As academics and journalists began researching the Tea Party supporters, they made several important discoveries.8 The movement did mobilize a fair number of younger, secular libertarians. So, the libertarian label was not entirely misleading. But as sociologists Ruth Braunstein and Malaena Taylor have shown, roughly half of Tea Partiers self-identify as “born-again or evangelical Christians” and well over half (57%) believe that America “is currently and has always been a Christian nation,”—a greater percentage than even self-identified members of the Religious Right.
