THE FLAG AND THE CROSS

Two sociologists examine polling data and American history to chart the dangerous rise of White Christian nationalism.

The so-called Christian right isn’t strictly Christian, write Gorski and Perry. They point to one survey in which one-fifth of those who identified as “Christian” also said they were secular or belonged to some other religion, meaning that “religious terms like ‘Christian’ and ‘evangelical’ are becoming markers of social identity rather than just religious conviction.” Many Christian nationalists are aggrieved Whites who believe that liberals are bent on “replacing” them with immigrants and minorities. By the logic of those adherents, events such as the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol are not insurrectionary but instead acts of self-defense, a violence that Christ’s purported followers endorse with full throats. Interestingly, according to Gorski and Perry, this Christian right, at whose heart lies “anti-Black animus” that dates back hundreds of years (whence the furor over the corrective 1619 Project), does not consider Muslims or even atheists to be existentially threatening. The real, dreaded enemies are “socialists,” and even if many Christian right-wingers probably couldn’t define what a socialist is, the thinking is that everything from taxes to the pandemic lockdowns are socialist ploys to take away rights that White Christian nationalists believe should be reserved unto Whites. Unfortunately, given the trajectory of American history, the authors write, there is no reason to think that this movement will fade away anytime soon. If decentralized power means that the worst of nationalist authoritarianism would be localized if Trump or some acolyte came to power, the authors suggest that it would be disastrous all the same: “Ironically, a serious attempt to ‘make America great again’ would probably end up making it chaotic and poor.”

A jarring analysis of a powerful and determined political minority bent on power.