Understanding the Threat of White Christian Nationalism: Important New Report from PRRI and Brookings

On 8 February, Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and Brookings Institution released the results of an important national survey entitled "A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture." As PRRI's press release announcing the report states,

The U.S. Has a White Christian Problem, and It's Imperiling American Democracy: My Commentary on New PRRI Report re: American Attitudes Towards Immigrants

Today, Public Religion Research Group (PRRI) published results of a study it has just done entitled "Are Immigrants a Threat? Most Americans Don’t Think So, but Those Receptive to the 'Threat' Narrative Are Predictably More Anti-immigrant." Some key findings of this report:

Robert P. Jones on Recent Elections and Abortion Issue, and My Question Again: Whither U.S. Catholic Leaders Now?

I headed the posting I just made about two valuable upcoming discussions of white Christian nationalism in the U.S. with a video from Joy Ann Reid's MSNBC "ReidOut" program. The video features a discussion between Reid, journalist Tim Miller, and Robert P. Jones of PRRI. In the video, Jones talks about how drastically out of step the Republican party, with its plans for a national ban of abortion, is with the American public, as only 1 in 10 Americans supports such a ban. 

As Election Day Arrives, Warnings, Predictions, Alarm Bells

Alarm bell mechanism, from "Electric Burglar Alarm," The Popular Science Monthly 18,1 (November 1880), p. 59 

As Joyce Vance says, it has become conventional to say that democracy is on the ballot at when elections are held in the US at this point in history, but this conventional wisdom may be true a fortiori this election cycle: 

Structural racism beliefs by party affiliation, 2022 PRRI American Values Survey

Philip Bump comments on an ad just released by Steven Miller’s America First political group. Miller was an official in the Trump administration who played a key role in some of its most savage anti-immigrant policies. America First's ad claims that racism against white Americans is a bigger concern than discrimination against racial minorities.

Robert P. Jones on 2022 PRRI American Values Survey: White Christian Nationalist Beliefs Now Affirmed by Half of Republicans and Half of White Evangelicals

Robert P. Jones explains the significance of key findings of the latest American Values Survey, released this past week by his PRRI group: 

In the News: PRRI American Values Survey, Assassination Attempt on Pelosi, Alito's Victimization Claims

Photo of stack of newspapers by Daniel R. Blume, Wikimedia Commons

1. Philip Bump writes, 

As the 2016 election approached, it became clear that immigration and often-but-not-always submerged concerns about race were a strong motivation for his supporters. The great America for which his mostly White supporters were nostalgic was one in which there wasn’t a focus on or accommodation for discrimination against Black or gay people.

On Thursday, PRRI released its annual American Values Survey (AVS), asking questions that get at the heart of that political impulse. What it shows is that race, immigration and right-wing politics continue to overlap — and overlap in, at times, alarming ways.

National Catholic Reporter Review of Sarah Posner, Unholy — "Sarah Posner's 'Unholy' implicates Catholics as well as evangelicals"

Here's a review I wrote of Sarah Posner's Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, which appeared in the 2-15 October print edition of National Catholic Reporter and is now also online at the NCR website. It's entitled, "Sarah Posner's 'Unholy' implicates Catholics as well as evangelicals":

Valuable Recent Commentary about Link Between White Supremacy and White Christianity in the U.S.

I'm sorry to have been away for so long. As I noted in a posting some weeks back, we have been dealing with health challenges, and we're hoping that a surgical procedure today will put them behind us. 

Robert P. Jones's White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity — Excerpts Worth Noting

As I did recently with Sarah Posner's new book Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, I'd like to share with you some excerpts from Robert P. Jones's book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2020), which I recently read. This book is very important, as Jones's Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) issues a report today entitled, "Summer Unrest over Racial Injustice Moves the Country, But Not Republicans or White Evangelicals." This reports summarizes recent PRRI polling findings which show that, even as other white Americans are gradually coming to see and admit the depths of racial injustice everywhere in American society, Republicans and white evangelicals — who are to a great extent one and the same — refuse to budge. These groups continue to want to claim that white citizens are the real victims of injustice.

More Valuable Commentary about Robert P. Jones's White Too Long

New interviews with Robert P. Jones keep coming along after the recent publication of his book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, about which I blogged a number of days ago. New interviews and commentary about the book, to which I will keep pointing you as I spot these pieces …. 

Valuable Commentary about Robert P. Jones's White Too Long

As a companion piece to my recent announcement of the publication of Robert P. Jones's book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, here's some valuable commentary about the book, some of it by Robert P. Jones himself:

Robert P. Jones's White Too Long Published Today: A Must-Read Book about American Christianity and White Supremacy

No matter how distracted and enervated I may be at present as we cope with some health issues, I can't let today pass by without noting that a very important book is appearing in print today. This is Robert P. Jones's White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. 

PRRI's Robert P. Jones in Juneteenth Interview: Trump Presidency a "Moment of Reckoning for White Christians"

8 in 10 white evangelicals, 6 in 10 white Catholics & Mormons, 50%+ of all US white Christians, set this nightmare into motion, claiming they voted "pro-life."

We must not forget. Racism + US white Christianity are central to this nightmare. Pretending re: this will not help.

— 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞 𝔻. 𝕃𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕤𝕖𝕪 🌈 (@wdlindsy) February 15, 2019

Today, for Juneteenth, CNN's religion editor Dan Burke has done an interview with Robert P. Jones, founder of Public Religion Research Institute, about his forthcoming book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. The CNN interview is entitled "This is a moment of reckoning on race for white Christians."

Want to Know Why, Even Now, More Than Half of US White Christians Stand with Trump? See Robert P. Jones on GOP's White Christian Strategy

1/ THREAD: For the second time this week, Donald Trump used a church as a photo op. This image released this morning shows the President and First Lady at Saint John Paul II Shrine. What follows is a partial #BodyLanguage#BodyLanguageExpert #EmotionalIntelligence pic.twitter.com/VOSERW2T2L

— Dr. Jack Brown (@DrGJackBrown) June 4, 2020

Three days ago on 4 June, the Public Religion Research Institute published results of a telephone survey PRRI conducted between 21-26 May. The PRRI report is entitled "Trump Favorability Slips Among White Catholic and Non-College Americans During National Unrest."

• Ahmaud Arbery, an African-American man out jogging, was killed in Brunswick, Georgia, 23 February by Gregory and Travis McMichael. Gregory McMichael is a former police officer. 
• Breonna Taylor, an African-American woman, was shot to death by Louisville police officers in her apartment on 13 March; no one has yet been charged in her killing.
• George Floyd, an African-American man making a purchase at a convenience store, was killed by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin on 25 May.

Notes on Gerardo Marti's American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency

I recently read Gerardo Marti's American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), and would like to share some thoughts about that book with you. A key insight of Marti's book is that, in looking at Donald Trump, we Americans are looking in a mirror and seeing our own faces. It is not, as many in the media have wanted to imagine, a fluke that he seized the White House in 2016, riding significant backlash against the nation's first African-American president to do so. This outcome is consistent with ugly currents long present in American history — from the outset of the nation, in fact — that many Americans appear determined not to see.

At Long Last, Christianity Today Lowers the Boom — "It's Time to Call a Spade a Spade" — & Republicans Rage

Christianity Today was founded by Billy Graham, the most prominent evangelical figure in modern history. It is a vehemently anti-choice, conservative publication.

The second it called for Trump's removal, the entire GOP attacked it as "far-left."

THIS IS HOW CULTS THINK.

— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) December 20, 2019

I will publish the second half of Ruth Krall's wonderful essay "Bearing Witness: The First Step in Reconciliation" in the next day or so. Meanwhile, these developments, which have just unfolded, seem to demand commentary — and here are some good pieces I've read in the past two days:

Ed Kilgore on White Evangelicals as Heart of Trump Base: "Committed to a Common Desire to Take America Back to Its Days of Greatness in the 1950s"

In "White Evangelicals Are Still the Heart of Trump's Base," Ed Kilgore comments on new Pew Research Center data that some commentators are erroneously interpreting to mean that white evangelical support for Donald Trump is waning. As Ed Kilgore notes, it's not waning. To the contrary, it remains robust, especially among the most churchgoing and committed of white evangelicals, 70 percent of whom report strong support for Trump.

Yes, More on Catholic MAGA Boys: Conversation White Americans (& Especially White Christians) Refuse to Have, or Why Trump Is in the White House

Nothing has changed, essentially, since Robert P. Jones offered us the analysis of our serious cultural-political-religious crisis in 2016 in the passages highlighted below.

This is a crisis in which white U.S. Christians are singularly, critically implicated. /1 pic.twitter.com/AObT14hixb

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) January 30, 2019

Hell of a Week: "Americans Who Mandate a Close, Symbiotic Relationship btw Christianity & Civil Society Are Deeply Opposed to Federal Gun Control Legislation"

With yet another tragic mass shooting, the #GunControl debate will yet again take center stage.

One reason for the intractable nature of this debate? Deeply held moral & religious schemas like Christian nationalism. 1/8@LandonSchnabel @PaulHRosenberg @jackmjenkins @JackSmithIV

— Andrew Whitehead (@ndrewwhitehead) May 18, 2018

Our working paper shows that Americans who mandate a close, symbiotic relationship btw Christianity & civil society are deeply opposed to federal gun control legislation. 2/8

Find the working paper here: https://t.co/1FzmpjZlxr@socarxiv pic.twitter.com/gFlHvYnHw3

— Andrew Whitehead (@ndrewwhitehead) May 18, 2018

It has been a hell of a week, and center-stage in each fresh hell are U.S. white Christians, notably white evangelicals. Here's some commentary: