How do measures of Christian nationalism perform differently across racial and religious subgroups in national surveys?
Executive summary
National surveys find that raw levels of agreement with Christian nationalist items vary more by religious denomination and church attendance than by race alone, with white evangelical Protestants showing the highest rates of endorsement while Black and Hispanic Christians often register similar item-level scores but translate those scores into different political attitudes; PRRI’s large American Values Atlas and related studies underscore both the uniformity of some measures across racial groups and the sharply divergent political consequences of those measures by race [1] [2] [3]. Scholars warn that the same survey items can mean different things to respondents of different racial and religious backgrounds, producing “white” and “nonwhite” Christian nationalism profiles that lead to different policy preferences and partisan behaviors [4] [5].
1. How national surveys operationalize Christian nationalism—and their strengths
Major efforts, especially PRRI’s American Values Atlas, measure Christian nationalism with a multi‑item battery about Christianity’s relationship to American identity and government, fielded to unusually large samples (more than 22,000 adults) and weighted to demographic benchmarks to permit state‑level and subgroup analysis [6] [1] [2]. That scale allows researchers to report fine‑grained patterns—by denomination, church attendance, party, and state—while acknowledging standard survey limits such as question wording and weighting decisions that shape results [1] [7].
2. What the numbers say about race, religion and raw support
Across PRRI reports and related work, there is “little variation” in aggregate support for Christian nationalist items by race or ethnicity when taken alone, whereas religious identity and practice are far stronger predictors: white evangelical Protestants are the most likely to qualify as adherents or sympathizers, and weekly churchgoers are disproportionately represented among adherents [1] [2] [8]. PRRI press statements and releases emphasize that while race alone does not fully explain endorsement rates, evangelicals racialized as white and Hispanic Protestants show especially high levels of support [3] [8].
3. Where race reshapes what Christian nationalism predicts politically
Multiple studies find a crucial interactive effect: when people of different races endorse the same Christian nationalist items, the political correlates differ—White adherents tend to align those beliefs with more reactionary, exclusionary positions, whereas Black and Hispanic respondents who endorse similar items often maintain more progressive stances on matters of racial inequality, religious pluralism, and inclusion [5] [4] [9]. PRRI likewise reports that Christian nationalist beliefs “produce divergent political outcomes by race, particularly among Black Americans,” underscoring that identical survey responses do not imply identical political meaning or behavior [3].
4. Measurement pitfalls and interpretive alternatives
Scholars and commentators caution that item batteries capture a mix of identity, theology, and political posture; some Black and Latino Christians may express pride in Christianity’s civic role without endorsing the racialized, exclusionary program that scholars associate with “white Christian nationalism,” and self‑identification versus ideological items can yield different subgroup patterns [4] [5]. The New York Times and academic critiques argue journalists and researchers sometimes conflate general desire for Christian influence with the specific, racially inflected project labeled “Christian nationalism,” a conflation that can obscure diversity within churches and across racial groups [10] [4].
5. Political and research implications—what to watch for next
For policymakers and analysts, the key takeaway is caution: headline percentages mask the conditional effects of race and religion—high item agreement among nonwhite Christians does not automatically portend the same political alignments seen among white evangelicals, and large surveys must continue disaggregating interactions of race, denomination, and partisanship to avoid misleading generalizations [1] [2]. At the same time, PRRI and other researchers flag robust links between Christian nationalist measures and Republican identification, support for Trump, and other authoritarian‑leaning attitudes among certain subgroups, meaning the social and political consequences of these beliefs remain consequential even as their meanings vary by race [2] [7].