My country, white or wrong: Christian nationalism, race, and blind patriotism

ABSTRACT

A principal concern regarding nationalist sentiment is the tendency to sanctify “the nation” and support it as chosen and pure regardless of its complicity in injustice. Building on research showing the tendency to whitewash America’s past is primarily localized to white Americans, and particularly those who stress its Christian heritage, we theorize Christian nationalism amplifies Americans’ willingness to endorse “blind patriotism” (supporting the nation even in the wrong), but only for white Americans as opposed to Blacks or Hispanics. General Social Survey data affirm the more Americans conflate Christian and American identities, the more they agree citizens should support their country even if it is wrong. As anticipated, this association is pronounced for white Americans, but virtually non-existent among Blacks and Hispanics. Stemming from American religious and national identities being deeply racialized, conflating the two sanctifies “the nation” but only among whites, whose national membership and hegemony were historically assumed.

KEYWORDS:

• Nationalism
• whiteness
• whites
• Blacks
• Hispanics
• Christian nationalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To be sure, the phrase “my country, right or wrong” is often used by those denouncing blind patriotism. For example, Du Bois ([1952] 2007, 113) wrote: “I do not believe that loyalty to the United States involves hatred for other peoples, nor will I promise to support my country ‘Right or Wrong’. I will defend this country when it is right. I will condemn it when it is wrong”. Nevertheless the phrase has historically captured the notion that nationalists will fail to check their government’s excesses or injustices (or even start to support them) out of blind loyalty.

2 The ISSP module on national identity was also in collected in 1996, but at that time, the GSS did not collect information on Hispanic Identity. The module was on administer form X of Ballot A, B and C while the ISSP module for Citizenship II was administered on form Y across the same ballots. See: https://gss.norc.org/Documents/quex/2014_Quex_Map.pdf.

3 The GSS measures of political ideology and biblical literalism were not administered to who received the outcome or Christian nationalism measure in 2004.

4 We also tested an interaction between our Christian nationalism measure and gender as some studies have found modest variation in the association between Christian nationalist ideology and various outcomes by gender (e.g., Perry, McElroy et al. 2022). However, in this case, there was no significant interaction with gender and thus we leave it unreported.

5 The models also produce probabilities for Other Race individuals. However, we focus on the three main racial groups here to emphasize the core differences we are interested in.