Baptizing America

they found White evangelicals to be the religious group most embracing of Christian Nationalism with 64% categorized as adherents or sympathizers, one-third of White mainline Protestants also matched that profile.

PRRI in 2023 found that 31% of White evangelicals agreed that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” That made evangelicals the religious group most likely to agree with needing political violence. But White mainline Protestants were second at 25%.

Republicanism is the religion, and they’ve been fighting for that for at least 25 years—just to turn it into a religion. So that it doesn’t matter what they do—and let’s be honest, Trump is probably one of the worst humans in the whole universe—my dad will never be able to do anything other than be on this “religion team” because he’s told that it’

What it means to be evangelical is being radically remade. It used to be that when many people thought about evangelicalism, they conjured up an image of a fiery preacher imploring them to accept Jesus. Now the data indicate that more and more Americans are conflating evangelicalism with Republicanism—and melding two forces to create a movement tha

one way of understanding Christian Nationalism is that the freedom democracy affords has been used to create a society that its purveyors believe neglects God’s blessing and desires. Thus, the authoritarian turn is justified to correct these abuses democracy allows and return the United States to their understanding of the righteous path.

Christian ethicist David Gushee warns that when reactionary “Christians believe themselves to be losing significant cultural influence, facing moral or political threats to their families or institutions, and being offered the opportunity to (re)gain cultural and political power, they can prove susceptible to authoritarian, antidemocratic, Christia

consequences.23 Instead,

The design of the Christian flag occurred in 1897. As the story goes, when a guest speaker failed to show up for Sunday School at the Coney Island Congregational Church (also known as Brighton Chapel) in Brooklyn, New York, a local leader gave an impromptu speech. Noticing an American flag draped over the corner of the pulpit, Charles Overton used

That means they aren’t just offering a kind of two kingdoms theology, acknowledging citizenship obligations to both an early and heavenly realm. Rather, the congregations symbolically say which kingdom they really follow, and which they find subservient or secondary at best.