Christian Nationalism as Democratic and Religious Threat

Christian Nationalism as Democratic and Religious Threat

Christian nationalism is a growing movement that is challenging constitutional democracy, Christian community, and the free expression of all religious faiths in America. While numerous figures speak and write about Christian nationalism as if it’s a known quantity, there are significant questions that presently remain unanswered about this phenomenon: Are all conservative Christians Christian nationalists? Who demographically makes up American Christian nationalism? What is Christian nationalism’s relationship to Christianity? What are its impacts on a democratic and pluralistic society? 

This workshop conference will take up these and further questions, to try and understand various facets of this urgent topic for American religious faith and democracy.

Presenters:

What is Christian Nationalism?

Christian nationalism represents an extraordinary challenge to American democracy, and to American freedom of religion. Christian nationalism is not Christian patriotism. Instead, Christian nationalism in America is a white Christian movement that embodies white supremacy and is rooted in fear of the “other,” especially Blacks, Latinos, and Muslims. White Christian nationalists call for strict gender roles, and the subordination of women as God’s design. The movement fuses the identity of white Christians with the only “true Americans.” Finally, white Christian nationalism seeks to return to a mythic time of the past where white men ruled supreme, women and colored people knew their place, and America’s power came from unfettered military omnipotence. White Christian nationalism is not Christian in any measurable way, and in fact statistics demonstrate that many of its most fervent supporters rarely attend church and reject traditional Christian teachings.

Leonard Feeney, S.J. a Jesuit who was one of the founders of what became the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Student Center, elucidated a new phrase in American Catholicism in the early 1950s: “liberal Catholicism." Before Feeney, Catholics used only two phrases to refer to themselves: Catholics and lapsed Catholics. Catholics weren't necessarily "conservative" (most Catholics in the 1950s identified themselves as Democrats) and "lapsed Catholics" weren't liberal in any American political sense. But in the course of his battles with the Archbishop of Boston (and eventually with Rome), Feeney came to identify the real enemies inside the church as "liberals," something new in American Catholicism. And Feeney's identification of those "traitors within" the Church paved the way for regularly identifying "the left" as the real threat to American Catholicism as well as to American cultural identity. Feeney's new use of the word "liberal" to describe his Catholic opponents influenced a number of Catholic conservatives who followed inhis footsteps, including Gommer DePauw (in his championing of the Latin Mass), Mother Angelica (in her attack on liberal bishops in the Church), and the current editor of Crisis Magazine, who champions a return to "orthodox" (i.e., traditionalist) Catholicism.

Mark Massa, S.J. was dean of the School of Theology and Ministry, and for nine years director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. He is a religious historian whose work focuses on the American Catholic experience in the 20th century. Among his published works are Catholics and American Culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and the Notre Dame Football Team, Structures of Theological Revolution: How the Debate Over Birth Control Changed Catholic Theology, The American Catholic Revolution: How the 60s Changed the Church Forever, and Catholic Fundamentalism in America. His current project is a book entitled Models of American Catholic Identity.

Despite its widespread unpopularity, Christian nationalism has played an outsized role in reshaping democratic norms and influencing institutions once thought untouchable. This raises two important questions: Why has Christian nationalism become more relevant in American politics despite its lack of wide-ranging support? And more importantly, why has there been so little resistance to an ideology that poses a grave threat to US democracy? I argue that the combination of political disengagement alongside the mobilization of a highly motivated coalition of Christian nationalist adherents explains the movement’s rising influence. To test my claims, I draw on nationally representative survey data from PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute), examining the link between varying levels of Christian nationalism adherence and political attitudes and behaviors. The findings reveal how an unpopular ideology can penetrate political power structures, which contributes to the destabilization of core democratic norms and institutions.

Dr. Shortle is a professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma, where she studies group identity in the context of American political behavior. Her research frequently supports organizations seeking to increase civic engagement and strengthen the mental, economic, and democratic health of their communities. Dr. Shortle is the co-author of The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2022, with Eric McDaniel and Irfan Nooruddin). She served as a Public Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute from 2023 to 2025 and is currently a Public Fellow at the Pulaski Institution and a Research Fellow with the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges. She is the co-PI of the Rural Talent Lab project. Her research and insights have been featured on CNN, France 24, ABC Australia, Al Jazeera English, The Hill, Newsweek, The Conversation, and PBS.

In 1972, at the height of the Black Power movement, Albert Cleage published Black Christian Nationalism. Cleage was already a prominent figure: he was an activist minister in Detroit and a theologian, often credited as co-founder of the Black Theology movement. Cleage had already published The Black Messiah, a provocative argument for understanding Jesus as Black, and in Black Christian Nationalism, Cleage wove his theological and political ideas into a vision for political transformation aligned with radical Black movements and their social analysis. What can we learn by revisiting Black Christian Nationalism in an era of proliferating white Christian nationalism? I argue that the juxtaposition of these projects invites us to reflect on the ambivalent theological significance of nationhood and the role of the imagination in both theology and politics. Further, I ask where we might find creative ways of reimagining the nation and its ambivalent relationship to theology today.

Vincent Lloyd is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at King’s College London. At Villanova, he directs the Center for Political Theology. Lloyd’s books include Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination (Yale, 2022), the co-authored What Is Political Theology?(Columbia, 2025), and Harold Cruse: Critic, Writer, Teacher (Yale, 2026). Lloyd has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, Emory’s James Weldon Johnson Institute, and Durham University. His next research project is a book on Christianity and race, co-authored with Jonathan Tran.

This essay offers the prosperity gospel as an analogy for understanding the current resurgence of Christian Nationalism in Evangelicalism that I call the “dominance gospel.” It outlines some of the crucial cultural and ideological patterns of religious culture that shape the Evangelical form of Christian Nationalism and analyzes several analogues under this rubric. It further describes the struggle within the Evangelical orbit over these teachings and several ways in which it has been combatted, concluding with a fresh deconstruction of Christian Nationalism that builds on these internal efforts.

Daryn Henry is Assistant Professor of Christian Studies at the University of Virginia. His two previous books are: A. B. Simpson and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism and The Freedom of God: A Study in the Pneumatology of Robert Jenson. His work focuses on the vibrant array of American Religions, especially the ways in which various Christian communities dynamically interact with pluralistic modern and postmodern cultures in the larger history of Christian thought. He is currently teaching a seminar on Christian Nationalism in the shadow of Thomas Jefferson’s university.

This chapter analyzes affective relationships between Hegseth’s body art; emotional rhetoric during religio-political speeches; racist, masculinist, and Christian exceptionalist policies instituted since his appointment as the Secretary of War; and imperialist U.S. military operations during the second Trump administration. This examination focuses on how Hegseth frames, embodies, and enacts what he calls a “warrior ethos” in Christian nationalist discourse, anti-Muslim tattoos, and U.S. military policies and deployments. In body, language, and deed—including the Jerusalem Cross and We the People inked on his chest and arm; a “Warrior’s Prayer” at a Pentagon worship service in March 2026; an “anti-woke” cultural restructuring with adverse material effects on non-white, non-Christian, and non-cisgender male soldiers; and an alleged sexual assault—Hegseth is the archetype of a Christian citizen-soldier on a fascist crusade to forcibly impose white masculinist Christian supremacy within the U.S. military, the nation writ large, and throughout the world.

Jessica Johnson teaches in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Seattle University, and is the author of Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire, published by Duke University Press in 2018. Her second book, Radicalizing Men: Fascist Desires, Great Replacement Propaganda, and Political Violence, will be published by Duke University Press in December 2026. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor and Visiting Scholar in the Department of Religious Studies at William & Mary from 2019-2023. During the 2025-2026 school year, she is teaching classes in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Seattle University.

Although most often associated with evangelical Protestants, many rank-and-file and publicly prominent Catholics assent to Christian nationalism’s fundamental precepts or political ends. Through silence, dissimulation, circumlocution, or outright endorsement, the perception of the Catholic Church’s commitment to its pastoral mission is jeopardized and its doctrine muddled. Those arguing for Christian nationalism or its analogue, Catholic integralism, frequently invoke themes and principles in Catholic social teaching against clear pronouncements from the universal magisterium. This essay argues that the rise of Catholic support for Christian nationalism in the United States constitutes a “new Americanist heresy,” harkening to the era of Pope Leo XIII in the era of Leo XIV. To assimilate and climb the ladder of political influence, Catholic supporters of Christian nationalism contradict their very identity as “catholic,” and endanger the moral authority of the Catholic Church as an advocate for dignity of the human person, especially the poor and vulnerable.

Marc V. Rugani is associate professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Ethics in Society at Saint Anselm College. He received his doctorate in moral theology and ethics from The Catholic University of America in 2021 and has published several articles in academic journals including The Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Civic Sociology, Religions, and The Catholic Social Science Review. His continuing research focuses on how Catholic social teaching informs economics, politics, and sociology in creative engagement with the capabilities approach.

The separation and demarcation of “religion” as a distinct public sphere separate from politics is basic to liberalism, even if it takes different forms in different European traditions and in the global context of countries colonized by Europeans. As early as the eighteenth century, conservative and Romantic opposition in both Europe and the colonies resisted liberalism by imagining the restoration of an integral public sphere. This paper approaches contemporary “Christian nationalism” as one more manifestation of this resistance, dependent upon the suppression of classic Christian denominational divisions for its appeal. It then takes up the question of Jewish responses to Christian nationalism. I argue that in some ways, this moment parallels previous moments of conservative ascendance in which Enlightenment-era liberal reforms were rolled back, e.g. the late 1800s and the 1930s. Just as in those moments, liberal Judaism seems weak and obsolete, fueling the popularity of socialist and nationalist alternatives.

Samuel Hayim Brody is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. His research investigates modern Jewish thought at the intersections of politics, economics, and religion. He is the author of Martin Buber’s Theopolitics (2018) and co-editor, with Julie E. Cooper, of The King is in the Field: Essays in Modern Jewish Political Thought (2023). He is also editor or co-editor of two volumes of the Martin Buber Werkausgabe. He is a member of the Editorial Collective at the journal Political Theology.In addition to academic venues, his writing has appeared in Boston Review, The Jewish Daily Forward, Jewish Currents, the Montreal Review, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

The nation of Israel and the broader middle east occupy a central place in the theologies of many American Christians. Dispensational Premillennialism, which has exercised enormous influence over American Evangelicalism, holds that the reestablishment of Israel as a nation-state was a key harbinger of history’s rapid acceleration towards a period of massive disruption, famine, and war – the Great Tribulation – which must occur before the Millennium, Christ’s thousand-year literal and physical reign as King on Earth. Since the oil crises of the 1970’s, Dispensationalist preachers and writers have identified Islam and Islamic states as key players on the side of darkness in this apocalyptic system. These Islamophobic sentiments increased exponentially through the First Gulf War, the 9/11 attacks, and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This theology provides the substrate for the unprecedented and shocking comments made by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and various U.S. military commanders directly connecting the U.S.’s current war in Iran to biblical end-times prophecies – even though Hegseth belongs to a Calvinist postmillennialist sect that rejects Dispensationalism. Early versions of Dispensational theology foresaw a special role for the United States in the events leading up to the Great Tribulation but tended to emphasize that true Christians would be removed from the earth – “raptured” – before the worst of the ensuing disasters and wars. Ominously, today, Dispensational narratives about Israel, the middle east, and Islam have fused with postmillennial and other end-times visions in which the United States, as a new Christendom, will bring Christ’s eschatological kingdom to Earth by force. This development poses manifest threats to the American Constitutional tradition of civilian control over military force exercised within the limits of the separation of powers, individual civil liberties, and international order. After surveying the origins of this new fusion of Dispensational postmillennial theology, this paper suggests several interventions, some for religious communities and some for governmental policy makers.

David Opderbeck is Professor of Law, Director of the Program on Faith, Values, and Rule of Law, and Co-Director of the Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology and Institute for Privacy Protection at Seton Hall University Law School. He is cross-trained as a lawyer and theologian, with a Ph.D. in Systematic and Philosophical Theology from the University of Nottingham, and has published several books and numerous papers on law, technology, and political theology. He founded the Program on Faith, Values, and the Rule of Law at Seton Hall University's School of Law to examine how the world’s great religious, theological, and philosophical traditions have contributed to the understanding of justice and human dignity that underpins modern rule of law principles and to the virtues and practices that support human flourishing and just governance.

Freedom and the belief that America is part of a divine plan has been central to the nation’s identity. However, history has shown us that those who adhere to the divinity of the nation understand freedom from a particular standpoint. They have sought freedom to control others as opposed to the freedom of citizenship. Using Orlando Patterson’s three conceptions of freedom, personal, civic, and sovereignal; this paper examines the relationship between adherence to American Religious Exceptionalism and the importance of religious freedom in relation to other Constitutional freedoms. Additionally, it will examine support for policies that expand freedoms for religious groups.

Professor McDaniel is a Professor in the Department of Government and the co-director of the prelab at the University of Texas at Austin. His research examines how the intersection of race and religion influence the American political landscape. His book, Politics in the Pews: The Political Mobilization of Black Churches, provides an explanation for why some Black churches choose to engage in the political world while others do not. His most recent book, The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics, co-authored with Irfan Nooruddin and Allyson Shortle, explores the ramifications of Americans believing that their nation is God’s chosen nation. Additionally, he is working on projects related to religious worldviews and religious freedom.

In September of 2025, a young Presbyterian pastor, David Black, was shot with a chemical pellet by ICE personnel while he prayed outside the Broadview facility in Chicago. However, in February of that same year, President Trump had signed an executive order, Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias. Trump’s order stated that “My Administration will not tolerate anti-Christian weaponization of government or unlawful conduct targeting Christians.” But despite the President’s claim that anti-Christian weaponization would not be tolerated, nothing was done. No agents were disciplined, and no investigation opened. It is the chasm between these two events – the claim that anti-Christian use of the government would not be tolerated, and the open harassment of a Mainline pastor, that raises the question of the relationship between Christian nationalism and Mainline Christianity. This study will examine why Christian nationalists must reject the claims of progressive Christianity to be Christian, or even their right to exist.

R. Ward Holder is professor of theology and politics at Saint Anselm College, in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics. Among his other works, he has authored John Calvin and the Grounding of Interpretation: Calvin’s First Commentaries, Brill, 2006; and Calvin and the Christian Tradition: Scripture, Memory, and the Western Mind, Cambridge, 2022. Among his political theological efforts he has co-authored The Irony of Barack Obama: Barack Obama, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Problem of Christian Statecraft, Ashgate, 2012; and Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice: Christian Realism and Democracy in America in the Twenty-First Century, Lexington, 2019. His essays have appeared in Christian Century, Church History, Politics and Religion, and Society.

Christian nationalism is often analyzed through the lens of each country's internal religious and political history. Although domestic political and religious history remains fundamental to interpreting its national manifestations, this article argues that at least one influential strand of contemporary Christian nationalism is best understood through a transnational perspective. Focusing on the charismatic networks associated with C. Peter Wagner and the New Apostolic Reformation, I examine how theopolitical ideas and charismatic authority circulate between the United States and Brazil. Rather than portraying Brazil as a passive recipient of a North American religious export, the article turns its attention to a dynamic of mutual influence, in which key Brazilian evangelical leaders appropriate these ideas—reinterpreting and reshaping them within their own political and ecclesiastical contexts—while simultaneously contributing to their global circulation. These exchanges help create a transnational grammar of dominion manifest in recurring themes interpreted through slightly different expressions in each context, such as "restoring" or "redeeming the nation." This shared transnational religious grammar—and the organizational networks facilitating its diffusion through distinct yet deeply interconnected expressions of dominionist Christian theopolitics—contributes to undermining democratic pluralism and legitimizing white Christian supremacy in both countries and beyond.

Raimundo C. Barreto is an associate professor of World Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. He earned his PhD degree in Religion and Society from Princeton Theological Seminary. His publications include the books Protesting Poverty: Protestants, Social Ethics and the Poor in Brazil (Baylor University Press, 2023) and Base Ecumenism: Latin American Contributions to Ecumenical Praxis and Theology (Fortress Press, 2025), and the co-edited volumes Alterity and the Evasion of Justice: Explorations of the “Other” in World Christianity (Fortress Press, 2023) and Theology and Ethics of Oppressed and Marginalized Peoples: Social Ethics and Agency in World Christianity (Wipf & Stock Books, 2025). Barreto is the general editor of the Fortress Press Series World Christianity and Public Religion and a co-editor of the Journal of World Christianity. He is also a co-editor of the Penn State University Press World Christianity Book Series and a co-convener of the World Christianity Conference, which has been held annually since 2018.