How religious nationalism is affecting Kentucky, U.S. and world politics

David Buckley is a political science professor at the University of Louisville who specializes in the connections between religion and democracy, both in the U.S. and abroad. We discussed the rises of religious nationalism abroad and Christian nationalism in the U.S, and the simultaneous surge in the number of people who say they are not religious at all. (This interview has been condensed.) 

Perry: If you look at the news in Israel, India, Russia, here in the United States, it seems like religious fundamentalism is increasingly powerful in politics. Not necessarily Christian fundamentalism, but a kind of religious-infused conservatism. Is that the right way to think about it? 

David: I would think of it more as religious nationalism than religious fundamentalism. That term fundamentalism frequently has a kind of theological origin story to it, an ancient theological or scriptural tradition that we need to preserve in a coherent way. The movements you are referencing are a little bit less theologically unified than that. They're more concerned with national unity and national preservation. Religious identity has a part in that. And some believers who are deeply committed to theological principles are probably involved. 

But a number of the leaders of these movements aren't particularly pious themselves. They're mostly interested in using religion to define an exclusive political community.

So religious nationalism. Is that on the rise? And if so, why? 

Yes. You are really seeing it across continents. You referenced the movement behind Trump in the United States. We see it in Israeli politics, we see it in Indian politics, we see it in parts of Western Europe. You could look at Poland for certain and even Hungary. There were elements of religious nationalism in the Bolsonaro movement in Brazil. 

So yes, this is a fairly clear trend around the world. The why question is an interesting one. In some contexts we hear about this arising in response to demographic change—perceived threat from traditional religious majorities who are facing new levels of diversity or who have resentment about lost privileges. That's possibly true. 

There could also be a phase of history element to this. As class-based politics fade away in large parts of the world, strong religious identity claims might become more plausible. 

In the U.S. context, when I hear about “Christian nationalism,” often the person or people being described would've been called “evangelical Christians” or “fundamentalist Christians” ten years ago. How is Christian nationalism different from the conservative Christianity that we’ve been talking about in America for decades? 

It’s a great question, and one that scholars are really wrestling with. There's a couple of ways to come at this. One is the policy agenda that's associated with Christian nationalists. as opposed to earlier phases in the Christian Right. If we think about the policy agenda that's most closely tied to the traditional Christian Right of the 1980s, we probably think about opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion, more recently we think about opposition to civil rights for gay and lesbian individuals. Those issues are still important to many Christian nationalists, they haven't left the scene. 

But we have religious endorsement now for quite conservative policy positions on issues like immigration and refugee policy that came up during the Trump administration. That's new. 

I also think there's clearly been a change in leadership of the Christian Right. We saw this in the kinds of pastors who were given access to the Trump administration. These were not the traditional organizational leaders within the old-line Christian Right. These were newer individuals, often with social media-based followings. There's been a real pluralization of authority that's brought new voices into these discussions. 

Just to be precise, would we call say, Daniel Cameron, Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul a Christian nationalist?

It’s a good question and points to weaknesses in precision of how the term is used. I suspect that those individuals would probably answer yes to some of the traditional survey questions that scholars tie to Christian nationalism—for instance support for prayer in public schools and the idea that the United States should live up to Christian values. 

At the same time, when we think of Christian nationalists, it's not just support for school prayer that we have in mind, I don't think. Right? There's exclusivity in privileging Christianity over other religious traditions. And on that axis, I don't think those individuals would be seen as representatives of Christian nationalism. 

Part of my question is politicians such as Mike Huckabee and George W. Bush were fine describing themselves as evangelical Christians. But who is the most famous politician who would be comfortable being described as a Christian nationalist? 

Marjorie Taylor Greene has self-identified in that way and kind of claimed the term and tried to take it from a term of criticism to one of that she self-identifies with. You see some of that going on now with Christian nationalists saying, “Yes, I'm not ashamed of this. This is not a slur, this is something I'm proud of.” 

But I agree it is still a term that is often used pejoratively. So you don't have as many people wrapping themselves up in it, in the same way that “white evangelical” was an uncontroversially-good label in conservative politics in George W. Bush's heyday.

So here in Kentucky, what are some policies that are being passed as a result of Christian nationalism? Are anti-trans laws Christian nationalism? 

I don't think that you have to go to Christian nationalism to explain anti-trans laws, traditional social conservatism gets you there. 

I actually think that some of the stuff on curriculum restrictions does resonate with Christian nationalism …the versions of the history of ourselves culturally, racially but also religiously that we are going to present. Part of that is this effort to rehabilitate the role of Christianity as not just always present in the United States, but at the core of the American experiment and not subject to criticism, to defend its primacy within the United States.

So is Christian nationalism really what’s driving conservatives today? 

A lot of the research on Christian nationalism doesn't ask, “Why did so many people who seem to have Christian nationalist beliefs not riot at the Capitol on January 6th?” 

We are overstating the role of this package of beliefs and underestimating other factors. One thing that I think is important to put on the agenda is the way that Christian nationalism has intersected with trends in conspiratorial politics and perceived victimhood in American society, that are making the worst effects of Christian nationalism come out in public. 

I have a paper with Adam Enders, another political scientist at U of L, and the University of Mississippi’s Miles Armaly, where we looked at the January 6th attacks. We found that Christian nationalism only made people more likely to participate in or to support the January 6th violence when they also believed things tied to conspiratorial politics and white identity. 

In other words, religion isn't all that's going on here. There's other changes in information consumption and attitudes. We can't understand Christian nationalism unless we put it in context of those other changes.

Going in the other direction, in the United States in particular, we have a growing number of people who describe themselves as non-religious. That’s now something like 30 percent of the population. 

Is that related to the Christian nationalism story? 

There's really good social scientific evidence that certain forms of conservative Christian mobilization and politics can drive other people to pull away from organized religion. Lots of different types of data are showing that politics is changing the way that people identify religiously. 

This is probably a reaction to the more typical social conservatism of the religious right. Is Christian nationalism changing that or accelerating that trend? I'm actually not really sure that I've seen a lot of evidence of that. 

There were always people who said they were Christians but never went to church and didn’t have deep convictions. Is it now just more socially-acceptable for them to say that they aren’t believers? 

There's evidence that levels of high religiosity in American society have not declined nearly as dramatically as that kind of middle ground has been hollowed out. Mid-religiosity individuals became comfortable, for all kinds of reasons, with saying, “No, I actually don't have a religion.” 

The question is, “What are the consequences of that politically?” As a scholar of religion and democracy, I do worry a little bit about this. Mid-level religious participation did contribute to our democracy. You might not have been the world's most enthusiastic member of a congregation, but you were probably more likely to get registered to vote. You were probably more likely to have social relationships with people whose views differ from your own. You may have been more likely to even run for office yourself. 

We see evidence that the unaffiliated are less engaged in other forms of civic life. 

It’s the erosion of social capital.  The forms of community participation that make democracy work or at least contribute to democracy's health are definitely changing in contemporary America and maybe breaking down. 

In other words, we think churches provide something valuable that is not just religious lessons. 

Exactly. There was always a dark side to religious participation in this country. We don't want to overlook that. There's always been exclusivity and segregation. But we do have some pretty strong evidence across different social movements and periods of American history that there was this very important role in local communities being played by religious congregations. 

Institutional religion is being hollowed out at the same time that is happening to the modern state, which is being hollowed out by years of tax cuts and hostility to government spending. 

You’re Catholic. Where do Catholics fit into all of this? 

Well, a number of Catholics are actually right at the center of the rise of Christian nationalism. A number of Catholic intellectuals have been laying a kind of intellectual groundwork for this anti-liberal right in American politics. 

I don't know how that resonates in the lived experience of the average Catholic congregation in the United States. …I don't think you've seen it as kind of a force in the lived experience of your average Catholic congregation in the same way that you do hear about this going on in white evangelical America.