“From my own observations, most people who become supporters of Christian nationalism do not begin as right-wing political activists first (although political leaders may cynically exploit Christian nationalists for their own white nationalist power campaigns). On the contrary, Christian nationalists start out as Christian first.” (p. 43). This is analogous to what happens as people are drawn into cults. 

The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide by Pamela Cooper-White is a challenging and thought-provoking book. I have wrestled with it more than I have with many other books I have read, for reasons I will discuss in this review.

Cooper-White sets the table in the Introduction when she asserts that:

“…the research in this book will demonstrate the very term Christian Nationalism really means white nationalism and stands opposed to virtually everything Jesus taught, as embodied in the gospel vision of justice and compassion.” (p. 4).

She then goes on to make an argument which is very well-sourced and extensively footnoted, but in my opinion not entirely persuasive.

My main issue with Cooper-White is the imprecise way she defines Christian Nationalism, which is a struggle for her due to the smudged lens of her political liberalism. It seems that she sees Christian nationalists as the scary white people in rural America and the South who voted for Trump. The problem is that this is too broad. Wikipedia defines Christian Nationalists in America as follows:

Christian nationalism asserts that the United States is a country founded by and for Christians. Christian nationalists in the United States advocate a fusion of identitarian Christian identity and cultural conservatism with American civic belonging.  It has been noted to bear overlap with Christian fundamentalism, white supremacy, Christian supremacy, the Seven Mountain Mandate movement, and dominionism…1

You can see the problem right away. To the secular left, all this stuff runs together. However, astute MCOI readers understand that there are non-trivial distinctions to be made between “Christian fundamentalism, white supremacy, Christian supremacy, the Seven Mountain Mandate movement, and dominionism.” Moreover, there are likely people—even within the Christian nationalist movement—who have a more sophisticated view of the American founding than the reductionist assertion that America was founded by Christians. Readers of this publication understand that many of America’s founders were Deists, deeply influenced by the Enlightenment. Certainly, they were culturally informed by Christian civilization, but many of them did not have orthodox Christian beliefs—though some did. John Adams ended his life as a Unitarian, though I digress.

Getting back to The Psychology of Christian Nationalism, Cooper-White opens in Chapter 1, “Unholy Alliances: Christian Nationalism, White Supremacy, and the Pursuit of Power,” by discussing the shocking Capitol riot and attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021. She gives examples of the rioters carrying overtly Christian symbols. She then goes on to discuss a study by sociologists of religion, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, which she interprets as suggesting that a significant majority of southern, white, evangelical Christians are Christian nationalists, and that other mainstream Catholics and Protestants often lean in that direction. I can see how she gets there given the way that she interprets the Whitehead and Perry study, but I see it as being less black-and-white than she (and the study’s authors) did. To their—and her—credit, Cooper-White notes that “The authors are careful to point out that ‘evangelicalism’ and white conservative Protestantism” are not synonymous with Christian nationalism.” (p. 15). However, she goes on to say that “…fully two thirds of all Christian groups taken together agree with Christian nationalist ideas.” (p. 15).

To fairly evaluate this assertion, one must look at the statements in the Whitehead and Perry study that were used to label someone as a Christian nationalist if they agreed with them. One of the statements was, “The federal government should advocate Christian values.” But what if by that you mean, as Cooper-White has already mentioned, “the gospel vision of justice and compassion?” Do people who want their government to reflect those values, including Cooper-White, have Christian nationalist tendencies? Another one of the statements was, “The success of the United States is part of God’s plan,” but there are different ways to interpret that statement. Some Christians believe that the success of the United States is part of God’s plan simply because it occurred under a sovereign God. America’s success is part of God’s plan, and if America fails tomorrow, that will be part of God’s plan, as well.

I do not mean to gainsay Cooper-White, because she does have a point about the damage to our country done by some (but not all) Christians’ uncritical entanglement with right-wing politics, and especially their slavish devotion to the undeniably controversial figure of Donald Trump. In a section of Chapter 1 headlined “How Christian is Christian Nationalism?” she again quotes Whitehead and Perry, who observe that, “Christian nationalism is rarely concerned with instituting explicitly ‘Christ-like’ policies, or even policies reflecting New Testament ethics at all.” (p. 16). Quite so, but I am hesitant to go as far as Whitehead and Perry (and Cooper-White) go in lumping Evangelicalism, white nationalism, and Christian nationalism all together. Part of my hesitation is because I grew up in the milieu of white, southern, Evangelical religion myself, though my current religious views as an Episcopalian are probably closer to Pamela Cooper-White’s, who is an Episcopal priest. Therefore, I look at Evangelical subculture as someone who is familiar with it from the inside, while Cooper-White writes as an outsider looking in, attempting to understand. Nevertheless, she is correct in her critique of Christian nationalism being more about right-wing politics (which Whitehead and Perry mislabel as political conservatism).

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