The title is no longer just an opinion, it is now an empirical fact that has been confirmed by researchers.
Several researchers formed this hypothesis …
“the political empowerment of Christian nationalist ideology in the form of politicians expressing Christian nationalist sentiments corresponds to physical attacks on religious minorities carried out by self-professing Christians.”
They then tested this.
The results they got confirmed it.
The paper that describes all this was written up and published on Sept 2, 2024 within the “Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion” and is titled, “Christian Nationalism and Violence Against Religious Minorities in the United States: A Quantitative Analysis“
OK, let’s dig into this to see what they actually did.
First, let’s establish a few obvious key points
Christianity, as practised by most who believe, and Christian Nationalism are not the same thing.
When we use the term “Christian Nationalism” then what we are talking about is the belief that a specific variation of Christianity should be the government, only Christians should be elected into office, and that the Bible should be the law of the land. It often comes with a heavy dose of completely fictitious history to justify the stance.
The rather obvious problem is that the term “Christian” is vague. It is an umbrella word that shelters rather a lot of very different and at times conflicting beliefs.
If indeed only “Christians” can be elected, then what does that actually mean?
A rather obvious way to find out is to ask Evangelicals if Catholics are real Christians and can be elected. In response evangelical Christian Nationalists would explain that Catholics are heretics and not true born again Christians, so no
You also have to wonder about other mainline denominations, such a Methodist, Orthodox, Episcopalians, or Presbyterians.
Then we have the JWs and the Mormons … where would they stand?
OK, so what happens if somebody pops up and says, “Hey, I’m born again, I’m a Christian, I’m with you“, would they be believed and accepted or would there be some kind of test. Even if they declared all this and never attended a church anywhere, would they be accepted?
Trump fits into this category, and yet is also very obviously not Christian, yet is accepted by many as the chosen one of God.
What if they did occasionally pop into a church when the cameras are there, but normally says and does things that rather blatantly conflicted with the actual teachings of Jesus?
Yes, I’m still banging on about Trump of course.
You get my point. If for some bizarre reason it actually happened and Christian Nationalists gained total power, then how exactly could it ever work and avoid rapidly spiralling into a constant religious war.
European history teaches us that what tends to happen is that when one variation of Christianity gains total power it will proceed to obliterate and suppress anything and everything that is deemed to be heresy, and that includes all other variations of Christianity.
Some might of course pop up to assure you by advising, “Ah, no we would never do that“.
That now brings us right back to the published paper. The conclusion it brings to the table is that Christian Nationalism is violent and intolerant. This is a study that builds upon previous insights. Earlier studies have confirmed that Christian Nationalism is associated with opposition to gun control, and also support for political violence …
- A study by Whitehead, Schnabel, and Perry (2018) found Christian nationalist beliefs to be a strong predictor of opposition to gun control in the United States.
- A study by Armaly, Buckley, and Enders 2022 found evidence that Christian nationalist beliefs correspond to popular support for political violence
Those are not isolated studies, there is plenty more. For example Baker, Perry, and Whitehead 2020a; Davis and Perry 2021; Perry, Baker, and Grubbs 2021; Perry et al. 2021; Perry and Whitehead 2015a, 2015b; Perry, Whitehead, and Davis 2019; Perry, Whitehead, and Grubbs 2020, 2021a, 2022a; Whitehead and Perry 2015, 2019, 2020a). Whitehead and Perry (2020b) cover a number of findings in book form.
All of the above flags up Christian Nationalism as …
- Racist
- Misogynist
- Authoritarian
- Homophobic
- Antivaccine
- Antiscience
- etc…
A key point for you to appreciate is this – Religious freedom exists today. We have a vast diversity of belief because no variations are permitted to dominate. Change that and you can more or less kiss religious freedom bye bye on the dock and then watch as it sails off over the horizon into the sunset.
Many Christians might vote for the idea of having Christians in government and vote to have the bible as law. They would do so while completely and totally failing to understand that they might actually be voting for their specific variation of Christian belief to be oppressed and obliterated.
Some Christians do indeed fully grasp and appreciate this, and that is why they very strongly support the separation of church and state, and are very opposed to Christian Nationalism.
Yes, but what is the risk here, what do people think about it all?
Via various polls from reputable organisations such as Pew, PRRI, and Gallap, we do have an insight into this.
However, be cautious with such data. What it gives us is an insight into what people think and that need not translate into actual actions or outcomes.
Within the introduction section the paper does lay out so details. Here are a few examples …
- A survey by the Pew Research Center found that about one third of American adults who identify as politically conservative believe that being Christian is very important for being American (Silver 2021)
- Although the Pew survey finds that more Americans support rather than oppose separation of church and state, it also notes that there remain large reservoirs of support for church-state integration (e.g., Torba and Isker 2022; Wolfe 2022).
- Another Pew survey revealed that 65 percent of white Evangelicals say, “if they conflict, the Bible should have more influence than the will of the people.” Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals and 45 percent of all Americans believe the United States should be a “Christian nation” (Pew Research Center 2022).
All that was background.
OK, so let’s now dip into the study itself.
What exactly did the study do?
It is a Quantitative Analysis.
A what?
They analysed the available data using statistical methods.
OK, so what data did they use?
They constructed a dataset that contained information on Christian nationalism and violence from all 50 states over the time period of 1990 to 2018.
Why that period?
Basically because that is the period of time that there was data for.
OK, so exactly what data, where did they get it from?
They tapped into the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) which is held by the University of Maryland. This is an open-source database that includes information on all terrorist attacks around the world. They specifically pulled out details of attacks by self-professing Christians against non-Christians on a yearly basis in the United States. They also included attacks by white supremacists if they claimed to be acting in the name of the Christian faith.
Then what?
Their hypothesis was that Christian nationalist violence is more likely to occur in contexts where it receives political empowerment. So they also looked into Congressional records to see if national-level senators elected from individual states articulated Christian nationalist beliefs. They considered senators only and did not include congressional representatives because senators represent entire states, whereas house representatives represent only a single district within a state.
You can perhaps see where this is now going. When an elected senator expressed Christian Nationalist beliefs, for example by promoting something like one or more of these …
- “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation.”
- “The federal government should advocate Christian values.”
- “There should be no separation of church and state.”
- “The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces.”
- “The federal government should allow prayer in public schools.”
- “America holds a special place in God’s plan.”
- “The United States was founded as a Christian nation.”
- “Being Christian is important for being a good American.”
- “A President should have strong religious beliefs.”
- “Society’s rules should be based on God’s laws.”
- etc…
… then would they also find a statistically significant uptick in Christian nationalist violence being recorded?
So what did they find?
Oh come now, the title is a bit of a spoiler.
Here it is in their own words …
The results provide evidence in support of our hypothesis that Christian nationalist sentiments are associated with higher levels of antiminority violence. The main independent variable of interest, Christian_Nationalism, is statistically significant at the 1 percent level in two model specifications, at the 5 percent level in one model specification, and at the 10 percent level in the final specification. In all the cases, the coefficient is signed in the expected positive direction; Christian nationalism is positively associated with antiminority violence. Among the covariates, Logged_GDP_Capita holds statistical significance in two specifications, Party_Voted in one of the specifications, and Trump in both of the specifications in which it is included.
… We also ran eight additional robustness checks to test the validity of our results…
…In summary, all of the results, including the robustness checks, provide ample support for the hypothesis that the public expression of Christian nationalist sentiments on the part of American senators is positively and robustly associated with greater attacks by Christians against non-Christians. In no cases was the Christian nationalism variable found to be statistically insignificant.
Thoughts?
I’m shocked I tell you … shocked.
Well OK, I’m not, and I suspect you also are not. This result is very predictable for what are very obvious reasons.
Christian Nationalism is in essence a deeply intolerant selfish arrogant autocratic world-view that falsely declares itself to be the one and only prevailing truth, and that everybody else can go take a hike.
The belief that they have a divine mandate from a god that entitles them to grab hold of political power and then use it to inflict their whacky beliefs upon everybody is not new. In fact, it’s a very old story and can been observed in action by anybody willing to check out a bit of European history.
Separation of church and state exists for a reason, and contrary to what many might believe about that, it is the only safeguard that exists to protect religious freedom. If we permit it to be washed away, then we would be walking into a very dark place.
Further Reading
- The published paper itself: Christian Nationalism and Violence Against Religious Minorities in the United States: A Quantitative Analysis
- Hemant also did a writeup on it on substack – Researchers say Christian Nationalism fuels violence against non-Christians