White Christian nationalism: the most powerful identity politics

A vision of government centered on controlling the lives of others

Shortly after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were, in fact, “extrauterine children” and IVF facilities in the state stopped providing services, much of the Republican Party sought to reassure the public that they supported IVF. Was this a case of the some rogue judges going too far? Or simply too far in an election year, as politicians, like House leader Mike Johnson, who had previously opposed carve-outs for IVF in their fetal personhood bills reversed their position?

The Alabama decision came amidst reports of officials in Trumpworld plotting to infuse a future administration with Christian nationalist values. Understanding contemporary American governance increasingly requires understanding Christian nationalism. This is not a warning about the future. Rather, it is an effort to understand trends that are already occurring, and which will get worse.

One of the difficulties in writing about this topic is discerning what is the dividing line between traditional Christian beliefs and Christian nationalism. So I emailed with Samuel Perry, a Professor at the University of Oklahoma who has undertaken some of the most compelling research on the topic, including his book with Philip Gorski The Flag and the Cross. I will try to be careful in my use of terminology, while noting the potential for conflating Christian nationalism and Christian beliefs is greatest in cases where government decisions, explicitly driven by theocratic values, constrain individual rights.

Christian nationalism as White identity politics

We’ve been inundated by books and thought pieces about identity politics in the past few years. This accounts almost always center on liberal politics classified as “woke.” Indeed, the concepts of identity politics and “wokeness” are treated as interchangeable. This seems odd, since the most profound form of identity politics, which has fueled the transformation of the governing philosophy of one of the two main American political parties, is Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism is not just about religious beliefs, but a fusion of Christian and nationalist identities. More recently, this has increasingly meant a fusion of far-right versions of Christianity and nationalism. For example, Christian nationalism is associated with stronger support for political violence, including events like the January 6 Capitol riot. Recent work suggests that this support is tied up to racial identity, a sense of victimhood, and conspiratorial beliefs.

Moreover, Christian nationalist support for Trump is “intimately connected to fears about ethnoracial outsiders” according to research by Joseph Baker, Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead. The connection between race and Christian nationalism is deep enough that Perry and co-authors argue that we should pay particular attention to White Christian nationalism.

Specifically, for Whites, Christian nationalism is powerfully associated with refusing to acknowledge anti-Black discrimination while affirming supposed anti-White discrimination…Thus, for Whites, appeals to America’s “Christian” heritage are racially coded and contribute to an ideological defense of White supremacy, including the denial of blatant anti-Black injustice and a commitment to White victimhood.

White Christians are more likely to say that that people complaining about nonexistent racial discrimination is a bigger problem than actual discrimination. White evangelicals say they face more discrimination than gay and lesbians.

I asked Perry about Christian nationalism and a future Trump administration. He noted how Trump has been expert in his appeal to the sense of grievance and persecution that Christian nationalists feel:

Trump's promises to the Christian right have always centered around the narrative that they are persecuted by the radical left, who are served by the Democrats. This was part of his campaign in 2016, 2020, and now in 2024 it's the same narrative. At a December 19th, speech in Iowa, for example, Trump told his audience As soon as I get back in the Oval Office, I’ll also immediately end the war on Christians. I don’t know if you feel it. You have a war. There’s a war." He added, "Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before." Just yesterday at a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters in Nashville, Trump said "No one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you."

This sense of persecution is puzzling. Christian nationalists wield extraordinary power relative to the size of their voting bloc. An acute example is Samuel Alito, one of the most powerful men in America, who complains that he and others who seek to remove rights from LGBTQ groups are ones being discriminated against: “Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government.” His very ability to credibly threaten to remove such rights reflects a bizarre combination of victimhood and coercive power. Any critique of his ability to impose his values upon the lives of others is, in his mind, the true crisis that should guide government decisions.

The effects of Christian nationalism are already here

Christian nationalism is not a single coherent movement, but understanding some of the basic themes helps to understand how it operates, and the inevitable contradictions in that operation.

The Alabama Supreme Court decision reflects a long-held goal of creating a fetal personhood standard. The Chief Justice of the Court relied on his reading of the bible to explain his concurrence. From Sarah Posner:

Parker’s 22-page concurrence in the IVF case cites four Bible verses (Genesis 1:27 and 9:6, Exodus 20:13, and Jeremiah 1:5) and spans a millennium-and-a-half of Christian theology, including Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine and John Calvin. Based on this expansive review, Parker concludes that, in passing the 2018 constitutional amendment, the people of Alabama adopted “the theologically based view of the sanctity of life” that “God made every person in His image;” that each person “has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate;” and that no human life can be “destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.” There could scarcely be a better encapsulation of Christian nationalist jurisprudence.

The Judge, Tom Parker, endorses the “Seven Mountain Mandate” which holds that Christian values should shape key aspects of society, including not just religion and family, but also education, media, entertainment, business, and government. Part of what was so remarkable about the Alabama decision is how openly Parker was willing to invoke Biblical guidance. There is none of Alito’s vague invocation of “the Nation’s history and traditions.” Parker was a protege of Judge Roy Moore, the former Alabama Chief Justice who was removed from office as recently as 2003 for displaying a religious monument in the state court buildings. But Parker felt comfortable relying on explicitly theocratic logic. As Christian nationalism becomes more open, the dog whistles will be replaced by full throated endorsements of a Christian worldview by public officials.

Nikki Haley, the candidate of moderate Republicans, quickly agreed that frozen embryos are “babies.” Haley’s rush to approve felt like a misstep. Trump called for Alabama legislators to legalize IVF, and other Republicans followed suit. Haley believed this was just about fundamentalist Christian values. Trump declared: “We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!” He recognized that a constraint upon a service used primarily by wealthy White couples — IVF treatments run between $15,000-$20,000 for a single cycle — went too far. The logic of the judicial decision — if life begins at conception, embryos must be people — fails against the logic of Christian nationalism — that White people need to reproduce to avoid being replaced.

Religious freedom to discriminate, but not to help

Once we see Christian nationalism as a form of identify politics, riven by fear of displacement and a sense of persecution, it becomes easier to understand. It implies a need for control over others. In a series of court victories, the Supreme Court has carved out a series of religious freedoms, which are largely freedoms to discriminate against others who meet their disapproval. At the same time, Republican officials can target religious organizations who seek to help those who fall outside the accepted Christian nationalist fold. For example, Ken Paxton is suing to stop a religious institution from providing shelter to undocumented immigrants.

Policing bodily autonomy

Theocratic law inevitably ends with women having fewer rights. At around the same time that Alabama made IVF illegal, a 2023 post from the Heritage Foundation, the organization designing the Project 2025 blueprint for another Trump administration, started to circulate.

Moral panic entrepreneur Chris Rufo doubled down, explaining the logic for why reproductive rights are unnecessary.

Jamelle Bouie drew a connection between different types of bodily autonomy targeted by the theocratic right.

You cannot disentangle abortion from reproductive rights. You cannot disentangle reproductive rights from bodily autonomy. And you cannot disentangle bodily autonomy from basic questions of equal rights and democratic freedom. It is not a coincidence that the lawmakers spearheading the assault on abortion are also the lawmakers spearheading the assault on other forms of bodily autonomy — like the right of transgender Americans to exist in public as themselves. They are also the same lawmakers waging a broader campaign to restrict the ability of people in their states to live and think as they please.

To restrict bodily autonomy requires an activist state, and a coercive one. It is not small government conservatism. The state will tell you what to do with your body, and what books your children can read. But this is not enough. It needs to co-opt citizens: educators and health professionals who are prevented from doing their job. Citizens who report on their neighbors for seeking an abortion. Students who report on teachers or professors for saying the wrong thing. It is a state that teaches citizens that they serve to uphold a set of theocratic norms.

Who wins and loses as the Christian nationalist state increases in power?

A more muscular Christian nationalist state implies some winners and losers. Who are the winners? According to Perry, the professor who studies religion on politics, the winners are those who are committed to White reactionary politics:

The aspects of [Trump’s] agenda that would appeal the most to Christian nationalists are not what he would do for religion per se, but what he would do for White reactionaries. Couched in Trump's rhetoric about Christian persecution (which I argue is a dog whistle for White conservatives) have been his actual policy-based promises to close the border, build a wall, ban Muslims, stick it to China, oppose "CRT" and "woke," etc. You can't really understand American Christian nationalism without understanding how fundamentally racialized it is. It's more than just religion or Christianity, it's ethno-nationalism...Immigration and secularization look like twin ghosts of Christmas future for the Christian Right. The country as a whole is slowly secularizing and liberalizing, both due to period effects and cohort effects. In fact, Christian nationalist views themselves are diminishing in the general population. And the country is growing increasingly non-White as immigration and declining White birth rates exercise their own influences. The hope that a Trump victory offers for those who buy into the Christian nationalist vision (that this country rightfully belongs to "people like us" and our government should protect "our" heritage and influence from "them") is that the diminishing population of White conservative Christians can hold onto their influence a little longer, perhaps forever if enough laws are changed or lifelong judicial appointments can be made. 

Perry rightly notes that up to now, Trump has delivered little to Christians.

[Trump’s] promises to the Christian Right on that front have always been rather nebulous and silly. In 2016 it was about making sure everyone could say "Merry Christmas" again. And the height of George Floyd protests in June 2020, it was him silently holding aloft a Christian Bible in front of St. John's church for that famous photo op. And in his speech to the National Religious Broadcasters yesterday, he said "I will protect the [media] content that is pro-God. We're going to protect pro-God context and content. To that end, at the request of NRB, I will do my part to protect am radio in our cars."

There are some important caveats that should affect how we think about how Christian nationalism will shape state power in the future.

First, imposing symbolic benefits for your group may be delivered by imposing very real costs on others. Christian nationalism has provide little in terms of tangible benefits for the the group from which it draws its support, while seeking to erode the rights and status of almost everyone else. The losers under Christian nationalism will be the targets of White reactionary politics. Again, from Perry:

Religious, racial, and sexual minorities lose as their very existence (not to mention their cultural and political influence) is publicly demonized and perhaps in some cases curtailed. Working class White Americans (even the Christian ones) exchange the possibility of a better economic future for the false promise that some mythical Christian heritage and values will be preserved.

Second, there are some areas where Trump has delivered, such as on abortion access, that provide guidance to what he will do in a second term. Judges appointed by Trump are primed to present to SCOTUS cases that allow them to push the boundaries of Christian nationalist values. More such judges, more cases, offered to a SCOTUS supermajority that no longer feels the need to find a middle ground on these issues.

Third, Trump’s approach to governance will be more sophisticated in a second term. He has a blueprint for governing that bears the imprint of supporters who are open about the goal of imposing Christian nationalist values. This includes familiar areas such as immigration, and education. Trump lawyers committed to a Christian nationalist agenda will operate in concert with their judicial brethren. The Alabama IVF decision rested on an 1872 law. Trump allies plan to leverage the 1873 Comstock Act to prevent the distribution of abortion medication. The1872 Alabama law was about civil lawsuits for wrongful death of children, and the Comstock Act is about the shipping of obscene materials. But sufficiently motivated Christian nationalist lawyers are happy to explain how each law prohibits the use of technologies that would not be invented for a century.

It is unlikely that Trump will advance Christian nationalism through legislative means, for the simple reason that these policies are unpopular. Abortion restrictions are so unpopular that the GOP is trying to rebrand its positions, while also blocking people from voting on them. Preventing recreational sex or access to contraception is unpopular. Nevertheless, in red state domains, some of these policies will be feasible.

We are past the point where the obvious contradictions of Christians putting their faith in a man who barely pretends to care about religion, while flouting religious values of honesty and fidelity, is shocking. What is more remarkable is how little Christian nationalism delivers beyond the sense of control over others. It is a vision of the world where there are little to no reproductive rights, no sex for anything other than reproductive purposes, where women, POC, and LGBTQ people’s rights and identities are erased. It is also a vision of the world where race and religion are intertwined, encouraging an ethno-nationalist state even if it involves the most un-Christian of acts. It is, above all, a version of the world fueled by conspiracy and a Manichean worldview, undergirded by a sense of persecution and grievance, rather than one of faith and charity.