White evangelicals' jeremiad on DC tours

Most religions exhort their followers to leave their evil/non-religious ways to move to a better future both on earth and hereafter. The religious narrative links the current woes to not accepting and adhering to religious edicts and cautions that if the people did not mend their ways, they will be replaced and/or destroyed. The unpleasant and unsatisfactory present is set between a cherished past and a glorious future. There is a call to return to the right path to avoid catastrophe. There are lamentations remembering the paradise lost in contrast to the dark present, and sorrow, despair, and grief are the main themes. Prophet Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations are possibly the best expressions of this reoccurring religious theme.

Harvard researcher, Lauren Kerby, has written a book on how White evangelicals' tours to Washington DC help revive, support, and confirm the "Christian-origins" of the United States. Unsurprisingly, these tours strengthen religious nationalism. In an interview with the Harvard Gazette, she summarizes her book,  “Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation’s Capital and Redeem a Christian America.”

Kerby points out that these tours, or more specifically tour guides, present white evangelicals as both insiders as well as outsiders:

While I was in D.C., I noticed these two distinct — and contradictory — stories that guides and tourists told about Christianity in the U.S. In what I call the insider narrative, they claim that America is a Christian nation and that they, as Christians, are the rightful leaders of the nation. They argue that American law, for instance, is based in biblical law, and that the founders intended that Christianity would occupy a privileged position in government. 

But they also tell stories about how the nation has abandoned its covenant with the Christian God, causing the United States to experience decline in morality and military power. This is what I call the outsider narrative: a story in which Christians are persecuted and victimized by a secular establishment that wants to erase the nation’s Christian heritage and keep conservative Christians and their values out of government.

Beyond the context of D.C., these two narratives are patterns for how white evangelicals talk about their relationship to the United States. Together, they form a jeremiad, the prophetic call for repentance and return to a past righteous state. And it’s worth noting that one of the most famous slogans of the 21st century follows this exact pattern: Make America Great Again.

Kerby also talks about how white evangelicals imagine themselves playing four roles in the American story depending on what benefits them. Two of these roles (founder and savior) focus on their position as an insider, while the other two (exile and victim) portray them as outsiders and are used to heighten their fears:

An essential part of political strategy is how you position yourself in the story you’re telling. Are you the scrappy underdog? Are you the avatar for tradition? Are you a sympathetic victim? Depending on the circumstances, you’ll probably benefit more from one position than another.

These four roles I identify — founder, exile, victim, and savior — are the different positions white evangelicals take in their political activities. They offer a lot of range, and if one isn’t working, it’s easy to switch to another role. For instance, as founders they can appeal to the authority of George Washington and other Christian leaders in early America to justify things like posting “In God We Trust” in schools. But if, say, something unflattering comes to light about a white evangelical leader, the victim role lets him dismiss it as an attack from anti-Christian forces. It’s a ready-made defense. 

Kerby also explains that her book is about white evangelicals and not all evangelicals as non-white evangelicals do not relate to the American history the same way, and the DC tours, she has written about, did not have many non-white evangelicals in them:

By now, it’s old news that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. Non-white evangelicals, however, voted against him at a similar rate. Lumping all evangelicals together, as many outlets still do, erases non-white evangelicals. Even when theology is shared across these groups, the political behaviors I’m interested in are distinct. So it’s important to be specific about which subset of evangelicals I’m talking about, and even then, it’s worth noting that white evangelicals are themselves an internally diverse group. There’s enough commonality that we can make generalizations, but there will always be exceptions.  

The other reason I emphasize this group’s whiteness is because I’m talking about their historical relationship to the United States, and race is inextricable from that. White supremacy in the United States means that white evangelicals have enjoyed privileges and safety not granted to non-white communities, evangelical or otherwise. And one of the most distinctive features of Christian heritage tours is the way they highlight white Christians in American history and exclude everyone else. I want to draw attention to that with my word choice, because it shows the entanglement of Christian nationalism with white supremacy. When tourists say “Christian America,” they mean white evangelical America. It’s much narrower than it sounds.

4th of July and American Religious Nationalism

Is the US a Christian nation? Does embracing Christian nationalism part of being a Christian in America? Is the 4th of July a Holy Day?

Angela Denker is a Lutheran pastor in her article "Christian nationalism, the border and Fourth of July church in Dallas" critiques the close link of American nationalism and Christianity. She visits a megachurch on the 4th of July and informs how the 4th of July has become a religious holiday as are many other national holidays in America. How America is worshiped almost as an idol in many churches: 

When I got there for Saturday night worship, I found out that Prestonwood had a big Fourth of July celebration planned for Independence Day. Pastor Jack Graham promised at the beginning of Saturday worship that they’d be “celebrating our freedoms as a country ... and singing patriotic songs,” as well as offering a pastor dunk tank, games and refreshments in the Dallas summer heat.

When I walked in, I noticed that the arena-style worship space that seats 7,000 had been covered with red, white and blue American flag bunting. Flags festooned the stage, and most of the screen designs and backgrounds were red, white, and blue.

As Graham concluded his welcome for the evening service, he said, “We’re going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem and honoring our service members.”

I had not said the Pledge of Allegiance since elementary school, and I could not help but think of the Ten Commandments — ostensibly as influential here as the pledge. The First Commandment, as found in the Book of Exodus, warns against worshipping and pledging allegiance to a flag and not to God, but no one around me seemed to mind, so, feeling a compulsion to conform, I put my hand on my heart and mouthed the words.

We then sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” and sat as the songs for each branch of the armed forces played, and veterans and active-duty soldiers were invited to stand when their branch was called, and we applauded.

The idea of American exceptionalism having a biblical justification is not new, but Prestonwood made it fresh. The church had bright and compelling red, white and blue graphics with retro black-and-white photography, a guest preacher who specializes in travel to the Middle East, and even a special song. The video montage and song came next, followed by the guest speaker. 

Source: Family Research Council

Pastor Denker contrasts this deep entanglement of Christianity and the American state with another view where love of Christ and love for America are at war. She writes about her conversation with Dean Inserra, a prominent conservative evangelical pastor. He is a Liberty University graduate and the founder of City Church in Tallahassee, Florida. He is also an advisory member of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Inserra told me about a term from Southern Baptist theology that describes the current moment in American politics and religion. “In this linking of nationalism and Christianity, we are forgetting about the message of Jesus. ... When we do that, we have a gospel distortion.”

A gospel distortion is the idea that another ideal is impeding the truth of the gospel. Inserra said the gospel distortion in the SBC during and before Trump’s presidency has its roots in Christian nationalism.

“We have to be Christian first. If you are American first, Jesus will be at odds with you,” he said. “Patriotism is not a fruit of the Spirit. It’s idolatry on the Fourth of July.”

Inserra pointed to national holidays that receive as much attention in the SBC as Christmas and Easter. “I say there are different high holy days in the Southern Baptist Church. Some churches have Pentecost and Epiphany. We have the Fourth of July, the Sunday closest to Veterans Day, the Sunday closest to Sept. 11. You go to a Southern Baptist Church on the Fourth of July, you’d think you were at a baseball game, eating a hot dog.”

Ira Stoll, a conservative editor and columnist, argued in his essay, The Theology of the Fourth of July, in Time magazine, that 4th of July is a religious holiday and it was the liberal icon President Kennedy who told us that. Ira quotes three different speeches, including his inaugural address, to prove his point. 

For instance, on July 4, 1946, Kennedy was invited to speak at the City of Boston’s Independence Day celebrations. 

Kennedy began by talking not about taxes, or about the British, or about the consent of the governed, but about religion. “The informing spirit of the American character has always been a deep religious sense. Throughout the years, down to the present, a devotion to fundamental religious principles has characterized American though and action,” he said

Ira contends that even if we ignore Kennedy, there is enough evidence from the founding documents and the founding fathers of America about the nature of the state that was imagined in the early years:

Whatever Kennedy’s motives were as a politician for emphasizing this point, on the historical substance he had it absolutely correct. The Declaration of Independence issued from Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, included four separate references to God. In addition to the “endowed by their Creator” line mentioned by JFK in his July 4 speech, there is an opening salute to “the laws of nature’s God,” an appeal to “the Supreme Judge of the World,” and a closing expression of “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”

A signer of the declaration, Samuel Adams, writing to a friend on July 9, wished the declaration had been issued earlier: “If it had been done nine months ago we might have been justified in the sight of God.”

George Washington, announcing the Declaration of Independence to the troops in a General Order dated July 9, wrote, “The General hopes and trusts, that every officer and man, will endeavour to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country….knowing that now the peace and safety of his Country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms.”

Ira ends his essay by saying that Americans can believe whatever they like but "the idea on which our nation was founded" was clearly religious.

White and non-white evangelicals: do their politics differ?

Evangelicals are usually spoken as a group that supports political and social conservatism. They are identified as a religious group that votes as a block and as it is close to 20-30% of the population, its views become very important during the US elections. However, while almost all evangelicals are socially conservative, research shows that, politically, evangelicals have diverse opinions and positions. Then, why it seems that evangelicals vote as a block for the Republican Party. There are three reasons:

• About two-thirds of the evangelicals are non-Hispanic white;
• White non-Hispanic Americans, including white non-Hispanic evangelicals, are more likely to vote than African-Americans or Hispanics;
• Many conservatives, who are not evangelicals according to most religious/doctrinal definitions, identify themselves as evangelicals.  

Add these three factors and it would be easier to see why more than 80% evangelicals regularly vote for the Republican Party even when the party leadership has regularly supported racist and anti-immigrant policies. President Trump's nomination, election, and continued popularity among evangelicals show that the political choices of evangelical voters (who are mostly white) are informed as much by race as they are by religion. 

A previous blog post discusses in detail the debate over how to define an evangelical and whether self-identification (which is the way most political polls identify evangelicals) is the right way to identify evangelicals, so we will not explore these issues here (for those who want to read about it: Who are evangelical Christians?). 

Here are two articles that explain the link of evangelism, race and voting behavior. 

The FiveThirtyEight article How Trump And Race Are Splitting Evangelicals? contends that race and President Trump are dividing evangelicals or exacerbating their differences:

 America’s community of self-described evangelicals, about a fourth of the population, is increasingly divided between a more conservative, Trump-aligned bloc deeply worried about losing the so-called culture wars; and a bloc that is more liberal on issues like immigration, conscious of the need to appeal to nonwhite Christians and wary of the president. The split in evangelical Christianity isn’t new, but it appears to be widening under Trump. 

Two factors appear to be driving this divide. First, the number of white evangelicals is in decline in America at the same time that the evangelical population is becoming more racially diverse. According to 2016 data from the Public Religion Research Institute, about 64 percent of evangelicals are non-Hispanic white, compared to about 68 percent in 2006... 

And these nonwhite evangelicals see politics differently than white evangelicals. While the largest plurality of white evangelicals identify as Republicans, most black evangelicals are Democrats. A plurality of evangelical Latinos, in contrast, identify as political independents — and they’re less supportive of the Democratic Party than Latinos overall — but they are still more likely to consider themselves Democrats than Republicans.

Source: How Trump And Race Are Splitting Evangelicals? 

The second factor driving this divide among evangelicals is Trump himself. His governing style is, in effect, forcing evangelical leaders to choose between embracing the white evangelicals who overwhelmingly support the president or distancing themselves from the president — and even politics generally — as part of an appeal to their diversifying congregations.

The Religion & Politics essay We Are All Evangelicals Now blames a "sense of “racial embattlement," the belief that one's group faces more discrimination than any other group in the US, for the voting pattern of evangelicals, who are mostly white. The author, Janelle Wong, argues that evangelicals are not outliers and their views are close to those of white Americans as white Americans also feel being discriminated against. The only difference is intensity, "Evangelicals embody U.S. racial attitudes on steroids." Wong concludes the essay by focusing on narratives of white persecution: 

The bottom line is that the racial divides and racial anxieties we see in evangelical America are not so different from the views of white Americans more generally. I speculate that these attitudes are more extreme than those of other white Americans because their fears of demographic change are even more exaggerated than other whites. A narrative of religious persecution runs deep in white evangelical theological circles. Believers expect to be attacked for their religious commitments. Hence, their defenses may be easily raised by “the War on Christmas.” Narratives of persecution have primed them to expect a broad cultural assault, despite the fact that white Christians face the least religious persecution of any religious group in the United States. These fears of religious persecution, unfounded or not, interact in an especially potent way with fears of racial embattlement to produce the political conservatism detailed above. That being said, the racial patterns we observe among evangelicals are more intense, but consistent with the racial patterns that define the country as a whole. In this respect, we all share something very deep with evangelicals.

Trump, Merry Christmas and White Christian Nationalism

Here are few articles on President Trump's focus on Christmas and "war on Christmas."

Independent informed the readers about Trump's ending the "war on Christmas":

For those who felt they needed the President's permission, Donald Trump has declared: "We can say Merry Christmas again."

Mr Trump repeatedly vowed during his campaign to end the so-called “war on Christmas", a commonly held belief among many of the President’s Christian supporters.
His comment came during a speech celebrating the passage of the tax reform bill.

Some of Mr Trump's supporters have felt that saying the more neutral and inclusive “happy holidays” to mark celebrations of Hannukah, Eid, or other holidays taking place around the same time, has undermined the Christian majority in the country.
The "war" extends to some feeling as if political correctness is a forced and unnecessary social practice as well. 

Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University told CNN that Mr Trump “is no one's idea as an evangelical Christian, but he is very much using the same rhetoric as the war on Christmas...And it fits very much into his worldview that the people he's representing have been left behind by this liberal society".

Mr Trump claimed on the campaign trail that Americans would say “Merry Christmas in every store” during his presidency, implying that the phrase had gone out of use. (read the article Donald Trump announces 'we can say Merry Christmas again')

The CNN informed its readers that almost one in three adult Americans are bothered by at least some degree by the declining emphasis on religion in the way Americans celebrate Christmas:

Did President Donald Trump live up to his promise to end the "war on Christmas"? Depends on who you ask.
While some would quibble with the very idea that a war on the holiday exists, recent polling does suggest that the Christian nature of Christmas is less culturally prevalent than in the past.

A Pew Research Center survey, published last week, found that most US adults believe the religious aspects of the holiday are emphasized less now than they used to be. But overall, just 31% of adults said "they are bothered at least 'some' by the declining emphasis on religion in the way the U.S. commemorates Christmas."
Meanwhile, the "remaining two-thirds of the U.S. public either is not bothered by a perceived decline in religion in Christmas or does not believe that the emphasis on the religious elements of Christmas is waning," according to the Pew poll.

Throughout his presidential campaign -- and during his first year in office -- Trump emphasized he would "make Christmas great again" by ending the "war on Christmas," a concept that is the revival of a quintessential conservative culture war.
"If I become president, we're going to be saying Merry Christmas at every store," he promised supporters in 2015, among the many times he made such a yuletide pledge.
Fast-forward to October 2017 -- two months ahead of the annual holiday -- and Trump repeated such rhetoric at the Values Voter Summit. "Guess what?" the President told those gathered. "We're saying 'Merry Christmas' again."

His Christmas rhetoric -- and interest in making speeches in front of Christmas trees -- has inspired everything from "Saturday Night Live" sketches to merchandise (there is an official "Make Christmas Merry" hat sold on the Trump campaign website, and dozens of Trump-inspired Christmas-themed sweaters on websites such as Etsy and Amazon).
The Pew survey suggests that while most Americans still celebrate Christmas, the way they think about and commemorate the holiday appears to be moving in a more secular direction.
About 55% of US adults "say they celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, including 46% who see it as more of a religious holiday than a cultural holiday and 9% who celebrate Christmas as both a religious and a cultural occasion." That's slightly down 4 percentage points from 2013, when 59% of Americans said they celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, including 51% who saw it as more religious than cultural.

A vast majority of Americans — including 56% of Republicans — say the "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate is "made up" and not a "real issue," according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. (Read the article In his 1st year in office, did Trump end the 'war on Christmas'?)

Newsweek article reminds the readers that Nazis also used Christmas to promote a divisive nationalism, albeit Trump does not promote genocide or violence against minorities like Nazis:

Trump isn’t the first political figure in history to co-opt Christmas. In fact, some see parallels between Trump’s speeches in front of Christmas trees and attempts by authoritarian regimes like the Nazis to manipulate popular celebrations to promote a political ideology. But by weaponizing Christmas in this way, Trump is bringing a dangerous tradition of politicizing religious holidays into the United States, one expert says.  

“Because Americans have enjoyed a relatively stable political system, Christmas in the U.S. has been relatively immune to the overt politicization of the holiday,” Joe Perry told Newsweek. He is the author of the book Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History, which examines the way Nazis used Christmas to spread fascism.

“But not completely immune. The far right’s engagement in the ‘war on Christmas’ explicitly posits that there is one single true or correct Christmas. The holiday’s true nature is somehow under threat from outsiders and liberals who act as forces of degradation, multiculturalism and secularization,” Perry continued.

In this context, Trump has been using the so-called war on Christmas to wage a culture war that pits multicultural liberals against Christian conservatives. He began doing this long before Christmas. Meanwhile, some members of the religious right support Trump’s most nationalist, race-baiting form of political rhetoric, including his reclaiming of Christmas.
Likewise, Nazi Germany’s propagandists rooted their idea of Christmas in visions of ethno-nationalism. They rewrote the lyrics of Christmas carols, promoted Nazified holiday traditions and launched numerous Christmas charity events for poor Germans. The ultimate goal was to draw a clear line between those who belonged and those who should be excluded and not benefit from the joys of Christmas.

Trump’s rhetoric differs from that of Nazi Germany’s, most notably because he has never advocated genocide. But Trump’s talk about Christmas coexists with re-emerging white identity politics, Randy Blazak, a sociology professor who studies white nationalism, told Newsweek.

“Committed white nationalists love Trump’s bring back Christmas campaign almost as much as evangelicals,” he said. “His followers see this as gospel and a rebuking of multiculturalism and political correctness, and the growing influence of Jews, Muslims, atheists and other non-WASPs.”

President Donald Trump signs a proclamation in front of a Christmas tree, as Vice President Mike Pence stands behind him

Source: How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism

Perry said that Trump hasn’t gone nearly as far as the Nazis in promoting his vision of the holidays, and he sees major flaws in describing Trump as a Nazi-like figure. But there are some clear parallels.

“Trump and the Nazis share aspects of race baiting and perhaps broader aspects of extreme conservatism—many political ideologies do,” Perry said.

“Frankly, I’m not sure how far Trump himself is willing to go to use the holiday to promote anti-Muslim or anti-minority visions of America, or if he even really understands what he is doing with his ‘merry Christmas’ tirades.” (Read the article How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism)

Is "Trumpism" a new kind of nationalism?

Baylor University released the results of the fifth wave of the Baylor Religion Survey in September 2017 (See American Values, Mental Health and Using Technology in the Age of Trump). It is one of the most extensive surveys that is regularly conducted on religious attitudes in the United States. Around 11000 adults, chosen randomly from a stratified sample, were asked to respond to the survey and the 1501 complete responses were used for the analysis. 

The survey was conducted in the first few months of Donald Trump's presidency and, besides regular concerns, the survey focused on Trump voters. The survey found that people who voted for Trump in November 2016 generally believed:

• Themselves to be "very religious;"
• That the US is or was a Christian nation; 
• Muslims are a threat to America;
• In gender traditionalism; 
• In an Authoritative God. (p-6 of the Baylor Religion Survey (BRS) report)

From this information, the report writers conclude that a new form of nationalism is visible:

This collection of values and attitudes form the core ethos of what we might call Trumpism. It is a new form of nationalism which merges pro-Christian rhetoric with anti-Islam, anti-feminist, anti-globalist, and anti-government attitudes. (p-7 of the BRS report)

Is "Trumpism" a new kind of nationalism? Trumpism is a new phenomenon and journalists, analysts and academics are still trying to understand it and see where it fits in the political firmament.  Some are calling it a new type of conservatism and the biggest transformation of the conservative movement since the 1960s (See Is Trumpism the New Conservatism?), others tussle with the issue and argue that Trump is not a true conservative but he believes in true conservatism and is governing or will govern like a true conservative i.e. there will be no new type of conservatism as Trumpism will soon merge in the mainstream conservative movement (See Is Donald Trump a conservative? We asked the CPAC faithful).

So, again, is Trumpism a new kind of nationalism? The characteristics of Trump voters identified above give us a clue.

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

First, survey analysis shows that most of the Trump voters consider themselves to be very religious. Religion is important for them and many of them are evangelical Christians. 

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

Second, generally, Trump voters believe that America was or still is a Christian nation. The survey statistics show that almost 60% of Americans believe that American is or was a Christian nation, a sign of the overall strength of religious nationalism in the US. 

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

Most of the those who believed in Christian nationalism voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016. The report also acknowledges the strength of religious/Christian nationalism in the US and its association with Trumpism but did not call Trumpism a type of religious nationalism.

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

The BRS survey results also showed that Republicans generally subscribe more to religious/Christian nationalism than independents or Democrats. This survey result can be interpreted as indicating that Trumpism is not much different from the mainstream Republican Party that is currently moving closer to Christian nationalism. 

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

The third characteristic of the Trump voters, based on BRS survey results, was their Islamophobia or fear of Muslims. Generally, Americans feel threatened by both Muslims and conservative Christians. However, most conservative Christians, who voted for Trump, fear Muslims more than any group. 

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

Fear of other religions or "othering" of religions that are different from one's own is a characteristic of religious nationalists. Clearly, if one feels one's religion is the basis of nationalism, then people who do not believe in one's religion cannot be part of one's nation even if they live next door and speak the same language. The following graph demonstrates that people who believe that America was or is a Christian nation consider refugees from the Middle East, who are almost all Muslims, a terrorist threat.

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

The fourth characteristic of Trump voters is gender traditionalism i.e. men and women have different roles in life. Gender traditionalism is also associated with the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. These characteristics are also associated with Christian nationalism in the US.
Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

These characteristics are associated with religious nationalism worldwide. In fact, religious nationalists belonging to different traditions (Christian, Jewish, Hinduism, Islamic, etc.), though bitter enemies of each other, agree on this issue.

Finally, Trump voters generally believe in an "authoritative God." The concept of authoritative God was given by Baylor University professors Paul Froese and Christopher Bader in their book,  America's Four Gods: What We Say about God — & what that Says about Us, published in 2010. Matt Young explains the thesis of the book and the four types of God.

The thesis of the book is, in essence, that classifying people according to their religious denomination (or lack thereof) tells you little about, for example, their politics or their views on science. Instead, Froese and Bader classify people according to the kind of God they believe in: authoritative, benevolent, critical, and distant (not to mention none).
Froese and Bader pose 2 questions, “To what extent does God interact with the world? To what extent does God judge the world?” As a result of interviews and surveys, they conclude that

Americans differ radically in their beliefs about how closely God guides and judges their lives. These two dynamic dimensions of belief reveal four distinct images of God:

1. The Authoritative God—one who is both engaged and judgmental [31%]
2. The Benevolent God—one who is engaged but not judgmental [24%]
3. The Critical God—one who is not engaged but judgmental [16%]
4. The Distant God—one who is not engaged or judgmental [24%]
[5. Atheist [5%]]

But most important, do these different Gods matter? Unequivocally, yes. A person’s God is a direct reflection of his level of moral absolutism, his view of science, his understanding of economic justice, his concept of evil, and how he thinks we should respond to it. And these powerful relationships exist regardless of where he lives, the color of his skin, the amount of money he makes, how many years he has spend [sic] in school, or the church he attends.

Simply put, America’s four Gods lie at the heart of our moral, cultural, and political disagreements. (See America's Four Gods)

Froese and Bader argue that belief in a specific type of Church (or religion) is not a sure prediction of belief in a specific type of God. However, there is some statistical association, for instance, between belief in a distant God and belonging to "nones."

Coming back to Trumpism, most of the Trump voters believe in an authoritative God and those who believe in an authoritative God are more likely to be religious nationalists. Survey results revealed that those believe in an authoritarian God are more likely to want the declaration of the US as a Christian nation and are not likely to favor the strict enforcement of separation of church and state.

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

Source: BRS Wave 5, 2017

Is Trumpism a new type of nationalism, then? The above discussion indicates that of the five characteristics of Trumpism identified by the BRS Wave 5, at least four are also the characteristics of religious nationalism. So, Trumpism does not appear to be a new type of nationalism. 

Make America White and Christian Again

Mirren Gidda of Newsweek, like many others, tried to answer the question, 'How did Trump win?' The answer might come as a shock; many Americans, living in one of the most secular and diverse countries, want to make America a white, Christian country.

There were many things going against Trump and the prospect of him winning the US presidency was so farfetched that it was considered funny. He had no political or military experience and the twice-divorced billionaire, who had lived an irreligious life, was vying to get the nomination of the Republican Party which is largely dependent on evangelicals for its recent successes. Furthermore, non-White and women voters made a majority of the American electorate and Trump managed to keep offending these two groups during the whole campaign. Finally, he had little grasp of the complex political and economic issues that America, and the world, faced and his ignorance was exposed.

But still Donald Trump won and he did not win by attracting the poor, most of whom voted for Clinton:

Trump voters tended to be older (53 percent of people aged 45 and over voted for him), well-off and white. According to the exit polls, 58 percent of all white voters chose Trump at the voting booth, while just 21 percent of non-white voters cast their ballots for the Republican nominee.

The biggest issue for Trump voters—ahead of foreign policy, the economy or terrorism—was immigration, exit polls showed, with 84 percent of Trump voters saying that the government should deport undocumented migrants rather than give them the chance to apply for legal status.

Analysts say Trump’s success among white voters is partly attributable to his tapping into concerns about immigration and a feeling among many voters that the U.S. should be a white, Christian country. “It’s like everything he said hit the right nationalistic buttons,” says Allyson Shortle, assistant professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma...

According to Shortle, research shows that religious nationalism features particularly heavily among Trump’s supporters. It is part of the reason, she says, that Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S. played so well. It appealed to “this narrow vision of a Christian America,” Shortle says.

Trump's attraction was thus partly religious and partly racial. Two of his signature policies were building a wall to put an end to immigration from Mexico and denying Muslims entry into the US. Scholars argue that Trump tapped into white, Christian nationalism that many Americans believe in, although few would openly say so:

“Some people think about it as an ideology, a movement, or an attitude—but some research, including my own, views nationalism as part of a person’s social identity,” writes Kathleen Powers, assistant professor in the department of international affairs at the University of Georgia, in an email to Newsweek . “When people identify with a nationality, they have an idea about what defines the prototypical or archetypal group member. In short, they carry a picture of what it means to be an American.

“That prototypical American,” Powers adds, “might be defined in relatively inclusive terms, like a person who respects political institutions, or in more exclusive terms, like someone who is part of a Judeo-Christian religion, speaks English, or is a member of a certain racial group. Certainly, some people define the prototypical American as white, Christian, and/or born in the U.S.”

And if that’s your conception of what it is to be an American, Powers writes, then anyone who deviates from the norm is either not a true American, or is a poor version of one.

What figures prominently in how ordinary citizens define what it is to be an American, Shortle says, is the notion of the U.S. and its peoples as a Christian nation. (The Pilgrim Fathers, who founded what came to be the United States of America, were Christian dissenters fleeing religious persecution in Europe.)

Even today, religious nationalism remains strong among a significant proportion of U.S. citizens. On September 29, a poll of 4,000 Americans—which Shortle helped organize—found that 43 percent of respondents thought that the abundant natural resources in the U.S. were a sign that God wanted America to lead the rest of the world. Sixty percent of those surveyed believed that the U.S. holds a special place in God’s plan. (Not all of the people polled were Christian or even religious).

Obama's two-term presidency would certainly make you fearful of the catastrophic times ahead. The son of a black Muslim becoming President of the Republic could have been the last straw. 

Professor Gorski, one of the most preeminent scholars of nationalism, agrees but claims that Trumpism is a secular religious nationalism (it seems like an oxymoron but let's read Professor Gorski):

There are various interpretations of Trumpism on offer. Reading it as fascism explains its appeal to the white nationalists of the “alt-right.” Reading it as populism explains its appeal to a white working class fed up with the “Washington establishment.” And reading it as authoritarianism explains its appeal to voters with authoritarian personalities. These interpretations are not necessarily wrong, but they do not explain Trump’s appeal to evangelicals qua evangelicals.

So, let me propose a different interpretation. On this reading, Trumpism is a secular form of religious nationalism. By “religious nationalism,” I mean a form of nationalism that makes religious identity the litmus test of national belonging. By “a secular form of religious nationalism,” I mean one that strips religious identity of its ethical content and transcendental reference. In Trumpism, religion functions mainly as a marker of ethnicity.

Gorski argues that devoid of any ethical dimension, bloody conquest and violent apocalypse, has been the basic recipe for this secular religious nationalism, which is also referred by its more innocuous-sounding name 'American Exceptionalism.' Trump does not use the religious rhetoric like many other US Presidents but the idea is similar:

Trump does not allude to the Tribulation or the Second Coming in the way that old school religious nationalists like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson did. But Trump does portray the contemporary world as an apocalyptic hellscape. There are no demons or angels, no monsters or dragons. Just “real Americans” threatened by hordes of Syrian refugees, gangs of Muslim terrorists, and swarms of Mexican rapists. Trump’s apocalypse is a secular one.

With Christ out of the picture, the role of Messiah is open again. He claims that he and he alone has the power to cast these monstrous minions back into their respective pits, as long as his followers put their faith in him. “Believe me folks,” he often says, “I will do it.” I will deliver you from evil, I will redeem you from poverty, and I will lift you up again above all races. American will “win” again. In Trumpism, the Second Coming of Christ becomes the First Term of the Donald.

Gorski argues that it's Christianism, not Christianity (perhaps similar to what Islam is to Islamism) and that's why it is not the most pious, but the most political, Christians that are attracted to Trump:

Reading Trumpism as a secular version of religious nationalism not only explains why so many evangelicals rallied to Trump, it also sheds light on which evangelicals did so. Not the more pious of the evangelical masses, as it turns out, nor the more theologically astute of its leaders. During the spring of 2016, opinion polls turned up a fascinating finding: an inverse relationship between church attendance and support for Trump. As for Graham Jr. and Falwell Jr., they are political leaders, not thought leaders.

In short, the affinity is not really between Trump and Christianity—it’s between Trumpism and Christianism. By Christianism, I mean Christianity as a political identity denuded of ethical content. Trumpism is a Christianist version of political theology.

Professor Gorski's explanation is interesting but I would like to ask if Trump did not act like a Christian and did not talk like a Christian then how can we accuse him of being a (secular) religious nationalist. Many political leaders claim that they will bring heaven on earth and without them there would be apocalyptic hellscape so are all of them religious nationalists, even if they persecute religious nationalists and abhor religion? If this is so, almost every political leader, atleast in the developing world, is either a religious nationalist or a secular religious nationalist.

Is Christian nationalism increasing in America? According to a West Virginia University study reported in Huffpost, Christian nationalism was decreasing in America in 2014:

In their study, Whitehead and researcher Christopher Scheitle of West Virginia University analyzed more than 3,000 responses to questions on the qualities of being an American and patriotism from the 1996, 2004 and 2014 waves of the General Social Survey.
They presented their findings at the recent joint annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and Religious Research Association in Atlanta.
Consider how the ties between religion and nationalism can change dramatically in different time periods:

• In 1996, some 38 percent of respondents said being a Christian was very important to being an American. 

• In 2004, just three years after the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and a year after the invasion of Iraq, nearly half, or 48 percent, of Americans, attributed the same significance to being a Christian. 

• In 2014, a period of relative calm, the percentage dropped to one-third.

So, what happened in 2016? How did a liberal America vote for a person who denigrated women and racial/religious minorities during the whole election campaign? Is Christian nationalism still declining or it increased after 2014? Did fear of the ISIS, home-grown/lone-wolf terrorism and migration again linked Christianity with nationalism?