Examining How Dual Christian Nationalism Influence Sexism across Partisan Lines

• In Event: 50268 - Religion and Nationalism

Abstract

Scholars argue that Christian nationalism, the ideology that envisions the United States as a distinctly Christian nation, serves as a robust indicator of male supremacy, misogynistic attitudes, and Trump support (Du Mez 2020; Whitehead and Perry 2015, 2020; Burke 2016; Edsall 2021; Cassese and Holman 2022). However, survey-based evidence for these associations remains limited. This study connects and develops two significant developments in the study of Christian nationalism (Davis 2022; Djupe, Lewis, and Sokhey 2023; Li and Froese 2023) by investigating how state-centric Christian Statism and society-centric Religious Traditionalism predict various gender-based ideologies, including hostile and benevolent sexism, anti-abortion attitudes, and feminist self-identification.
More importantly, our findings reveal that these associations are moderated by partisan identity. Analyzing nationally representative data, we find that while Christian Statism is consistently associated with male supremacist ideologies across party lines, Religious Traditionalism performs differently among Republicans. Specifically, we find Religious Traditionalism is negatively associated with hostile sexism but positively associated with feminist self-identity among Republicans. These findings demonstrate that different dimensions of Christian nationalism correlate with distinct gender ideologies, with these relationships further complicated by partisan affiliation.

Authors

• Ruiqian Li, American University

• Michael John Paul Ryan, Baylor University

• Joyce Chang, Baylor University