad exemptions can transfer the costs of religious accommodation to same-sex couples and may weaken generally applicable civil-rights protections. From this perspective, exemptions require particular scrutiny when religious objections arise in commercial businesses, public offices, employment, or publicly funded services.

The disagreement therefore is not simply between advocates and opponents of religious liberty. Much of the legal debate concerns where religious liberty should apply, whose rights bear the consequences of an exemption, and whether different institutions should receive different levels of protection.

The Respect for Marriage Act

Congress revisited federal marriage law in 2022 following renewed discussion about the constitutional foundations of substantive due-process rights.

The Respect for Marriage Act repealed the remaining provisions of DOMA and established federal recognition of marriages valid where they were performed. It also requires states to recognize marriages lawfully performed in other states, subject to the statute's provisions.

The law simultaneously contains protections concerning religious organizations and religious services.

The legislation produced an unusual coalition. Many LGBTQ-rights organizations and supporters of marriage equality backed it as an additional statutory protection for legally recognized marriages. Some religious organizations that maintained theological opposition to same-sex marriage also supported the legislation after religious-liberty language was added.

Other conservative Christian organizations opposed the law, arguing that its protections for people and institutions objecting to same-sex marriage were inadequate.

The debate illustrated an important development in marriage politics: disagreement over the theological definition of marriage does not necessarily determine a religious organization's position on every civil marriage law. Some organizations came to support legal arrangements combining civil recognition for same-sex couples with protections for religious institutions that continued to define marriage as male-female.

Same-Sex Marriage and Christian-Nationalist Conceptions of Social Order

Researchers studying Christian nationalism frequently place marriage within a broader conception of social order.

In this interpretation, debates about marriage are connected to ideas about gender roles, sexuality, family authority, religion, national identity, and the moral responsibilities of government. Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry's research describes Christian nationalism as involving not merely personal religious beliefs but ideas about how American society should be organized.

This helps explain why same-sex marriage can acquire symbolic importance exceeding the immediate legal question of who may receive a marriage license. For some Christian-nationalist adherents, changing marriage law can be interpreted as evidence that American institutions have departed from what they understand to be the country's proper Christian moral order.

Critics of Christian nationalism argue that government enforcement of specifically Christian understandings of marriage conflicts with religious pluralism and equal citizenship. Christian-nationalist activists and some religious conservatives instead argue that public policy inevitably reflects moral judgments and that traditional marriage norms have legitimate religious, cultural, and social foundations.

These competing views involve fundamental disagreements over the relationship between religion and government in a pluralistic society.

Christian Nationalism Is Not Synonymous With Christianity

Research on this subject requires careful terminology.

Christian nationalism should not be used as a synonym for Christianity, evangelical Protestantism, conservative Christianity, opposition to same-sex marriage, or Republican political identity. These populations overlap in various ways but are not interchangeable.

There are Christians who support same-sex marriage, Christians who oppose it for theological reasons without embracing Christian nationalism, and Christian-nationalist adherents whose political attitudes differ on particular policies. Several Christian denominations perform same-sex marriages, while others continue to teach that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman.

There are also religious arguments supporting marriage equality. Christian clergy, theologians, congregations, and advocacy organizations have participated in campaigns for LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage.

Similarly, opposition to same-sex marriage exists outside Christianity. Polling demonstrates significant variation among Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, members of other religious traditions, and religiously unaffiliated populations.

Treating Christian nationalism as a measurable ideology rather than a general label for religious conservatism therefore produces a more accurate description of the research.

Continuing Challenges to Obergefell

Although Obergefell established nationwide marriage equality in 2015, opposition to the decision did not disappear.

Some conservative Christian legal organizations have continued to argue that Obergefell was wrongly decided. Litigation involving former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the ruling, subsequently became one vehicle through which advocates sought reconsideration of the decision.

These efforts demonstrate that same-sex marriage remains part of contemporary debates within portions of the Christian Right. At the same time, the political and legal environment differs considerably from the period before 2015. Same-sex couples have married throughout the country for more than a decade, national public opinion has become substantially more supportive of legal same-sex marriage than it was during the early marriage campaigns, and Congress enacted the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022.

The debate consequently now encompasses several overlapping questions: whether Obergefell was constitutionally correct, whether the Supreme Court might reconsider it, what federal statutory protections would remain if constitutional doctrine changed, and how religious-liberty protections should coexist with legal recognition of same-sex marriages.

Changes Within Evangelical Christianity

The legalization of same-sex marriage has also produced debates within evangelical Christianity.

Most major conservative evangelical organizations and denominations continue to maintain traditional theological definitions of marriage. Nevertheless, surveys show generational and institutional differences within evangelical populations, and some congregations and individual evangelicals have adopted affirming positions toward same-sex relationships.

Other evangelicals who continue to hold traditional theological beliefs have argued for political pluralism rather than attempting to impose those beliefs through civil marriage law. Discussions surrounding the Respect for Marriage Act illustrated this approach, with some religious conservatives supporting legal recognition coupled with institutional religious-liberty protections.

Researchers have also investigated whether highly visible Religious Right opposition to LGBTQ rights has affected Americans' relationship with organized religion. Some scholarship suggests that culture-war politics surrounding sexuality and marriage can contribute to political polarization and religious disaffiliation, particularly among younger Americans. Establishing the magnitude and direction of those relationships remains a continuing subject of research.

Public Opinion After Obergefell

The period following Obergefell has not produced a simple end to disagreement.

National support for same-sex marriage is considerably higher than it was during the early 2000s, but significant divisions remain by religion, party identification, ideology, and Christian-nationalism orientation.

PRRI's 2025 American Values Atlas illustrates these differences. Nationally, 65 percent supported legal same-sex marriage. Among Christian-nationalism Rejecters, support was 93 percent, while 22 percent of Adherents supported it. Skeptics and Sympathizers occupied intermediate positions.

The same survey found differences among religious traditions. White mainline Protestants and white Catholics showed substantially higher support than white evangelical Protestants. Differences also existed within Christians of color and among non-Christian religious traditions.

The findings demonstrate both long-term change and continuing polarization. Americans have moved substantially toward legal acceptance of same-sex marriage, but Christian-nationalist beliefs remain associated with much lower levels of support.

Interpreting the Relationship

The accumulated scholarship supports several distinctions.

First, Christian nationalism is strongly associated with opposition to same-sex marriage, but association should not automatically be interpreted as simple causation.

Second, Christian nationalism overlaps with evangelical identity, religious conservatism, Republican identification, and conservative ideology, but researchers generally treat these as analytically distinct concepts.

Third, the politics surrounding same-sex marriage have changed over time. Before Obergefell, political campaigns often focused on whether same-sex marriage should be legally recognized at all. After nationwide legalization, disputes increasingly concerned religious exemptions, public accommodations, foster care, expressive services, and the durability of the Supreme Court precedent.

Fourth, religious communities are internally diverse. Conservative religious opposition played an important role in campaigns against same-sex marriage, but religious organizations and believers also played important roles in campaigns supporting marriage equality.

Finally, Christian nationalism places the marriage debate within a larger question about American identity: whether government should reflect a particular Christian conception of social order or maintain a more religiously pluralistic framework in which citizens with competing religious and secular understandings of marriage share equal civic status.

Conclusion

The relationship between Christian nationalism and same-sex marriage provides an important case study in the interaction of religion, national identity, law, and cultural change in the United States.

Scholarly studies consistently find that stronger Christian-nationalist beliefs are associated with substantially lower support for same-sex marriage. That association persists even though American attitudes toward marriage equality have changed dramatically since the early twenty-first century.

The political conflict has also evolved. Early campaigns centered on DOMA, state constitutional amendments, Proposition 8, and proposals for a federal marriage amendment. United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges transformed the constitutional landscape, while subsequent disputes increasingly focused on religious liberty, compelled expression, public accommodations, government programs, and institutional exemptions. The Respect for Marriage Act added federal statutory protections while also incorporating protections for religious organizations.

Same-sex marriage therefore remains relevant to the study of Christian nationalism even after nationwide legalization. The issue reveals competing understandings of Christianity's relationship to American identity, the proper role of government in defining family life, the scope of religious liberty, and the meaning of equality in a religiously diverse society.

At the same time, neither Christianity nor opposition to same-sex marriage should automatically be equated with Christian nationalism. The available research instead supports examining Christian nationalism as a particular set of beliefs about Christianity, American identity, government, and social order—beliefs that strongly correlate with, but are not identical to, traditional religious views of marriage.