Thread by @MikeyPasek

🚨FORTHCOMING IN JESP🚨w/ @Marah_Alkire, Jo-Ann Tsang, & @wade_rowatt. Religious demographic change increases Christian Americans' perceptions that their religious identity and beliefs as under attack, which predicts greater #ChristianNationalism. psyarxiv.com/mfyj5/ (1/13)

Social psychologists (e.g., @mocraig4, @jaricheson) have documented how changing racial demographics evoke threat and trigger conservatism among White Americans. We wanted to know whether simultaneous shifts in America’s religious demographics have a similar impact. (2/13)

Our work piggybacks on recent awesome work from @ClaraLWilkins et al. showing that secularization and LGBT acceptance can trigger threat among American Christians. (3/13) psyarxiv.com/hc46b/

Background: In 2007, 77% of the US population identified as Christian. Today, that # is only 69%. Among younger Americans (18-29), that # is only 54%. The number of unaffiliated Americans has doubled in the last 25 years and Protestants now are a minority group in the US. (4/13)

In two studies, we randomly assigned American Christians to read about shifting religious demographics or to a control condition. Those in the experimental condition reported greater feelings that their religious identity and beliefs were under attack. But that's not all. (5/13)

We also found evidence that religious demographic shifts can increase Christian nationalism (e.g., "The federal government should declare the United States a Christian Nation") through religious threat. See great work from @socofthesacred & @ndrewwhitehead on this topic. (6/13)

In addition to predicting higher Christian Nationalism, increased threat also accounted for increased support for Trump in the 2016 election! This is consistent with work from Brenda Major et al. (2016) on racial status threat. (7/13)

There is a lot of great work being done (but mostly not in social psychology!!) on Christian nationalism (see also @kkdumez, @GorskiPhilip, @AntheaButler, @robertpjones and many others). (8/13)

And we see Christian nationalism's influence everywhere from the January 6 insurrection (see #capitolsiegereligion) to vaccine skepticism to racism. (9/13)

As the U.S. becomes increasingly religiously diverse, more social psychological research on the impacts of religious diversity on Christians and Christian nationalism is needed. So too is more psychological work on the intersection of Christian and White nationalism! (10/13)

Religion plays such a big role in so many people's lives, in the US and around the world. And much of it is positive! But religious identities can also be powerful forces of intergroup intolerance and division. (11/13)

I hope that this work calls needed attention to the important role of religion as an important social identity that should be studied through an intergroup relations lens. There's so much more to learn! (12/13)