(iPoster) Faith in Democracy? How Christian Identity Shapes Democratic Commitments

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Religion and Politics & Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries (Post-Soviet)
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Religion and Politics

Abstract

To what extent does Christianity support or undermine democratic norms and commitment in the United States? Specifically, how do different types of Christian identity and context shape support for democratic norms? What mechanisms mediate religion’s capacity to function as a democratizing force versus an exclusionary or authoritarian one?
Christianity in America exerts a varied influence on democracy — capable of fostering civic virtue, institutional trust, and political participation in some contexts, while driving exclusion, resentment, and support for authoritarianism in others. The literature shows that religion’s democratic potential depends not on belief per se, but on how Christian identities are politicized, institutionalized, and mobilized — especially through forms like Christian nationalism, which sacralize ethnocultural boundaries and justify authoritarian politics. Therefore, understanding Christianity’s role in democracy requires disaggregating its doctrinal content, institutional form, and cultural-political expression across different denominations and subgroups.
A long-standing and recently revived tradition in American political thought views religion — especially Christianity — as a moral anchor for democratic life. Classical theorists like Tocqueville emphasized the way Protestant voluntarism and moral discipline supported civic participation, and this idea continues to guide much of the contemporary scholarship, including a growth of modern works that emphasize Christianity’s good for the health of democracy (P. S. Gorski 2018, 2020; Tocqueville 1835; Wuthnow 2021). However, recent trends suggest a shift, with certain Christian groups exhibiting skepticism or outright opposition to democratic norms (Al-Kire et al. 2021; Baker, Perry, and Whitehead 2020; Ben-Nun Bloom 2014; P. Gorski and Perry 2022; Perry and Grubbs 2024; Wilkins et al. 2022). This dissertation will rigorously examine this reversal, moving beyond past historical and theoretical frameworks and providing a political science-centered empirical test of the relationship between Christianity and democracy. Is this reversal true? What does evangelical support for Trump and the rise of Christan Nationalism tell us about Christian support for democracy? And how does this puzzle operate differently across different traditions and contexts of American Christianity?
The project will combine large-scale survey analysis, original national survey questions, and pre-registered survey experiments to test when and why Christianity supports or undermines democratic norms. The observational component analyzes existing data from the major political science surveys to document variation in democratic attitudes across Christian traditions and over time. Building on these findings, original survey questions and three experiments will provide causal leverage on the project’s core mechanisms—identity, context, and threat. These experiments will test whether making Christian identity salient weakens democratic commitment, whether certain framings of democracy resonate differently across denominations, and whether perceptions of cultural victories or losses shape support for democratic norms. Together, these studies will yield a comprehensive, mechanism-based account of Christianity’s democratic consequences in the United States.

Author

• Amy Brooke Grauley, University of Notre Dame