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Christian nationalism, not evangelical identity itself, predicts Trump voting.

Properties2
tagsja-picks, xref, deepthinking, factual_claims, trade, corroborated, category/factual-claims
aliases@whitehead_taking_2020, loc. 232, @whitehead_make_2018, loc. 43, @whitehead_make_2018, loc. 130

4 min read

Christian nationalism, not evangelical identity itself, predicts Trump voting.

Evidence

How can we be sure Christian nationalism is the cognitive mechanism linking white evangelicals to Trump support? There are two ways. First, even when we remove the effects of race and religious affiliation, Christian nationalism predicts voting for Trump. This means that it isn’t the difference between being an evangelical and any other religious affiliation that truly matters. Rather, it is the degree to which Americans differ in their orientation toward Christian nationalism. It is the fact that there are more Ambassadors and Accommodators among white evangelicals that creates those differences between religious traditions. — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 232

It is critical to clarify that we are hypothesizing that the influence of Christian nationalism on the 2016 Presidential election is distinct from, even as it is closely related to, other cultural factors influencing voting for Trump. — Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry, and Joseph O. Baker, Make America Christian Again, 43

Rather, Christian nationalism is a pervasive set of beliefs and ideals that merge American and Christian group memberships―along with their histories and futures―that helped shape the political actions of Americans who viewed a Trump presidency as a defense of the country’s perceived Christian heritage and a step toward the restoration of a distinctly Christian future. Christian nationalism provides a metanarrative for a religiously distinct national identity, and Americans who embrace this narrative and perceive threats to that identity overwhelmingly voted for Trump. … Notably, Christian nationalism is also the only significant religious predictor of voting for Trump in the full model. The mediation models help make sense of this by showing that two standard measures of religiosity—religious practice and views of the Bible—have effects that can only be fully understood by examining their indirect effects, which occur by predicting differential levels of Christian nationalism. — Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry, and Joseph O. Baker, Make America Christian Again, 130

Categorization

  • XREF: ‘White Noise’ consumerist religion echoes here — religious nationalism as an identity market, distinct from the doctrinal content it advertises. — connects to: Christian nationalism, not denomination, now predicts Americans’ politics — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 454; Christian nationalist adherence is primarily political rather than religious — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 214; White evangelicals supported Trump because of their beliefs, not despite them. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 8 (+8 more)
  • DEEPTHINKING: The mediation finding that religious practice and Bible views only matter via their correlation with Christian nationalism is a genuinely counterintuitive scientific result that inverts how commentators talk about ‘the religious vote’.
  • corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 232; Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry, and Joseph O. Baker, Make America Christian Again: Christian…, 43; Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry, and Joseph O. Baker, Make America Christian Again: Christian…, 130

Broader Connections

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