White Christian Nationalism: A Framework for Understanding Ideological Resistance

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 4:15 pm - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Culture Wars, Curriculum Battles, and Public Schools

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
​Education remains a central battleground in American culture and politics, where debates over privatization, curriculum, and identity have intensified. As ideological divides deepen, resistance to educational equity has taken on new urgency and visibility. Scholars have long examined factors such as racial backlash, homophobia, transphobia, and conservative religious activism as drivers of this resistance (e.g., Anderson, 2016; Kumashiro, 2002; Deckman, 2004). However, these perspectives, while valuable, may not fully capture the distinct confluence of race, religion, and nationalism shaping current opposition. In this paper, I argue that White Christian Nationalism (WCN) offers a critical framework to understand complex ideological resistance, revealing how cultural narratives around race, religion, and belonging underpin political and educational conflicts today. This framework makes more visible the moral and theological narratives that often go unnamed in discussions of sociopolitical resistance to educational equity.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
​White Christian nationalism (WCN), although not a new force in the American political and cultural landscape, has become increasingly visible in recent years, with adherents exerting growing influence on public policymaking at all levels (Hadley & Burke, 2025, p. 1). Defined as a cultural framework (Whitehead & Perry, 2010), a “political movement that is fueled and pushed forward by religious rhetoric and racist theological arguments” (Johnson et al., 2025, p. 126), and a political ideology that uses religion to advance authoritarian power structures (Stewart, 2019), much of the “deep story” of White Christian nationalism is upheld and legitimized by theological beliefs within American Christianity (Gorski & Perry, 2022; Johnson, et al., 2025, Onishi, 2023). Scholars describe a combination of underlying beliefs that connect notions of Christianity with nation: moral traditionalism rooted in hierarchical social orders, narratives of victimization, conspiratorial distrust of elites, and an authoritarian impulse toward exclusion and control (Gorski, 2017; Gorski & Perry, 2022; Miller, 2021; Whitehead & Perry, 2020).

​Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
To examine the usefulness of this framework for educational researchers, I conducted a conceptual inquiry grounded in a critical review of literature. I also draw on brief examples from a larger qualitative study of ideological resistance in one school district, including parent emails and public comments, to illustrate how WCN manifests in educational discourse.

Results
Discourse that has become commonplace within this resistance—around Christian persecution, parental rights, and fear of the “other”—can be situated more precisely when examined through the lens of WCN. For example, one parent wrote to a superintendent after the district’s implementation of Black Lives Matter Week of Action: “I am DONE being silent and just allowing you to CORRUPT our youth.” While other frameworks help name racial backlash or heteronormative anxiety, WCN surfaces a deeper narrative of cultural decline and Christian victimhood. “Corruption” here signals not just miseducation, but moral and spiritual contamination.

Significance
​White Christian nationalism remains an underused but crucial framework for providing conceptual clarity to current educational conflict. Failing to name it can obscure a more nuanced picture of the current moment and weaken our ability to respond to threats to educational equity.

Author

• Katelin G. Trautmann, Pennsylvania State University