Philippa Kaur

According to a May 2022 poll from the University of Maryland, 61% of Republicans favor declaring the United States a Christian nation – even though 57% recognized that it would be unconstitutional. Meanwhile, 31% of all Americans and 49% of Republicans believe “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that would be an example for the rest of the world,” a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute found.

Those statistics underscore the influence of a set of ideas called “Christian nationalism,” which has been in the spotlight leading up to November 2022 midterm elections. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has openly identified as a Christian nationalist and called for the Republican Party to do the same. Others, like Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, have not claimed that label but have embraced its tenets, such as dismissing the separation of church and state.

Few Americans use the term “Christian nationalist” to describe themselves, but many more have embraced some aspects of this worldview. There is widespread confusion over what the label really means, making it important to clearly explain. My work on how race and religion shape Americans’ attitudes toward government led me to study Christian nationalism, and to co-write a book detailing how it shapes Americans’ views of themselves, their government and their place in the world.

Christian nationalism is more than religiosity and patriotism. It is a worldview that guides how people believe the nation should be structured and who belongs there.

Mission from God

The phenomenon of white Christian nationalism has been studied by historians, sociologists, political scientists scholars of religion and many others. While their definitions may differ, they share certain elements.

Christian nationalism is a religious and political belief system that argues the United States was founded by God to be a Christian nation and to complete God’s vision of the world. In this view, America can be governed only by Christians, and the country’s mission is directed by a divine hand.

In my recent book “The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics,” written with fellow political scientists Irfan Nooruddin and Allyson Shortle, we demonstrate that this worldview has existed since the Colonies and played a central role in developing American identity. During the American Revolution, political and religious leaders linked independence from the British as part of God’s plan to set the world right.

‘Apotheosis of Washington,’ by John James Barralet, imagining the first president rising from his tomb.
Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

From then on, many Americans’ belief that God favors their nation has guided their view of pivotal events – such as supporting Manifest Destiny, the idea that the U.S. was destined to expand west across North America; or framing the “war on terror” as a conflict between Christians and non-Christians in the 21st century.

Today, only about 4 in 10 people in the U.S. are white Christians. The thought of no longer being the majority has prompted some of them to see Christian nationalism as the only way to get the nation back on the right track. Christian nationalism typically restricts adherents’ view of who can be considered a “true” American, limiting it to people who are white, Christian and U.S.-born, and whose families have European roots.

Dissidents, disciples and laity

The majority of Americans do not embrace Christian nationalism. Even so, its echoes appear everywhere from American flags in church pulpits, to the Pledge of Allegiance, to “In God We Trust” on money, license plates and government vehicles.

My book co-authors and I argue that Christian nationalist ideas exist along a spectrum. For our book project, we developed a measure we refer to as “American Religious Exceptionalism” and used it to analyze nationally representative and state surveys from 2008 to 2020. Based on that data, we categorized U.S. citizens into three groups: dissidents, laity and disciples.

“Dissidents” reject the idea of the U.S. having a divine founding and plan, and express a more open understanding of what it means to be an American. Among the nationally representative samples, the proportion of dissidents ranges from 37% to 49% of the population.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the “disciples” strongly believe in the divine founding and guidance of the U.S. and express more restrictive ideas about who can be a “real” American and who should be allowed to enter the country. Disciples, who represent between 10% and 14% of the population, are more likely to see immigrants as a threat to American culture, and to express concern about the decreasing percentage of Americans who are white and Christian.

Those in the “laity” in the middle represent between 37% and 52% of the population. They demonstrate support for many of the same views the disciples do, such as anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-Muslim attitudes, but less intensely.

Master salesman

Politicians can be thought about as entrepreneurs constantly looking for new consumers. Some of them have found a devoted audience among the disciples, who tend to be politically engaged and eager to vote for a candidate who will advance their view of the nation.

Former President Donald Trump has been particularly successful at attracting voters who are sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas, by portraying himself as a defender of Christians “under siege.” In June 2020, in the midst of upheaval over police killings of unarmed Black Americans, tear gas was used to disperse protesters to allow then-President Trump to have his picture taken holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. His open animus toward Muslims has also helped bring Christian nationalists from the fringes into the mainstream.

Supporters of then-President Donald Trump pray outside the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
Win McNamee/Getty Images

Images linking Christianity with the nation and with Trump, as part of a larger divine mission, were on full display during the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In the most extreme Christian nationalist views, the government must be brought into alignment with this ideology – even if force is necessary.

Our research found that 68% of disciples agree that force may be necessary to maintain the traditional American way of life. Most disciples express strong support for representative democracy; however, 48% of disciples support the idea of military rule, compared with 6% of dissidents.

Heading to the polls

Christian nationalism’s movement toward the mainstream is evident in the 2022 midterms, as several candidates have announced their support for Christian nationalism or made statements highly in line with it. Not only does such rhetoric mobilize disciples, but it has the potential to persuade the laity that these candidates will best represent their interests. An atmosphere of increasing partisan polarization, where political debates are sometimes portrayed as between angels and demons destroying the country, provides a fertile environment.

What this means for American democracy is unclear. But as some white and Christian Americans fear a loss of status, I believe Christian nationalism is coming back – attempting to reclaim its “holy land.” More

In western culture today, demons exist as something of a paradox. Religious belief in them is often presented as marginal. Many mainstream Christian denominations are silent or give them little prominence.

In 2014, for example, the Church of England removed references to the devil from its baptismal rites. When questioned, Bishop Robert Paterson stated that the devil “has been turned into a cartoon character of no particular malevolence”.

At the same time, American politics is replete with demons. Pentecostal ideas of “spiritual warfare” – the use of prayer to battle invisible demonic forces – have become mainstream and tied to ascendant Christian nationalist movements.

Belief in satanic forces behind national and global politics are core tenets of conspiracy movements like QAnon, which claims (without evidence) that liberal actors and politicians engage in satanic ritual abuse of children to prolong their lives.

Western demons remain alive and well in popular culture and contemporary politics. One of us (Jonathon) has researched the continued presence of demons in contemporary culture from gaming to US elections.

The other (Zohar) has completed a study demonstrating the complexity of demons in medieval religious traditions and folk tales. And it shows the enduring relevance of these stories for contemporary societies, as such stories continue to be told as a living oral tradition to this day.

Yet it is hard to completely refute Bishop Paterson’s assertion. The devil’s swing between cartoon character and active threat is part of the figure’s complex history in the modern world. While once seen as threats to human souls, demons today are much more ambiguous figures.

The lighthearted and cartoonish depiction of the devil in modern popular culture has managed to undermine the figure’s ability to threaten and terrify.
Everett Collection Inc / Alamy

Malevolence, benevolence, ambivalence

This ambiguity is in line with non-Christian and older perceptions of demons. In the ancient near east, demons were perceived as good, evil or morally neutral. Liminality (existing at a boundary or threshold) and ambivalence are essential characteristic of demons. Christianity repressed these aspects, identifying demons as unequivocally evil.

Traditions such as Islam maintain a long-standing ambivalent depiction of demons and satan, who can be rebellious and believers, deceitful and teachers, benevolent and enemies. In Mediterranean Muslim societies and beyond, jinn (spirits which can be benevolent or malevolent) remain a concrete part of life, due to cultural heritage and religious tradition.

The Qur’an depicts the jinn as an intelligible species, alongside humans and angels. This religious and cultural context is a powerful influence on notions of health and disease, too. For example, the notion of possession by jinn can be seen in Muslim societies, but also in the UK, among communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Middle East or north Africa. Sometimes, modern medicine and an Islamic religious authority are involved in such cases.

The devil and popular culture

For many westerners today, however, demons are more often figures of popular culture. Yet such depictions often echo their ambivalent ancient and non-Christian characterisations. In the TV show The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–2020), the devil is both an object of devotion for several core characters and a primary antagonist.

In Lucifer (2016–2021), he abandons rulership of hell to run a nightclub in Los Angeles and assist local police in solving crimes. These works often take the devil’s theological origins more as inspiration than as gospel.

Lucifer: a crime-solving incarnation of the devil.
Netflix

The titular character of Lucifer is drawn from the universe of Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel, The Sandman – itself subject to a recent TV adaptation. And Sandman’s Lucifer owes more to the Satan of John Milton’s epic 1667 poem Paradise Lost than the Christian Bible.

Milton’s portrayal of Satan wrestling with his damnation inspired others to reflect on themes of freedom, power, justice and self that recast the devil in morally ambivalent, even heroic ways. Beyond simply figures of evil, demons became artistic motifs to explore of the struggles of free will, the opposition to tyranny and the processing of grief.

This ambivalence exists in other religious traditions. Sufi (mystical) Islam portrays Iblis (Satan) as tragic. He was disobedient of God’s command to the angels to bow before the newly created Adam because he preferred monotheism (only prostrate oneself to God) over obedience.

Yet as Kevin Spacey’s character, Robert “Verbal” Kint, says in The Usual Suspects: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

This phrase echoes a Sufi warning against turning one’s back on demons: as soon as they are considered dead, they will rise and stab the person in the back. For practitioners of “spiritual warfare”, this is exactly what has happened. To them, the decline in literal belief in demons and the diversity of media depictions are signs not of the evil’s decline – but his ascent.

The Christian right and the devil

The Christian nationalist movement in America today is exemplary here. As Jonathon analyses in their book, Passing Orders (2021), members of this movement view social liberalisation and cultural change as demonic.

Reproductive and LGBT rights and recent movements for racial justice such as Black Lives Matter are key examples of such changes. Often this is framed as a struggle against an imagined “secular humanism”, the driving, diabolic ideology of a secular world that has forgotten the devil exists, and which thus acts on his behalf.

Despite common perceptions of them as inherently evil, the place of demons in modern society is often ambiguous. In line with their depictions in non-Christian contexts such as Muslim and ancient Greek traditions, demons exceed simple representations of evil, becoming symbolic of concepts such as freedom, wilfulness, rebellion, passion and moral grey areas. This ambiguity becomes especially stark when placed against differences in cultural contexts and historical eras. More

The website of the America First Secretary of State Coalition (“America First SOS”) doesn’t include the word “democracy” anywhere. It goes hard on “integrity”, mentioning “voter” and “election” integrity four times in about 800 words. But the Coalition isn’t interested in democracy.

America First SOS aims to get “America First” (that is, Trumpian Make America Great Again) Republicans elected as secretaries of state across key battleground states like Arizona and Nevada, precisely so they can influence or even change election processes and outcomes in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential elections.

The America First candidates will, if elected, “counter and reverse electoral fraud”. Their openly stated objective, in other words, is for state-level election officials to both reverse-engineer Trump’s election loss in 2020 (never mind that this is impossible) and ensure that he (or his favoured candidate) takes out the next one.

Across the United States, at every level of politics, democracy is under attack. America First SOS is just one example. While the November midterm elections are being treated by political analysts largely as a standard horse race, they are nothing of the sort. What happens in November will be a critical indicator of the strength of the United States’ political institutions. And the signs are not good.

Review: The Unfolding – A.M. Homes (Granta)

“Democracy,” as one of the characters in A.M. Homes’ brilliant new novel puts it, “is fragile, more fragile than any of us are comfortable admitting”.

The Unfolding is fiction: a made-up story of American politics. But just like in the real United States, the lines between truth and fantasy are perilously thin.

Homes’ main character, the “Big Guy”, is a businessman and lifelong Republican – not unlike Jim Marchant, the Republican candidate for secretary of state in Nevada and cofounder of America First SOS.

Both Marchant and Homes’ Big Guy came of age in Ronald Reagan’s America. They lived through the triumph of the end of the Cold War, the blip of the Clinton years, then the Republican glory of the 2000 election and the George W. Bush years. So they are accustomed to wielding power, and they do not take well to having that power threatened.

Read more:
American exceptionalism: the poison that cannot protect its children from violent death

Rich Republicans, ‘saving democracy’

The Unfolding begins on election night, 2008. The Big Guy is in Phoenix, Arizona, attending John McCain’s election night party. In the book, it’s always “Phoenix” – not the election, not the fact that

a Black man just got elected president of the United States. Oh my fucking god.

It’s “Phoenix” that was “the tipping point”. Because in the book – as in so much of real politics – the experiences of rich, old white men are almost always centred.

The book follows the Big Guy from the night of November 4 2008, until January 20, 2009 – President Obama’s inauguration day – as he and his network of other rich Republican men construct intricate and secretive plans to, as they see it, save American democracy.

The Unfolding begins in Phoenix, with Republican presidential candidate John McCain losing the 2008 election.
Chris Carlson/AP

The Big Guy and his network never really explain how it is that “democracy” is under threat, because they know that it isn’t, not really (not in 2008, anyway). What is under threat is power – specifically, the power of rich men to control American politics. As one of the Big Guy’s interlocutors puts it to him: “That’s the part that makes you really anxious, the idea that old white men will be obsolete.” The Big Guy replies, “You’re not wrong.”

Outside the context of the novel, this dialogue might seem a little ham-fisted, and it is. But therein lies its genius. Homes’ ability to tap into the language of American politics, history and culture – its simultaneous complexity and embarrassing simplicity – is astounding in its brilliance.

Homes’ capture, through fiction, of the backlash to the election of Barack Obama and its continuing reverberations, is the greatest strength of this book. That backlash (or, more accurately, “whitelash”) is responsible for Trump and so many white Americans’ embrace of, in President Biden’s real-life words, “semi-fascism”.

To Homes’ characters, living in the period between Bush’s election loss and the inauguration of the first Black president, “It’s not just that Obama won, it’s as though the founding fathers were assassinated.” They felt (and perhaps still feel) they’d watched

a generation of hard work flushed down the toilet. That’s what it is – it’s not four years, it’s not nothing, it’s an entire generation of men who worked to build this country and now it’s flushed, that’s what happened.

The Big Guy can hardly bear it; he’s watching his worlds, political and personal, collapse around him. To his like-minded friends, he insists that “each of us has worked too hard to leave this earth without having made a lasting impression”.

The Big Guy and his network are distraught, too, because “there is no succession plan – there is nothing in place to say who will run the world after they are gone”. They don’t have any sons.

A.M. Homes’ novel ends at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration.
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Read more:
Jared Kushner’s memoir is a self-serving account of a hero’s triumphs but contains a great deal of fascinating detail

Personal and political crises

This mingling of the personal and the political finds life in one of the book’s best characters, the Big Guy’s teenage daughter, Meghan. She, too, is shaken by the events of November 2008, as everything she thought she knew – about her country, and her own life – begins to fall down around her.

Meghan’s navigation of these dual crises, and her own changing identity, often finds its own expression in historical thinking. Both she and the Big Guy love American history; they’re obsessed by it.

One of their favourite games is exchanging obscure facts about the Big Guy’s favourite president, George Washington. They have made a family tradition of visiting historical landmarks. But it’s in these places where Meghan’s uncertainty grows. Driving past the site of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Meghan wonders if

the grassy knoll is less of a hill or a mound, and more of a bump, or at this point in time – a blip? Is that true or has the scale of things changed? Does a place compact and get smaller over time? Does history shrink?

Meghan’s complex musings on the nature of history, her “fear that truth is an elusive thing, that history is not fixed in time and space but subject to fluctuation and interpretation and to the possibility that there are other stories”, stands in stark contrast to her father’s more insistent, one-dimensional view of the past and the present. While Meghan wants “to make history, to live in history, and to be the history of the future”, her father is more interested in controlling it.

Musing on the very first president, and his decision to step down after two terms, the Big Guy waxes lyrical on Washington’s selflessness, his patriotism, and his refusal to be “a king”. “What did America not want to be?” asks the Big Guy. “A kingdom.”

The Big Guy, consciously or not, exposes the contradiction at the heart of American power. The Big Guy and his friends don’t want a king, but they do want to be kingmakers. They don’t want democracy, not really. Or perhaps they do, but they want the version George Washington lived – a democracy reserved for rich, white men. The way, as they see it, American democracy was originally conceived.

Horrified by Obama’s election, The Big Guy wants a George Washington democracy – one reserved for rich, white men.
Lewis Whyld/AP

If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The Unfolding cuts to the heart of a broken American politics. It’s billed as a “black comedy”, but I never once found the book funny. It was far too real, and too brilliant in its fictional diagnosis of American malaise. Homes captures the horror and the stupidity of American power.

Throughout the book, we’re never really sure if the Big Guy and his network can be taken seriously. When they say meaningless things like, “Our plan will be organized around the concept of rings of power and authority with an inner circle”, are we to believe that this is a brilliant organisational strategy? Are these men executing a supremely complex game of three-dimensional chess? Or are they just rich, mediocre-but-entitled white men exploiting a system that was always rigged in their favour? Maybe it’s both.

Will the Big Guy’s network succeed in their plans? Will America First SOS succeed? Will Trump come back? Will American democracy collapse? Has it already?

The Unfolding opens with the oft-repeated line, “It can’t happen here.” (“It”, in this case, being the fall of the United States to fascism, riffing off another work of fiction, Sinclair Lewis’s titular 1935 novel.) As the lines between fantasy and reality increasingly blur, A.M. Homes offers us a brilliant, frightening reminder that “it” just might happen. Or that either way, “there’s shit on the horizon.” More