Who Hasn't Heard About Christian Nationalism?

This post has been unlocked through a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment for the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA). The graphs you see here use data that is publicly available for download and analysis through link(s) provided in the text below.

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(I have to give credit to the most prolific social scientist I know - Sam Perry, for the idea for this piece. He published an article in The American Sociologist titled, “Sociology and Its (Limited) Publics: The Case of ‘Christian Nationalism.’” In some cases I am just recreating his analysis. So, if you want a much more rigorous academic discussion of public awareness of Christian Nationalism, give that article a read.)

There’s not a more discussed concept in American religion and politics right now than Christian Nationalism (CN). For those of us who unfortunately spend too much time on Twitter, it seems like it comes up at least once a week. But, there are concepts that seem to be hot topics on Twitter that just don’t seem to jump the fence into the larger discourse. But, it’s pretty hard to empirically test which ideas get into the larger cultural bloodstream, though.

However I found a survey on the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), which was a joint project between the Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings which focused largely on Christian Nationalism. It was fielded at the end of 2022 and it asks a pretty simple question: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Christian Nationalism?

Here’s how the distribution of those answers looks when it’s broken down by religious tradition. 

Among Catholics, it’s clear that not many have a favorable view of CN - just 20%. In contrast, twice that percentage of Catholics view Christian Nationalism as somewhat or very unfavorable. There is a pretty noticeable divide between the Protestants who identify as evangelical and those who don’t when it comes to Christian Nationalism. Among evangelicals, about 33% have a favorable view of CN, while 29% have an unfavorable view. However, among non-evangelicals the unfavorables outnumber the favorables (34% vs 24%). But there are no types of Protestants where a clear majority have a positive view of Christian Nationalism. 

Among the nones, it’s readily apparent that there are not a lot of positive vibes toward Christian Nationalism. About 57% of non-religious Americans have a very unfavorable view of CN and another ten percent say their view is “somewhat unfavorable.” Just a vanishingly small number (about 8%) say that their view of CN is favorable. 

But I’ve been avoiding something in the prior graph that needs to be talked about. What really jumped out to me were the gray bars on the far left of the graph - those were people who said they ‘have not heard of (CN)’. In the entire sample, 35% had no concept of Christian Nationalism. Among partisans, Republicans were the most likely to have never heard of CN (44%), while it was just 28% of Democrats.

I wanted to try and tease out some of the factors that make folks more or less likely to say that they simply don’t know what Christian Nationalism is on a survey.

Let’s pivot from religious variables for a bit and start this inquiry by looking at political ideology using a seven point scale that ranges from ‘extremely liberal’ to ‘extremely conservative.’

Well, this graph certainly tells a pretty compelling story. For those who describe themselves as ‘extremely liberal’ just 8% of them say that they have no awareness of Christian Nationalism. But as the scale moves closer to the middle, the awareness of CN begins to decline. It’s 17% of liberals and 24% of those who are slightly liberal. Once you hit the ‘moderates’ in the sample, awareness of CN drops significantly - 41% of them have no conception of the term.

What’s also fascinating is that once you get to the middle of the spectrum, the bars don’t get taller. Among conservatives, there is almost no variation. It’s 40% of ‘slightly conservatives’ and essentially the same percentage of ‘extremely conservatives.’ Being further left makes one much more aware of Christian Nationalism, but being further right doesn’t yield a different level of knowledge of CN.

But maybe that’s mitigated at some level by age. Younger folks may be much more aware of online discourse compared to older Americans. So I cut the sample twice: once into five different age buckets and then again by political partisanship. Here’s what I get.

This is a graph that I am going to be thinking about for a while. What is striking to me is that across the top row, there’s very little variation by age. About 40% of 50 year old Republicans have not heard of Christian Nationalism. It’s the exact same share of Republicans in their twenties. And the same thing is true for Democrats. About a quarter of them haven’t heard of CN. That’s true for the youngest age group and it’s also the case for 45-54 year old Democrats, too.

But that brings me to another finding worth thinking about a bit - there is essentially no difference in awareness of CN among the youngest Democrats compared to the oldest ones. The numbers essentially stay very consistent between 25% and 30% of the Democrats in the sample. For Republicans, it’s pretty clear to me that the oldest Republicans are the least aware of Christian Nationalism. About half of Republicans who are 65 or older don’t know about Christian Nationalism, that’s about eight points higher than younger Republicans.

A Republican who is 65 or older is twice as likely to not know about Christian Nationalism compared to a Democrat between the ages of 18 and 35. If you want to see how age and religious affiliation interact when it comes to awareness of Christian Nationalism, here’s a graph I made about that. 

Let’s throw education into the equation now.

Okay, it’s pretty clear that awareness of Christian Nationalism runs along educational lines. Those with a high school diploma or less have a lower level of knowledge of CN compared to those with a college degree. But what is worth pointing out is that among those with a high school diploma or less, there’s a very small partisan gap - 40% of Democrats aren’t aware of CN compared to 47% of Republicans.

As education increases, the partisan gap does as well. For those with a four year college degree, it’s a twenty point gap - 23% of Democrats aren’t aware of CN compared to 43% of Republicans. It gets even larger when looking at those with a graduate degree. Among Democrats with at least a master’s degree, only 12% don’t know about Christian Nationalism. It’s a whopping 38% of Republicans in this same education category.

Think about this: when going from the lowest education bracket to the highest, awareness of Christian Nationalism increases by 28 points among Democrats. Among Republicans, it’s just 9 points. If you want to see how education and religious affiliation intersect when it comes to Christian Nationalism, here’s a graph that visualizes that. 

One thing that really stood out to me from Sam Perry’s paper was something that he tweeted about in regards to media consumption. Respondents were asked which media source that they trusted the most with a bunch of options ranging from local news to the major 24 hour news networks to the upstart conservative outlets like OAN and Newsmax.

The type of people with the least amount of awareness of Christian Nationalism were those who trusted their local news the most - nearly half of them had never heard of Christian Nationalism. Which makes me wonder if any local news media have focused on the topic. I don’t know the answer, but it would be interesting to track down any local stories about CN.

But the group that scored the second highest on lack of awareness of Christian Nationalism were those who trusted Fox News the most. That’s certainly worth thinking about more deeply. Those who trusted Fox News were less aware of Christian Nationalism than respondents who didn’t watch TV news at all.

The people who were the most aware of Christian Nationalism were those who trusted MSNBC the most followed by PBS and CNN. I think we can all say that this is deeply intertwined with partisanship. Republicans watch Fox News and Democrats tend to watch MSNBC and CNN. Those on the left are much more aware of Christian Nationalism than those on the right.

But let’s put a bow on this by running a regression with a bunch of variables. I am trying to predict what factors lead someone to at least be aware of Christian Nationalism, regardless of their feelings on the topic. If the coefficient is to the right, it means that it predicts a great likelihood of knowing about CN. If it’s to the left, it predicts a lower likelihood. If it intersects with zero (the vertical dashed line), there’s no relationship.

There is exactly one variable here that predicts lower awareness of Christian Nationalism - age. Older folks don’t know about Christian Nationalism compared to younger adults. There are a couple of variables that don’t predict awareness in either direction - race, income, and church attendance.

But there are a handful that drive up awareness of Christian Nationalism and they all have the same magnitude. They are: being male, being a Democrat, and claiming no religious affiliation.

I think I will let Sam Perry explain the upshot of these findings through his tweets.

Brutal truth is that despite our enthusiastic efforts (writing op-eds & accessible books, giving public talks, countless news interviews), most of our public sociology on Christian Nationalism has likely been preaching to the choir.

Why is this happening? According to Sam.

1) siloed media landscapes & 2) further erosion of trust (much of it deserved + propaganda) in academics & mainstream media among conservatives.

Thus, the current discussion about Christian Nationalism has been largely ignored (or rejected) by those on the right side of the political spectrum, while the Left has consumed anything that they can get their hands on when it comes to the dangers of Christian Nationalism.

I, myself, look forward to the roundtable discussion that is (hopefully) going to happen in about a decade that focuses on what academia learned about speaking to the general public about our work in ways that cross the political aisle.

Code for this post can be found here.