How religious language is used to define national identity, shape belonging, and legitimize exclusion.
Christian nationalism is best understood not simply as a religious movement, but as a political project that uses Christian language and symbolism to define who counts as a legitimate American and whose values should govern public life. Its power comes less from theology alone than from the way it translates anxieties about secularism, demographic change, and shifting moral norms into a narrative of national decline and promised restoration. Within that framework, defending Christianity becomes a way to defend the cultural authority of a particular social group while presenting its priorities as aligned with the interests of the nation.
Consider the phrase “Judeo-Christian values.” On its surface, it may seem to name a shared moral tradition, but in Christian nationalist politics it often does more than describe a set of beliefs. Instead, it functions as a framework for defining what the nation should be and who has authority to define it. Debates over “values,” then, are also debates about belonging, legitimacy, and political power.
Belonging and the Boundaries of the Nation
Here the movement’s underlying logic becomes clearest. Once Christianity is treated as the core of American identity, those who fit that image are more easily cast as the “real” Americans, while others can be framed as suspect, less patriotic, or outside the nation’s core. Calling America a Christian nation, then, is not only a statement of belief; it is also a way of defining insiders and outsiders. Christianity as a faith tradition is broader and more theologically diverse than this ideological use of it, which is precisely why the distinction matters analytically.
Race, Whiteness, and National Identity
That insider/outsider logic has also been shaped by race. In the United States, Christian nationalism has often been tied to whiteness, and the America it imagines is often white, Christian, middle class, and socially conservative. That does not mean every supporter is white or that every version of the movement looks the same. But it does mean race matters, because it helps explain how religion, national identity, and old social hierarchies get fused together. This point is reinforced by Samuel L. Perry and Joshua B. Grubbs’s 2025 article, “The Religion of White Identity Politics: Christian Nationalism and White Racial Solidarity,” which argues that Christian nationalism is a powerful predictor of white racial solidarity and helps explain how religious, national, and racial identities can converge in exclusionary politics (Perry & Grubbs, 2025).
“Christian Values” as a Political Framework
The argument often works like this: freedom depends on virtue, and virtue depends on Christianity. In this formulation, Christian nationalism recasts an older civic claim in explicitly religious terms. Christian values are presented not as one moral vision among many, but as the essential foundation for personal character and national freedom. Once that move is made, political decline can be attributed to moral decline, and defending Christian values can be framed as saving the country.
Loss, Restoration, and Political Appeal
At its core, this movement advances a story of loss. The past it invokes is often an imagined 1950s America—white, Protestant, middle class, and more clearly a “Christian nation.” The aim is not merely to honor that past, but to restore it. The same structure appears in contemporary politics. In her 2024 response to President Biden’s State of the Union, as reflected in the published transcript of her remarks, Senator Katie Britt said the country seemed to be “slipping away,” framed the southern border as evidence of disorder, and described inflation as proof that ordinary families were losing security and opportunity (Britt, 2024). The 2024 Republican Party Platform makes the same argument more explicitly. It declares that the United States is in “serious decline,” that its identity and way of life are under threat, and that national restoration requires renewed order, patriotism, and greatness (Republican National Committee, 2024). Together, these examples show how narratives of loss become political arguments for recovery, making restoration the movement’s conceptual and rhetorical center.
That restorationist logic also helps explain why some voices on the religious right, including some aligned with Christian nationalism, have become increasingly skeptical of liberal democracy. From that perspective, participation in a pluralistic system has not preserved their moral and cultural influence, making more hierarchical models of political and moral order appear more attractive, whether expressed through nationalism, Catholic integralism, or appeals to Christendom. The restorationist impulse traced throughout this essay, then, does not stop at rhetoric about decline; it can also shape doubts about whether pluralist institutions are capable of delivering the recovered social order the movement seeks. What emerges is a central tension in the movement: whether its commitments are oriented toward moral witness and justice, or toward authority, hierarchy, and the preservation of cultural dominance.
Christian nationalism endures because it offers more than a set of beliefs; it offers a framework for interpreting political conflict and social change. That is what gives the movement its force, but it is also what makes it consequential for democratic life. When national identity is defined through exclusionary religious terms, pluralism can appear not as a constitutional principle to be protected, but as a threat to be overcome. Understanding Christian nationalism, then, requires seeing it not only as a form of religious discourse, but as a broader ideological project that structures belonging and reshapes the terms of political conflict.
References
Britt, K. (2024, March 8). Senator Katie Britt delivers Republican address to the nation. Senator Katie Britt.
Perry, S. L., & Grubbs, J. B. (2025). The religion of White identity politics: Christian nationalism and White racial solidarity. Social Forces, 104(2), 453–475.
Republican National Committee. (2024, July 8). The 2024 Republican platform.