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(Andrew Whitehead, PhD) I study Christian nationalism.
Christian nationalism is basically
a way of seeing, interpreting
and understanding the social world.
Americans who embrace it
believe that the United States
has always been
and always should be
distinctively Christian,
in its national identity,
sacred symbols,
and its public policies.
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What we're finding is that
Christian nationalism is something
altogether different from
private religiosity
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So I work with large surveys
of the American public.
And so, we'll ask them
a handful of questions having to do with
Christian nationalism.
We might ask them
if the federal government should
declare the u.s. a Christian nation,
or we may even ask if they believe
that the success of the United States
is part of God's plan.
And so, in their responses
to these individual questions,
we're able to see how much they agree
and embrace Christian nationalism
or resist and reject it.
And then, when we ask them questions about
public policies or their behaviors,
we can compare how they answer
some of these questions
versus where they fall
within this spectrum
on Christian nationalism.
So in one recent study, we find that
for Americans who strongly embrace
Christian nationalism,
they are much more likely to believe that
the police treat blacks
the same as whites.
Now, what's interesting though,
is that we find that
Americans who strongly embrace
private religiosity,
they are much more likely to see
racial inequality in policing.
We also found in another study that
Christian nationalism is strongly
related to gun control attitudes.
In fact, it is one of the
strongest predictors.
No matter your religious affiliation,
political ideology,
or your political party,
where you live in the country.
Americans who embrace
Christian nationalism are much more
likely to oppose any federal gun control
regulation control regulation.
Abd what is interesting again is that
Americans who are more religious privately,
they're more likely to support
gun control.
We see that Americans who embrace
Christian nationalism are more likely
to draw specific boundaries around
what America is all about,
where we are going, who we should be,
and how we should get there.
Whereas private religiosity, we see,
is operating in a very different way.
To some, extent Americans who embrace
Christian nationalism
are aware of the same problems
that we're all facing,
but they would see that there are very different
ways that we're supposed to work
towards changing those.
So with gun control for instance,
it isn't as though they want to say:
"let's not do anything at all."
But they would say that it isn'tpt to us,
or even the government to control guns
We need to work on the individual hearts
of Americans.
We need to attend to,
as they would see it,
the unraveling of the moral fabric
of the nation.
And if we do that,
then, gun violence is going to decline.
They see individual level change
of individual hearts as
the way to attend to some of these issues.
Rather than seeing, perhaps,
that there are structural changes
that we can make.
[gentle music]
The reaction towards this research
should be greater understanding
of where people are coming from,
so that we can dialogue together.
I think much of the polarization
within politics is people refusing
to understand where people are coming from
and having empathy for those views.
[gentle music]
When we talk about
religious cultural frameworks,
these aren't things that people just
come up with on their own.
They are given to them.
And so understanding how somebody
got from A to B
may help us work together
to find compromise towards
a common goal.
Nobody wants school shootings,
and we all agree on that.
But if we are to find a way forward on
these important issues,
You have to be able to understand and
realize where they are coming from
and those frameworks that they are using
to make sense of their social world.
[insightful music]