Jesus and John Wayne Wannabees: How Christian Nationalism and Femininity Shape Extreme Politics Among Men in the US (under R&R)

With Paul Djupe

Christian nationalism, the well-known conflation of Christianity with the state, has been linked with a wide range of conservative, exclusionary, patriarchal, and anti-democratic attitudes and actions. Little work has sought to explain Christian nationalism itself and posit dispositional factors that may work to shape both the worldview as well as its outcomes. Inspired by the book Jesus and John Wayne, we explore the role of gender identity as one possible source of both Christian nationalism and extreme politics. However, instead of finding a link with (toxic) masculinity, we find that men identifying as more feminine are more Christian nationalist, adopt more sexist attitudes, support more group extremism, and are more likely to endorse violence. Following wellestablished theory, we argue that this pattern suggests extreme politics acts as compensatory mechanisms to project masculinity when it is lacking otherwise. Moreover, we find that these dynamics are not isolated to white Christian nationalism.

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Words and Attitudes of the Heart: The Emotional Content of Christian Nationalist Communications (under review)

Christian nationalism has emerged as an important component of the relationship between religious identities and political attitudes.  While several studies have analyzed the constellation of Christian nationalist elites and the effects of Christian nationalist orientations on public opinion, to date no study has explored how Christian nationalist elites message to the public or what effect these messages have.  Moreover, the current literature lacks comparisons of Christian nationalism to other similar orientations.  This study uses content analysis to compare the content and use of emotion language of Facebook messages of Christian nationalist, Christian non-nationalist, and patriotic groups.  I find that these groups focus posts on issues that are stereotypical to the group identity, and that the use of emotion language differs by topic and group type.  Additionally, groups’ use of emotion language shifts the emotional responses of readers, especially in Christian nationalist groups.  This study adds to our understanding of the role of emotion in social media communications and the effects of social media communications on readers. 

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Religion is Sometimes Raced: Christian Nationalism is Ingroup Protection (under review)

With Paul A. Djupe, Brian R. Calfano, Andrew R. Lewis, and Anand Edward Sokhey

Popular narratives suggest that the effects of Christian nationalism should be more heavily concentrated among white Americans. The academic literature on Christian nationalism largely reflects this take, often asserting that it is effectively White Christian nationalism. We question such pronouncements, as they have come without systematic analysis across the broad range of issue areas needed to justify subgroup segmentations. Utilizing national over-samples of Black and Latino Christians (alongside White Christians), we assess the relationship between standard measures of Christian nationalism and attitudes towards policies that vary in their degree of racialization. Our findings qualify typical narratives: consistent with a theory of Christian nationalism as sacralized ingroup protection, we find effects that diverge by racial groups on racialized issues but otherwise converge. We close by discussing the implications of these findings and offering suggestions for future work linking race with Christian nationalism.

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An Army for God: Gun Ownership, Christian Nationalism, and Support for Political Violence

With Donald Haider-Markel and Abigail Vegter

Political violence in the U.S. is rare, but recent rises in political extremist motivated violence suggest we could be in the early years of a new wave of right-wing violence. This rise in violence coincides with increases in Christian nationalist preachers and adherents as well as an increased linkage between protecting religious freedom and gun rights. We engage the growing literature on gun politics and Christian Nationalism to explore whether gun owning Christian Nationalists are more likely to believe that using force against the government can be justified. We know that new political identities are being formed around gun ownership and Christian Nationalism. These identities have implications for political behavior including voting turnout and vote choice. Less is known about how these identities shape policy preferences and political attitudes. Christian Nationalists believe that their identity is under threat making it more likely that they might be willing to pursue drastic measures in pursuit of self-protection. For gun owners, we extend the logic of existing studies and hypothesize that gun ownership is associated with a greater propensity towards violence and the belief that use of violence is an effective means to solving (political) problems. We further argue that gun advocates have intermixed with Christian Nationalists, increasing the likelihood that both might be likely to support the use of violence against the government. We test these hypotheses making use of data from a nationally representative survey of American adults. Our results support our arguments, with a few important caveats.

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Christian Nationalism is Unbounded by LGB Status (under review)

With Paul Djupe

In the exponential  spread of research on Christian nationalism, much of it presumes supporters are heterosexuals. After all, those who hold Christian nationalist worldviews hew strongly toward anti-gay rights policy, among other hierarchical, discriminatory policies. This work most often presumes that the targets of those policy attitudes line up naturally opposed to Christian nationalists without evidence. Here we take up the question of whether there are LGB (there was no T item in our survey) Christian nationalists and whether they take the same positions on a wide range of issues as non-LGB Christian nationalists. Drawing on multiple datasets with appropriate questions from 2020 through 2023, we document that there are, in fact, LGB Americans with Christian nationalist views. And then we assess whether Christian nationalism has the same relationships with policy attitudes for LGB as it does for non-LGB Americans. We find small gaps and many similar slopes. Moreover, the similarities do not stop at the ingroup door  –  we find Christian nationalist LGB Americans taking positions against anti-LGB-discrimination efforts and against same-sex marriage. We conclude that religion plays an especially strong role in leading LGB Americans to advocate for a Christian America.