Title The everyday crusade : Christian nationalism in American politics / Eric L. McDaniel, Irfan Nooruddin, Allyson F. Shortle

Published Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2022 ©2022

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Description 1 online resource (xix, 272 pages) : illustrations Contents Myths, gods, and nations -- Who are the believers? -- Who dwells in His house? -- What do we owe strangers? -- Evangelizing American religious exceptionalism -- Governing the temple -- The view from the back pews Summary "The Everyday Crusade offers a provocative explanation for the anti-democratic impulses of otherwise ordinary Americans that surfaced so viscerally on January 6th, 2021. We advance two main arguments. First, the political coalition represented by the rioters is unified and animated by a toxic narrative of racial and religious grievances under the umbrella of nationalism. White Christian Nationalists are today the base of the Republican Party and those who attacked the U.S. Capitol are drawn from their ranks. Second, tempting as it is to believe that this attack is an aberration and that it is unrepresentative of America, we argue that its leaders draw on a long tradition of American Religious Exceptionalism that dates back to the earliest days of colonial settlement of today's United States. In that very real sense, and with apologies to the poet, they, too, sing America. The irony is that such revanchism sits alongside an increase in progressive support for voting rights, marijuana legalization, gay marriage, universal healthcare, reinvestment in racial equality, and decriminalization reforms. It is almost as if, on the eve of a progressive policy explosion, something deep within American society was awoken, ready to fight for continued cultural dominance - rebranded as "survival." This is no surprise. When Trump warned of American carnage at his poorly attended inauguration, he was issuing an unmistakable dog whistle to his supporters who worry that their two centuries plus long grip over defining America was being loosened and affirming his willingness to champion them. When he promised them America First, he invoked their belief in American Religious Exceptionalism, a coherent intellectual framework that combines America's origin myths and explains its role in the world, and has done so from the nation's founding. Our effort builds on rich theoretical and empirical research that has joined the effort to process the whiplash experienced by many of how we went from Barack Obama to Donald Trump and what the implications of this are for our understanding of American politics. Many of these works focus usefully on group identity mechanisms, explicating, as Robert Jones and Janelle Wong do, the insecurity of White evangelical voters in the face of demographic change, and, per Rachel Blum, the growing influence of extremist factions within the Republican party. Either way, Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto make clear, the motivating force is the threat of losing status as a dominant group in society. Another tack has been developed by Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead who, focusing also on the growing power and disquiet of White evangelicals, warn of the power of White Christian nationalism. Their explanation, like ours, builds on foundational comparative models of how the variety of ways religion and nationalism combine to shape national myths and to impact state institutional design. The Everyday Crusade owes considerably to the insights produced by the scholars cited above and by many more who have built the theoretical models of public opinion we work with here. Yet we believe our book offers a distinct interpretation of the restrictive and illiberal attitudes characterizing American public opinion from the 2000s to the 2020s. Public willingness to support undemocratic policies and candidates is not the sole purview of the nation's White evangelicals. In fact, heightened illiberalism in American public opinion has been occurring under an unprecedented era when Americans have increasingly left organized religion. The public's willingness to support undemocratic policies and candidates is likewise left unexplained purely by looking to the nation's Republicans or the Tea Party's infiltration into it; rather, there are plenty of political independents and Democrats who subscribe to restrictive policies and authoritarian candidates"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on May 09, 2022) Subject Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ) SUBJECT Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ) fast Subject Christianity and politics -- United States Conservatism -- United States -- Religious aspects -- Christianity Nationalism -- United States -- Religious aspects -- Christianity White nationalism -- United States Christianity and politics Conservatism -- Religious aspects -- Christianity Nationalism -- Religious aspects -- Christianity White nationalism United States Form Electronic book Author Nooruddin, Irfan, author Shortle, Allyson F., author LC no. 2021053515 ISBN 9781009029445 1009029444

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