The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy

by Philip S. Gorski

In 2020 the Department of Homeland Security issued its annual Homeland Threat Assessment. Officials warned that “Among Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs), racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists—specifically white supremacist extremists (WSEs)—will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.” Although white supremacist extremists and white Christian nationalists are not identical, there is some overlap and, like the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups, white supremacist extremists easily co-opt Christian symbols and ideas for violent purposes. Given the historic and ongoing dangers posed by white Christian nationalism and its related movements, Gorski and Perry insist on urgently and aggressively combating this ideology. The convincing research presented in The Flag and the Cross has led me to the following assessment: white Christian nationalism is the greatest threat to the witness of the church in the United States today. It is not, as many white Christian nationalists would contend, Critical Race Theory or the 1619 Project or wokeness that push people away from the church and hinders democracy—white Christian nationalism does that.

The Flag and the Cross is not a book you can simply read—the knowledge this book imparts must be absorbed and applied. We all have to be able to spot white Christian nationalism in everyday life, current events, legislative actions, and rhetoric. We have to become adept at addressing white Christian nationalism when and where we see it. This will take a rare kind of courage that stands against the status quo at great risk to oneself. But we have no other choice: the stakes are too high. Apathy and indifference make us complicit in the demise of our nation. We must use the data assembled by Gorski and Perry in The Flag and the Cross to fight white Christian nationalism as if our entire democracy depends on it. Indeed, it does.

The chaos of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, was bewildering for many. In part, because the violent riot was also a riot of images: a wooden cross and a wooden gallows; Christian flags and Confederate flags; “Jesus Saves” and “Don’t Tread on Me” banners; button-down shirts and bullet-proof vests.1 But these confusing—and even seemingly contradictory—symbols are part of an increasingly familiar ideology: “white Christian nationalism.”2 This book is a primer on white Christian nationalism, what it is, when it emerged, how it works, and where it’s headed. White Christian nationalism is one of the oldest and most powerful currents in American politics. But until the insurrection, it was invisible to most Americans. It was invisible to most conservative white Christians, because for decades it has been the water they swim in and the air they breathe.3 It was invisible to most secular progressives, because they live in a bubble of their own in which white Christian nationalism seems “fringe” rather than mainstream. But that bubble was burst on January 6, 2021, by the white-hot rage of pro-Trump insurrectionists. That rage had been building since long before the presidential election. Throughout 2020, President Trump routinely spouted debunked claims of mail-in ballots from pets, dead people, and undocumented immigrants, virtually promising rampant voter fraud come November.4 Following his election loss, he desperately stoked his followers’ rage via Twitter, sowing l...

White Christian nationalism is a “deep story” about America’s past and a vision of its future. It includes cherished assumptions about what America was and is, but also what it should be. We borrow the “deep story” idea from sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. In her 2016 book Strangers in Their Own Land, she recounts the lessons she learned during the five years she spent talking with white working-class Americans in the oil-refining regions of rural Louisiana.7 Their “deep story” goes something like this: people like them have been standing in line, waiting patiently for their chance at the American dream. But up ahead, they see people cutting in line—immigrants and minorities and other people who haven’t paid their dues. What’s worse, they see politicians helping the line-cutters, liberal politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. So, they vote for conservative politicians who (they believe) will send those people to the back of the line where they belong. The unstated (and incorrect) assumption is that “white people were here first.” The deep story sounds a lot like “Make American Great Again.” It helps explain why so many rural whites voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and again in 2020.8 What makes deep stories “stories” is that they function like a bare-bones movie script. They include a cast of heroes and villains, and well-worn and familiar plots that events are supposed to follow. And, like many classic scripts, they are made and remade, with tweaked story...

the skeptical reader might wonder what’s “Christian” about this deep story. It is “Christian” because the vast majority of those who believe this story identify as such. It is also “Christian” insofar as it draws on particular readings of the Bible. And because it draws on the Bible, the story sounds “orthodox” and “traditional” to many mainstream Christians.10 Whether this reading of the Bible is “really” Christian is a question for theologians, not sociologists. But as we will see, this deep story is not only widespread, it is also centuries old.

White Christian nationalism has also shaped American popular culture. Consider the “post-apocalyptic” genre of novels and movies, such as “The Road.” Or superhero comics and films, such as “Captain America.” Today, the secularized version of white Christian nationalism is almost as important as the religious one. Though sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the two, as evidenced by the many cosplay crusaders among the Capitol insurrectionists and the overlaps between Christian “prophecy belief” and the “QAnon” conspiracy theory.12 But white Christian nationalism is not just a deep story about what was; it is also a political vision of what should be. First and foremost, of course, white Christian nationalists believe that America should be a Christian nation, or, at least, a nation ruled by Christians. And though the expectation of “whiteness” is rarely expressed explicitly, it is often clearly assumed in the sort of “Christian” that adherents of white Christian nationalism have in mind. Who counts as “white” and what counts as “Christian” has changed over time. White Christian nationalism’s enemies have also changed, from Native Americans and Catholics, to communists, Black radicals, atheists, Muslims, and socialists, each taking their turn as the main threat to “(white) Christian values.”

What connects these stances to each other is a particular understanding of freedom, order, and violence with deep roots in American history.13 Freedom is understood in a libertarian way, as freedom from restrictions, especially by the government. Order is understood in a hierarchical way, with white Christian men at the top. And violence is seen as a righteous means of defending freedom and restoring order, means that are reserved to white Christian men. This understanding of freedom, order, and violence is the heart of white Christian nationalism. We can now start to see how the various pieces of the political vision fit together. Government regulation infringes on the freedom of white Christians. So do mask mandates and COVID lockdowns. “Urban crime” and “racial riots” threaten the social order. They must be met with force by the police or, barring that, by good Christian men. Thus, the need for access to firearms. The general principle is this: white men must sometimes exercise righteous violence to defend (their) freedom and maintain social (and racial) order. It is freedom for “us” and authoritarian social order for “them.” This “us vs. them” tribalism may seem un-Christian, the glorification of violence even more so. But not if seen through the lens of the end times theology we mentioned earlier, with its sharp division between a good “us” and “evil” them, and its gory tales of “spiritual warfare.” The goal is to forever redeem and restore a lost world corrupted by “...

Demographic change is also a key factor. As white Christians approach minority status, white Christian nationalists are starting to turn against American democracy. After all, the basic principle of democratic government is majority rule. So long as white Christians were in the majority and could call the shots, they were willing to tolerate a certain amount of pluralism, provided that “minorities” did not insist too much on equality. Now faced with the prospect of minority status themselves, some members of the old white majority are embracing authoritarian politics as a means of protecting their “freedom.”15 Is their freedom really in danger? They surely believe that it is. White Christian nationalists sincerely believe that whites and Christians are the most persecuted groups in America.16 Consequently they view efforts to expand access to the democratic process—such as removing obstacles to voter participation—as an existential threat to their political power.

white Christian nationalism is not “Christian patriotism.” White Christian nationalism idealizes the power of white Christian Americans. It is rooted in white supremacist assumptions and empowered by anger and fear. This is nationalism, not patriotism. Patriotism, as the political philosopher Steven Smith explains, is first and foremost “loyalty . . . to one’s constitution or political regime.” Nationalism is loyalty to one’s tribe “but always at the expense of an outgroup, who are deemed un-American, traitors, and enemies of the people.” One reason the two sometimes get confused, as historian Jill Lepore explains, is that nationalism often disguises itself as patriotism: “Because it’s difficult to convince people to pursue a course of aggression, violence, and domination . . . nationalists pretend their aims are instead protection and unity and that their motivation is patriotism. This is a lie. Patriotism is animated by love, nationalism by hatred. To confuse the one for the other is to pretend that hate is love and fear is courage.”17

white Christian nationalism is not synonymous with white evangelicalism per se, even if there is considerable overlap. Though we may not be able to say that for much longer, as white evangelicalism becomes more and more synonymous with Republican voting and reactionary politics. To be sure, some evangelical leaders publicly distanced themselves from Trump in 2016. Others did so later. But many others not only supported Trump that year; they doubled down on Trump in 2020, arguing that he’d kept his promises to defend religious liberty and appoint conservative justices.

white Christian nationalism isn’t synonymous with white evangelicalism though: it has many non-evangelical supporters, including a significant number of mainline Protestants; white Roman Catholics; and, even more, white Pentecostals. Yet another reason is that a minority of white evangelicals are actively resisting white Christian nationalism. Indeed, following the events of January 6, 2021, the faculty of Wheaton College—the “evangelical Harvard”—released a formal statement condemning the insurrection and denouncing “Christian nationalism” and “white supremacism.” These counter-currents give some measure of hope that the subculture of white evangelicalism may yet be reformed from within.21

white Christian nationalism is not just a problem among white American Christians. There are secular versions of white Christian nationalism that claim to defend “Western Culture” or “Judeo-Christian civilization.” And there are secular white Americans who know how to leverage white Christian nationalist language. For such Americans, the “Christian” label simply signals shared tribal identity or veils political values that would otherwise be socially unacceptable. That is certainly how Trump himself used the label—as a rallying cry and a fig leaf—and one reason why so many white Christians have been attracted to him: not because he himself is an exemplar of Christian piety, but because he waved the Christian flag and announced his willingness to “fight” for it. For some white Christian nationalists, the fight has become more important than the faith. This is one reason why many leaders on the Christian right were so unexcited about the prospect of a Pence presidency during Trump’s first impeachment, despite Pence’s unimpeachable evangelical credentials: Pence had the faith, but Trump had the fight, and it was the fight they really cared about. That is because their goal is power, not piety. Nor was this the first time they prioritized fighting over faith. Remember that in the 2016 primaries a majority of white conservative Christians chose Trump over numerous GOP candidates with far stronger evangelical bona fides. They wanted a fighter for Christians (read: people like us...

Christian leaders will have to convince at least some of their followers that white Christian nationalism is neither “Biblical” nor “patriotic,” but idolatrous and un-Christian. And progressive leaders will have to be willing to join hands with them. There are moments when political principles are more important than policy debates. This is one of them.

Survey all the rioters who’ve been rounded up since the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, and it’s unlikely that many would describe themselves as “Christian nationalists” let alone “white Christian nationalists.” Even the overtly Christian ones—the guy carrying a “Jesus saves” sign, or waving a Christian flag, or saying a prayer in Jesus’s name on the Senate floor—would probably reject these labels. Nor would many (if any) admit to being “white nationalists,” “conspiracy theorists,” “insurrectionists,” “white supremacists,” or any other label with such obviously negative connotations. In interviews, most of the rioters have described themselves as something like “Christian patriots.”

We define white Christian nationalism and identify white Christian nationalists using a constellation of beliefs. These are beliefs that, we argue, reflect a desire to restore and privilege the myths, values, identity, and authority of a particular ethnocultural tribe. These beliefs add up to a political vision that privileges that tribe. And they seek to put other tribes in their “proper” place. White Christian nationalism is nationalist because it rejects pluralism and what many on the right call “globalism.” It expresses a desire for national unity and international power. But unity around what? And power for whom? Unity around what political scientist Eric Kaufmann calls “ethno-traditionalism,” a national myth that blurs distinctions between culture and race with talk of “Christian heritage and values.”2 And power for whites. Because when some whites—many whites, in fact—hear the words “Christian” and “American,” they think of “people who look and think like us.” A truly Christian nation, in their view, would celebrate and privilege the sacred history, liberty, and rightful rule of white conservatives, tolerating “others” at best; enslaving, expelling, or exterminating them at worst. This is the root of the massive resistance of some whites to removing Confederate statues or to teaching about racism in American history—to impugn the racial history of the nation is to dispute the chosenness and fundamental goodness of white Christians. When the QAnon Shaman thanked his ...

America’s Most Effective Dog Whistle In her 2021 Christian Post article, “The Assault on ‘White America,’ ” Hedieh Mirahmadi writes, “[W]e must acknowledge the widespread assault on the conservative Christian community. I use the phrase ‘White America,’ though ironically we are comprised of all ethnicities and races but united in our stand for biblical and democratic values that are the foundation of our country.”7 Notice what the author is assuming. She states that conservative Christians are under attack, but she takes this as an assault on “white America.” She even acknowledges that the group under attack comprises multiple races and ethnicities, but what makes them “white” apparently is their united stand for America’s foundational biblical and democratic values. Mirahmadi’s rhetorical sleight-of-hand is not unusual. White Christian nationalists often use religion to hide race in this way. But it is a little clumsy. She gives away the game too easily. White Christian nationalists did not always need to play this game though. Before the civil rights movement, white politicians who wanted to stir up their voters could just use racial slurs. After the civil rights movement, they had to find more subtle ways of invoking race. They invented code words that triggered the racial anxieties of white voters. On his deathbed, Republican strategist Lee Atwater confessed that when openly saying the N-word started to backfire and hurt politicians, he urged Nixon to adopt the languag...

Indicators of Christian nationalism (in combination or included separately) are powerful predictors of ultra-conservatism for white Americans, especially on any issues involving race, discrimination, xenophobia, or justice. But they have very little influence on the attitudes of Black Americans. And often little influence on Hispanic Americans too.9 As noted earlier, whiteness is the hidden link that transforms the deep story of Christian nationalism into a political vision. Is the era of dog whistle politics over? Perhaps. Though not in the way one might imagine. More and more, the quiet part is not just said out loud; it’s shouted to the heavens. In July 2020, for example, evangelical activist Eric Metaxas tweeted, “Jesus was white. Did he have ‘white privilege’ even though he was without sin?” The statement was absurd on its face. The idea of a “white race” did not even exist in Jesus’s time. But Metaxas’s message was clear enough: “Jesus was one of us. He was part of our tribe.”21 And, like him, we are without (racial) sin.

As author James Baldwin famously wrote, The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors.10 Baldwin explained that the white Americans who held these myths were “the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.” Fifty years on, Baldwin’s words still ring truer than many white Americans want to believe.

It’s not that Christian nationalists have a different understanding of American history; it’s that they often have an incorrect understanding. But only if they are white. In one of our surveys, we gave respondents a short quiz that included five true/false statements about religion in American political history. 1. The 1st Amendment says Congress can’t restrict religious liberty, but Congress could make laws privileging Christianity. (False) 2. The U.S. Constitution references our country’s obligations to God several times. (False) 3. The phrase “In God We Trust” did not become the nation’s official motto until after 1950. (True) 4. The phrase “under God” was not added to the pledge of allegiance until after 1950. (True) 5. Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s made it illegal for students to pray or read their Bibles in public schools. (False) Respondents could answer true, false, or don’t know. We then calculated the average percentage Americans got correct on the quiz. Figure 1.3 shows how scores change across adherence to Christian nationalism for both white and Black Americans. Black Americans tend to score lower than whites on the quiz, primarily because they are more likely to simply say they don’t know. But there is no association between their scores on the test and their adherence to Christian nationalism. Not so with whites. The higher they score on Christian nationalism, the lower they score on the test. Why? Not because they don’t give answers but because they ...

When scholars assess religious conservatives’ knowledge of many aspects of science (for example, atoms, lasers, viruses, or genes), they score well. It is only when they are asked about hotly contested culture-war topics (for example, evolution or the Big Bang) that they do poorly. This is why white Americans who more strongly affirm that America should be for “people like us” are more likely to answer questions about religion in America’s political history in a way that elevates the preeminence and alleged persecution of Christianity. Not only may they have learned erroneous religious history, but the ideology of white Christian nationalism may incline white Americans to reinterpret their history in ways that elevate their own group as heroes and victims. We can see this sort of ideologically driven approach to history more directly when we see how Christian nationalism corresponds to whites’ views about the Civil War and Confederate monuments. In August 2020, we asked Americans if they believed “historians debate whether slavery was a central cause of the Civil War” (an issue that is frankly of virtually no dispute among historians). We also asked them whether they would support the removal of Confederate monuments and statues of former slave owners—the vast majority of which were erected in the early 1900s to valorize the antebellum South—because of their racist legacy (see Figure 1.4). Even after holding other relevant characteristics constant, as white Americans more ...

we must be specific that the phenomenon we’re describing in this book is white Christian nationalism. At issue is not just religious nostalgia or even religious conservatism, as if such things transcended ethnic and racial identities. Rather, it is an acute strain of ethno-traditionalism in which “white” and “Christian” are conflated into a single identity—“white-Christian.” Dog whistles are effective to the extent that the target population hears and understands their intended meaning, while most others remain oblivious. Even as it’s become riskier for mainstream politicians to use negative dog whistles like “thug” or “welfare queen,” the word “Christian” remains the right’s most effective signal to white conservatives that “our values,” “our heritage,” “our way of life,” and “our influence” are under attack, and “we” must respond. Christianity and American-ness are both raced.

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt has become one of America’s leading sources for understanding political polarization. His 2012 bestseller, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, presciently described the intensifying polarization that was both a cause and an effect of the Trump presidency. In the end, however, even Haidt’s diagnosis proved too sanguine. In a popular TED Talk that accompanied the 2012 book, Haidt mused that a common threat might restore common ground in American politics. If Americans learned that a large asteroid was on course to strike earth within a few years, he speculated, they would surely throw aside their petty differences and come together to strategize, coordinate, and sacrifice so that humanity could survive. And then that asteroid arrived in the form of COVID-19. And Americans did not come together. Instead they became more polarized than ever.

Even after accounting for religious, political, and sociodemographic characteristics, as Christian nationalism increases, white Americans’ confidence in each expert group starts high and declines precipitously. And just the opposite for Trump. As Christian nationalism increases, trust for Donald Trump soars. The end result is that at extremely high levels of Christian nationalism, less than 20% of white Americans expressed “a great deal” of trust in experts, while over 85% reported a great deal of trust in Donald Trump. Predictably, given the enormous trust white Christian nationalists place in Trump, we see a corresponding distrust in mainstream news media among white Americans who score higher on Christian nationalism. All presidents have complicated relationships with the free press. And this is how it should be. In democracies, the press should be able to call “balls and strikes” on political leaders, fact-checking false claims and reporting on the real-world consequences of failed policies. But like no other president since Nixon, Donald Trump has famously excoriated “lamestream” news outlets as “fake news,” both leveraging and fueling populist distrust in mainstream media. His feud continued unabated during the pandemic.

white Christian nationalism powerfully predicted resistance to following the recommendations of health experts publicized through most news outlets during the early stages of the pandemic. When we asked Americans in May 2020 how frequently they followed recommended precautions for limiting the spread of COVID-19 such as wearing a mask in public or washing hands more frequently, white Americans who scored higher on Christian nationalism were much less likely to take such precautions. In fact, they were more likely to engage in behavior that experts discouraged, such as meeting with large numbers of people, eating out in restaurants, or going shopping for nonessentials.14

While most journalists and scholars were quickly able to point out the combination of distrust and ignorance behind these patterns, few recognized the role of white Christian nationalism among the evangelical population. As we show in Figure 1.7, even after we account for other relevant factors in statistical models, in February 2021 only roughly 5% of white Americans who score the lowest on our full Christian nationalism scale indicated that they wouldn’t get vaccinated. That percentage steadily climbs to 50% at the highest levels of Christian nationalism. By contrast, over 85% of white Americans who largely reject Christian nationalism indicated they’d either already been vaccinated by February 2021 or would do so as soon as possible. That percentage declined in a linear fashion to less than 30% among the most ardent supporters of Christian nationalist ideology.15

in March 2020, Trump said decisions on how to handle the pandemic couldn’t be left to medical experts: “If it were up to doctors, they may say, ‘Let’s shut down the entire world.’ You know, we can’t do that.” Right-wing pundits made similar statements on air or over social media. Fox News host Laura Ingraham said, “Doctors provide medical treatment and cures—they should not be the determinative voices in policy making.” Similarly, Charlie Kirk resented that, “The question we’re not allowed to ask . . . is should the number of people who get sick be the only variable we factor into our ethical calculation? It’s also impossible to dispute that the steps we are taking are destroying the American economy.” And overtly Christian nationalist pastor Lance Wallnau went even further to argue tanking the economy was the Democrats’ whole ballgame: “The virus will touch just a fraction of the population,” he explained, “The Left wants the economy distressed because the crisis improves their chances of taking office.” Other Trump supporters on the Christian right emphasized the threat to personal liberty posed by mask mandates and lockdown restrictions. Former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee, for example, said in mid-April 2020 that lockdown enforcement was threatening Americans’ “civil liberties” and effectively “shredding the Constitution.” So too, pastor John MacArthur, who drew national criticism for reopening his megachurch during the pandemic and discouraging...

It is important to recognize how differently white Christian nationalism functions from “religious commitment” as social scientists traditionally measure it. As other studies have shown, white Christian nationalism and religious commitment are not the same, and often they move white Americans in different directions on issues of social justice and equality. In this case, white Christian nationalism goes in the opposite direction of religious commitment. That is to say, once we account for Christian nationalism in our statistical models, white Americans who attend church more often, pray more often, and consider religion more important are less likely to prioritize the economy or liberty over the vulnerable. Why is this the case? Because white Christian nationalism is about ethno-traditionalism and protecting the freedoms of a very narrowly defined “us.” Religious commitment, in contrast, can expand what philosopher Peter Singer calls the “circle of empathy,” our ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes. But if white Christian nationalism narrows our circle of empathy, there’s another, closely connected ideology that helps justify why those outside the circle are so unworthy of help.

In November 2020, we asked Americans a series of questions about economic systems and policies. We added up how much Americans agreed with statements like “Free markets are the key to our national prosperity” and “We must not over-regulate businesses or we will stifle productivity,” along with others like “We need strong social safety nets to provide for those who cannot work,” and “The government should intervene to reduce economic inequality” to create a scale. We ordered the responses such that higher scores tell us how strong of a free-market capitalist Americans were. When we ran statistical models to assess which factors predicted Americans’ scores on the scale, we found that Christian nationalism was the second strongest factor in scoring higher, second only to political conservatism. But what is just as interesting is that we found this connection between Christian nationalism and a strong preference for free-market ideals is exclusive to whites. Figure 1.9 shows the divergent patterns for white and Black Americans across Christian nationalism. As we’ve seen in previous figures, as scores on our Christian nationalism scale increase, Black Americans stay quite steady in their approval of strong free-market attitudes. But white Americans increase tremendously in their support for markets unhindered by government intervention.

put simply, the idea of a “Christian nation,” which was founded by people in favor of “our way of life” has not only become culturally inextricable from white Christian culture, but also from the “rugged individualism” that adherents associate with free-market capitalism. It is part of the whole identity. Economic self-interest and individualism are not just “rational” or “efficient,” they are what “real Americans” and “good Christians” value. What do the bad people value? In her 2020 book Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise or America Will Fall, conservative opinion writer Cheryl Chumley explains, “Here’s the real enemy: collectivism.”

In his speech at the “Evangelicals for Trump” rally on January 3, 2020, Donald Trump warned his audience: Our opponents want to shut out God from the public square so they can impose their extreme anti-religious and socialist agenda on America . . . The extreme left in America is trying to replace religion with government and replace God with socialism. That’s what’s happening . . . We resolve again today that America will never be a socialist country, ever. America was not built by religion-hating socialists. America was built by church-going, God-worshipping, freedom-loving patriots.

D’Souza himself is not white and has no personal experience being targeted as a white Christian man. But it’s no coincidence that he references white men and Christians together. In his mind, and likely that of his readers, the socialist assault on one might as well be an assault on the other. And he exhorts his readers in conclusion, “[W]e need a new generation of leaders who can assimilate the things that Trump does so effectively, fearlessly and gleefully. Trump has made it fun to beat the hell out of leftists and socialists, and even when Trump is gone, we must continue to enjoy the Trumpian experience of being a butt-kicking Republican, Christian, right-wing American capitalist.”18 The dog whistle character of “Christian” language is on full display here. We might all be inclined to ask, “What exactly is ‘Christian’ about the ‘Trumpian experience’ D’Souza describes?” But inserting “Christian” in with that list of identities makes perfect sense if D’Souza is appealing to what political scientist Lilliana Mason calls a “mega-identity” that merges the various individual identities that distinguish “people like us” from “people like them.”19 And in both Trump’s and D’Souza’s statements, being a faithful American is connected to both promoting Christianity in the public square and opposition to those who would replace “our” culture and prosperous free markets with totalitarian socialism. D’Souza fuses the ethnic and economic threats together in a phrase he uses frequently:...

Unsurprisingly, white Americans who scored higher on white Christian nationalism thought conservative Christians were just fine, and they were more likely to hold prejudicial attitudes toward atheists, Muslims, and socialists. But here’s what surprised us: the strongest association wasn’t between white Christian nationalism and antipathy or distrust toward atheists or Muslims. You might think that these groups pose the biggest threat to Americans who want a “Christian nation.” Instead, the strongest connection was between white Christian nationalism and antipathy toward socialists. It is that group, not atheists or Muslims, that white Christian nationalism finds the most threatening. Given this connection, it was unsurprising that when we ran regression models to assess which factors predicted higher scores on our anti-socialism scale, Christian nationalism was the biggest factor by a mile, even above conservative political ideology or partisan identification. It’s what we call a “monster” in the model. This would immediately suggest that “socialists” appear to be most threatening, not necessarily for Republicans or those who are politically conservative per se, but principally for Americans who have merged the idea of Christian national identity with free-market capitalism.

We’ve explained that the term “Christian,” because it has taken on an ethnic connotation in the minds of many whites, has become an invaluable dog whistle on the right to rally white conservatives to the defense of “our way of life,” “our heritage,” or “our country.” But as Trump’s rhetoric and that of his Christian right surrogates has shown, the word “socialist” has also become a critical dog whistle for white Americans who adhere to Christian nationalist ideology, helping to identify the “them” who pose such a grave threat to “us.”

White Christian nationalism is our term for the ethno-traditionalism among many white Americans that conflates racial, religious, and national identity (the deep story) and pines for cultural and political power that demographic and cultural shifts have increasingly threatened (the vision). Though there have always been a variety of Christian groups and expressions, and we aren’t simply “letting Christianity off the hook” here, the term “Christian” in white Christian nationalism is often far more akin to a dog whistle that calls out to an aggrieved tribe than a description of the content of one’s faith. In Dinesh D’Souza’s words, these days it means something like “butt-kicking Republican, Christian, right-wing American capitalist.” Whiteness is often assumed in there.

for white Americans, adherence to Christian nationalism is among the strongest predictors of ultraconservative stances on every contentious political issue. The ethno-traditionalism of white Christian nationalism then fosters white populism. We can see this when we consider which Americans were more likely to blame immigrants, the Chinese, or Blacks for the COVID-19 pandemic; which Americans trusted Donald Trump and Breitbart rather than experts and mainstream news for COVID-19 information; and which Americans prioritized personal liberty and economic prosperity over protecting vulnerable lives.

it was around 1690 that racism, apocalypticism, and nationalism first fused into a deep story. It’s important to emphasize that things could have turned out differently had some of the colonists acted differently. You could say that in 1690 we lost an alternative vision for life in the New World: one in which the natives and the colonists would live in concord or even in community; one in which the line between white and Black did not yet fully and irrevocably correspond to that between freedom and bondage; and one in which there was room, not only for non-Protestants but also for non-Christians. The death of that vision went hand in hand with the birth of a new vision: a social order dominated by white Protestant men and defined in opposition to “red savagery,” Black bondage, and Roman popery. Within that order, race, religion, and nationalism were to be aligned—by force, if necessary. That is the spirit of 1690: the spirit of white Christian nationalism.

Our vision is much closer to that of the 1619 Project than the 1776 Commission. But it also differs from both in important ways. Where the 1619 Project sees mostly continuity, we see much contingency. In 1619, a more inclusive and egalitarian society was still possible, if not probable. It was the decisions and actions of Puritan thinkers and leaders that throttled it. What’s more, that possibility was choked off not only by the enslavement of kidnapped Africans, but also by warfare with native peoples—and their French Catholic allies. “Whiteness” was defined not only in opposition to “blackness” but also to “redness,” and not only in terms of color but also in terms of religion: Protestant vs. Catholic and Christian vs. “heathen.”4 The first colonists committed two “original sins,” not one. If we too often forget the first one—the violent expropriation of the indigenous peoples—it is partly because violence and disease left behind far fewer of their descendants to remind us. The Spirit of 1690 was to impose white control over non-white bodies, indigenous lands, and all political institutions.

In 1776, a more inclusive and egalitarian society once again appeared possible, if only briefly. Some whites—and many non-whites—took the founding ideals of liberty and equality to their obvious and logical conclusion: abolition.5 But the price of manumission was deemed too high, and national unity was bought at the expense of racial equality. That same pattern would repeat itself for a third time with the end of Reconstruction and a fourth time after the civil rights movement. Four times the dream of racial equality was sacrificed on the altar of (white) national unity. The question is whether history will repeat itself a fifth time in our own era. This much should be clear by now: realizing the dream of a multiracial democracy means abandoning the spirit of 1690 and the story—the “deep story”—that has sustained it for over three centuries. Instead we must find a new story—a better story—about what America can and should be.

Writing in 1581, the English Puritan Perceval Wilburn cheekily described his religious compatriots as “the hotter sort of Protestants”: those who burned with religious zeal—and were also sometimes literally burned for it. Many historians have made this definition their own. More recently, journalist James Sleeper has ambivalently described the Puritan refugees who fled to a New England as “America’s first Very Serious People,” people who were serious about their moral principles.6 And also serious about enforcing them (including on non-Puritans).

Few played a more prominent role in crafting this vision of New England as a New Israel than the Mathers, Cotton (1663–1728) and his father and grandfather, Increase and Richard Mather. Today, Cotton is most often remembered for his role in the Salem witch trials of 1692. But he was also one of the first chroniclers of New England—and of its wars with the natives. For the secular reader, Mather’s chronicle seems a curious hodgepodge of military and church history. There are long descriptions of battles between the New England colonists and various native tribes, but also entire chapters on Baptist and Quaker dissenters. For Mather, though, war and dissent were inextricably linked by covenant and providence. In his view, the Puritans had made a covenant with God to defend the true religion. The presence of dissenters was a breach of this covenant. God punished the Puritans for that breach by sending the natives to wage war on them. In Mather’s words, “since this degeneracy has obtained so much among us, the wrath of heaven has raised up against us a succession of other adversaries and calamities.” If heretics were the cause of God’s wrath, then the natives were his chosen instrument. As with the biblical Israelites of the Old Testament, so with his new Chosen People in their new Promised Land of New England.8 Mather was not the first to view the Puritans’ wars with the native tribes through a providential lens. But he was arguably the first to view it through an apocalyptic...

It’s important to stress that killing or converting Indians were not the only possibilities entertained by the Puritans. There was also a third: coexistence. The first to theorize and practice it was Roger Williams (1603–1683). Though a Puritan, Williams quickly fell out with his brethren and was banished from Boston. He then established the Providence Colony in what is now Rhode Island. Williams developed close ties with the native tribes. He sometimes preached the gospel to his native acquaintances. But he did not attempt to change their way of life. For him, being a Christian did not require living like an Englishman. Under Williams’ leadership, the Providence Colony became a haven for dissent and a beacon of toleration—and also an early prototype of what a multiracial and multicultural democracy might look like.

Williams’s views differed from Mather’s in at least three key respects. First, he drew a sharp line between Christianity and morality: the one did not imply the other. In his observation, the morality of the natives was often superior to that of the Puritans. Second, he drew a sharp line between religious and civil authority, much sharper even than the Puritans, not because he worried about the church corrupting the state but rather the reverse. Third, because he believed that freedom of conscience was absolute, and that it implied freedom of expression. He rejected the collective authority of the Puritan clergy and, even more, their efforts to silence dissent. In sum, Williams believed that people of the most varied backgrounds could still form a civil society together, so long as they separated religion and morality and church and state and did not force anyone’s conscience or silence anyone’s speech. This he called “meer civility.”11 Sadly, the path of “meer civility” was the road less traveled in Williams’s day. Killing and converting would become the dominant poles of “Indian policy” in the centuries that followed.

the shift to Black slavery created a problem for English theologians, a problem that grew more acute as some enslaved Blacks converted to Christianity and enslavement was passed on from mother to child. On what grounds could Christians enslave other Christians—Christians, moreover, who were not captives of war? The old theological justifications provided no clear answer. New justifications had to be invented. What was needed, in a phrase, was a racist theology. The need was soon met. Writing in 1681, the Anglican priest Morgan Godwyn listed the two most common forms of racist theology. The first was “pre-Adamism,” the belief that there had been two separate creations resulting in two separate species: pre-Adamites and Adamites. Only the latter were humans with souls. The second was Noah’s Curse: because Ham had seen Noah drunk and naked in his tent, God placed a mark on Ham’s son Canaan and condemned his offspring to perpetual servitude.14 By 1700, proslavery theologians had woven these and other stories together into what historian David Whitford calls the “Curse Matrix.” It had three elements: (1) “black skin is the result of God’s curse”; (2) so is Africans’ supposed “hypersexuality and libidinousness”; and (3) slavery was actually a boon to Africans because it exposed them to Christianity and (white) civilization.15