Relentlessly tedious repetition of essentially a single, unsurprising finding in a thousand different ways. Essentially "Christian nationalism" (determined by measuring how much you favor things like prayer in schools, the federal government formally declaring America a Christian nation etc.) will highly predict your religio-political views (in the obvious direction: more CN, more right-wing; less CN, more left-wing), even moreso than political identification, ideology, or religious affiliation. Well.. no kidding? How could it be otherwise?

There are 6 questions used to determine adherence to Christian nationalism, each freighted with religio-political significance, and respondents can agree strongly or weakly with each. Of course a 6-variable religio-political (each with degrees of precision) factor is inherently packed with much more information and predictive power than any single variable (GOP/Dem, con/lib, Christian/non-Christian). This is virtually definitionally true, and it's hard to imagine how it could possibly be otherwise, yet they report their findings in breathless tones as if they've stumbled on a hidden truth. When in reality they needn't have even conducted any surveys to know this was true.

In a desperate bid to separate "white evangelicals" (the subject of much scorn and approbation from their scholarly circles for their Trumpist ways) from "Christian nationalists", Perry & Whitehead deploy farcical scientistic means. After reporting that "Christian nationalists" views correlate highly with religious devotion and practice (i.e. the more you read scripture, attend church etc. the more "Christian nationalist" you will tend to be), they then deploy a comical device to negate this fact. If you *control for Christian nationalism*, then religious devotion no longer predicts more Christian nationalist views! But.. this is a tautology. Of course if you "control for Christian nationalism", i.e. remove one strong conservative-religious impulse, the remainder will be much more liberal along various dimensions.

As an analogy, imagine I conducted a survey trying to measure levels of "secular globalism", by asking questions like how much one supports international, intergovernmental organizations authorized to enforce human rights, how much one supports open borders, how much one bases their humanitarianism on religion etc. And called this the "secular globalist" (SG) scale. Now imagine (as it's not difficult to predict) that Secular Globalism correlates highly with liberal political views. Now further imagine, because I'm a conservative, right-wing atheist, who doesn't like the bad rap that atheists get as being so liberal, I decide to "control for Secular Globalist ideology" in the sample and--WHAT DO YOU KNOW!--once you control for SG, it turns out atheists are surprisingly moderate or conservative. Well.. yes, but this is a triviality. Because you removed the interconnected matrix of motivations that tends to make atheists more liberal in the first place by "controlling for" secular globalism.

Desperate to obfuscate that their own data shows that staunch anti-Christian-nationalism correlates highly with atheism, Judaism, and low levels of religious practice and devotion among Christians (revealing anti-CN to be the pagan, secular force Christians rightly claim that it is), the means they deploy reach the level of utter absurdity. ( )

Argues that Christian nationalism is a distinct entity from religiosity in the US. So, for example, Christian nationalists see serving in the military as important to being “a good person,” while being devoutly religious decreases the likelihood that a person endorses this view. “As Americans show greater agreement with Christian nationalism, they are more likely to view Muslim refugees as terrorist threats, agree that citizens should be made to show respect for America’s traditions, and oppose stricter gun control laws. But as Americans become more religious in terms of attendance, prayer, and Scripture reading, they move in the opposite direction on these issues.” Devotional religiousity is associated with ideas of caring for the vulnerable, while Christian nationalism is “unrelated” to taking care of the sick and needy, and Christian nationalists are less likely to believe that actively seeking social and economic justice is important to being a good person. In their view, it is fundamentally a political orientation, not a religious one.

Although the authors conclude that Christian nationalism “allows those who embrace it to express a racialized identity without resorting to racialized terms,” they hold (less persuasively) that it’s not reducible to racism. The reasoning: there is a noticeable percentage of US-minority groups that hold “certain” Christian nationalist views (like endorsing militarism, teaching the Bible in schools, the special role of the US in God’s plan, and traditional gender roles) but also have a strong racial justice orientation, “the exact opposite of what we see in white Americans.” By their data, 65% of Blacks support Christian nationalism, the largest proportion of any racial group (though support is not necessarily full endorsement). ( )