Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 2018, 79:2 147–171 doi: 10.1093/socrel/srx070 Advance Access Publication 25 January 2018
Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election
Clemson University
Samuel L. Perry University of Oklahoma
Joseph O. Baker East Tennessee State University
Why did Americans vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election? Social scientists have proposed a variety of explanations, including economic dissatisfaction, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. The current study establishes that, independent of these influences, voting for Trump was, at least for many Americans, a symbolic defense of the United States’ perceived Christian heritage. Data from a national probability sample of Americans surveyed soon after the 2016 election shows that greater adherence to Christian nationalist ideology was a robust predictor of voting for Trump, even after controlling for economic dissatisfaction, sexism, anti-black prejudice, anti-Muslim refugee attitudes, and anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as measures of religion, sociodemographics, and political identity more generally. These findings indicate that Christian nationalist ideology—although correlated with a variety of class-based, sexist, racist, and ethnocentric views—is not synonymous with, reducible to, or strictly epiphenomenal of such views. Rather, Christian nationalism operates as a unique and independent ideology that can influence political actions by calling forth a defense of mythological narratives about America’s distinctively Christian heritage and future. Key words: Christian nationalism; 2016 presidential election; Donald Trump; voting; xenophobia; Islamophobia; sexism.
*Direct correspondence to Andrew L. Whitehead, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, Clemson University, 132 Brackett Hall, Clemson, SC 29634, USA. E-mail: alw6@clemson.edu. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals. permissions@oup.com.
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Andrew L. Whitehead*