Fear is a poor motivator, and people deserve to know the truth. Poor and working-class people find themselves thrown into struggles without understanding the full breadth of forces against them. Suddenly, a small rent strike finds itself grappling with a whole ruling class apparatus: a local politician seeking re-election, media that casts them as helpless rather than protagonists, police that may try to break the strike, nonprofits who might want to funnel their fight into “proper channels”, and perhaps most peculiar, a nearby church which is supplying a picket line with much-needed water. Without clarity, fear motivates attempts to circumnavigate these forces, or worse, to submit to their demobilization.
The term “Christian Nationalism” has exploded in the past few years. Over a dozen books have been published at high volumes on the subject in a short time, the vast majority of which I would call “alarmist” (take your pick). It is based on a few convenient facts: America is still overwhelmingly religious, and most of that is Christian. Trump’s campaign has a large base of particularly evangelical Christians, and he has frequently been found absorbing accusations of nationalism. A common theme heard is “a threat to democracy.”
Yet it seems fewer individuals in the GOP are self-identifying with the “Christian Nationalist” label than the alarmists imply. Indeed, many may invoke Christianity, and they may also invoke sentiments that could be called “Nationalist.” This, however, is hardly new. What the “Christian Nationalism” narrative presents is a nascent movement that is poised to triumph over secular liberalism. What we find in evidence to the contrary are significant but gradual shifts in American Christianity that the GOP has been able to channel into its base, which also represents significant failures and lapses for the Democrats.
There is, however, something called Christian Nationalism, a small milieu amongst a broader constellation of Christo-fascisms (also take your pick), and these do make their mark on the Trump campaign. However, it’s a grave mistake to overstate their influence as anything more than a small player in a much larger, almost untenable alliance. We risk joining in a chorus of a defense of the barely secular nationalism of the Democratic Party. The worst consequences of Christian Nationalism will be anti-Christian Nationalism.
By de-mystifying “Christian Nationalism,” we can see critical vulnerabilities in the political strategies of both major US parties and act accordingly. The object is not to minimize the real danger the GOP’s platform to women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, poor and working-class people, etc., but to explain the role that Christianity is playing in their strategy and why the Democratic Party finds the “Christian Nationalist” label useful despite its problems.
The statistics and graphs are courtesy of Ryan Burge of Graphs about Religion unless otherwise linked. Edits provided by Amelia Davenport, an editor for Cosmonaut Magazine and co-author of Shop Talks on Economics. Opinions are my own.
The Christian Problem in the GOP
The Republican Party must continually drive its Christian base toward its candidates. Small cracks and declines in American Christianity mean this base requires persistent maintenance. It is not something they take for granted.
It should be noted that the Republicans have never been weak with Christians. Their task is instead to consolidate them based on shifts within this base. 29% of the GOP did not attend Church in 2008; now that's 44%. That’s a huge weak point they cannot afford to overlook; with a decline in weekly church attendance, Republicans are losing a place they depend on to reach these crucial voters.
So, if the GOP cannot depend on Church attendance or participation in its institutions, it must capture the Christians by other means. To go further, most clergy do not endorse candidates whatsoever, but far more spoke in favor of Hillary in 2016 than Trump. The Billy Graham’s and Pat Robertson’s aren’t quite out, but the Matt Walsh’s and Ben Shapiro’s are on their way in.
But it’s not without liability; as previously mentioned, this is a rather untenable alliance. Transphobia has been quite unsuccessful electorally, and has cost the GOP many more elections than it has won. Transphobia remains very popular with Trump’s core base but much less popular with a broader base of voters. Even Trump has publicly taken note of the chaos in this partnership, “You see, I’m talking about cutting taxes, people go like that,” he says and then gives an uninspired golf clap. “I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Who would have thought? Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.”
What Christians?
America and the GOP are still predominantly Christian. It is often overstated that religion in America is in decline, but this has been very slow, with 76% of Americans still identifying with a religion, 69% of that being Christianity, and 49% of Americans saying religion is “very important” to them. It is also important to note that white Christianity is in decline. The proportion of Christianity in every non-white demographic has remained the same.
It's within the decaying Christianity that we see the shifts that matter. Evangelicalism, particularly of the non-denominational variety, is certainly ascendant within American Christianity, and especially the Republican Party. This is the largest religious (or lack thereof) group in the GOP, at 38%. It doesn’t quite play by the same rules as the mainline Christianity that in the 1970s formed 46% of the Republican Party (today just 17%). They are less likely to attend church regularly, do bible study, become members of a congregation, or even consult the bible in their views on immigration. According to Christian Nationalist alarmist Kristin Kobes Du Mez in Jesus and John Wayne, “Evangelicals may self-identify as ‘bible-believing Christians’ but evangelicalism itself entails a broader set of deeply held values communicated through symbol, ritual and political allegiances”.
However, to see “Christian Nationalism” proper, we have to look further into the fringe of Evangelicalism, away from the megachurches of Joel Osteen and towards the Baptist (in the case of William Wolfe) and Calvinist (in the case of Stephen Wolfe) remnants of oldline American Protestantism. Historically conservative sects such as the Southern Baptist Convention are not being spared in the Evangelicalization of American Christianity, experiencing some of the sharpest declines in membership that we’ve seen. These aren’t the evangelical products of what they call “revival”, but the last call for such from dying sects.
It seems, quite plainly, that most Christians, much fewer people in general, do not believe in “Christian Nationalism.” This involves grafting statistics onto an ever-moving goalpost of what “Christian Nationalism” means, the results are anything but neat. A couple of scholars have found a study by Baylor useful in surveying these beliefs. Samuel Perry uses this same data in his introduction to Taking Back America for God to inoculate readers to the prevalence of these beliefs. However, when comparing the time between 2007 and 2021, as prepared by Ryan Burge, we see a whole different dimension. These data markers of Christian Nationalism show the movement is declining, not growing.
It is the last question, however, that interests me. It’s the only “nationalist” opinion that went up. It seems that the beliefs that are increasing are faith-based views on prosperity, and this is linked to their views on America. 40 percent of Evangelical churches preach “the prosperity gospel,” part of which is the idea that poverty results from faithlessness. The period spanning this survey includes a major recession and recovery. Some might point to Biden’s positive job reports and recent growth in the American economy, but as far as being able to impact this survey, it is too little, too late.
What Democracy?
The Republican plan for conquest of power, Project 2025, is only possible in a system that is already deeply undemocratic. The judicial and executive branches, the Senate, and the Electoral College wield disproportionate and exceptional authority. It is these means that are at the center of their plan. It should be taken seriously as these means do exist, and we have already seen how Republicans them. His unprecedented volume of federal court appointees, including two Supreme Court nominations, is being felt in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the “religious exception” to PrEP, the threat to Obergefell. These are all sweeping judicial reforms brought to us by the man who lost in 2020 and unable to be defended against by the man who won.
We live in a day and age where boutique astroturf movements are pervasive in mainstream politics. Every electoral cycle, political persuasions get plunged into a system of grifting, grafting, and sorting. Project 2024 may have “hundreds” of “organizations” backing it; however, this is not the marker of a “grassroots” movement. Citizenship scholar Lisa Jane Disch sheds some light on this phenomenon in Making Constituencies: “A constituency is not found but made … a constituency is not a demographic fact but a political achievement”.
To use a completely different example, in 2023 there was a rally that took place in Washington called “Rage Against the War Machine”, promoted by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. The organizers raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had the backing of a huge range of organizations, from most of the third parties (Libertarians, Greens, and the Tulsi Gabbard-inspired “Peoples Party”), to the LaRouche group, to various anti-war speakers. It had some minor celebrity appearances from Jimmy Dore to Roger Waters. Accounts of turnout vary, with some reporting 750 - 1500 people and others “no fewer than 2000”. I love some good raging against war machines, but it was clear that this was no historic “March on Washington”.
By all accounts of the attendees, the Rage Against the War Machine was a success, with another iteration being planned as “Defeat the Deep State”. I don’t think manipulation and incompetency are as potent as some political scientists might like to believe (and to be fair, many such as Disch don’t). Rather it is our political system that enables dangerous opportunists. After all, it didn’t matter there was such a small turnout, even some response to mobilization was enough to satisfy its function for both the speakers and attendees. Disch continues in Making Constituencies: “Political representation does not merely reflect social constituencies but participates in constituting them … political conflict does not merely express divisions in society but participates in forging those divisions.”
So, should Christian Nationalism not be an astroturf movement but rather a grassroots one, it doesn’t change its function as a constituency and how that’s being forged in the Republican Party. Christian Nationalism is a threat to secular liberalism, not “democracy”. The racist and transphobic policies of the Republican party have a secular basis, and secular liberalism provides no viable defense against them.
Biden’s Christian Nationalism
We remain in the twilight of the Democratic Party of Mainline Protestantism. Obama opposed same-sex marriage on a religious basis, even if he didn’t really believe what he was saying. To conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, Obama, too, was a Christian nationalist. Biden also sees the need to invoke his Christianity, reminding us just last year that “as a Catholic,” he’s “not big on abortion”.
Biden has repeatedly emphasized he is a Zionist, and you ought to believe him. Zionism is a movement of various Jewish nationalisms, there is no more succinct definition. He advocated for moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem decades before Trump. In 2010, even Obama and Clinton had enough of Netanyahu and contemplated unprecedented pressure on Israel, but made the fatal mistake of tasking Biden with diplomacy. Biden advised Netanyahu to call their bluff, and he did. Biden’s devotion to Israel is the most necrotic of nationalisms. With his popularity in free fall and the death toll rising, he’s willing to sacrifice and sabotage his campaign and legacy. When this self-destruction manifests so instinctually, we call it a death drive.
Biden has also repeatedly said that Jews are not safe in America without Israel, 3 times in the past 6 months. He has also been saying this since 1986. Biden has said that he cannot guarantee Jewish safety in America “no matter how hospitable, no matter how consequential, no matter how engaged, no matter how deeply involved you are in the United States”. This rhetoric dangerously flows into philosemitic and antisemitic tendencies of the Christian right. The only logical conclusion one can make here is an affirmation of America’s Christian nationhood.
In other nationalist endeavors, Joe Biden has put the most racist, xenophobic border bill we have seen yet on House Speaker and Republican Mike Johnson’s desk. The bill threatens to upend asylum, deepen militarization of the border, and ramp up deportations. Biden has ramped up his xenophobic rhetoric as well, referring to undocumented people as “illegals” in his State of the Union address, to the applause of Congress and adorning a pin distributed by Marjorie Taylor Greene. The decision to try to reach across the aisle to compete with the Republican’s racism shows the danger of a nationalist willing to roll the dice with the lives of migrants.
It would seem, conversely, that the Republicans have as much need for secular nationalism. Atheists and agnostics, or “nones” as Burge puts it, although still underrepresented in the GOP, continue to grow and have more than doubled since the Reagan years. Even the self-identified Christian Nationalists acknowledge their politics have a secular basis.
Spread the Good Word
The Christian Nationalism narrative, as presented by the alarmists, has but one proposal to stop Christian Nationalism: Re-elect Joe Biden. Because the agenda put forward by Christian Nationalists, sometimes linked to Project 2025, is contingent on electing Donald Trump, the only reasonable solution is to cast undying faith in the Catholic Zionist.
Regardless of what you do in November, if you are not convinced the alarmists are engaging in alarmism, then surely you can recognize how Biden and the Democrats have been so weak against Christian Nationalism and are poorly equipped to defeat the Republicans. With Biden’s popularity persistently behind Trump, we are in for big trouble if this is the preparation for an imminent fascist revolution.
The problem with Christian Nationalism is that we cannot extrapolate a political program out of opposition to it. Being against something is purely negative content, the antidote is to be for what we are for. Despite being the party of classical reaction, the Republican Party platform has a narrative that is far less shaped by its opposition. The rhetoric of the GOP has even been able to craft a constituency of “non-Christian Evangelicals”, a phenomenon perhaps best explaining Disch’s “a constituency is not found but made”.
What’s the antidote to Christian Nationalism? Theories that lead us to mysticism find their rational solution in struggle. The decline of class struggle and the rise of constituency crafting has led to a poverty of politics in a new Gilded Age. Labor movement guru Jane McAlevey says in No Shortcuts: “To win big, we have to follow the methods of spending very little time engaging with people who already agree, and devote most of our time to the harder work of helping people who do not agree come to understand who is really to blame for the pain in their lives.” Some Christian Nationalist alarmists adamantly refuse this, preferring sloppy scholarship to cast rural America as irredeemably lost to Christian Nationalism.
However, I don’t think McAlevey is saying all that needs to be said here. If class struggle is the antidote, which I believe it is, then at some point you do have to look back at the workers who do agree and mobilize towards a broader political vision. And from what it seems, the labor movement built up in the past few years is doing exactly that. Otherwise, we’re stuck in the fatal error of economism. I’m glad that McAlevey has caught the attention of Disch as well, who provides a gentle critique: “Organizing is an aspect of mobilization and not its opposite.”
Fascism is built on our failed interventions. It thrives in the defeat and decline of working-class movements that used to take the place of the prosperity gospel. Liberal Christians are more politically mobilized than even conservative evangelicals. Others who might be disaffected with Christianity altogether are not necessarily mobilized into something different. The people the alarmists want you to fear aren’t “threats”. To the dismay of the alarmists, they’re registered voters, and they are people that socialists and liberals alike failed to organize.