Christian Nationalism, Religious Pluralism, and the 2024 Election
Robert P. Jones
Public Religion Research Insitute (PRRI)
Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Time: 5 - 6:30pm
Location: Gasson 100 in-person / Webinar virtual (register here)
Co-sponsored with the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning.
Is America a pluralistic democracy, or is it a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians? These competing visions of the nation have divided us throughout our history. Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, will discuss his New York Times bestselling book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, which returns to the fateful year when a little-known church doctrine emerged that shaped the way five centuries of European Christians would understand the “discovered” world and the people who populated it. This reframing of American origins exposes the deep historical roots of white Christian nationalism--a hierarchical worldview of God-ordained dominance that is correlated with antisemitic, anti-immigrant, and Islamophobic attitudes, along with denials of systemic racism and an insistence on patriarchal gender roles. Jones explores how the rise of white Christian nationalism today is not just about our partisan divides, but about the future of a pluralistic democracy in the U.S.
Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). He is the author of The New York Times bestselling book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future. Jones writes regularly on politics, culture, and religion for The Atlantic, TIME, Religion News Service, and other outlets. He is frequently featured in major national media, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others. He is also the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award; and author of The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Jones writes weekly at White Too Long, a newsletter for those dedicated to the work of truth-telling, repair, and healing from the legacy of white supremacy in American Christianity. He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Emory University and an M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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An article from CNN discusses the many ways that White Christian nationalism is a threat to American democracy. Journalist John Blake hones in on the ways that this harmful ideology impacts Evangelicals of color. While “Evangelical” and “Christian nationalist” are not synonymous, many People of Color that belong to Evangelical churches feel as though the two terms are often equated. The majority of Evangelicals in the United States are not actually white. Black Americans identify with Evangelical churches at a higher rate than White Americans, there is a quickly-growing population of Latinx Evangelicals, and most students in Evangelical student associations at competitive universities are Asian-American. White Christian nationalism is rooted in racist ideology, but that does not mean that these individuals should control the narrative of Evangelical Christianity and render Evangelicals of color invisible in their own churches.