Public Religion Research Institute CEO Robert Jones shared new data this week that shines light on the disturbing popularity of Christian nationalism — summed up as a belief that America’s national identity is interwoven with Christianity — in regions of the country controlled by Republicans.
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it was a clear sign that the upper echelon of American legal power was delivering for evangelical extremists. And to underscore how dire things have become two years on, when the Alabama Supreme Court decision classified embryos used for in vitro fertilization as human beings, it wasn’t lost on critics that the chief justice invoked Bible verses in his concurring opinion and has been open in his support for extremely theocratic views.
So PRRI’s new study on Christian nationalism, assembled using interviews with more than 22,000 people, is timely.
Here are a few of my key takeaways.
Christian nationalists are a relatively small group but wield outsized power
PRRI found “three in ten Americans qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents (10%) or Sympathizers (20%), compared with two-thirds who qualify as Skeptics (37%) or Rejecters (30%).”
So adherents and sympathizers of Christian nationalism make up about 30% of the American population — and evidently about 66% of the Supreme Court bench, if the Dobbs ruling is any indicator.
Alabama’s an outlier
Alabama is an outlier when it comes to the popularity of Christian nationalism. It’s one