Andrew WhiteheadTwo years ago today violent insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol. While white Christian nationalism was not the only explanation, it remains an important one that must not be overlooked.
A 🧵
Since that day, I and others have spent a lot of thinking & writing about what happened and how white Christian nationalism tilled and fertilized the ground for violence to take root and ultimately bloom.
My colleague Sam Perry & I wrote this soon after the insurrection.
https://time.com/6052051/anti-democratic-threat-christian-nationalism/
We wrote this column at the 1-year anniversary of the insurrection. It highlights the ongoing threats we face as a nation, and how the violence we saw on 1/6/20 is being reimagined by those who seek to undermine a pluralistic democratic society.
Leading up to the midterms in 2022, I wrote this piece highlighting the 3 threats Christian nationalism poses to the US.
These threats remain. We ignore them at our collective peril.
https://time.com/6214724/christian-nationalism-threats-united-states/
One of major changes we've seen since the days following 1/6/20 is the contestation of the label "Christian nationalist." Soon after 1/6 many denied CN even existed. W/in a year, they downplayed it. Soon after, some were openly embracing the identity.
Ultimately, white Christian nationalism isn't going away. We wrote about new data that help us understand why.
https://time.com/6233438/white-christian-nationalism-isnt-going-away/
I was also excited to participate with a group of wonderful scholars, religious leaders, and activists to create the most complete account of how Christian nationalism contributed to 1/6 and the fallout after.
As we continue to make sense of our current cultural and political moment, there are 4 elements that I think Christian nationalism overlaps with that not only made 1/6 possible, but portend future threats to a peaceful, democratic society.
Element #1: Christian nationalism is strongly associated with believing the "Big Lie," that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump (despite no evidence)
Element #2: Christian nationalism is strongly associated with support for political violence.
Element #3: Christian nationalism is strongly associated with support for QAnon and conspiratorial thinking.
Element #4: Christian nationalism is strongly associated with information sources that routinely support all of the above elements.
Should we continue to see white Christian nationalism as a threat to democracy? Yes. Why?
Data collected by Sam Perry soon after 1/6 and then 6 months later shows that Americans who embrace Christian nationalism grew *more* supportive of those who stormed the Capitol.
Pair this with the tendency of Americans who embrace Christian nationalism to want to limit access to voting to the "worthy" few (people like them), and we can see that CN is interested in democracy only to the extent it returns favorable results.
All this to say, we need to remember 1/6 for exactly what it was: a violent insurrection that threatened the very core of what we imagine the US to be--a country for the people, by the people.
White Christian nationalism demands a country for *a* particular people only.