Kerby Goff, Rice University; Eric Silver, Penn State, and John Iceland, Penn State

The concept of Christian nationalism has taken center stage in many Americans’ minds as either the greatest threat to democracy or its only savior.

Political scientist Eric McDaniel defines Christian nationalism as the belief that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation. “In this view,” according to McDaniel, “America can be governed only by Christians, and the country’s mission is directed by a divine hand.” Why does the idea resonate with some but alarm others?

Scholars often portray Christian nationalism as rooted in a deep-seated desire to exclude non-Christians and people of color from American society. Historians point to a persistent link between racism and Christian nationalism among white Americans throughout U.S. history.

White Christians, however, are not the only ones sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas. Nearly 40% of Black Protestants and 55% of Hispanic Protestants agree with statements such as “being Christian is an important part of being truly American.” Interestingly, over one-third of Muslims agree that the U.S. government should promote Christian moral values but not make it the official religion.

Many who reject Christian nationalism do so because it seems to privilege those white Christian Americans who would like to make conservative Christianity the United States’ official religion. Conversely, supporters argue that the future of the U.S. depends upon loyalty to God and to staying true to the country’s Christian past. They contend that since the nation’s founding, a Christian influence in government and societal institutions such as education and health care has been and remains essential to sustaining religious, political and economic stability.

While racial, religious and political tribalism appear to influence who supports and who rejects Christian nationalism, our own research suggests there are other factors at play, specifically moral differences. We set out to understand the role that different moral values play in shaping support for and opposition to Christian nationalism.

Our study drew on the most influential social science approach to understanding moral values: moral foundations theory.

Moral differences

Moral foundations theory states that humans evolved to possess six primary moral intuitions that shape moral judgments – care for the vulnerable, fairness in how people are treated, loyalty to in-groups, respect for authority, reverence for the sacred, and the safeguarding of individual liberty.

A vast amount of research finds that liberals endorse the first two foundations, care and fairness, but score lower on the rest.

Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to score equally on all six foundations. This suggests their moral judgments often involve balancing a desire to be compassionate with a desire to safeguard the stability of the social order.

Moral foundations theory has been used extensively by social scientists to study hot-button issues such as crime control, policing, vaccine resistance, immigration, same-sex marriage, abortion and more.

For example, research finds that prioritizing care for the vulnerable, which is most pronounced among liberals, is linked to reduced acceptance of police use of force. Conservatives, who also value respect for authority, often favor “law and order” even when it involves use of force.

What our research found

With moral foundations theory as our guide, we analyzed Christian nationalism using a 2021 national survey of 1,125 U.S. adults conducted by YouGov, a global opinion research organization. We measured respondents’ moral foundations with the moral foundations questionnaire, which has been used extensively by researchers across numerous academic disciplines.

To measure Christian nationalism, we asked respondents whether they agreed with six questions, such as whether the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation, advocate Christian values, allow prayer in public schools and allow religious symbols in public spaces, to list a few.

What we found surprised us.

Support for Christian nationalism was most strongly linked to the moral foundations of loyalty, sanctity and liberty, but not to the authority foundation. We expected Christian nationalism to appeal to individuals who are enamored of authority, providing a rationale to their support for authoritarian leaders. But in our study, respect for authority did not distinguish those who supported Christian nationalism from those who opposed it.

We also found that support for Christian nationalism was linked to having a weaker fairness foundation. But it was not related to the strength of one’s care foundation.

We conclude that differences over Christian nationalism emerge not because some people care about the harm Christian nationalism could bring to non-Christian Americans, while others don’t. Rather, our findings suggest that those who support Christian nationalism do so because they are more sensitive to violations of loyalty, sanctity and liberty, and less sensitive to violations of fairness.

Our findings also revealed that support for Christian nationalism isn’t merely about racism or being ultrareligious, as critics often suggest. We accounted for endorsements of anti-Black stereotypes and religiosity. Yet, moral foundations remained the best predictors of Christian nationalist beliefs, even after taking into account these critical variables.

2 moral approaches to Christianity in the US

The Christian nationalism scale we and others have used combines several different beliefs about Christianity’s role in society. So we also examined how each of the six items in our Christian nationalism scale related to each of the six moral foundations. We found two important patterns.

First, we found that the Christian nationalist desire to bring church and state closer together was most prominent among those with strong loyalty and sanctity foundations and a weak fairness foundation. This means that people who advocate for a Christian state largely do so out of loyalty – specifically, loyalty to God – and out of a desire to adhere to God’s requirements for society, as they understand them.

In line with this, support is also linked to a desire to protect the sanctity of the nation’s Christian heritage. Those who oppose bringing church and state closer together do so out of a sense that such a union would be unfair.

Second, we found that the desire to allow prayer in schools and religious symbols in public spaces was strongest among those with pronounced liberty and sanctity moral foundations. This likely means that people who favor public religious expression, but not a union of church and state, do so because they see individual religious expression as a sacred national ideal.

All in all, our study shows that support for or opposition to Christian nationalism is not merely due to religious, political or racial identities and prejudices, as many believe, but is rather due to entrenched moral differences between the two camps.

Building solidarity through diverse moral concerns

Moral divides are not necessarily impassable. It’s possible that understanding these diverging moral concerns may help build bridges between those who are sympathetic to and those who are skeptical toward Christian nationalism.

America’s founders conceived of fairness and liberty as central to a democratic society. And these values have fueled loyalty to a robust national identity ever since.

Our research suggests that the controversy surrounding Christian nationalism is driven not by a lack of moral concern by sympathizers or critics but by their different moral priorities. We believe that understanding such differences as morally rooted can open the door for mutual understanding and productive debate.

Kerby Goff, Associate Director of Research at the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University; Eric Silver, Professor of Sociology & Criminology, Penn State, and John Iceland, Professor of Sociology and Demography, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jeremy P. Shapiro, Case Western Reserve University

I began practicing psychotherapy during the Reagan administration. Thirty years went by before distress about politics became a clinical issue for any of my clients.

I remember the moment it first happened: There was a long voicemail from a distraught woman requesting therapy for anxiety and depression in reaction to the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump. I listened twice to make sure I hadn’t missed something. I hadn’t. There were no other issues. This woman wanted therapy for political distress.

That was a new one for me and every therapist I knew. But now I see no sign of this clinical challenge abating.

Political polarization in the U.S. is at the highest level ever measured. Growing majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say they consider members of the other party to be unintelligent, dishonest and immoral.

What I’m calling political distress is a bipartisan mental health problem. It is based on a belief that, because the country is in the hands of bad leaders, awful things might happen. Many people experience intense fear about what the other side might do. Both Republicans and Democrats have experienced this anguish, but it peaks at different times for the two parties, depending on who won the last election.

We psychotherapists like to base our interventions on research-based strategies that have been vetted in clinical trials or, if not that, at least strategies grounded in the clinical expertise of master therapists who wrote classic books. There’s none of that for how to deal with political distress.

But therapists cannot tell a client in distress that future research is needed before we can help. Instead, we pull from what is known about how best to handle related issues. Here’s the advice I’m sharing with my clients who are upset about the way the world is going.

Taking a longer view

Information about American history is relevant to political distress because, psychologically, people evaluate their situations by comparing them with anchors or norms. You compare current dangers and threats with what you’ve faced and survived in the past.

A Democrat comparing today’s United States with the country a decade ago may feel gloomy. But broader comparisons can produce a more grounded, calming perspective.

The U.S. has faced major trials and tribulations over the course of its history. The country has proven itself to be a resilient democracy. Basic information about the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II yields a sense that the present political moment is not the only perilous time our republic has ever faced.

Wisdom of the Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer is an effective summary of research on coping. As I discuss in my book “Finding Goldilocks,” the well-known invocation identifies two basic strategies and tells you when to use which one. People need the strength to change what can be changed and the serenity to accept what cannot. Political distress, like many stressors, calls for a combination of both tactics.

Doing what you can means funneling political anxiety into political actions, including voting, volunteering, donating money and serving as a poll worker. Can one person’s actions make a difference? They can make one person’s worth of difference. You can’t do everything, but you can do something.

In addition, taking action about a problem, even if it does not produce a solution, often reduces distress, especially if it brings you together with like-minded people.

Once you’ve done what you can, it’s important to acknowledge how much is beyond your control: The whole world doesn’t rest on your shoulders alone. Then you can in good conscience turn your attention to the good things in your own personal life.

It helps to limit your consumption of political news; past a certain point, you’re not learning anything new and just fueling your agitation.

The best things in life aren’t political

One basic tool of cognitive therapy for anxiety is asking the question, “What is the worst thing that could plausibly happen?” The purpose of this question is not to get anxious people thinking about worst-case scenarios – they’re doing that already – but to move their thought process forward to a picture of how they could survive their worst fear. This is a strangely effective form of reassurance.

Democrats believe Donald Trump’s second administration will hurt people. But with important exceptions – such as undocumented immigrants who could be deported – when many people try to picture exactly how their lives will be damaged in specific, concrete, serious ways, they usually do not come up with much.

This does not mean nothing bad will happen. It does mean you likely can cope with whatever does. While Trump’s policies might be unfortunate and even infuriating for those on the other side of the aisle, they are unlikely to be disastrous on an immediate, day-to-day level for large groups of people.

A very broad perspective will remind you that democracy is a rarity in world history. For most of civilization, people have lived in monarchies or tyrannies of some sort, and most of them managed to be OK.

I’m not suggesting that people disengage from the political world. I believe it’s important to stand up for what you believe is right. My advice is not to put on your rose-colored glasses and withdraw into your own safe space, the rest of the world be damned.

But the main sources of human well-being are family, friends, meaningful work, hobbies, the arts, nature, spirituality and acts of kindness. None of these depend on political systems. We can cope with political distress by falling back on the best things in life.

Jeremy P. Shapiro, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Joe Árvai, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

After four years of U.S. progress on efforts to deal with climate change under Joe Biden, Donald Trump’s return to the White House is swiftly swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction.

On his first day back, Trump declared a national energy emergency, directing agencies to use any emergency powers available to boost oil and gas production, despite U.S. oil and gas production already being near record highs and leading the world. He revoked Biden’s orders that had withdrawn large areas of the Arctic and the U.S. coasts from oil and natural gas leasing. Among several other executive orders targeting Biden’s pro-climate policies, Trump also began the process of pulling the U.S. out of the international Paris climate agreement – a repeat of a move he made in 2017, which Biden reversed.

None of Trump’s moves to sideline climate change as an important domestic and foreign policy issue should come as a surprise.

During his first term as president, 2017-2021, Trump repealed the Obama-era Clean Power Plan for reducing power plant emissions, falsely claimed that wind turbines cause cancer, and promised to “end the war on coal” and boost the highly polluting energy source. He once declared that climate change was a hoax perpetuated by China.

Since being elected again in November, Trump has again chosen Cabinet members who support the fossil fuel industry.

But it’s important to remember that while Donald Trump is singing from the Republican Party songbook when it comes to climate change, the music was written long before he came along.

Money, lies and lobbying

In 1979, the scientific consensus that climate change posed a significant threat to the environment, the economy and society as we had come to appreciate them began to emerge.

The Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate, commissioned by the U.S. National Research Council’s climate research board, concluded then that if carbon dioxide continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, there was “no reason to doubt that climate changes will result.” Since then, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by about 25%, and temperatures have risen with it.

The report also concluded that land use changes and the burning of fossil fuels, both of which could be subject to regulation, were behind climate change and that a “wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late.”

But none of this came as a surprise to the oil industry. Working behind the scenes since the 1950s, researchers working for companies such as Exxon, Shell and Chevron had made their leaders well aware that the widespread use of their product was already causing climate change. And coinciding with the Ad Hoc Study Group’s work in the late 1970s, oil companies started making large donations to national and state-level candidates and politicians they viewed as friendly to the interests of the industry.

The oil industry also implemented a disinformation campaign designed to cast doubt about climate science and, in many cases, about their own internal research. The strategy, ripped from the pages of the tobacco industry playbook, involved “emphasizing uncertainty” to cast doubt on the science and calling for “balanced” science to sow confusion.

This strategy was helped by the creation and financial backing of lobbying organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Global Climate Coalition, both of which played central roles in spreading falsehoods and casting doubt on the scientific consensus about climate change.

By 1997, when 84 countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, the oil industry had built an effective apparatus for actively discrediting climate science and opposing policies and actions that could help slow climate change. So even though President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1998, the United States Congress refused to ratify it.

Partisan politics and the psychology of belonging

The Kyoto Protocol experience demonstrated that the lobbying and disinformation tactics used by oil companies to discredit climate science could, on their own, be highly effective. But they alone didn’t shift climate change from a scientific question to an issue of partisan politics. Two additional ingredients for completing the transition were still absent.

The first of these came during the election campaign of 2000. At the time, the coverage of the major news networks converged on dividing the country into red states, which lean right, and blue states, which lean left.

This shift, though seemingly innocuous at the time, made politics even less about individual issues and more like a team sport.

Rather than asking people to construct their voting preferences based on a wide range of issues – from abortion and gun rights to immigration and climate change – votes could be earned by reminding and reinforcing for voters which team they should be cheering for: Republicans or Democrats.

This shift also made it easier for the fossil fuel industry to keep climate change off state and federal policy agendas. Oil companies could focus their money, lobbying and disinformation on Republican-controlled states and swing states where it would make the biggest difference. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, for example, that it was a red state senator, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who brought a snowball to the Senate floor in February 2015 to “prove” that the planet was not warming.

The final ingredient had everything to do with human nature. Building on the analogy of a rivalry in sports, the red vs. blue state dynamic tapped into the psychological and social forces that shape our sense of belonging and identity.

Subtle but powerful social pressures within groups can make it harder for people to accept ideas, evidence and arguments from those outside the group. Likewise, these within-group pressures lead to preferential treatment for members who are in alignment with the group’s perspectives, up to and including placing greater trust in those who appear to represent the group’s collective interests.

Within-group pressures also create stronger feelings of belonging among those who conform to the group’s internal norms, such as which political positions to support. In turn, stronger feelings of belonging serve to further reinforce the norms.

Where to from here?

Opposing or supporting action on climate change has become part of millions of Americans’ cultural identity.

However, doubling down on climate policies that are in lockstep with our own political leanings will serve only to strengthen the divide.

A more effective solution would be to set aside political differences and invest in building coalitions across the political spectrum. That starts by focusing on shared values, such as keeping children healthy and communities safe. In the wake of devastating fires in my own city, Los Angeles, these shared values have risen to the top of the local political agenda regardless of who my neighbors and I voted for. It’s clear to all of us that the consequences of climate change are very much in the here and now.

Natural disasters across the U.S. have also brought the risks of climate change home for many people across the country. This, in turn, has led to bipartisan action on climate change at the local and regional levels, and between government and the private sector.

The U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 governors from both parties who are working to advance efforts to slow climate change, is one such example. Another example is the many U.S. companies with ties to government that participate in the First Movers Coalition, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industries that have proven difficult to decarbonize, such as steel, transportation and shipping.

But, unfortunately for climate action, examples like these are still an exception rather than the norm. And this is a problem because the current climate challenge is much bigger than a single city, state or even country. The past year, 2024, was the hottest on record. Many parts of the world experienced extreme heat waves and storms.

However, every movement has to start somewhere. Continuing to chip away at the partisan barriers that separate Americans on climate change will require even more coalition building that sets an example by being ambitious, productive and visible.

With the new Trump administration poised to target the recent progress made on climate change while preparing executive actions that will increase greenhouse gas emissions, there’s no better time for this work than the present.

Joe Árvai, Director of the Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability | Professor of Psychology, Biological Sciences, and Environmental Studies, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.