Christian Nationalism and Political Violence: Victimhood, Racial Identity, Conspiracy, and Support for the Capitol Attacks

Abstract

What explains popular support for political violence in the contemporary United States, particularly the anti-institutional mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol in January 2021? Recent scholarship gives reason to suspect that a constellation of beliefs known as “Christian nationalism” may be associated with support for such violence. We build on this work, arguing that religious ideologies like Christian nationalism should be associated with support for violence, conditional on several individual characteristics that can be inflamed by elite cues. We turn to three such factors long-studied by scholars of political violence: perceived victimhood, reinforcing racial and religious identities, and support for conspiratorial information sources. Each can be exacerbated by elite cues, thus translating individual beliefs in Christian nationalism into support for political violence. We test this approach with original survey data collected in the wake of the Capitol attacks. We find that all the identified factors are positively related to each other and support for the Capitol riot; moreover, the relationship between Christian nationalism and support for political violence is sharply conditioned by white identity, perceived victimhood, and support for the QAnon movement. These results suggest that religion’s role in contemporary right-wing violence is embedded with non-religious factors that deserve further scholarly attention in making sense of support for political violence. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-021-09758-y.

Liberty for Us, Limits for Them: Christian Nationalism and Americans' Views on Citizens' Rights

“…6 An issue that requires discussion is why the associations were generally consistent across racial identity and gender. In contrast with numerous other studies (e.g., Armaly et al 2022;Gorski and Perry 2022;Perry, Cobb, et al 2022;, black and white Americans did not diverge sharply in their patterns of association between Christian nationalism and political attitudes. And only Hispanics showed minor slope differences from whites.…”

“…A later study found that beyond inclining white Americans to affirm more economic messages in line with "rugged individualist" notions of achievements and failures, white Americans who center civic belonging about "Christian heritage" are simultaneously more likely to acknowledge instances of injustice against Black Americans while also indicating belief in anti-white discrimination being pervasive in American society (Perry, Cobb, et al 2022). Armaly et al (2022) found that white Americans who affirmed Christian nationalism were especially more likely to support violent extremism compared to nonwhites. And most recently, Gorski and Perry (2022) find that while white Americans' views on racial discrimination are significantly influenced by Christian nationalist the same is not true among Black Americans.…”

“…While "Christian nationalism" has been measured in various ways (e.g., Al-Kire et al 2021, 2022Corcoran et al 2021;McDaniel et al 2011), the Christian nationalism scale used by Whitehead and Perry (2020) has become the standard across disciplines like sociology, social psychology, and political science (Al-Kire et al 2021, 2022Davis 2018;Armaly et al 2022).…”

“…We would also anticipate Christian nationalism to deprioritize rights that provide opportunities to criticize or overturn power such as the freedom of the press or the right to vote. Lastly, we would also anticipate that these associations would be particularly salient among white Americans and men, following previous research (Armaly et al 2022;Perry, Cobb, et al 2022).…”

How social identity shapes conspiratorial belief

“…with strong pre-existing social identities such as partisanship (Armaly et al, 2022;van Prooijen et al, 2015) Hence, counter terrorist officials in the European Union and the United States have warned about "new forms of terrorism" motivated by conspiracy theories (Anon, 2019;Pantucci, 2020).…”