First the bad news: An alarming 53 percent of Republicans identify as either “adherents” or “sympathizers” of Christian nationalism.
Now the good news: A majority of Americans reject the ideology.
These are part of the results of the latest research by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), which hosted a webinar Tuesday, “Christian Nationalism and Trump’s Return,” to provide insights from its newly released 2024 American Values Atlas.
According to PRRI President and Founder Robert P. Jones, “Among one of our two political parties, [Christian Nationalism] has become a majority outlook, a majority worldview here, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing it have such a disproportionate effect in the country, is because it gets amplified through one of our two political parties.”
Jones was joined by University of Oklahoma Sociology Professor Samuel Perry, co-author of The Flag and The Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, Erica Ramirez, Senior Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives at Louisville Institute, and PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman to “discuss what this new data tells us about Christian nationalism supporters’ demographics, religious affiliation, policy priorities, and support for political violence.”
The publication updated a study which began in 2022 to include statistics from 2024. The new survey interviewed 22,000 adults across all 50 states, asking respondents a series of five questions gauging their support for Christian nationalism.
Based on their responses, those surveyed were placed into four groups: “Adherents,” who overwhelmingly agreed with all five questions; “sympathizers,” who somewhat agreed with the questions; “skeptics,” who somewhat disagreed with the questions; and “rejecters,” who completely disagreed with all five.
The survey found that, in 2024, over one-third of the country (30 percent) fell into the “adherent” or “sympathizer” categories, while about two-thirds (66 percent) were “skeptics” or “rejecters.” These findings were relatively consistent with data dating back to 2022.
The survey also found that while many Republicans qualify as either Christian nationalism Adherents (20 percent) or Sympathizers (33 percent), only about two in ten independents and even fewer Democrats qualify under those two categories.
“The patterns here might look a little bit familiar. In fact, if I didn’t tell you what this was, you would probably think it looks a lot like the [2024] red and blue electoral map,” said PRRI’s Jones. “And there’s a reason for that. These views are highly, highly correlated with votes for Republicans and Democrats, and particularly votes for Donald Trump in the last election cycle.”
Expanding on this, Louisville Institute’s Ramirez argued that the data showing Hispanic Protestants were more likely to support Christian nationalism than any other group besides white Protestants has implications for electoral politics.
“These [radical evangelical] groups are carrying enough influence with Hispanic voters to trouble what has been a long established Democratic Party bet, which is that these voters will vote … primarily on their ethnic interest,” said Ramirez. “I think now what’s emerging for me in the data is that there is not a Hispanic vote.”
Many of the questions researchers asked to bolster their findings reflect the connection between Christian nationalism and Donald Trump’s reelection victory. For instance, “adherents” and “sympathizers” overwhelmingly responded affirmatively to questions suggesting that men should hold a patriarchal role in society. According to PRRI CEO Deckman, “Christian nationalists would argue that society is better served when we endorse and embrace traditional gender roles.”
Secondly, the data showed a correlation between strong anti-immigrant sentiment and Christian nationalism. The extreme nature of the questions posed, echoing the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, is worth noting: over 65 percent of “adherents” and “sympathizers” believed that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background,” while 69 percent and 58 percent of “adherents” and “sympathizers” respectively believed that “immigrants entering the country illegally today are poisoning the blood of our country.”
The University of Oklahoma’s Perry linked these anti-immigrant sentiments to the fact that those who support Christian nationalism are far more likely to consume far-right media or Fox News, saying they “watch the kind of television that would have told them you’re being replaced, immigrants are invading, especially undocumented immigrants.” He said the fact that high percentages of Christian nationalist supporters believe in the more extreme “poisoning the blood” question is “shocking.”
The most concerning element of the PRRI report is that Christian nationalists are far more likely to support the use of political violence than the rest of the population. According to Jones, “You see adherents and sympathizers much more likely to affirm this sense of apocalyptic revolution that’s coming also much more likely … as the American public to believe both of these statements, and then much, much lower agreement among skeptics and rejecters.”
Perry argued that, although exit polls showed that “economic vibes, dissatisfaction with the economy, inflation, cost of living,” and border security were the major forces which pushed people toward Trump in 2024, the PRRI report revealed that Christian nationalism played a more important role than people realize.
Perry went on to say, however, that socioeconomic issues are intertwined with support for Christian nationalism. He noted the fact that Christian nationalist support is “higher in states with higher poverty rates, lower life expectancy, higher rates of gun violence, higher rates of incarceration, higher rates of divorce, and all kinds of indicators of quality of life not being great.”
He concluded that although those with lower education levels are more likely to show support, “ignorance per se” is not to blame for the persistence of Christian nationalism in states which voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024:
“It is about a lack of access or a lack of opportunity to achieve the things that you feel like you deserve…It is, in other words, an indicator, I think, of a populist backlash to feeling frustrated with one’s place in life, feeling like I am not getting access to all these other things that I see, and I’m being told by these media pundits that this is because it’s being stolen from me.”
Therefore, the roadmap to eroding Christian nationalist beliefs and their ability to influence national elections, according to Perry, lies in the government’s ability to help its citizens achieve better outcomes.
