Perceived cultural decline drives Christian nationalism’s authoritarian attitudes

Evidence

As multiculturalism and secular lifestyles were gaining popularity, many conservative Christians started to fear that their orthodox Christian faith and way of life would be mocked and abandoned by their offspring in a foreseeable future (Huntington 2005; Yancey and Quosigk 2021). Their victimhood mindset and declining ontological security explains why, in the post-Obama America, voluminous empirical studies find that CN is a robust indicator of a series of authoritarian attitudes and ideologies, such as xenophobia (Perry, Whitehead, and Grubbs 2022), Islamophobia (Whitehead, Perry, and Baker 2018), and racism (Davis 2019). Christian Nationalists are also more likely to promote gun culture (Whitehead, Schnabel, and Perry 2018), be skeptical of vaccines (Corcoran, Scheitle, and DiGregorio 2021), and support anti-democratic violence (Armaly, Buckley, and Enders 2022). — Ruiqian Li and Paul Froese, The Duality of American Christian…, 45

Categorization

• QUESTION: This causal story — victimhood and ontological insecurity as the driver of CN attitudes — is exactly the mechanism the reader needs to weigh against simple conservatism-collinearity when testing CN’s distinct predictive power.
• XREF: connects to: Power, fear, and violence function as idolatrous substitutes in Christian nationalism — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 99; Perceived cultural loss, not real threat, drives Christian nationalist grievance politics — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 191; Christian nationalism robustly predicts authoritarian political attitudes — Ruiqian Li and Paul Froese, The Duality of American Christian…, 45 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Christian nationalism robustly predicts authoritarian political attitudes #corroborates (0.85) — Ruiqian Li and Paul Froese, The Duality of American Christian…, 45
• Declining Christian nationalist numbers make their adherents feel threatened and marginalized #expands (0.78) — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 45
• Religious nationalism intensifies during social crises regardless of demographic religious decline #complicates (0.75) — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 197
• Christian nationalism fuses moral traditionalism, authoritarian control, and ethno-racial boundaries #expands (0.72) — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 142
• Christian nationalism bundles political ideology with cultural religious claims #expands (0.72)