September 3, 2021: White Christian Nationalism by Stephen DeBlasio
The threat from domestic violent extremists is currently on an upward trend. As reported by the FBI, over 1,000 Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) investigations were performed each year from 2017 to 2019.[1] 2019 was documented as the most lethal year for far-right violence in the US since 1995.[2] Beginning in 2021, the FBI reported over 2,000 open DVE investigations.[3] In the shadow of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, an understanding of the individuals and groups that conducted the attack is necessary to formulate effective policy responses. One of the underlying ideologies on display during January 6th was White Christian Nationalism.[4] The events of January 6th also represent a larger threat to American Democracy, the rise of illiberalism, and an authoritarian electorate willing to compromise the US Constitution if it means holding on to political power and advancing their legislative agenda.[5] In the following paragraphs, I will identify the historical context and intersectionality of White Christian Nationalists and established neo-conservative political factions.
To define nationalism, I use Bonikowski and DiMaggio’s adopted definition that “…nationalism is not an elite ideology or a specific set of normative beliefs, but a domain: “a heterogeneous set of ‘nation’- oriented idioms, practices, and possibilities that are continuously available or ‘endemic’ in modern cultural and political life.’”[6] In this context, White Christian Nationalism (WCN) is a movement focused on a cultural and political change away from the tradition of civil religion, which represents universalism, liberalism, and equality for all, towards a system centered on white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity.[7] WCNs also qualify their members with the word “Christian,” coded to mean “white,” “native-born,” and “male.”[8] Amongst WCNs, there is a fundamental belief that the US was founded as a Christian nation, that the US has strayed away from those foundational principles, and that it is their divinely ordained mission to return the US to those founding, Christian, principles.[9]
White Christian Nationalism did not appear overnight. America’s first formal nationalist political party was the Know-Nothing Party, created in the 1840s by Protestant Christians primarily in Northeast cities such as Boston, Salem, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.[10] The Know-Nothing Party’s candidates ran on anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant platforms, with high-profile gubernatorial, congressional, and state legislature success.[11] However, the Know-Nothing Party was unable to maintain its success, and the party died out by the late 1850s with America’s focus shifting towards the Civil War and fight over slavery.[12]
Following the Know-Nothing Party’s demise, Christian nationalism faced several waves of success and subsequent decline in the 1920s over the fights for school prayer, mandatory bible reading, and anti-evolution fervor. However, two World Wars and the Great Depression prevented nationalist parties from gaining traction within America’s political system. Then came the 1960s and 1970s, with a wave of federal legislature and Supreme Court rulings that reignited the nationalist flame.[13] Notable legislation included the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Hart-Cellar Act granting the largest number of non-Western immigrants’ entry into the US. Meanwhile, significant Supreme Court decisions included removing mandatory bible reading and school prayer from schools, legalizing abortion from Roe v. Wade, and eliminating tax exemptions for organizations that discriminate based on race.[14] The result of the federal legislation and Supreme Court led to the creation of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority movement. Researchers attribute the beginning of modern White Christian Nationalism to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority movement in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.
However, unlike previous nationalist movements in the US, the Moral Majority’s constituency was invigorated by political strategists within the Republican Party to support Ronald Regan’s candidacy and presidency. By allying with the formal Republican Party, Christian nationalists could access an entire universe of professional, well-organized, and well-funded networks. Since the 1970s, Christian nationalists in the US have grown to include law firms, Political Action Committees, not-for-profit organizations, and a robust media network that provide followers with broadcast radio, news organizations, print media, and most recently, social media apps and channels. The fusion of Christian nationalists with neo-conservatives led to the formation of the New Right, which has remained the backbone of the Republican party.[15]
The Moral Majority and the Republican Party’s ability to fuse the white, protestant Christian voter block was further encouraged by the events of Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993. These two events traumatized militia and fundamental Christian groups, turning the perception of the federal government into an overbearing monster that is a direct threat to the safety and well-being of these groups.[16] One of the outcomes of Ruby Ridge and Waco was the domestic terror attack committed by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City. McVeigh’s terror attack in 1995 not only marked the deadliest domestic terror attack in the US but also represented a fundamental shift in domestic extremist groups, which saw an opportunity in incorporating Christian symbolism into group ideology as a recruitment tool, and later, as justification for violence.[17]
The early 1990s to the early 2000s also saw the rise of Pat Buchanan’s America First agenda and his nationalist Presidential campaigns. Pat Buchanan ran on an anti-globalist, anti-immigrant, pro-family values platform that resonated with a small portion of the US electorate.[18] However, Mr. Buchanan’s platform later transitioned into the Tea Party’s successful rise within the Republican Party in the late 2000s and early 2010s and the Make America Great Again campaign that President Trump successfully ran on.[19]
The broad political network WCNs have developed in association with the New Right since the 1980s, and the political success from the 2010s has fueled a solid voter base that is uninterested in democratic values and the tradition of civil religion. Today, 36% of Republican voters qualify as Christian Nationalists based on ideology and political belief.[20] Instead, democratic backsliding is occurring at a steady pace in the US. In the last eight elections, from 1992-2020, the Republican Party only won the election by popular vote once, in 2004. Along with the lack of popular support, the Republican Party has shifted in ideology with the help of the New Right and politicians tailoring their agendas towards WCNs. Likewise, polling of the American populace in 1995 found that 25% of American’s believe it was a good idea to have “a strong leader who does not have to bother with the parliament and elections.”[21] That number increased to 38% in 2017.[22] Last, following the January 6th insurrection, polling of Republican voters reveals 45% approved of the actions taken by the insurrectionist, with only 25% considering the insurrection a threat to democracy.[23]
The linkage between the coalition of WCNs, the New Right, and domestic violent extremist groups, and the increasing threat to US democracy from authoritarianism and democratic backsliding is apparent. The hope is that by identifying the historical context and intersectionality of WCNs and established neo-conservative political factions, policymakers can create effective deradicalization programs and return to the ideals that support the US initiative of achieving the higher ideas of the “city on the hill.”
[1] Cynthia Miller-Idriss, “From 9/11 to 1/6 The War on Terror Supercharged the Far Right,” Foreign Affairs, September 1, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-08-24/war-on-terror-911-jan6.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Thomas B. Edsall, “’The Capitol Insurrection Was as Christian Nationalist as It Gets.’,” The New York Times (The New York Times, January 28, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/opinion/christian-nationalists-capitol-attack.html.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Bart Bonikowski and Paul DiMaggio, “Varieties of American Popular Nationalism,” American Sociological Review 81, no. 5 (September 8, 2016): pp. 949-980, https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122416663683, 952.
[7] Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Joshua T. Davis, “God’s Country in Black and Blue: How Christian Nationalism Shapes Americans’ Views about Police (Mis)Treatment of Blacks,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 5, no. 1 (August 2, 2018): pp. 130-146, https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649218790983, 132.
[8] Ibid. 132
[9] Gillian Hart, “Alternatives: Decoding ‘The Base’: White Evangelicals or Christian Nationalists?,” Studies in Political Economy 102, no. 1 (June 2, 2021): pp. 61-76, https://doi.org/10.1080/07078552.2021.1901015, 63.
[10] Josh Zeitz, “When America Hated Catholics,” POLITICO Magazine, September 23, 2015, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/when-america-hated-catholics-213177/.
[11] Arie Perliger, American Zealots: Inside Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2020), 32.
[12] Ibid. 33
[13] Jeffrey Haynes, Trump and the Politics of Neo-Nationalism: The Christian Right and Secular Nationalism in America (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021), 44.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid, 45.
[16] Samuel Perry, “The Capitol Siege Recalls Past Acts of Christian Nationalist Violence,” The Conversation, September 1, 2021, https://theconversation.com/the-capitol-siege-recalls-past-acts-of-christian-nationalist-violence-153059.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Jeffrey Haynes, Trump and the Politics of Neo-Nationalism: The Christian Right and Secular Nationalism in America (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021), 48.
[19] Ibid. 54
[20] Thomas B. Edsall, “’The Capitol Insurrection Was as Christian Nationalist as It Gets.’,” The New York Times (The New York Times, January 28, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/opinion/christian-nationalists-capitol-attack.html.
[21] Pippa Norris, “It Happened in America,” Foreign Affairs, January 26, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-01-07/it-happened-america.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Linley Sanders, Matthew Smith, and Jamie Ballard, “Most Voters Say the Events at the US Capitol Are a Threat to Democracy,” YouGov, January 7, 2021, https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/06/US-capitol-trump-poll.
Stephen DeBlasio, MA Security Policy Studies at The George Washington University
