🧵 Impossible to understand support for #ChristianNationalism without understanding the role of perceived threats to Christian dominance (Whiteness often implied), either demographically or culturally. Here are 3 experimental studies demonstrating & unpacking this connection. 1/5 Study 1: Authors find fundamentalist Christians on average oppose church-state separation, but really only when they feel their "prototypicality" (the sense that their religious subgroup represents America itself) threatened. Otherwise, no association. 2/5 doi.org/10.1111/jasp.1…

🧵 Good morning. Here are 6 studies (using a variety of approaches & data sets) showing capital punishment DOES NOT significantly deter homicide.

The death penalty is not "pro-life."

You're just killing more people to satisfy a corrupt sense of justice or lust for revenge. 1/7 2/7 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

One of the sad byproducts of all the political sorting is how boring it makes us. Maybe just my preference, but I find people less interesting when you can know one demographic fact about them & safely guess their stance on 10 issues. Be principled, be passionate, be interesting. And FWIW, I'm not talking about stereotyping people. I'm saying statistically our demographic identities are sorting under partisan/ideological identities to the point that where you live, whether you attend church, what you drive, tells me increasingly more about your politics.

🧵 What causes #ChristianNationalism to increase? Demographic threat. Authors find telling White Christians about threats to Christian numerical dominance evoked disgust which then led to increases in Christian nationalism & belief that Christians are discriminated against. 1/4 Curiously, authors found that telling White Christians about the demographic replacement of Whites didn't have a direct or indirect effect on Christian nationalism or much else. BUT they did find measures of symbolic racism predicted greater support for Christian nationalism. 2/4

🧵 Ever notice folks on the political left & right both claim their views represent those of Jesus? In our new study, we ask adults to rate Jesus on the left-right spectrum & find ratings are almost all about politics & almost nothing to do w/being religious or even Christian. 1/ For example, we find the leading predictors of whether you place Jesus further left or right are your own ideological identity and Christian nationalism, and this is true for Christians AND non-Christians alike. And religiosity doesn't really matter much. Why's that important? 2/

🧵 Something that's helped me understand contemporary GOP politics is Ziblatt's concept of "The Conservative Dilemma" (TCD). When you start to recognize the ways GOP efforts mostly revolve around addressing TCD, it makes much more sense. So what is it? How's it shape politics? 1/ Conservatives in democracies face a problem. On the one hand, conservatives serve the interests of traditional power (wealthy, whites, Christians, men, etc.). BUT they also gotta win elections. In the past, you solve that problem by limiting who can vote. But as voting... 2/

This is astonishing. Between 2019 and 2023, the % of Republicans who said parents should be able to put their kids in public school without the MMR vaccine (even if it creates health risks for others), more than doubled, from 20% to 42%.
pewresearch.org/science/2023/0… Loving the responses to this that flip it back on Fauci or Dems. "It's THEIR fault OUR party is so suspicious of vaccines that have been proven safe and effective for decades that we'd be willing to put everyone else's kids at risk. See what they made us do?!"

If you wanna read a scathing theological critique of #ChristianNationalism, look no further than John MacArthur himself. Brutal takedown of contemporary efforts to restore Christendom via political reform. Dude even thinks our Revolution was sinful—Founders didn’t obey Romans 13. Here’s his thoughts on the American Revolution. Hardly an endorsement of the Christian founding of our nation.

Last year @ndrewwhitehead & I were asked to submit this written testimony to the @January6thCmte on the role of white #ChristianNationalism in the #CapitolRiots. We explain how WCN had laid ideological groundwork & was shaping interpretation of events. 1/5
osf.io/preprints/soca… Because the Jan 6 Committee ultimately decided to leave out all discussion of #ChristianNationalism in their report, we've posted testimony on @socarxiv. The document has not been substantively revised or updated. Others have cited video/photo evidence, but we felt this... 2/5

🧵 Is #ChristianNationalism more threatened by religious or racial diversity? Our new study at @SREJournal uses a new CN index & finds CN predicts viewing both as hindrances to national unity, but its association with racial diversity is much stronger. 1/5
doi.org/10.1177/233264… This figure shows the difference pretty clearly. As #ChristianNationalism increases, Americans are more likely to see both religious and racial diversity as hindrances rather than strengths, but look at how much steeper the slope is for racial diversity. We also measured... 2/5

I'm often told churches should take care of social services, not the govt. When I explain that churches really don't contribute near enough service or money to cover the need, the response is often "Well if taxes were lower, we'd do more." Has there been any study testing that? Hey @lymanstoneky @ryanburge @PaulDjupe @RuthBraunstein, y'all know of anything on this?

🧵 Evangelicals, please stop saying silly stuff like "I read the XYZ translation cuz it's the most [accurate, literal]." How's your Greek & Hebrew? Non-existent? Then you are unqualified to judge "accuracy." And "literalness" is a dumb standard anyway. But you can do better...1/5 Rather than defensively repeating advertising claims you can't evaluate like "accuracy" or tribal slogans like "literalness," YOU can start to evaluate Bible translations on whether the editorial team has sought to be 1) transparent about their decisions & 2) accountable. 2/5

Hey fam, dropping in to share some data. Something we (@jt_davis14 @JoshuaGrubbsPhD) found in PDES data shows up in Pew. Among WHITE adults who think govt should support religion, 70% think voting is a privilege, not a right. BUT, it's a WHITE #ChristianNationalism thing... 1/4 Notice when we look at Black Americans, even among those who think govt should support religion, ~70% still believe voting is a protected right, not a privilege. It's not even close to where white Christian nationalists end on on voting rights. But what about Hispanics? 2/4

🧵 Trump supporters often act like his norm-breaking rhetoric over his political career was harmless. Here's four studies documenting that Trump's Tweets and rhetoric increased anti-vaxx attitudes, hate crimes, religious and racial prejudice, & suspicions of voter fraud. 1/5 This study shows that when Trump supporters were exposed to Trump's anti-vaxx Tweets, they became more suspicious of vaccines in general. Hardly a harmless effect leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp…

Just dropped on Amazon Sept 5th. A “How-To” #ChristianNationalism book written by the right-wing, anti-Semitic founder of Gab. Ranked #15 on Amazon this morning and already has 160 reviews. Blurb on the back cover by Doug Wilson. These people aren’t hiding their goals. @AndrewLSeidel @ardenthistorian @ndrewwhitehead @JemarTisby @kkdumez @AmandaTylerBJC @anelsona Just a little fan promo. Note the open self-identification as a #ChristianNationalist and dehumanizing language (“take back this country from the demons”). This is headed toward violence.

Whatever the Founders thought about church & state may help inform us. But honestly I care so much less about what Madison meant in the establishment clause or what Jefferson meant by "wall of separation," than what is right for us now & going forward. (And I think they'd agree.) It actually plays into a weird Christian nationalist game with CN assumptions to throw quotes from the Founders at each other like they're Bible verses. ("If we could only get down to what Madison REALLY meant, we'd just do that forever.") Times change. He & TJ understood that.

🧵 In the thick of book-writing, I've been thinking a lot about how non-social scientists intuitively define "religious." I think average folk get closer to the heart of what religion is: sacralized us-ness, demonstrated more by proven loyalty than rituals, doctrines, morals. 1/4 Here's an example. March 2021, Pew asked Americans how religious are Donald Trump & Joe Biden. By traditional criteria, Biden is quite religious. Trump not religious at all. But as Americans affirm #ChristianNationalism, they're WAY more likely to say Trump is religious. Why? 2/4

Clearly being conservative is correlated with opposing abortion. But is it correlated w/actually having abortions? Data from Regnerus's 2014 RIA survey. As women swing more conservative, they oppose abortion. But conservative women are hardly any less likely to have had one. 1/3 Same story when we're looking at the average number of abortions women report. Across political ideology, women in the survey reported between .37 & .49 abortions (zeroes bring avg down). But again conservativism more associated with opposing abortion in theory than practice. 2/3

🧵It's #LovingDay. Interracial families are what initially got me interested in white #ChristianNationalism. Our first study. We found this weird pattern: even though CN questions never mention race, whites higher on CN were more likely to oppose interracial marriage. Why? 1/6 Curious, we found the same pattern regarding transracial adoption. Whites higher on #ChristianNationalism were less supportive of people adopting children of a different race. Why?

These patterns indicate CN:
1) is racialized.
2) sacralizes rigid boundaries & social order. 2/6

Looks like Christian Nationalism is trending. For those interested, follow & read scholarship by @ndrewwhitehead @GorskiPhilip @RuthBraunstein @AntheaButler @kkdumez @praxishabitus, @Marah_Alkire @MikeyPasek @Shortle @EricLMcDaniel @RiccardiSwartz & myself. #ChristianNationalism @ndrewwhitehead @GorskiPhilip @RuthBraunstein @AntheaButler @kkdumez @praxishabitus @Marah_Alkire @MikeyPasek @Shortle @EricLMcDaniel @RiccardiSwartz Along with other scholars like @PennyEMN @EvanStewart23 @jack_dele @MilesArmaly @PaulDjupe and journalists & writers like @jackmjenkins @sarahposner @kathsstewart @anelsona @AndrewLSeidel and @PaulDMiller2.

Here's where you can lead disingenuous partisans like Ted Cruz when they insist declining church attendance causes gun deaths. Sad fact is gun deaths RISE w/the % of state who attends weekly & they FALL as the % of a state who seldom/never attends increases. Strong correlations. But why stop there? Here we see gun deaths also rise with the percent of a state's adult population who is Evangelical Protestant. A VERY strong correlation, in fact. (Religion data taken from Pew Religious Landscape Study, btw)