Christian Nationalism and Secular Nationalism
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Christian Nationalism and Secular Nationalism
Christian nationalism and secular nationalism represent different ways of connecting national identity, political authority, cultural belonging, and religion. Christian nationalism generally refers to frameworks that connect Christianity with the identity, history, values, or institutions of a nation. Secular nationalism, by contrast, locates national identity primarily in political institutions, citizenship, territory, language, shared history, culture, or other nonreligious foundations.
The distinction, however, is not always absolute. The source material shows that nationalism can combine religious and secular elements in different proportions. Political systems may be formally secular while still drawing upon religious symbols, sacred national narratives, rituals, historical myths, or majority religious traditions. Conversely, movements identified with Christianity may differ substantially in how strongly they favor formal religious authority, cultural Christian identity, or direct state support for religion.
Christian Nationalism as a Form of National Identity
Research on Christian nationalism commonly describes it as a cultural or political framework that links Christianity with national belonging. In the United States, scholars have examined beliefs about whether the country should be understood as a Christian nation, whether government should promote Christian values, and how Christianity should relate to public institutions.
The literature also emphasizes that Christian nationalism is not a single uniform ideology. Some studies distinguish between cultural attachment to Christian traditions and stronger support for giving Christianity an institutional or governmental role. Other research treats Christian nationalism as a social identity through which religion, patriotism, political affiliation, historical narratives, and cultural belonging may become connected.
Public opinion research further shows that Americans attach different meanings to terms such as "Christian nation" and "Christian nationalism." For some respondents these expressions refer primarily to historical influence or moral values, while others associate them with stronger forms of political or institutional preference for Christianity.
Secular Nationalism
Secular nationalism defines national identity without making membership in a particular religion a necessary basis of political belonging. It may emphasize citizenship, sovereignty, constitutional institutions, language, ethnicity, shared history, political ideals, or cultural traditions.
The sources show that secular nationalism should not automatically be equated with liberalism, pluralism, or political neutrality. Historical and contemporary examples from Turkey, India, Israel, Iran, and other societies demonstrate that secular nationalist movements may themselves become majoritarian, exclusionary, centralized, or ideologically rigid.
Secularism can also become part of national identity rather than merely representing the absence of religion. In some societies, support for secular institutions, public norms, or state traditions becomes incorporated into the national story and may be defended as strongly as religious traditions are elsewhere.
Christian Nationalism, Civil Religion, and Liberal Secularism
Civil religion occupies an important middle position between explicitly religious nationalism and strictly secular understandings of national identity. The concept refers to national narratives, rituals, symbols, historical figures, and institutions that acquire sacred or quasi-sacred significance without necessarily placing the state under the authority of an organized religion.
Robert Bellah's influential discussion of American civil religion described a public tradition containing sacred national symbols and historical narratives distinct from institutional Christianity. Later scholarship has examined whether civil religion can provide a shared national framework or whether it increasingly reflects partisan, cultural, or religious divisions.
Recent research distinguishes among Christian nationalism, civil religion, and liberal secularism as separate approaches to religion and public life. These models differ over whether Christianity should possess a privileged national role, whether national institutions may employ broadly religious symbolism, and whether government should maintain greater institutional neutrality toward religious and nonreligious worldviews.
Religion and Nationalism Are Not Simple Opposites
A recurring theme in the source material is that nationalism and religion cannot always be separated into distinct categories. Scholars have proposed several ways of understanding their relationship.
Religion and nationalism may function as parallel systems of identity and solidarity. Religion may supply symbols, narratives, institutions, or moral authority to nationalist movements. Nationalism itself may acquire characteristics resembling religion, including sacred territory, revered founders, public rituals, collective myths, and commemorations.
In other circumstances, religious traditions become a central source of national identity, producing explicitly religious nationalism. These different possibilities make it difficult to describe nationalism as inherently secular or religious.
Civic, Ethnic, and Religious Conceptions of Nationhood
The comparison between Christian and secular nationalism also overlaps with broader debates over civic and ethnic nationalism. Civic models generally emphasize citizenship, political institutions, constitutional membership, and common public commitments. Ethnocultural models place greater emphasis on ancestry, language, historical continuity, culture, or inherited traditions.
Religious nationalism adds another possible boundary of belonging by connecting the nation to a particular religious tradition. In practice these categories frequently overlap. A movement may simultaneously emphasize religion, ethnicity, citizenship, historical memory, and territorial attachment.
Scholarship on national identity therefore treats nations as communities constructed through combinations of myths, memories, institutions, symbols, territories, shared histories, and cultural traditions.
Race, Immigration, and National Belonging
Several sources examine the relationship between Christian nationalism and racial, ethnic, and immigration attitudes in the United States. Research has explored associations among Christian-nationalist beliefs, racial group identification, political identity, attitudes toward immigrants, and perceptions of national belonging.
The literature also cautions against assuming that Christian-nationalist measures have identical meanings across racial groups. Studies suggest that the relationship between Christian identity, nationalism, race, and political attitudes may vary substantially among different populations.
These findings place Christian nationalism within a broader debate over who is understood to belong to the nation and which religious, cultural, racial, ethnic, or political characteristics are considered central to national identity.
Constitutionalism and Church-State Relations
In the United States, debates over Christian nationalism and secular government frequently intersect with constitutional questions. The First Amendment prohibits governmental establishment of religion while protecting the free exercise of religion.
These constitutional principles create continuing debates over prayer, religious expression, public education, government support for religious organizations, religious exemptions, political speech, and the place of Christianity in public institutions.
The constitutional model does not require religion to disappear from public life. Instead, disputes often concern the boundary between individual or collective religious participation and governmental endorsement or establishment of religion.
Religious Pluralism
Religious pluralism provides another framework for understanding alternatives to Christian nationalism. A pluralist approach recognizes the coexistence of multiple religious and nonreligious communities within the same political system.
Some research examines whether religiously inclusive attitudes function as direct alternatives to Christian nationalism. Findings indicate that individuals may simultaneously hold some Christian-nationalist beliefs and some pluralistic or inclusive views, illustrating that ideological boundaries are not always sharply defined.
This complexity suggests that Christian nationalism, secularism, civil religion, and religious pluralism should not necessarily be treated as mutually exclusive categories.
Christian Nationalism in the United States
A substantial portion of contemporary scholarship focuses on the United States. Researchers have examined Christian nationalism in relation to voting behavior, political identity, racial attitudes, immigration, democratic norms, public ritual, political rhetoric, inequality, and perceptions of national history.
Survey research by Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute has documented substantial variation in public attitudes toward Christianity's place in government and national identity. These studies also distinguish between people who strongly embrace Christian-nationalist propositions, those who hold mixed views, and those who favor more pluralistic or secular understandings of government.
Geographic and demographic research further shows that support for Christian-nationalist ideas varies among states, religious traditions, racial groups, political affiliations, and other social categories.
Political Mobilization and Christian Nationalist Identity
Research also examines how Christian-nationalist identity may be shaped by political rhetoric, social networks, public ritual, and elite communication. Some studies investigate whether prominent political messages can encourage people to adopt the Christian-nationalist label or more strongly identify with the ideas associated with it.
Other work considers Christian nationalism as a social practice rather than only a set of survey beliefs. Prayer, public gatherings, national symbols, religious ceremonies, and political events may help connect religious identity to broader political narratives.
Research has additionally examined relationships between Christian nationalism and attitudes toward political conflict, victimhood, conspiracy beliefs, racial identity, gender roles, inequality, charity, and social justice.
Secular and Religious Nationalism in India
India provides an important comparative case because its political history includes both secular nationalist traditions and Hindu nationalist movements.
Post-independence secular nationalism sought to construct a national framework capable of incorporating substantial religious, linguistic, caste, and regional diversity. Later political developments intensified debates over whether Indian national identity should remain institutionally secular or become more closely connected with Hindu cultural and religious traditions.
Research on India also challenges the assumption that anticolonial nationalism was purely secular. Religious institutions, identities, and political movements frequently contributed to nationalist mobilization even when later governments adopted secular constitutional frameworks.
Turkey
Turkey offers another major example of secular nationalism. Early Kemalist nationalism emphasized modernization, state secularism, materialism, and the construction of a national identity separated from direct religious political authority.
Over time, however, Islamic and secular interpretations of Turkish identity competed for influence. Contemporary scholarship shows that secular nationalism in Turkey can itself become strongly ideological or exclusionary.
The Turkish case therefore demonstrates that secular nationalism is not simply the political opposite of religious nationalism. Both can provide powerful frameworks for defining national history, political legitimacy, and cultural membership.
Israel and Iran
Studies of Israel examine tensions between secular nationalist state-building and religious revivalism. Israeli national identity combines historical, ethnic, religious, territorial, and political elements, producing continuing debates over the relative roles of secularism and Judaism within state and society.
Iran also illustrates competition between secular and religious narratives of national identity. Both approaches draw upon historical memories, cultural traditions, and claims about legitimate political authority, but they locate the foundations of national identity differently.
These cases demonstrate that conflicts between religious and secular nationalism often involve rival interpretations of the same national history rather than entirely separate political traditions.
Christian Nationalism in Global Perspective
Christian nationalism is not limited to the United States. Comparative research has examined Christian-nationalist attitudes and movements in Africa and other regions.
Studies of African societies demonstrate that Christian nationalism may operate differently depending on national history, ethnic composition, denominational structures, colonial legacies, and political institutions. Research on Ethiopia, for example, examines interaction among Christian identity, political leadership, ethnicity, and national conflict.
Cross-national research cautions against assuming that patterns observed in American Christian nationalism automatically apply to other countries.
Nationalism, Secularization, and Modernity
Classical theories of nationalism often connected the rise of nation-states with modernization, industrialization, mass education, political centralization, and secularization.
Ernest Gellner emphasized the relationship between nationalism and modern social transformation. Benedict Anderson described nations as "imagined communities" created through shared political and cultural communication. Anthony D. Smith emphasized the importance of myths, memories, symbols, historical traditions, and older ethnic communities.
Later scholarship has questioned theories that treated modernization as a straightforward movement away from religion. Religious identity has remained politically influential in many modern societies, and nationalist movements frequently draw upon religious histories and symbols even when states remain formally secular.
Nationalism as a Secular Religion
Some scholars argue that nationalism itself can perform functions traditionally associated with religion. Nations may develop sacred territories, revered historical figures, founding myths, commemorative rituals, monuments, symbols, and narratives of sacrifice.
From this perspective, secular nationalism does not necessarily eliminate sacred forms of political belonging. Instead, political communities may transfer forms of reverence and collective meaning from religious institutions to national ones.
This interpretation complicates any simple division between religious nationalism and secular nationalism.
Competing Sources of Political Legitimacy
Religious and secular nationalisms ultimately differ partly in the sources from which they claim political and cultural legitimacy.
Christian nationalism may emphasize divine purpose, Christian heritage, biblical values, religious tradition, or historical Christianity. Secular nationalism may emphasize popular sovereignty, citizenship, constitutional institutions, historical continuity, political ideology, ethnicity, or shared culture.
Civil religion combines elements of both by placing national history and institutions within a symbolic or sacred framework without necessarily granting formal authority to a specific church or religious institution.
Different societies arrange these sources of legitimacy in different combinations.
Conclusion
Christian nationalism and secular nationalism are best understood as related but distinct ways of defining national identity and political belonging. Christian nationalism connects national identity to Christianity to varying degrees, while secular nationalism locates political community primarily in nonreligious institutions, citizenship, culture, history, territory, or political ideals.
The source material shows, however, that neither category is completely uniform. Christian nationalism ranges from cultural attachment to stronger forms of Christian political preference, while secular nationalism can range from pluralistic constitutional models to highly assertive or exclusionary ideological projects.
Civil religion further complicates the distinction by demonstrating that formally secular nations may continue to employ sacred national symbols, rituals, myths, and historical narratives.
Comparative evidence from the United States, India, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Africa, and other regions shows that religious and secular conceptions of nationhood frequently compete, overlap, and influence one another. The relationship among religion, nationalism, secularism, race, ethnicity, constitutionalism, citizenship, and political legitimacy therefore varies considerably across historical and national contexts.
Rather than forming a simple opposition between religion and nonreligion, Christian nationalism and secular nationalism exist within a broader spectrum of ways societies define the nation, determine political membership, interpret collective history, and organize the relationship between religious identity and state authority.
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Christian Nationalism in the United States
Americans' Views of Religion's Role in Government and Christian Nationalism | Chip Rotolo and Gregory A. Smith | Pew Research Center | May 14, 2026
Examines contemporary American attitudes toward Christian nationalism, church-state separation, government promotion of Christian values, and the role of religion in public life. Particularly useful for comparing explicitly Christian conceptions of national identity with more secular or religiously neutral understandings of government.
Mapping Christian Nationalism Across the 50 States: Insights from PRRI's 2025 American Values Atlas | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | February 17, 2026
Maps Christian-nationalist beliefs geographically and across religious and demographic groups in the United States.
The Varieties of American Christian Nationalism | Nilay Saiya | Politics and Religion | May 13, 2025
Argues that American Christian nationalism is internally diverse rather than a single ideology. This helps distinguish religious nationalism from both secular nationalism and other forms of Christian political engagement.
Resistance to Christian Nationalism in All 50 States | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | October 30, 2024
Examines Americans who reject or resist Christian-nationalist propositions, providing useful comparisons with pluralistic and secular approaches to national identity.
Views of the U.S. as a Christian Nation and Opinions About Christian Nationalism | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | October 27, 2022
Demonstrates that Americans attach widely differing meanings to the phrases "Christian nation" and "Christian nationalism."
In Their Own Words: How Americans Describe "Christian Nationalism" | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | October 27, 2022
Presents open-ended public descriptions of Christian nationalism, showing the range from Christian moral influence to institutional Christian political dominance.
45% of Americans Say U.S. Should Be a "Christian Nation" | Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | October 27, 2022
Examines what Americans mean by a "Christian nation" and how these ideas relate to religion, government, and political participation.
Crisis of Faith: Christian Nationalism and the Threat to U.S. Democracy | Edward Lempinen | Berkeley News | September 20, 2022
Uses historians, political scientists, and religion scholars to examine Christian nationalism against the American constitutional tradition of religious liberty and non-establishment.
Introduction: A House Dividing | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Taking America Back for God / Oxford University Press | March 19, 2020
Defines Christian nationalism as a cultural framework that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life.
Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election | Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry, and Joseph O. Baker | Sociology of Religion | January 25, 2018
Examines Christian nationalism as an independent political worldview rather than simply a proxy for conventional religious commitment.
Civic and Ethnic Nationalism | Various Authors | JSTOR | Various
Research on civic versus ethnic nationalism provides an important comparative framework for evaluating secular and Christian definitions of American identity.
Christian Nationalism and Civil Religion
Americans' Views of Religion in Public Life: The Effect of Three Cultural Models on Attitudes Toward Religious and Nonreligious Groups | David Sikkink and Greg Wurm | Social Science Research | August 2026
Directly compares Christian nationalism, civil religion, and liberal secularism as three different cultural models for organizing religion and national public life.
Hyperpolarization, Distrust, and Civil Religions in America Today | Aaron Quinn Weinstein | Polity | February 5, 2026
Reconsiders American civil religion under conditions of political polarization and institutional distrust, offering a framework for locating religious and secular forms of nationalism along broader ideological dimensions.
Pluralist Civil Religion | Amy E. Black and Douglas L. Koopman | Cambridge University Press | 2025
Contrasts Christian nationalism, strict secularism, and pluralistic civil religion as competing approaches to American national identity.
Which Civil Religion? Partisanship, Christian Nationalism, and the Dimensions of Civil Religion in the United States | Abigail Vegter, Andrew R. Lewis, and Cammie Jo Bolin | Politics and Religion | January 26, 2023
Empirically distinguishes American civil religion from Christian nationalism and examines whether shared national religious symbolism can still provide political unity.
American Civil Religion in the Era of Trump | Various Authors | Religions | 2023
Explores contemporary American civil religion in relation to Christian nationalism, secular nationalism, partisan identity, and competing interpretations of American national purpose.
The Duality of American Christian Nationalism: Religious Traditionalism versus Christian Statism | Various Authors | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | 2023
Distinguishes cultural Christian traditionalism from efforts to give Christianity formal state power, clarifying important differences between civil religion, religious nationalism, and Christian statism.
Contesting Civil Religion: Religious Responses to American Patriotic Nationalism, 1919–1929 | Michael Lienesch | Religion and American Culture | June 18, 2018
Studies how religious groups reacted to efforts to create a sacralized form of American patriotic nationalism after World War I.
Civil Religion and National Politics in a Neoliberal Era | Rhys H. Williams | Sociology Compass | July 27, 2014
Reviews the changing relationship among national identity, transcendence, political legitimacy, and civil religion.
From "Civil Religion" to Nationalism as the Religion of Modern Times: Rethinking a Complex Relationship | José Santiago | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | June 1, 2009
Examines the argument that nationalism itself can function as a modern secular religion, complicating the division between secular nationalism and religious nationalism.
Civil Religion in America | Robert N. Bellah | Daedalus | Winter 1967
The foundational essay on American civil religion. Bellah argues that national political life contains sacred narratives, rituals, historical figures, and symbols distinct from institutional Christianity.
Civil Religion and National Identity | Various Authors | JSTOR | Various
Scholarship on civil religion highlights a middle category in which political institutions remain formally secular while national symbols and narratives acquire sacred meaning.
Secularism and Secular Nationalism
Christian Nationalism as a Social Identity | Donald P. Haider-Markel et al. | Public Opinion Quarterly | July 4, 2026
Examines whether Christian nationalism is best understood as a worldview, ideology, or social identity. Useful for comparing religious nationalism with secular national identities.
Defining Christian Nationalism | Richard T. Hughes and Christina Littlefield | Christian America and the Kingdom of God / University of Illinois Press | February 25, 2025
Reviews definitions of nationalism, religious nationalism, secular nationalism, patriotism, and Christian nationalism, making it especially useful for establishing conceptual distinctions.
"We Should All Be Christian Nationalists": Elite Influence on Identification with Christian Nationalism | Various Authors | Political Behavior | 2025
Studies whether political rhetoric can increase identification with the Christian-nationalist label and worldview.
Discovering Shared Humanity through Faith and Fluidity | Harvard Divinity School | Harvard Divinity School | December 10, 2024
Discusses the limitations of treating religion and secularism as a simple binary and explores their interaction within contemporary nationalism and public life.
Islamism and Nationalism: How Did Old Enemies Become New Allies? | Various Authors | Zeitschrift für Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik | 2024
Reviews the historical tension between secular nationalism and religious political identities and explains circumstances in which nationalism and religion later converge.
Do We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism? A Critique of Charles Taylor | Murat Akan | Politics and Religion | December 13, 2023
Reconsiders secularism as an institutional response to religious diversity rather than simply the exclusion of religion from public life.
Worldview Studies | Various Authors | Religious Studies | 2021
Distinguishes secular people, secular worldviews, and ideological secularism, an important distinction when discussing secular nationalism.
International Comparisons and Secular/Religious Nationalisms
Secular Nationalism in Turkey: Mapping of a Reactionary Ideological Domain | Cenk Saraçoğlu | Justice, Power and Resistance | March 23, 2026
Studies an explicitly secular form of nationalism in contemporary Turkey. It is especially valuable for demonstrating that secular nationalism is not automatically liberal, pluralistic, or cosmopolitan.
Christian Nationalism and Attitudes About Democracy in Africa | John Ishiyama | Politics and Religion | September 15, 2025
Extends research on Christian nationalism beyond the United States and compares Christian-nationalist attitudes with broader democratic and political orientations across African societies.
Christian Nationalism in Global Perspective | Nilay Saiya | Harvard Divinity School | March 5, 2025
Places Christian nationalism in comparative global context and discusses the interaction among secularization, religious diversity, national identity, and political power.
Religious Origins of Nationalist Movements: The Experience of India and the Sudan | Md Moniruzzaman | Nations and Nationalism | July 23, 2024
Challenges the assumption that anti-colonial nationalism was inherently secular by tracing religious precursors to later secular nationalist movements.
The Appeal and Perils of Religious Nationalism: A Comparative Analysis | Joseph Harder | Theological Reflections | 2024
Examines religious nationalism comparatively, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe and the United States, in the context of secularization.
Christian Nationalism Is Tearing Ethiopia Apart | Andrew DeCort | Foreign Policy | June 18, 2022
Examines a form of Christian nationalism outside the United States and its interaction with Ethiopia's religiously and ethnically diverse national identity.
The Rivalry Between Secular and Religious Nationalisms: On the Split in Iranian National Identity | Various Authors | Springer | 2022
Examines competing secular and religious narratives of Iranian nationhood and the ways both use national history to legitimate political projects.
Turkish Nationalism and the Evolutionary Idea (1923–1938) | M. Asım Karaömerlioğlu and Murat Yolun | Nations and Nationalism | February 3, 2020
Examines the strongly secular and materialist intellectual foundations of early Kemalist nationalism.
The BJP in Power: Indian Democracy and Religious Nationalism | Milan Vaishnav | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | April 4, 2019
Contrasts India's post-independence tradition of secular nationalism with Hindu nationalism and examines their competing definitions of Indian nationhood.
The Roles of Religion in National Legitimation: Judaism and Zionism's Elusive Quest for Legitimacy | Uriel Abulof | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | September 2014
Develops four models: secular nationalism, civil religion, religion as a nationalist resource, and religion as the actual source of nationalism.
Nationalism and Islam in Cold War Turkey, 1944–69 | Various Authors | Middle Eastern Studies | 2014
Shows that secular and Islamic interpretations of Turkish nationalism competed for influence long before the contemporary period.
Using Cultural Trauma: Gandhi's Assassination, Partition and Secular Nationalism in Post-Independence India | Mira Debs | Nations and Nationalism | September 2, 2013
Analyzes how political actors used Gandhi's assassination and Partition to construct a secular-nationalist narrative for post-independence India.
Why Secularism Fails? Secular Nationalism and Religious Revivalism in Israel | Uri Ram | International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society | 2008
Develops a framework for examining varying combinations of nationalism, religion, and secularism in Israeli political identity.
The Crisis of Secular Nationalism in India | Aditya Nigam | The Insurrection of Little Selves / Oxford University Press | 2006
Examines the conceptual and political problems that arise when secularism and nationalism are combined into a single nation-building project.
Nation and Infra-Nationalisms: Secular-Nationalism Comes Apart | Aditya Nigam | Oxford University Press | 2006
Studies pressures placed on secular nationalism by caste, community, subnational movements, minority identities, and Hindu nationalism in India.
Multiple Modernity, Nationalism and Religion: A Global Perspective | Willfried Spohn | Current Sociology | May 1, 2003
Compares secular and religious components of nationalism across Europe, the Americas, Islamic societies, Israel, Africa, India, Pakistan, Japan, and China.
Secularism as National Identity | Various Authors | JSTOR | Various
Comparative research shows that secularism itself can become culturally embedded in national narratives, particularly in France, Turkey, India, and parts of Europe.
Race, Immigration, and Boundaries of National Belonging
Christian Nationalism, the Antisocial Gospel? Attitudes on Charity and Justice in the Kingdom of God | Samuel L. Perry, Blake Victor Kent, Phineas J. Bonner, and Joshua B. Grubbs | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | September 17, 2026
Examines how Christian-nationalist orientations relate to competing understandings of social responsibility, charity, and justice.
In God We Trust: Christian Nationalism, Political and Ethno-Racial Identities, and Distrust of Immigrants | Christopher H. Seto | Sociology of Religion | May 24, 2026
Investigates how Christian nationalism intersects with political and ethnoracial identity in shaping attitudes toward immigrants.
Culture Wars and Classism: Christian Nationalism, Economic Position, and Americans' Approval of Inequality | Various Authors | Social Forces | April 24, 2026
Extends Christian-nationalism research beyond cultural questions to economic hierarchy and attitudes toward inequality.
Partisan and Racial Sorting of Christian Nationalism, 1996–2022: Backlash and Counter Backlash on the (White) Secular Left and Religious Right | Jesse Smith | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | December 26, 2025
Traces the increasing partisan separation between Christian nationalist identification on the religious right and more secular orientations on the political left. The study is especially relevant to understanding Christian and secular nationalism as competing cultural frameworks.
Jesus and John Wayne Wannabes: How Christian Nationalism and Femininity Shape Extreme Politics Among Men in the US | Paul A. Djupe et al. | Sociology of Religion | March 8, 2025
Explores gender identity as one factor shaping the relationship between Christian nationalism and political attitudes.
White or Woke Christian Nationalists? How Race Moderates the Link Between Christian Nationalism and Progressive Identities | Various Authors | Public Opinion Quarterly | 2025
Shows that Christian-nationalist measures may function differently across racial groups and warns against assuming a single meaning across the population.
The Religion of White Identity Politics: Christian Nationalism and White Racial Solidarity | Various Authors | Social Forces | 2025
Examines the interaction between Christian-nationalist beliefs and white racial group consciousness in American politics.
The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy | Philip Gorski | UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix | April 17, 2023
Discusses the fusion of racial, religious, and national narratives in white Christian nationalism and distinguishes that formation from more universalistic national ideals.
A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | February 8, 2023
Provides national survey measures of Christian nationalism and analyzes its relationship with political, racial, religious, and democratic attitudes.
Understanding the Threat of White Christian Nationalism to American Democracy Today | Brookings Institution and PRRI | Brookings Institution | February 8, 2023
Presents survey research and scholarly discussion of Christian nationalism, pluralism, democratic institutions, and national identity.
The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism | Lerone A. Martin | Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion | 2023
Provides historical background on the interaction among federal institutions, race, religion, anticommunism, and American national identity.
Christian Nationalism and Political Violence: Victimhood, Racial Identity, Conspiracy, and Support for the Capitol Attacks | Miles T. Armaly, David T. Buckley, and Adam M. Enders | Political Behavior | January 4, 2022
Investigates relationships among Christian nationalism, perceived victimhood, racial identity, conspiracy beliefs, and attitudes toward political violence.
Civil Religion and the Cultural Politics of National Identity in Obama's America | Rhys H. Williams | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | June 4, 2013
Examines American civil religion as both a potentially universal national creed and a source of particularistic racial, religious, and cultural identity.
Constitutionalism, Pluralism, and the Secular State
The First Amendment: Religion and the Constitution | United States Congress | Constitution Annotated | Current
Provides the constitutional basis for the American prohibition on religious establishment and protection of religious exercise, central to debates between Christian nationalist and secular constitutional interpretations.
Religious Liberty and National Identity | Congressional Research Service | Constitution Annotated | Current
Reviews Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause doctrine relevant to contrasting a constitutionally secular state with proposals for religiously defined national government.
The Weakness of Anti-Christian Nationalism: When Religiously Inclusive Orientations Can't Increase Tolerance | Paul A. Djupe and Brooklyn Walker | Politics and Religion | March 26, 2026
Investigates attempts to construct pluralistic alternatives to Christian nationalism and shows that Christian nationalist and religiously inclusive ideas can coexist within the same individuals.
Religion, National Identity, and Competing Nationalisms
Christian Nationalism as a Social Practice: Prayer, Violence, and the Politics of Public Ritual | Various Authors | Terrorism and Political Violence | 2025
Examines how religious practices and nationalist political action can reinforce one another through public ritual.
Christianity's Place in Politics, and "Christian Nationalism" | Chip Rotolo, Gregory A. Smith, and Jonathan Evans | Pew Research Center | March 15, 2024
Surveys attitudes toward Christian values in government, official religion, church-state separation, and Christian nationalism.
Religion and Nationalism: Four Approaches | Rogers Brubaker | Nations and Nationalism | 2012
A major theoretical treatment showing that religion and nationalism may operate as analogous systems, mutually influence one another, become intertwined, or produce explicitly religious nationalism.
The Sacred and the Sovereign | Various Scholars | Cambridge University Press | Various
Research on nationalism demonstrates that modern sovereignty can acquire sacred qualities even when formal political institutions are secular.
Religion and the Nation-State | Various Scholars | Cambridge University Press | Various
Comparative scholarship examines how modern states negotiate religious institutions, majority religions, citizenship, and national belonging.
Nationalism | Ernest Gellner | Various | Various
Provides theoretical background for distinguishing state-centered modern nationalism from religious and ethnocultural sources of collective identity.
Religious Nationalism | Various Authors | JSTOR | Various
Research on religious nationalism provides comparative cases for evaluating Christian nationalism alongside Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and other movements.
Nationalism, Secularization, and Theories of Nationhood
The Nation in History | Anthony D. Smith | University Press of New England | 2000
Explores cultural myths, collective memory, ethnicity, and historical narratives used to define nations.
Nationalism and Modernism | Anthony D. Smith | Routledge | 1998
Reviews major theories that explain nationalism as a product of modernization, secularization, industrialization, and political transformation.
Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity | Liah Greenfeld | Harvard University Press | 1992
Compares several historical forms of nationalism and helps situate both religious and secular versions within the development of modern national consciousness.
Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany | Rogers Brubaker | Harvard University Press | 1992
Classic comparison of civic and ethnocultural traditions of national membership, useful for assessing where Christian and secular nationalist models fit within broader nationalism theory.
National Identity | Anthony D. Smith | University of Nevada Press | 1991
Examines the myths, memories, symbols, territories, and cultural traditions through which national identities are created.
The Ethnic Origins of Nations | Anthony D. Smith | Blackwell | 1986
Argues that modern national identities frequently draw upon older ethnic, religious, symbolic, and historical traditions.
Imagined Communities | Benedict Anderson | Verso | 1983
Develops one of the most influential theories of nationalism, emphasizing socially constructed national communities and the historical decline of older religious modes of political legitimacy.
Nations and Nationalism | Ernest Gellner | Cornell University Press | 1983
Argues that nationalism arises from modern social and economic transformation rather than ancient religious or ethnic continuity.
Secularism and National Identity | Various Scholars | Cambridge University Press | Various
A broad research literature shows that secularism can itself become an important marker of national identity rather than merely an absence of religion.
Religion and National Identity | Various Authors | JSTOR | Various
A broad scholarly literature examines when religion becomes a cultural marker of nationhood even in formally secular states.
