Holy Nations: How White Racism Boosts Black Support for Christian Nationalism

Current work on Christian nationalism emphasizes its strong correlation with exclusion of racial minorities and support for racialized policy, but Christian nationalism support is highest among Black Americans. If Christian nationalism is tightly bound to racism, why do Black Americans express such high levels of support for it? I argue that Black support for Christian nationalism is a response to White ethnonationalism. As Black Americans are denied their equal status as Americans, they increasingly assert their prototypicality as Americans by emphasizing their Christian identity. I employ an original survey experiment, finding that exposure to nationalist messaging in both its civic and ethnonationalist forms is related to higher levels of support for Christian nationalism among Black Christians, suggesting that the sense of national exclusion evokes Black Christians to emphasize their prototypicality as Americans. Moreover, by comparing the role of values underlying Christian nationalism support, I demonstrate that these results are not due to alternative understandings of the meaning of Christian nationalism for Black respondents. These findings shed light on Christian nationalism support as a racialized process.