By Brooklyn Walker “Christian nationalism is, at its heart, White supremacy” has almost reached the status of truism in the field of religion and politics. Christian nationalists are more tolerant of racists, support racially-coded spending, and believe that reverse discrimination is a significant problem. This desire for strict racial boundaries trickles all the way down into private life, with Christian nationalists disapproving of interracial marriage and adoption. In a recent article, I showed that even just the sight of Black people was enough to trigger prejudiced people to become more C ..read more

By Paul A. Djupe, Denison University The cycle has started again and, indeed, has come full circle. By the time Family Research Council (FRC) president Tony Perkins sat down for an interview with Politico in 2018, he knew about Stormy Daniels and the payoff, the Access Hollywood tape, and more and, yet, he gave Trump a “mulligan.” But he went further. When asked to affirm Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, he cast them aside for Trump: “You know, you only have two cheeks. Look, Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.” So, it’s no surpr ..read more

The PRRI Public Fellows program, founded in 2017, promotes and supports interdisciplinary public scholarship through a cohort of emerging scholar-leaders from across the social sciences, humanistic social sciences, and the humanities. The program expanded in the academic year 2021-2022 as part of PRRI’s Religion and Renewing Democracy Initiative with support from the Mellon Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation. For the 2024-2025 fellowship year, the program will include 15 diverse scholars working across the five major areas of PRRI’s work, including (1) religious, racial, a ..read more

By Danielle Lussier (Grinnell College) and Mohammed Iqbal Ahnaf (University of Gadjah Mada) [Image note: Syuhada Mosque, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, author photograph] In contrast to popular assumptions that mosques are a space where religious values become politically mobilized in Muslim-majority contexts, our research newly published open access in Politics & Religion finds that religious leaders in Indonesia are not a driving force for the politicization of religion. Rather, they largely seek to keep worship spaces politically neutral. Worship Spaces and Electoral Mobilization In Indonesia ..read more

By Paul A. Djupe, Denison University This week the seven mountain mandate (7MM) was in the news as New Apostolic Reformation apostle Lance Wallnau is warming up Project 19 – an attempt to mobilize Christians to swing some key urban counties for Trump in 2024. Project 19 is the front lines of “the battle for the mountain of government.” It coincides with the “Courage Tour,” Wallnau’s current road show, which together probably best describes how the latest incarnation of the Christian Right engages in political campaigning. Though it has older roots, the 7MM is Wallnau’s creation, articulated in ..read more

By Brooklyn Walker and Donald P. Haider-Markel There’s no question that the United States is changing. Historically, most representations of the country have assumed that Americans are overwhelmingly White and overwhelmingly Christian. But in the past 50 years, the US has become dramatically less White and less Christian. At the same time, we see evidence that White Christians are not doing OK. Many White Christians support the idea of Christian nationalism, which claims that Christianity should exert dominance by defining American political institutions and policy. They also fear that their r ..read more

By Paul A. Djupe, Denison University [Image credit: Anabaptist World.] All it took was some imprecise language from a Politico reporter to fire up the outrage machine. If it means that the rights and liberties of the Constitution were granted by God, then “Christian nationalism” is a smear applied to the broadest swath of the population that simply associates democracy with godliness. But it is only a smear if they don’t believe it. The more important question, therefore, is what Christian nationalism means to believers. Does it mean simply that the United States as constituted is fulfilling a ..read more

By Anand E. Sokhey and Paul A. Djupe ——> Order online for a 30% discount using code PENN-SOKHEYDJUPE30 <—— At a campaign appearance at the CPAC conference last month, Trump told “the choir” that conservatives and people of faith would be “hunted” if Joe Biden was elected to another term. On the one hand, this is not novel talk for the Trump years, but certainly is quite a bit different from when Ronald Reagan told a group of evangelicals in 1980, “I know that you can’t endorse me, but I only brought that up because I want you to know that I endorse you and what you’re doing.” On the othe ..read more

By Paul A. Djupe (Denison University) and Jacob R. Neiheisel (SUNY-Buffalo) “2024 is our final battle.” “The Seal is broken by what they’ve done…” “the sick political class that hates our country.” “There is a demonic portal above the White House.” “The Satanic Elites have a plan, but so do we.” The vernacular of politics in the U.S. in the Trump era is easy to dismiss as a hyperbolic and dark perspective consonant with Trump’s vision of American carnage from his inaugural address. But we believe it is more than that and marks a sharp break from the kinds of rhetoric used by Republican elites ..read more

By Paul A. Djupe, Denison University [Image credit: The Atlantic.] Three years ago, protestors assembled on The Mall in support of the Big Lie that Trump lost the 2020 election because of fraud. They were then turned toward the Capitol with the inspiration from Trump to fight like hell or “you’re not going to have a country anymore.” At this point, of the 1,230 people charged, about 900 people have been found (170) or pleaded (730) guilty to charges related to the insurrection, including a number guilty of seditious conspiracy. Acknowledging that January 6th was an insurrection, that Trump aid ..read more