Research shows that Americans who hold strongly to a myth about America’s Christian heritage—what is called “Christian nationalism”—tend to draw rigid boundaries around ethnic and national group membership. Incorporating theories connecting ethnic boundaries, prejudice, and perceived threat with a tendency to justify harsher penalties, bias, or excessive force against racial minorities, the authors examine how Christian nationalist ideology shapes Americans’ views about police treatment of black Americans. Analyses of 2017 data from a national probability sample show that adherence to Christian nationalism predicts that Americans will be more likely to believe that police treat blacks the same as whites and that police shoot blacks more often because blacks are more violent than whites. These effects are robust even when including controls for respondents’ religious and political characteristics, indicating that Christian nationalism influences Americans’ attitudes over and above the independent influences of political conservatism or religious parochialism. In fact, the authors find that religiosity influences policing attitudes in the opposite direction. Moreover, observed patterns do not differ by race, suggesting that Christian nationalism provides a cultural framework that can bolster antiblack prejudice among people of color as well as whites. The authors argue that Christian nationalism solidifies ethnic boundaries around national identity such that Americans are less willing to acknowledge police discrimination and more likely to victim-blame, even appealing to more overtly racist notions of blacks’ purportedly violent tendencies to justify police shootings. The authors outline the implications of these findings for understanding the current racial-political climate leading up to and during the Trump presidency.

In 2014 and 2015, video footage of the police killings of Eric Garner, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott (not to mention other deaths not filmed, such as Michael Brown’s) revealed more than a continuing trend of police violence against young black men in the United States. It also exposed a vast “racial perception gap” between white and black Americans regarding the relationship between the police and the black community (Jones 2016; Weitzer and Tuch 2004, 2005). Although black Americans have been unjustly brutalized by the criminal justice system for centuries (Alexander 2012; Muller 2012; Wacquant 2000), many white Americans were surprised to learn about the prevalence of police brutality, while others were reluctant to see these cases as anything but isolated incidents that happened to be filmed and, it was thought, blown out of proportion. Polling data from 2015 show that nearly half of white Americans believe the police treat blacks the same as whites (a higher proportion than in 1992, just after the Rodney King decision), compared with only 14 percent of black Americans (Jones 2016).

Although white Americans in general may be reluctant to recognize racial discrimination in policing, recent polling data suggest that white evangelicals are among the most unwilling. Using data collected just after the Baltimore riots in April 2015, Robert Jones (2016:153–55), in his book The End of White Christian America, showed that although 74 percent of black Americans believed the recent police killings of black men were part of a larger trend, only 29 percent of white evangelicals affirmed this response. Indeed, 57 percent of white evangelicals felt that the killings were isolated events. White evangelicals have a long history of ignoring institutional racism in a variety of American contexts (see Emerson and Smith 2000; see also reviews in Edwards, Christerson, and Emerson 2013; Emerson, Korver-Glenn, and Douds 2015). Jones theorized that white evangelicals’ unwillingness to acknowledge police discrimination may stem from concerns about white Christians’ waning cultural and political influence in the United States, leading to a loss of empathy and increasing social rifts between them and nonwhites.

Other recent research, however, shows that the myth of America’s Christian heritage and identity extends beyond white evangelicals themselves and is also found among nonevangelical (even irreligious) Americans (Bonikowski and DiMaggio 2016; Braunstein and Taylor 2017; Delehanty, Edgell, and Stewart forthcoming; Shortle and Gaddie 2015; Straughn and Feld 2010). Relatedly, other research finds that this “Christian nation” ideology may influence the public opinions of both whites and racial minorities similarly on issues such as Muslim immigration (Merino 2010; Shortle and Gaddie 2015) and even policing (Davis forthcoming). This suggests that the link Jones identified between being white and evangelical and views toward police treatment of blacks may have less to do with white evangelicals’ racial identity or religious tradition per se but depends primarily on the underlying historical connection they often draw between Christianity and America—what may be termed “Christian nationalism”1 (Davis forthcoming; Gorski 2017a, 2017b; McDaniel, Nooruddin, and Shortle 2011; Perry and Whitehead 2015a, 2015b; Yukich 2013).

Our study directly tests this thesis by examining how Christian nationalism influences white and nonwhite Americans’ views toward police treatment of blacks. Previous research affirms that Christian nationalism is associated with drawing more rigid boundaries around ethnoracial (Edgell and Tranby 2010; Perry and Whitehead 2015a, 2015b) and national (Edgell and Tranby 2010; McDaniel et al. 2011; Merino 2010; Shortle and Gaddie 2015) group memberships. We integrate this research with studies linking racial prejudice and perceived group threat with a tendency to justify harsher penalties, bias, or excessive force against people of color. Informed by these strands of research, we argue that adherence to Christian nationalist ideology not only solidifies Americans’ ethnic and national group boundaries but does so such that both white and nonwhite Americans alike are less willing to acknowledge racial injustice in policing but, in fact, will actually be more likely to blame blacks themselves for police violence. The implications of our study, we argue, hold tremendous significance for our understanding of the contemporary racial-political climate that contributed to the election of Donald Trump and sustains much of his support base (Whitehead, Perry, and Baker 2018; Whitehead, Schnabel, and Perry forthcoming).

Results At the bivariate level (Table 2), the measures associated with whether Americans believe that police treat blacks and whites equally or that the police shoot blacks because they are more violent than whites are entirely as one might expect. Americans who are less educated, identify as Republican, are apolitically conservative, are more religious, are biblical literalists, and are affiliated with a religious group (as opposed to no affiliation) are all more likely to affirm both views about the police treatment of blacks. Americans who are older, are white, live in nonurban areas, live outside the Northeast, and are evangelical are also more likely to affirm only that police treat blacks equally to whites, while Americans who are male, are not from the West, or have a punishing view of God are more likely to believe the police shoot blacks because they are more violent than whites. Regarding our focal predictor, Christian nationalism is moderately and positively associated with believing that police treat blacks equally to whites (r = .295, p < .001) and that the police shoot blacks because they are more violent than whites (r = .195, p < .001). As Figure 1 shows, these associations are roughly linear—increasing levels of Christian nationalism correspond with greater agreement that police treat blacks the same as whites and police shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites. Turning to the multivariate analyses, Model 1 in Table 3 examines the associations of all control variables with Americans’ likelihood of agreeing that police officers in the United States treat blacks the same as whites. Women, political conservatives, and biblical literalists are more likely to agree that police officers in the United States treat blacks the same as whites. Blacks, Hispanics, and Americans of multiple races or another race are less likely to agree than are whites. Compared with Republicans, independents and Democrats are less likely to agree with that statement. Model 2 in Table 3 includes the Christian nationalism measure, which turns out to be the strongest predictor in the model. Increasing levels of Christian nationalism are significantly associated (β = .30, p < .001) with a greater likelihood of agreeing that police officers in the United States treat blacks the same as whites. For every unit increase on the Christian nationalism index, the odds of agreement increase 9 percent. This translates to almost a 58 percent increase in odds of agreement for a 1 standard deviation increase above the mean on the Christian nationalism scale (scoring 23.98 instead of 17.56), net of the effects of all the control variables. Identical to Model 1, political conservatives, blacks, Hispanics, and other races (compared with whites) and Democrats (compared with Republicans) maintain significant associations. Women are now no longer different from men in their agreement with the policing measure, suggesting that Christian nationalism accounted the previously positive association. We now also find that Americans who report higher levels of religious activity are actually less likely to agree that police treat blacks and white equally. Model 3 in Table 3 examines the associations between the control variables and agreement that police officers in the United States shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites. Here we find that women, those in the “other race” category (compared with whites), and married Americans are less likely to agree, as well as those who report high levels of education. Americans who are more politically conservative, who view God as “punishing,” or are mainline Protestants (compared with evangelical) are all more likely to agree. Model 4 includes the Christian nationalism measure, which is significant and the second strongest predictor in the model behind only political conservatism. Specifically, increasing levels of Christian nationalism are positively associated (β = .18, p < .01) with a greater likelihood of agreeing that police officers shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites. In fact, a 1 standard deviation increase above the mean on the Christian nationalism index equates to a 32 percent increase in the odds of agreeing that police shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites. Similar to Model 3, gender, marital status, other race, education, political conservatism, viewing God as “punishing,” and affiliating as mainline Protestant are all significantly associated.8 We again also find, with marginal significance, that Americans who report higher levels of religious activity are less likely to believe police officers shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites. In ancillary analyses, we explored interaction effects between Christian nationalism and race/ethnicity (results available on request). None of the interactions were significant for either dependent variable, and thus it seems that Christian nationalism influences the policing attitudes of nonwhite Americans similar to those of white Americans. Figure 2 illustrates the robust relationship between Christian nationalism and Americans’ attitudes toward police treatment of blacks. Overall, increases in Christian nationalism correspond with a greater probability of agreeing that police treat blacks the same as whites (Figure 2A) and that police shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites (Figure 2B). Even when accounting for a host of control variables, including a variety of religious and political characteristics, Americans who score just 1 standard deviation above the mean for Christian nationalism are almost twice as likely to agree that police treat blacks the same as whites compared with Americans who score 1 standard deviation below the mean. Similarly, Americans who score just 1 standard deviation above the mean on the Christian nationalism index are much more likely to agree that police officers shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites than those who score 1 standard deviation below the mean. Figures 2A and 2B also demonstrate that Americans who are more religiously active are less likely to agree with either statement. The direction of this association is clearly opposite from that of Christian nationalism. The probability of Americans’ agreeing that police officers treat blacks the same as whites decreases from .58 to .44 when moving from 1 standard deviation below the mean for religious practice to 1 standard deviation above the mean for religious practice. The same is true for the probability of agreement that police officers shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites. With our expectations regarding Christian nationalism strongly affirmed, we address the broader implications of these findings below.

Acknowledgements We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback. Portions of this research were supported through research grants to the second author from the Association for the Sociology of Religion’s Fichter Grant Program and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion’s Jack Shand Grant Program.

Notes 1

Although the term Christian nationalism has at times been used to refer to specific organized movements to promote white Christian nationalist discourses and theocratic policies in various Western nations (Barkun 1997), here we mean the term to refer to a more generalized ideology and discourse in the United States, not localized to a specific, self-reflective organization of “Christian nationalists.” 2

Alexander wrote, “As the rules of acceptable discourse changed . . . segregationists distanced themselves from an explicitly racist agenda. They developed instead the racially sanitized rhetoric of ‘cracking down on crime’—rhetoric that is now used freely by politicians of every stripe” (p. 43). 3

Although this response rate is lower than desirable, it exceeds the average response rate for public opinion polls (Pew Research Center 2012), and recent scholarship establishes that the accuracy of parameter estimates is minimally related to response rates (American Association for Public Opinion Research 2008; Singer 2006). Furthermore, a recent analysis demonstrated that surveys weighted to match population demographics provide accurate data on most political, economic, and social measures (Pew Research Center 2012). Finally, we provide a comparison of a number of measures of the 2017 BRS with the 2016 General Social Survey. Although some small differences exist, the estimates from the 2017 BRS compare quite favorably. Although some variation is evident, the overall comparison is quite similar (see Supplementary Table 1). 4

Using SAS 9.3, this procedure generates five imputations using multiple Markov chains based on all variables included in the models, resulting in an overall N of 7,505 (1,501 × 5). All analyses draw on the MI data sets. The results reported in Tables 2 and 3 use the MI ANALYZE procedure in SAS. It combines all the results from the five imputations generating overall estimates, standard errors, and significance tests. 5

In ancillary analyses, we examined an “active” image of God scale (Froese and Bader 2010), in addition to the “punishing” image of God measure used in previous research on punitive attitudes. The “active” image of God measure was nonsignificant in all models except Model 4 and does not alter the findings presented below either statistically or substantively. We encourage future research on God images to explore this finding that is beyond the purview of the present study. 6

Given the large number of religion and politics control variables included in our models, we ran a host of collinearity diagnostics to ensure multicollinearity was not adversely affecting our results. First, although binary logistic regression results are presented below, we also checked the variance inflation factor scores for all variables across all models using ordinary least squares regression models, a strategy recommended by Allison (2001). We find that across all of our models, no variance inflation factor scores exceed 2.84, well below the standard cutoff of 10. Second, none of the bivariate correlations between independent variables included in our models exceed the classic cutoff point of 0.70. Finally, we rotated various religion and politics control variables in and out of our models presented below to ensure that there was no evidence of sign switching, a signal of possible multicollinearity issues. We found no evidence; all of the independent variables maintained identical directions of association to the results presented below. 7

We also performed additional analyses using the original coding of each dependent variable (1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree) and ordinary least squares regression modeling. Across all four models presented below, there are no substantive differences when using this alternative modeling strategy (results available upon request). Christian nationalism is still strongly and significantly associated with views of police treatment of blacks. Given that we are not making claims that Christian nationalism will make respondents more likely to strongly agree rather than agree, or disagree rather than strongly disagree, but rather that Christian nationalism will make respondents more likely to strongly agree or agree versus strongly disagree or disagree, we contend that dichotomizing the dependent variables and using binary logistic regression modeling is the ideal modeling strategy. 8

Although not the focal variable in these analyses, we found it curious that mainline Protestants were more likely than evangelicals to agree that police shoot blacks because blacks are comparatively violent. In the bivariate correlations (Table 2), mainline Protestants are not significantly different from others on either policing outcome. Thus, we reran all of our models while cycling out predictor variables to discern whether a variable served as a suppressor (results available on request). With all other controls in place, mainline Protestants do not differ significantly from evangelicals in their policing attitudes until biblical literalism and/or viewing God as “punishing” are included in models. Thus, it seems that once we hold constant dogmatic fundamentalism, evangelicals are in fact less likely to affirm antiblack stereotypes about police violence. 9

This reality was made more salient on August 26, 2017, when Seattle Seahawks player Michael Bennett was violently detained by Las Vegas police, one of whom pointed a gun at his head. Police were responding to reports of gunshots and racially profiled Bennett. Recounting the experience at a press conference, Bennett explained, “Any moment I could’ve made the wrong decision and whether . . . moved or felt like I was resistant or doing something wrong and . . . the Seahawks would be wearing the patch with number 73 on it.”