Who Are “Our Children”?: White Christian Nationalist Rhetoric in West Michigan School Board Campaigns

• In Event: Education amid an Era of Rising White Christian Nationalism and Political Extremism

Abstract

Drawing from school board election campaigns of White Christian nationalist (WCN) candidates in West Michigan, this study builds on prior work contextualizing rhetoric on literacy censorship within the community’s Dutch Reformed Christian settlement history and theology. This next step focuses on rhetorical tropes these WCN candidates used in their campaigns to mobilize affect, including rhetorical moves such as identifying White Christians as victimized or a “persecuted minority,” constructing a vision of the US nation-state as a chosen nation by God, and engaging in enemy identity formation via us/them binaries. Through this analysis, we put localized and broader national movements of WCN in dialogue to draw attention to their permeability across politico-geographical boundaries and disrupt their growing influence in education.

Authors

• Joel E. Berends, Michigan State University

• Katherine M. Ward, Michigan State University

• Kasun Gajasinghe, Michigan State University

• Mary M. Juzwik, Michigan State University

• Rebecca L. Witte, Michigan State University