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

by Philip S. Gorski

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.