Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry — The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy

72 published claims from this book.

• “Evangelical” now functions chiefly as a Republican Party identity label
• A common external threat does not reliably unite polarized publics
• A second American insurrection would likely be larger and more violent
• Being unable to name oppression’s source intensifies its psychological harm
• Big money and evangelical activists jointly funded the Tea Party
• Black conservative Protestants align with white evangelicals on Christian nationalism measures
• Black evangelicals experienced Trump’s election as a betrayal by their own churches
• Christian conservatives now justify discrimination via rights language rather than morality
• Christian nationalism fuses free-market capitalism into American Christian identity
• Christian nationalism independently predicts pandemic-era immigrant scapegoating among whites
• Christian nationalism is a global, not uniquely American, phenomenon
• Christian nationalism is measured through survey agreement statements
• Christian nationalism predicted not just noncompliance but reversed precaution behavior
• Christian nationalism predicts ultra-conservatism mainly for white Americans, not Black or Hispanic
• Christian nationalism strongly predicts pro-free-market attitudes among Americans.
• Christian nationalism survey items predict racial attitudes even though they mention no race
• Christian nationalist belief predicts Civil War revisionism and monument defense
• Christian nationalist founding claims are historically false.
• Christian nationalist history is factually wrong, not merely interpretively different.
• Christian nationalist rhetoric frames socialism as anti-biblical and anti-American
• Christian nationalist rhetoric uses coded ethno-traditionalism to mean white rule
• Christian right leaders framed pandemic restrictions as unconstitutional fear-based tyranny.
• Countering white Christian nationalism requires a cross-ideological popular front.
• COVID restrictions were opposed by the right on economic-withdrawal grounds, not health ones.
• COVID-19’s shared mortal threat deepened rather than healed American polarization
• Deep stories feel truest precisely when contradicting recorded history
• Demographic decline and inequality drive American political rupture
• Historical misinformation alone cannot explain Christian nationalists’ wrong answers
• Ideological identity, not ignorance, drives whites’ wrong history answers
• Ideology, not ignorance, drives culture-war knowledge gaps among religious conservatives
• Multiracial democracy and white Christian nationhood are logically incompatible in the US
• Nationalism masquerades as patriotism by claiming defensive aims
• Online racial abuse triggers measurable physiological stress responses
• Patriotism means constitutional loyalty while nationalism means tribal loyalty against an outgroup
• Perceived white Christian persecution drives opposition to voter access
• Racial anxiety about Obama ignited the Tea Party movement
• Racial dog whistles replaced explicit slurs after the civil rights movement
• Reactionaries act pro-actively while progressives stay reactive
• Reactionary movements embrace radical change to defend or restore hierarchies.
• Rural white MAGA support rests on a false line-cutting narrative
• Tea Partiers treat the Constitution as a sacred text akin to the Bible
• The 2020 DHS threat assessment named white supremacists the top domestic threat
• The Christian label often masks tribal politics among secular whites
• The Christian Right has long openly pursued suppression of rival voters
• The Christian-nation founding story contradicts documented history
• The founding fathers held diverse religious views and drew on secular sources
• The word Christian has become racially coded for conservative whites since Reagan
• Trump blamed China rather than his own administration for the pandemic
• Trump scapegoated minorities to deflect COVID-19 blame
• White Christian identity is conflated in conservative rhetoric with whiteness itself
• White Christian nationalism drives right-wing populism in America
• White Christian nationalism explains seemingly contradictory Christian political behavior
• White Christian nationalism fuses race and faith into one ethno-traditionalist identity
• White Christian nationalism has cycled through a series of shifting internal and external enemies
• White Christian nationalism in America mirrors secularized versions across Europe and Latin America.
• White Christian nationalism is a defensible empirical category, not a slur
• White Christian nationalism masks racial anxiety behind religious identity claims
• White Christian nationalism operates as an adaptable narrative, not fixed beliefs
• White Christian nationalism repels people from church more than progressive ideas do
• White Christian nationalism shaped which authorities Americans trusted during the pandemic
• White Christian nationalism treats voting as a right limited to worthy groups
• White Christian nationalism went unnoticed by both its adherents and its critics
• White Christian nationalism, not mere distrust, drove evangelical COVID vaccine refusal.
• White Christian nationalist beliefs predict perceived anti-white discrimination
• White Christian nationalist policy positions lack a biblical basis
• White Christian nationalists answer history questions wrongly while Black ones abstain
• White Christian nationalists blamed Black Americans rather than social conditions for COVID disparities
• White Christian nationalists sincerely believe whites and Christians are the most persecuted in America
• White Christians supported Trump despite his apparent moral violations
• White evangelical support for Trump rose between 2016 and 2020
• White politicians shifted from racial slurs to coded language after civil rights
• Whiteness alone links Christian nationalist belief to right-wing political mobilization