In recent years, scholars, journalists, organizations such as PRRI, and many others have produced a huge amount of discourse about white Christian nationalism in the United States. How have progressive Christians, in particular, engaged with the term “white Christian nationalism” in order to organize, define their opponents, and motivate political action? Survey data from PRRI indicate that progressive Christians are more familiar with and more likely to use the term “Christian nationalism” than any other political group. What does white Christian nationalism mean to them, and how does it function within their communities?
To address these questions, we spoke with several local chapters of the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism (CACN), a campaign of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC). These chapters are in Oregon, Indiana, Louisiana, Texas, Michigan, Georgia, Minnesota, and Alaska. We conducted interviews with leaders and other members, virtually and in person, and observed book clubs, guest speakers, planning meetings, and other events, from December 2025 to June 2026. In this Spotlight Analysis, we reflect on this research to explain how the discourse of white Christian nationalism provides a foundation for the groups’ activities, including local political activism, continuing education, and community building.
Understandings of and Attitudes Toward Christian Nationalism
The label Christian nationalism originated as an analytical category used by researchers to classify patterns in survey responses. In 2022, PRRI created a comprehensive measurement of Christian nationalism based on five questions about the relationship between Christianity, American identity, and the U.S. government. Based on their answers to these five questions, respondents can be sorted into four broad categories: Adherents, Sympathizers, Skeptics, and Rejecters of Christian nationalism.
According to PRRI’s most recent data, 11% of Americans qualified as Christian nationalism Adherents and 21% as Sympathizers. Thus, roughly one-third of Americans at least somewhat agree with the claims or assumptions of Christian nationalism. The majority do not: 37% are classified as Skeptics, while 27% are Rejecters — those who are most vociferously opposed to the ideology.
The term Christian nationalism has gradually moved beyond research discourse and into popular usage, where people began using it to describe themselves and others. When PRRI first asked about Christian nationalism in 2022, over one-third of Americans (35%) had not heard of it, while just 23% say the same today. Moreover, Christian nationalism Rejecters are now the least likely to report not having heard of the term (13%), compared with Adherents (20%), Sympathizers (26%), and Skeptics (28%).
Who are the Rejecters? The data indicate that Rejecters are much more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, and they are more likely to support issues like birthright citizenship and mandatory vaccines. In terms of religious affiliation among Christians, Christian nationalism rejection is most correlated with Hispanic Catholics, white Catholics, and white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants.
Because Rejecters are among those most familiar with the term and its underlying meanings, this project centers their interpretations to understand how engagement with the concept shapes their self-definitions and political practices. Christian nationalism is now, among other things, a contested discursive field through which people make claims about identity, belonging, and power in American public life.
Christians Against Christian Nationalism
In late 2025, we reached out to each chapter that was listed on CACN’s website and made contact with about a dozen of them. The local chapters are at various stages of development and have slightly different areas of focus and activity. While the demographics of each chapter vary, we learned that these chapters are composed of mostly white mainline Protestants, most of whom are at or near retirement age. Each chapter has its own leadership team and designated division of labor. Some chapters have a more developed leadership team, with a designated person for social media, leading monthly meetings, and connecting with other organizations that are committed to civic causes. Others have members who have to wear multiple hats. Nearly all of the leaders expressed a desire to connect with other chapters and share organizing strategies or other tools that would be useful for their work.
“Something Christians Need to Address With Other Christians”
One way the term white Christian nationalism functions in the context of anti-Christian nationalism media is to frame Christian support for President Donald Trump as an intragroup issue for all Christians. A local leader explained that a primary goal of CACN should be to help churches examine their own assumptions regarding Christian nationalist ideals. This type of intragroup framing emphasizes education, solidarity, and conversation training. While CACN leadership emphasizes awareness and advocacy, and while these goals and frames are not mutually exclusive, some members are drawn to/view the main purpose of CACN as intervening within the church. When we asked one local leader what draws people to a group like CACN, she explained that people recognize that Christian nationalism is “something Christians need to address with other Christians.”
Several members with whom we spoke came from conservative evangelical backgrounds and had left that tradition, in some cases many decades ago. Many members of one local group met each other through their church, a progressive mainline protestant congregation. They were drawn to the church because of its prosocial mission and progressive politics — for example, they play a role in the city’s Pride parade. A few church members, assisted by the pastor, organized a book study, beginning with Andrew Whitehead’s American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church, and that led to the formation of the chapter. Their focus on Christian nationalism, in some cases, offers them a way to understand their own pasts as well as reach out to friends and family members who remain right-wing Christians.
Call it “White Christian Nationalism”
At one local meeting, when asked about their fears of Christian nationalism, CACN members expressed concerns about “great replacement theory” rhetoric and fears of a possible “racial cleansing” (this was mentioned in the context of erasing the military contribution of Black people and women at Arlington National Cemetery and elsewhere). One woman spoke up, explaining that she preferred to refer to it as “white Christian nationalism” because, to her, Christian nationalism seemed mostly about preserving racial purity.
Other chapters described persistent challenges in helping members connect the macro-level movement of Christian nationalism to local racial politics and to their own positionality as white Christians in the United States. Even regions seen as liberal bastions of racial politics are not immune from Christian nationalism (for example, recent data shows that 25% of Oregonians are Christian nationalism Sympathizers). Leaders observed that many participants approached Christian nationalism as something external to themselves, using it to demarcate a boundary between extremist or inauthentic forms of Christianity and their own religious identities.
Organizational resources, such as the BJC’s discussion guides on how “racism undergirds Christian nationalism,” further institutionalize this reframing by encouraging participants to examine how Christian symbols, narratives, and moral claims are used to encode and reproduce racialized anxieties and hierarchies. For many white Christians — particularly those newly engaging questions of race and systemic inequality — the term white Christian nationalism thus serves as both an interpretive tool and a pedagogical entry point.
“Christian Nationalism is Political, not Religious”
Christian nationalism has offered Christians who are confused and/or disturbed by the rise of Trump a framework with which to make sense of our current political moment. It also helps carve out a space for political activity among liberal Christians who otherwise view politics with suspicion or prefer to position themselves above partisan conflict.
One local organizer shared that their chapter dedicates much of their programming to “educating [our] members to connect what is happening at the federal level to the local level.” Their monthly meetings involve reading op-eds, short research articles, and news stories in order to “label our territory, define our opponents, and motivate political action.” Thus, they create an interpretive framework through which members can make sense of contemporary political developments, situate themselves within broader struggles, and translate abstract national issues into actionable local concerns. Some groups maintain active chats on messaging platforms, allows them to share recent local and national news items, and situate them vis à vis Christian nationalism.
While Christian nationalism rhetoric can highlight the pollution of a pure Christianity, others emphasize that it is not Christianity at all. Texas Senate candidate James Talarico has repeated the line that “there’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism,” and popular books such as Michael Austin’s “American Christian Nationalism: Neither American Nor Christian” echo this claim. At one local CACN meeting, a member claimed that Christian nationalism was “a political group that cherry-picks the Bible.” The CACN Instagram account explains that Christian nationalism is “a damaging political ideology.” This is a common theme on CACN’s official social media posts: As one TikTok put it, “God isn’t a Democrat or Republican.” This helps to position CACN as above the partisan fray, creating space for people who don’t want “to get political” to feel like they are doing something about Trump. These groups carve out a space for members to do real political work without feeling that they are embroiled in partisanship.
Conclusion
Further research, including quantitative survey-based research, is needed to learn more about the religious, political, cultural, and social worlds of Christian nationalism Rejecters and Skeptics. Our study offers a window into the work of those who use the term most frequently, organizing their opposition. In so doing, it points toward new directions for research on the liberal mainline and the Christian left, broadly construed, as well as the discursive politics of the now-ubiquitous term white Christian nationalism.
