Crusading for Moral Authority: Christian Nationalism and Opposition to Science

Abstract

Numerous studies show biblicist Christianity, religiosity, and conservative political identity are strong predictors of Americans holding skeptical attitudes toward publicly controversial aspects of science, such as human evolution. We show that Christian nationalism—meaning the desire to see particularistic and exclusivist versions of Christian symbols, values, and policies enshrined as the established religion of the United States—is a strong and consistent predictor of Americans’ attitudes about science above and beyond other religious and political characteristics. Further, a majority of the overall effect of political ideology on skepticism about the moral authority of science is mediated through Christian nationalism, indicating that political conservatives are more likely to be concerned with particular aspects of science primarily because they are more likely to be Christian nationalists. Likewise, substantial proportions of the well‐documented associations between religiosity and biblical “literalism” with views of science are mediated through Christian nationalism. Because Christian nationalism seeks to establish a particular and exclusivist vision of Christianity as the dominant moral order, adherents feel threatened by challenges to the epistemic authority undergirding that order, including by aspects of science perceived as challenging the supremacy of biblicist authority.

Paying Attention to the Pandemic: Knowledge of COVID-19 Facts by News Source and Demographics

“…In a study of trust in the expertise and shared values of scientists during COVID-19, conservative Protestants and Catholics were skeptical of scientists’ knowledge ( Evans & Hargittai, 2020 ). Political conservatives were also skeptical of the science, but this effect was largely mediated through beliefs in Christian nationalism ( Baker et al, 2020 ). I repeated the analysis including political party affiliation as a control, and the results were largely the same (see Supplemental Table A2 ).…”

Religious identity and intersectional privilege: (A)symmetric biases in Christians and atheists are unaffected by prompts to consider religious and racial privilege.

“…Such Christonormativity is argued by Ferber (2012) to be largely unacknowledged and intersectional in nature, coexisting with and reinforcing ideologies of White racial privilege and gender inequality. A desire to preserve the intersecting privileges of Whiteness and Christianity may perpetuate a wide range of sociological problems in the United States, including opposition to gay rights (e.g., Perry & Whitehead, 2016; Whitehead & Perry, 2015), tolerance of police brutality toward Black Americans (Perry et al, 2019), support for patriarchy (Whitehead & Perry, 2019), antiscience beliefs (Baker et al, 2020), and the COVID-19 pandemic (Perry et al, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). Accordingly, it is crucial to study the psychological processes that result from reminders of White and Christian privilege.…”

Global Contexts: How Countries Shape the COVID-19 Experience of Amish and Mennonite Missionaries Abroad

“…Christian nationalists embrace libertarian ideals of government and neo-liberal free-market economic policy (Perry et al 2020b;Whitehead and Perry 2020). They also tend to question scientific authority (Baker et al 2020). Accordingly, Christian nationalists are less likely to wear masks, wash their hands, social distance, and isolate (Perry et al 2020a) and are more likely to oppose government restrictions that protect the vulnerable (Perry et al 2020a).…”

“…Certain conservative Protestant sects in the U.S. resisted these directives (Ali et al 2020;Duran et al 2020;Perry et al 2020aPerry et al , 2020bPew Research Center 2020;Stein 2021). The non-compliance may reflect a religiously motivated distrust of science, medicine, the government, and the media (Armer and Radina 2006;Baker et al 2020;Galanter 1999;Gastañaduy et al 2016;Glassman 2018;Miller and Karkazis 2013;Offit 2015;Thompson and Kisjes 2016). The behavior may also reflect political sentiments that are independent of religious beliefs.…”