Christian nationalism's support is strongest in rural, conservative states
In states including North Dakota, Mississippi, Alabama and West Virginia, half or nearly half of residents support the view that Christians should dominate all areas of American society, including its laws, according to a new survey about the influence of Christian nationalism by the Public Religion Research Institute, based on interviews with more than 22,000 people.
The nonprofit's latest research mapped support across all 50 states for a set of religious beliefs that used to belong to the fringes of Christianity in the United States.
Nationally, about three in ten Americans believe, or at least sympathize with, ideas that claim the U.S. is a Christian nation and that the country's laws should draw from Christian values.
"But they're about a third of the Republican Party, so they have this outsized megaphone," said Robert P. Jones, PRRI's president and founder and author of the recent book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.
He says Christian nationalist beliefs have become a defining feature of former President Donald Trump's political movement.
Other examples of the movement's ties to power include Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Tom Parker, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who recently ruled frozen embryos have the same legal protections as people.
Jones said about two decades ago, ideas about the need for dominion over American society were mostly found in the charismatic Pentecostal edges of white evangelicalism. Today, white evangelical Protestants are the most supportive of Christian nationalist views, though those views are also popular among Hispanic Protestants and some followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to the survey.
"At the heart of that movement is this thing called the Seven Mountains Mandate, and it is this idea that Christians are to take control of all sectors of society, government, even media and entertainment," Jones said. Chief Justice Parker specifically cited that language in a podcast released the same day as the ruling he authored about in vitro fertilization was released.
Other policy priorities for Christian nationalists include restrictions on abortion access, LGBTQ rights and strict immigration limits, Jones said. PRRI also found they are roughly twice as likely as other Americans to believe political violence can be justified.
"From that worldview, there really aren't political opponents. What there are is existential enemies. And I think that's also kind of poison to the fabric of democracy in the country," said Jones.
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