About 60 percent of Americans believe the US was ever a Christian nation

Evidence

In the 2017 BRS, 26 percent of Americans agreed that the United States has always been and currently is a Christian nation. Nearly one-third of Americans (32 percent) believe that at some point in its past the United States was a Christian nation, but is not anymore. A smaller number of Americans, 20 percent, report that America has never been a Christian nation. And still another fifth (21 percent) couldn’t say either way (see Figure I.1). The responses could be combined in several ways depending on the story one would like to tell. If you define a Christian nationalist as anyone who believes the United States is currently or ever was a Christian nation, more than three out of every five Americans reside in this category. If it includes only those who currently see America as a Christian nation, the number is less than three in 10. — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 49

Categorization

• XREF: Provides the empirical baseline data this reader needs to test whether Christian nationalism’s footprint matches Cooper’s description of the social-conservative coalition’s reach. — connects to: The United States was not founded as an explicitly Christian nation — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 115; Belief that America is a Christian nation fell sharply from 2012 to 2017 — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 182; American national identity remains fundamentally Judeo-Christian at its core — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 159

Broader Connections

• American national identity remains fundamentally Judeo-Christian at its core #corroborates (0.82) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 159