Social Problems, 2020, 0, 1–22 doi: 10.1093/socpro/spaa002 Article
Joshua T. Davis and Samuel L. Perry University of Oklahoma
A BS TR A C T Recent studies demonstrate that white Americans who adhere to “Christian nationalism”-an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity and American civic life-tend to hold authoritarian, exclusionary, and overtly prejudicial attitudes, particularly regarding ethno-racial minorities. We use data from the 1996 and 2014 General Social Surveys and consider relative political tolerance toward old-fashioned racists (i.e., persons who believe black Americans are genetically inferior) compared to other historically stigmatized groups, including anti-religionists, communists, militarists, and homosexuals. Viewing Christian identity as essential to American civic belonging is among the strongest predictors of whites’ being politically intolerant of all stigmatized groups, racists included. However, when we examine relative tolerance toward racists compared to other stigmatized groups, white Christian nationalists show greater tolerance than other whites. This effect is distinct from personal religiosity which is associated with lower relative tolerance toward racists. Additionally, we find both time and gender moderate the association between white Christian nationalism and relative tolerance toward racists. Findings ultimately demonstrate that white Americans who adhere to Christian nationalism exhibit authoritarian tendenciesexpressing lower tolerance for all groups considered-while making greater relative allowance for old-fashioned racists, who may be allies in the task of social control and coercion. K E Y W O R D S : white Christian nationalism; racism; racists; political tolerance; Trump.
Two prominent ideological commitments characterize the majority of white Americans who elected Donald Trump and continue to support him today.1 The first is antipathy toward racial and ethnoreligious minorities such as black Americans, immigrants, and Muslims (Ekins 2017; Major, Blodorn, and Blascovich 2018; Schaffner, MacWilliams, and Nteta 2018; Stewart 2018). The second is Christian nationalism, an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity and American civic life (Whitehead, Perry, and Baker 2018; see also Gorski 2017a; Sides 2017; Stewart 2018).
The authors contributed equally and are listed alphabetically. We gratefully acknowledge the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. Direct all correspondence to Joshua T. Davis, Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma, 780 Van Vleet Oval, Kaufman Hall, Norman, OK 73019; email: jdavis@ou.edu. Data for replicating this study are freely available from NORC or The Association of Religion Data Archives www.thearda.com, and coding specifications are available from the authors upon request. 1 To be sure, scholars in the past two years have also identified sexist/patriarchal values (Schaffner et al. 2018) as contributing to Trump support, as well as economic dissatisfaction, though the latter factor seems less influential than previously thought (Schaffner et al. 2018; Whitehead et al. 2018). C The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. V
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
1
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/socpro/advance-article/doi/10.1093/socpro/spaa002/5810532 by guest on 08 August 2020
White Christian Nationalism and Relative Political Tolerance for Racists