Christian Nationalism is a Misdiagnosis
Avoid doing harm by distinguishing right-wing discourses
Since 2020, it has become fashionable for journalists and left-wing activists on social media to toss the epithet "Christian nationalist!" across the partisan divide. Indeed, pundits regularly warn that American democracy may collapse due to the rising tide of Christian nationalism. One major catalyst for these warnings is Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry's influential book promoting this diagnosis, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. According to Whitehead and Perry, 52% of Americans either advocate or support Christian nationalist views.
The good news is that, for most Americans, the Christian nationalism diagnosis is wrong.
Whitehead and Perry (2020) spawned some robust peer reviews that demonstrated their linear Christian Nationalism scale is seriously flawed and treats diverse right-wing phenomena as Christian nationalism when they are something else. Li and Froese (2023) empirically confirm what earlier peer reviews hypothesized: at least two distinct nationalist discourses are present in Whitehead and Perry's datasets. One of these is properly called Christian nationalism. The other is less nativist, less racist, and less statist. It correlates with what Ruth Braunstein (2022) theorized as the Colorblind Judeo-Christian Nation (CJCN) discourse. Unlike Christian nationalists, its adherents have little interest in establishing a theocratic state. Most importantly, they (wrongly) believe their account of America avoids the illiberalism of Christian nationalism and deeply resent suggestions to the contrary.
If both discourses are illiberal, why does distinguishing these two diagnoses matter?
In short, it matters because the treatment prescriptions differ. Confusing those influenced by the colorblind Judeo-Christian nation discourse with Christian nationalists disrespects them so profoundly that it radicalizes them, driving them to ally with MAGA populism despite their opposition to its nativism and anti-democratic tendencies. We do harm when we respond to CJCN adherents with the treatment appropriate to Christian nationalists.
Since 2020, many scholars of right-wing social movements have prioritized distinguishing Christian nationalism from competing forms of American civil religion. They strive to account for qualitative differences in its diverse forms of expression, including the intensities with which beliefs are held and how the intersection of race and religion drives how American identity and America's enemies are conceived. Right-wing social groups can seem similar because their stories about America's past and future share a standard plot structure. The founding myths they treasure reflect an ignorance of our history and a nostalgia for a golden age to which America can and should return. The stories are declension narratives that yearn for heroes to emerge who will conquer the enemies who stand in the way of our return to simpler times.
Though the tales share that familiar plot (Make America Great Again!), their content varies, with different heroes, enemies, and values that must be restored. Right-wing groups share a nostalgic perspective, yet the myths they tell have essential differences that generate their different political agendas. Chief among these differences are how race and religion intersect in imagining America's past and future. It's vital to discriminate between Christian nationalism and right-wing groups with common ground and yet significant political differences.
A case in point is the Tea Party movement. During the Reagan era, the Religious Right co-opted the "Judeo-Christian America" narrative that arose after WWII as Christians sought to express inclusiveness and solidarity with Jews. However, the Religious Right movement blended that lexicon into their narrative of American exceptionalism so that the key to American chosen-ness was its preservation of ethical resources embedded in its Judeo-Christian ethno-tradition.
In their account, "Judeo-Christian" was simply another term for the Anglo-Protestant ethnotradition and devotion to readings of the United States Constitution that favor that ethnotradition. The Tea Party of the 2010s adopted that narrative, blending it with libertarian principles, a putatively "colorblind" reading of the Constitution, and conservative fiscal principles. They claimed American democracy and capitalism depend on a restored commitment to that ethnotradition in response to threats from radical secularism and pluralism. Without the priority of that ethnotradition, American democracy and capitalism will collapse.
If Christian Nationalism is overtly exclusive, the Colorblind Judeo-Christian narrative (wrongly) sees itself as inclusive. It counts Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks as heroes. It sees the Constitution and the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s as race-neutral and growing inequalities not as proof of unfairness under the law but as proof that some citizens refuse to embody American values of freedom, self-reliance, and the Protestant work ethic.
Ironically, the Colorblind Judeo-Christian Nation is blind not to color but to the subtle logic by which it absolves itself of exclusionary practices. In truth, it converts race into a cultural rather than racial category. It broadens the set of those it recognizes as part of that culture to include anyone who embraces the Judeo-Christian ethno-tradition. How could it be racist since it condemns discrimination based on racial categories? It redefines American-ness in terms of consent and conformity to the Anglo-Protestant ethno-tradition - now rebranded as Colorblind Judeo-Christian - that privileges conservative political values like freedom, individualism, independence, and self-reliance. This enables those shaped by this story to claim and believe they practice colorblind and religiously tolerant inclusivity while sustaining established practices of exclusion and privilege.
The critical rhetorical feature distinguishing the Colorblind Judeo-Christian nationalist from a Christian nationalist is this subtle move from racism to culture. It distorts the Judeo-Christian component of the American civil religion that arose after the Holocaust. It honors the civil rights settlement of the Great Society by embracing the 'colorblind law' aspiration expressed famously by MLK. In this semantic shift, the colorblind ethos eclipses race as a category. Race no longer matters, but culture does.
Here is how it functions in its adherents: "In keeping with the Great Society Settlement, we should welcome fully as citizens anyone faithful to our Colorblind Judeo-Christian ethos. We don't discriminate based on race, period. We are inclusive of all people, regardless of their skin. As long as that is true, we are innocent of charges of racism."
But look at what's happened. The discourse converts race into a cultural category.
First, the Anglo-Protestant ethnotradition generates the CJCN narrative as a corrective in reaction to its dialectical tension with the vision of a Beloved Community put forth compellingly by 20th-century civil rights leaders. Judicial and legislative law and cultural mores adjust their aim: America shall be a colorblind nation, and a good citizen supports laws that treat all people equally regardless of skin color. Discrimination based on race, like anti-Semitism, is culturally taboo.
Yet the narrative components that generated the ethnotradition's pre-existing White supremacy, patriarchy, and xenophobia remain. The Great Society settlement debulked but did not eradicate them. Like tumor cells left behind after an effort to reduce cancer's volume, they remain in the body, hidden to adherents, replicating their DNA and waiting for conditions conducive to their dominance.
Those conditions are present now.
Nevertheless, those shaped by the CJCN narrative pledge loyalty to the color blindness creed. They perceive themselves as enlightened, good citizens who have embraced wholeheartedly MLK's teachings concerning race.
However, the discourse promotes a liberal ethic but is not, in impact, liberal. It sees anyone who does not live according to its ethnotradition as an internal outsider. It considers any people who might, through immigration, dilute the hegemony of the Colorblind Judeo-Christian people (such as Muslims) as threatening, external outsiders.
How does one become an internal outsider within the Colorblind Judeo-Christian nation? By seemingly rejecting its ethnotradition.
That ethnotradition prizes rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, and the Protestant work ethic. So, adherents are not racist (in their eyes) when they refuse to support policies that would alleviate generational poverty or address chronic crime or substandard educational opportunities. The reasons they give themselves and others for their refusal are not racist; they are cultural. Their legitimate compatriots adhere to the CJCN ethnotradition; adherents infer that those suffering these things reject the "American" ethnotradition because they don't embody individualism, self-sufficiency, traditional family values, and the Protestant work ethic. "They don't count as deserving Americans; we rightly reserve tax dollars for those who demonstrate those qualities. They are citizens who act as outsiders by rejecting the American creed."
Christian nationalism is a real and present danger in America. Still, for most Americans, it is a misdiagnosis. The Colorblind Judeo-Christian narrative generates the most common illiberality manifest on the American Right. Those influenced by it do not seek a theocratic state. They cannot see themselves as racist because racial logic is converted into cultural criteria. They see themselves in a line from Lincoln to MLK.
Christian Nationalist groups and groups shaped by the Colorblind Judeo-Christian narrative share much in common. Both discourses feature declension narratives in which their groups are victims called to rally Americans to restore needed commitments. But their differences are significant. The critical difference is that the former discourse seeks to eliminate the separation between Church and State. In contrast, the latter discourse sees that as shredding the Constitution they revere.
Both groups may share illiberal political attitudes on the cultural issues that polarize Americans. But their differences matter. Treating all right-wing social movements as a Christian nationalism monolith is a failure of moral discernment. Most importantly, it does harm by driving Colorblind Judeo-Christian nationalists into the MAGA camp.
Braunstein, Ruth. 2021. “The ‘Right’ History: Religion, Race, and Nostalgic Stories of Christian America.” Religions 12 (2): 95. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12020095.
Davis, Nicholas T. 2023. “The Psychometric Properties of the Christian Nationalism Scale.” Politics and Religion 16 (1): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048322000256.
Li, Ruiqian, and Paul Froese. 2023. “The Duality of American Christian Nationalism: Religious Traditionalism versus Christian Statism.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, August, jssr.12868. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12868.
Smith, Jesse, and Gary J. Adler. 2022. “What Isn’t Christian Nationalism? A Call for Conceptual and Empirical Splitting.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World 8 (January): 237802312211244. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231221124492.
Whitehead, Andrew L., and Samuel L. Perry. 2020. Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Oxford University Press.