American Christian Nationalism and the Meaning of “Religion”

American Christian nationalism highlights the entanglements of identity and power as they relate to the category of “religion.” Like many populist movements, Christian nationalism emerges out of a power-devaluation crisis stemming from the diminishment of White Christians’ social and political hegem...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Miller, Daniel 1975- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2022
In: Method & theory in the study of religion
Year: 2022, Volume: 34, Issue: 1/2, Pages: 64-85
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B USA / Christianity / Nationalism / Social identity / Power structure / New Christian Right / History 2000-2022
RelBib Classification:CG Christianity and Politics
CH Christianity and Society
KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history
KBQ North America
Further subjects:B Christian Nationalism
B definition of religion
B Populism
B Social Identity
B Religion And Politics
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Summary:American Christian nationalism highlights the entanglements of identity and power as they relate to the category of “religion.” Like many populist movements, Christian nationalism emerges out of a power-devaluation crisis stemming from the diminishment of White Christians’ social and political hegemony, coalescing around the affirmation that the US is a properly “Christian” nation. However, an examination of Christian nationalism reveals that the meaning of “Christian” within Christian nationalism cannot be captured by traditional measures of individual religiosity that tacitly presuppose that religion is essentially private, belief-focused, and non-political in nature, but must recognize that it expresses a complex social identity involving multiple social domains (e.g., race, gender, political ideology) and, as such, contests of power. This analysis is significant for religious studies because it suggests that religion is better approached analytically as an active process of socially-shared identity formation than as a belief system or Gestalt of individual religious practices.
ISSN:1570-0682
Contains:Enthalten in: Method & theory in the study of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341533