Teaching About (Against) White Christian Nationalism

Above: (Top) A man carrying a Bible in front of Trump and anti-government militia flags during the January 6th Insurrection. (Bottom) Civil rights and religious groups have been raising warnings about the rise of white Christian nationalism, such as the Glendale United Methodist Church in Nashville.

What Is White Christian Nationalism?

In a recent article in The History Teacher, Kaylene Stevens and I argued, 

Not all movements were/are just. ... It is crucial that history teachers help students distinguish between movements for justice and movements against justice. Not all people working together to advance shared ideas are working toward goals of fairness or freedom. In fact, some are organized to do the exact opposite. (p 353)

White Christian nationalism is one of those unjust movements.

White Christian nationalism is an ideology that fuses white supremacy, conservative Christianity, and American nationalism/American exceptionalism. White Christian nationalists generally believe that the United States was founded as a white and Christian nation (which directly conflicts with the historical record) and that U.S. laws and institutions should be built on conservative Christian beliefs (which conflicts with the Constitution and Bill of Rights). White Christian nationalists often believe that the U.S. was created by God and is divinely favored. Some demand spiritual warfare (which explains its relationship to domestic terrorism) and believe that Donald Trump was chosen by God to be president and should be immediately returned to power (evident during the January 6th Insurrection). As such, they believe that the country must be "taken back from" non-Christians, people of color, immigrants, and queer people. At its core, it is a particular type of racist (xenophobic and queerphobic) and Christian supremacist thinking (although the mainstream adherents will usually deny that they hold racist beliefs, but surveys show differently) that essentially rejects the pluralism, justice, and democracy of the United States. "The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy" by Philip Gorski and Samuel L. Perry offers a good primer (and you can watch one of Philip Gorski's talks on the topic here), as well as Bradley Onishi's "Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next."

As a movement, white Christian nationalism has had increased support in recent years, has strongest support among white evangelical Protestants and in rural areas, and gained significant political power within the Republican Party, including its leadership, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson (although he does not use the term to describe himself). It has also found overlap with anti-democratic and far-right groups in recent years. In recent polls, 6 in 10 Americans believed the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and 45% think it should be a Christian nation (at the same time, large percentages of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos, are concerned about the rise of white Christian nationalism). It is also not purely a U.S. phenomenon, as similar movements exist in Canada and across Europe and have gained political power in Hungary, with Viktor Orbán collaborating with U.S. conservatives, and Poland, which involves a Catholic take on white Christian nationalism.

What Is the History of White Christian Nationalism?

 

Above: (Top) The John Gast painting "American Progress" personifying Manifest Destiny shows an angel-like figure of Columbia bring light to the West and forcing Indigenous people off their land for the advancement of white society. (Bottom) Insurrectionists carried many symbols of white supremacy and Christian nationalism on January 6th, including crosses and Confederate flags.

White Christian nationalism is not a new phenomenon. Instead, similar movements have emerged at various points in American history (and some trace it all the way back to Columbus and later the Doctrine of Discovery). In many ways, movements like these are conservative and reactionary, especially when there are demographic shifts and changing social attitudes. White Christian nationalism certainly was a guiding ideology of the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay Colony, who used settler-colonialism to create a theocracy based on their conservative Protestant teachings (see Cotton Mather specifically); they intentionally used the killing, displacement, and religious conversion of Native peoples to create their ethnonationalist religious colony. In fact, many modern white Christian nationalists use the Puritans (as well as the actual or imagined Christian practices of some of U.S. "founding fathers") as a model and to historically validate their movement. The Second Great Awakening is another area where white supremacy and Christian nationalism re-emerged in American politics and policy. White Christians' participation in Manifest Destiny in the U.S. and Canada and a growing belief that God had given them a continent to establish a government based on their religious teachings and that using violence on Native peoples was justified in making their Christian nations. White Christian nationalist thinking emerged again in the era after the Civil War, which helped justify American imperialism (what Philip Gorski has called "WASP nationalism") and a view that the United States was acting as "God's hand" to spread white and Christianity values and freedom to the rest of the world through empire. 

Some historians have argued that the modern white Christian nationalist movement was born in the 1920s as a reaction to Asian and southern and eastern European immigration, Black migration north, and the changing morality of the time (related, it was a period where the Ku Klux Klan had a re-insurgence with a strongly Christian identity). Later, anti-New Deal campaigns in the 1930s expanded the movement (and created an unusual partnership with corporate America), which was strengthened by anti-communist and segregationist campaigns of the 1950s, and rebranded by conservative television evangelists and others in the 1980s into what became referred to as the "religious right" and gained supporters through the anti-abortion movement (and a more fringe and violent iteration inspired the Oklahoma City Bombing and other vigilante militia groups, including the Christian Patriot Movement). Later, similar ideologies influenced members of the modern Tea Party Movement in the early 21st century. Today, it presents a major threat to American democracy, pluralism, and justice, which has been made clear through the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. White Christian nationalism also has a precarious relationship with support for Israeli nationalism, based on views related to the end of the world, and regressive views of women's rights (including voting rights) in the U.S. and globally.

Above: (Top) Many segregationists viewed themselves as both American patriots and devout Christians, including at this Ku Klux Klan rally at an Oregon Baptist Church in 1922. (Bottom) A homeowner in Louisiana makes clear their desire for public schools to be centered around religious beliefs (also notice the U.S. flags) in 2018. 

How Has White Christian Nationalism Found Its Way Into Schools?

In recent years, white Christian nationalism has found its way again (as this is not the first time) into public schools, especially through curriculum and book bans. White Christian nationalists have strategically focused on controlling the narratives that are told in public schools (often through political control of school boards and activism by astroturf groups like Moms for Liberty), which includes advocating and, in many cases, mandating that U.S. history be taught as rooted in European and Christian thinking. They justify white settler-colonialism as part of a larger biblical plan and excuse any racial and religious violence as simply common aspects of their eras. The movement has also carefully crafted its language to not raise alarms about its white supremacist and Christian nationalist ideology. Rather, it often uses coded language (especially when it comes to anything related to school curriculum). Instead, it will emphasize that a curriculum is teaching about "western civilization" or "classical education," or use terms such as "American exceptionalism" and "our European past." Moreover,  it often removes references to the American democracy in favor of exclusively using American republic and positions Europeans as delivering civilization to the rest of the world. Those have long been used as codes for "anti-multiculturalism," "white supremacy," and now "white Christian nationalist" curricula.

In recent years, there have been political pushes in several states, including Texas, Florida, North Dakota, and Virginia, to include Bible studies courses in public schools or increase Christian perspectives in curriculum standards starting at the elementary level through high school and incentivizing teacher professional development that has an emphasis on Christianity, conservatism, and western civilization. Some charter schools (independently run schools that receive public funds) have built their educational programming around white Christian nationalist curriculum. Several states education agencies have endorsed PragerU's (which is a rightwing media organization and not a university) videos and curricular materials, which involve anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, anti-LGBTQ, and Christian nationalist propaganda. Conservative groups nationally (such as the rightwing Civic Alliance's American Birthright curriculum standards and the conservative Christian Hillsdale College 1776 history curriculum) have offered alternative curriculum standards and materials based on white Christian nationalist views. Yet, this is also occurring in more liberal states, albeit in more careful and nuanced ways, through conservative groups attempting to influence the writing of state social studies standards or using lawsuits to limit the teaching of certain subjects or affinity spaces for certain students.

 

Above: Adopted by numerous school districts and state education agencies, American Birthright and the Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum are essentially white Christian nationalist propaganda posing as school curriculum.

This is not a new phenomenon. There has been a long history of centering white and Christian nationalist ideologies in the history curriculum. As Kaylene Stevens and I outline the long history of white supremacist influence on history curriculum in our book Teaching History for Justice:  

White supremacy was intentionally built into the original design of ancient history courses. These courses became standard components of North American and European education in the 18th and 19th centuries (Marino, 2010; Morris & Scheidel, 2016), at a time when those nations were engaging in colonialism and later in imperialism. Eurocentric ancient history was used to justify the emerging national boundaries and related nationalism (Hourdakis, 1996; Hourdakis, Calogiannakis, & Chiang, 2018), especially in Western Europe, the United States, and Canada; it was to show that these nations were the heirs to civilization started in Greece and Rome. Moreover, Eurocentric ancient history was used to justify White people’s global power and expansion, as well as assert European and American exceptionalism. For instance, the study of Greek and Roman history, as proof of European superiority, was advocated by Herbert Spencer, who was a lead developer of scientific racism in the late 1800s (Morris & Scheidel, 2016). In the 1980s and 1990s, Eurocentric ancient history again gained popularity and was advocated for by a group of, often politically conservative, scholars and politicians as a way to combat the emergence of multicultural education in the 1960s and 1970s (Dunn, 2008; Nash, Crabtree, & Dunn, 2000). They argued that, for national unity, it was essential that all Americans learn that the U.S. government, and more broadly civilization, was originally founded in Europe and built on a Western heritage and culture (Gagnon, 1998; Ravitch, 1990; Ravitch & Finn, 1987; Stotsky, 2004). (pp. 105-106)

These ideas directly overlap with a white Christian nationalist interpretation of U.S. history and have generally created educational alliances between conservative educational scholars and white conservative Christian political leaders.

Above: Herbert Spencer, a lead intellectual of scientific racism and who coined the term "survival of the fittest," was a white supremacist (although abandoned his Christian beliefs as a teenager) and a major advocate for the teaching of white supremacy in schools through curricula centered on European history.

How Do We Help Students Learn About White Christian Nationalism and the Role that It Has Had in the Past and Present Day?

It is crucial that social studies teachers teach the long history of white Christian nationalism in the United States and ask them to examine the role that it has had in the past and present day. Below are some resources on the history of white Christian nationalism in the United States. 

In examining these sources, teachers may pose the inquiry question: What is the history of white Christian nationalism in the United States? Does it present a major problem for American democracy in the present?

With this, it is very important to clarify that not that not all conservative Christians are white Christian nationalists. White Christian nationalism, as I defined earlier, is a very specific movement that draws on Christian supremacy and white supremacy, and advocates for a Christian and white U.S. state. Many Christians hold conservative political views without a belief that the U.S. should be a Christian government and that whites are a superior racial group. Moreover, many Christian denominations have explicit teachings for racial justice and religious pluralism (not to mention a strong Christian tradition within the African American community that has long united Christian thinking with social justice). Granted, some white conservative Christians are becoming increasingly influenced by or have found themselves unknowingly aligned with white Christian nationalism (raising concerns among many Christian groups, including some members of the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, Roman Catholic Church, Baptist religious leaders, the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism and others). [In full disclosure, I am Catholic and a Polish American, so have seen some of this white Christian nationalist thinking during visits to Poland and among people I grew up with who are gravitating to a white nationalist or fascist view of Catholicism that some call postliberalism or the fringe conservative group Opus Dei, which has ties to Project 2025 and incoming vice president J.D. Vance.]

"The Roots of Christian Nationalism Go Back Further Than You Think" by Robert P. Jones (TIME Magazine)

"White Christian Nationalism: The Deep Story Behind the Capitol Insurrection" by Philip Gorski (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

"Tracing the Rise of Christian Nationalism, from Trump to the Ala. Supreme Court" by Terri Gross and Brad Onishi (National Public Radio)

"The Dispossessed? Lived History and White Christian Nationalism" by Lauren R. Kerby (Berkeley Center; Georgetown University)

"How I Became a Christian Nationalist" by Kenneth Woodward (The Washington Post)

"An ‘Imposter Christianity’ Is Threatening American Democracy" by John Blake (CNN)

"The Mundane History of White Christian Nationalism" by Neil J. Young (Religion & Politics)

"Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next" by Melissa Harris-Perry (WNYC)

"White Christian Nationalists Want More Than Just Political Power And Washington, D.C., Looms Large in their Struggle" by Lauren R. Kerby (The Atlantic) 

"White Nationalism Remains Major Concern for Voters of Color" by Gabriel R. Sanchez, Keon L. Gilbert, and Carly Bennett (Brookings)