# Andrew Whitehead & Samuel Perry **American sociologists of religion** whose collaborative work has produced the most empirically rigorous analysis of **Christian nationalism** as a measurable political ideology — distinct from religious devotion, church attendance, or theological conservatism. **Andrew L. Whitehead** (Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis) and **Samuel L. Perry** (University of Oklahoma) are co-authors of *Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States* (Oxford, 2020) — the book that established Christian nationalism as a social-scientific construct with measurable dimensions, predictive power, and specific political consequences. For the Power Theory cluster, Whitehead and Perry fill the **authoritarian-religion gap** — the missing analysis of how Christian nationalism functions not as a religious movement but as a **political ideology** that uses Christian identity as a marker for ethno-national belonging and deploys religious language to sanctify authoritarian, patriarchal, and white-supremacist power structures. ## Core Contributions ### *Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States* (2020) The central contribution: Christian nationalism is **not the same thing as being a devout Christian.** Whitehead and Perry demonstrate empirically that Christian nationalism is a distinct political ideology — a set of beliefs about America's relationship to Christianity — that operates independently of personal religious commitment. You can be a devout churchgoer who opposes Christian nationalism, or a rarely-attending cultural Christian who strongly supports it. The ideology is about national identity, not personal faith. **The Christian nationalism scale:** Whitehead and Perry developed a six-item survey instrument measuring agreement with statements like: - "The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation" - "The federal government should advocate Christian values" - "The federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state" (reverse-coded) - "The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces" - "The success of the United States is part of God's plan" - "The federal government should allow prayer in public schools" **The four orientations:** Based on responses, Whitehead and Perry identified four populations along a Christian nationalism continuum: | Orientation | % of population | Characteristics | |---|---|---| | **Rejectors** | ~21% | Actively oppose the fusion of Christianity and government; support strict separation | | **Resisters** | ~26% | Uncomfortable with Christian nationalism but not strongly opposed; the ambivalent middle | | **Accommodators** | ~32% | Generally support the idea of America as a Christian nation but don't push for theocratic governance | | **Ambassadors** | ~20% | Strongly endorse Christian nationalism; support government enforcement of Christian values; the movement's core | **The key finding: Christian nationalism predicts political attitudes better than religious devotion alone.** Once Christian nationalism is controlled for, the effect of church attendance, prayer frequency, and theological conservatism on political attitudes (immigration, race, gender, guns, authoritarianism) substantially diminishes or disappears. It's not *religiosity* that predicts right-wing political attitudes — it's *Christian nationalism*. The ideology is doing the political work, not the theology. ### What Christian Nationalism Predicts Whitehead and Perry's data showed that Christian nationalism — independent of personal religiosity — is a strong predictor of: | Domain | Finding | |---|---| | **Authoritarianism** | Higher Christian nationalism → stronger support for authoritarian governance, executive power, punitive justice | | **Racial attitudes** | Higher Christian nationalism → more opposition to racial equity, BLM, immigration; more support for "law and order" rhetoric | | **Gender hierarchy** | Higher Christian nationalism → stronger support for traditional gender roles, opposition to feminism, tolerance of domestic violence | | **Gun rights** | Higher Christian nationalism → stronger opposition to gun control (guns as sacred objects in the Christian-nationalist worldview) | | **Anti-pluralism** | Higher Christian nationalism → stronger opposition to religious diversity, Muslim immigration, LGBTQ rights | | **Trump support** | Christian nationalism was the single strongest predictor of voting for Trump in 2016 — stronger than party identification, race, income, education, or religious denomination | The Trump finding is the most politically consequential: Christian nationalism predicted Trump support even among people who rarely attended church, who didn't identify as evangelical, or who described their theology as moderate. The ideology, not the faith, drove the vote. ### *The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy* (2022) Perry and Philip Gorski's follow-up specifically analyzed **white** Christian nationalism — arguing that the "Christian" in Christian nationalism functions primarily as a marker for **white ethno-national identity** rather than theological commitment. The "Christian nation" that Christian nationalists want to "take back" is implicitly (and often explicitly) a *white* Christian nation — one in which racial hierarchy, patriarchal authority, and Christian cultural dominance are fused into a single national identity. **The racial dimension:** Perry and Gorski showed that white Christian nationalism is the strongest predictor of: - Belief that police treat racial minorities fairly - Opposition to kneeling during the national anthem - Belief that Confederate monuments should remain - Opposition to immigration (especially non-white immigration) - Support for voter ID laws and other restrictions on voting access The "Christian" marker functions as a racial-identity marker with theological camouflage — exactly the kind of ideological laundering that Gramsci's hegemony framework predicts. ## The Stenner-Whitehead/Perry Synthesis Whitehead and Perry's Christian nationalism scale and [[Karen Stenner]]'s authoritarian predisposition model are measuring overlapping but distinct constructs that interact powerfully: | Dimension | Stenner | Whitehead/Perry | |---|---|---| | **What they measure** | Authoritarian predisposition (intolerance of difference) | Christian nationalist ideology (fusion of Christian identity with national authority) | | **What activates it** | Perceived normative threat | Perceived threat to America's "Christian identity" | | **What it predicts** | Authoritarianism, punitiveness, intolerance (across all domains) | Authoritarianism, racial hierarchy, patriarchy, gun culture, Trump support | | **The overlap** | Christian nationalism *is* a normative-threat frame — "America is losing its Christian identity" is a normative-threat signal that activates authoritarian predispositions | The synthesis: Christian nationalism provides the **narrative infrastructure** for Stenner's threat activation. "They're taking God out of our schools," "they're destroying our Christian heritage," "they want to replace us" — these are normative-threat signals delivered in Christian-nationalist vocabulary. The ideology provides the threat narrative; the predisposition provides the psychological response; the right-wing media ecosystem provides the amplification. ## The Fromm Connection Christian nationalism offers all three of [[Erich Fromm]]'s escape mechanisms simultaneously: | Escape mechanism | Christian nationalist form | |---|---| | **Authoritarian submission** | Submission to God, to pastoral authority, to Trump-as-Cyrus — the chain of authority provides the relief of surrender | | **Destructiveness** | "Spiritual warfare" — the world is controlled by demonic forces; destruction of the enemy (secular liberalism, LGBTQ, immigration) is *righteous* destruction | | **Automaton conformity** | The premade identity: "Christian American patriot" provides total identity packaging — beliefs, values, enemies, community, purpose — without the anxiety of autonomous choice | Fromm's insight is that these are not rational choices but compulsive responses to the anxiety of freedom. Christian nationalism provides the most comprehensive escape package available in contemporary American politics — more comprehensive than MAGA alone, because it adds transcendent meaning, divine sanction, and eternal stakes. ## KB Significance Whitehead and Perry fill the **authoritarian-religion gap** in the Power Theory cluster: 1. **The measurement contribution.** Christian nationalism is now a measurable construct with validated scales, predictive power, and documented relationships to specific political attitudes. This moves the KB's analysis of the religious right from descriptive ("evangelicals support Trump") to analytical ("Christian nationalism — a specific political ideology distinct from personal religiosity — predicts Trump support better than any other variable"). 2. **The religion-as-ideology diagnostic.** The critical finding — that Christian nationalism predicts political attitudes independently of religious devotion — reframes the KB's analysis of the religious right. The organizations the KB documents (Council for National Policy, Family Research Council, the NAR ecosystem) are not primarily religious organizations — they are *political* organizations that use Christian identity as a mobilization tool. Whitehead and Perry provide the empirical basis for this distinction. 3. **The racial-identity function.** Perry and Gorski's analysis of white Christian nationalism reveals that "Christian" functions as a racial-identity marker with theological camouflage. This connects to Bell's interest-convergence framework: Christian nationalism defends racial hierarchy (a structure that serves white-majority interests) while framing the defense in religious terms (which makes it feel principled rather than self-interested). 4. **The threat-activation integration.** Christian nationalism provides the narrative infrastructure for Stenner's normative-threat activation — the specific vocabulary and worldview through which perceived threat is communicated, interpreted, and mobilized. Understanding this integration is essential for understanding why the religious right is the MAGA movement's most reliable base. ## See Also - [[Power Theory]] — the analytical framework - [[Christian Nationalism]] — the ideology page - [[Dominionism]] — the theological tradition (distinct from but overlapping with Christian nationalism) - [[Karen Stenner]] — authoritarian activation; Christian nationalism as normative-threat narrative - [[Bob Altemeyer]] — RWA scale; Christian nationalism scale as the religion-specific complement - [[Erich Fromm]] — escape from freedom; Christian nationalism as the most comprehensive escape package - [[Jonathan Haidt]] — all six moral foundations activated simultaneously by Christian nationalist messaging - [[Theodor Adorno]] — F-scale dimensions (conventionalism, superstition, exaggerated concern with sexuality) map closely onto Christian nationalist attitudes - [[Ruth Ben-Ghiat]] — the Cyrus narrative and Trump-as-strongman within Christian nationalist theology - [[Derrick Bell]] — the racial function of "Christian" identity; interest convergence - [[Theda Skocpol]] — organizational infrastructure of the religious right - [[Council for National Policy]] · [[Family Research Council]] — institutional nodes - [[Political Psychology]] — hub page - [[Intellectual Foundations of Resistance]] — counter-strategies - [[Magnifica Humanitas]] — [[Pope Leo XIV]]'s AI encyclical; the clearest illustration of the theology-vs.-ideology distinction the framework identifies