The Power of Christian Nationalism (Neon Liberalism #81, with Allyson Shortle)

Samantha and guest Allyson Shortle, professor at the University of Oklahoma, talk about the current state and long history of the movement which forms the hard core of Donald Trump's support: Christian nationalism. Where did this movement begin? How deep are its roots in American myth? What do Christian nationalists believe, and why have they stuck with Trump even as other groups begin to desert him?

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Transcript

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:00:10]**
Welcome back to Neon Liberalism. I am Samantha Hancox-Li.

Pete Hegseth loves to work out in his duties as Secretary of Defense — or, as he likes to call it, Secretary of War. You can often see him doing — I guess we could call them photo shoots, video shoots — of him exercising with various service members around the world, often with his shirt off. And you can see on his chest a variety of tattoos, including a Crusader cross.

And that religious imagery isn't confined to his body. It's not confined to his skin. It pervades his political career, pervades his speeches. As Secretary of Defense, he is constantly calling on religious imagery, and in many ways that makes Hegseth the most visible emblem of Christian nationalism in the second Trump administration — but not the only one.

And so, to try and understand what this movement is — it's not my background, it's not the world that I came from — I thought maybe I should talk to somebody who studies it a little more closely. So I am very excited to welcome on Allyson Shortle, professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma, and something of an expert on Christian nationalism. Welcome to the podcast.

**Allyson Shortle [00:01:35]**
Thank you for having me. I'm pleased to be here.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:01:39]**
Okay, so I guess — what's Christian nationalism?

**Allyson Shortle [00:01:42]**
Well, Christian nationalism can be a lot of different things. We often talk about the movement interchangeably with its other sorts of parts or components.

The movement is a highly organized movement, which is a social movement that involves a lot of political coalitions, and it's well funded and organized, and is in fact global in nature — even though it is spurred out of the United States largely, but certainly came out of evangelical culture, white evangelical culture specifically. That is the social movement, and they've had great success on the elite level, what we would call leadership, or in our institutions, reshaping how democracy is performed in America. They've done a very successful act of changing our norms. This is with shocking success, and it seems very sudden, even though this was a long-term plan on the part of the movement to retake the nation and all of its institutions.

Now, that's the movement, and it's really hard to put your finger on. And they do not wear the label Christian nationalism on their sleeve, on purpose, in order to be as powerful as possible. So it's hard to identify, but we know that it is massively successful. And the Trump administration is proof of that. His cabinet, the ideas he puts forth, are Christian nationalist. They are crafted by Project 2025, which is essentially a manifesto that was written by hundreds of Christian nationalist writers and authors — people who claim to be Christian nationalists, a lot of them, some who do not — and this agenda in Project 2025, from the Christian nationalist movement, is in fact showing up in Trump's agenda. This has reshaped a lot of what we're seeing happening in terms of policymaking, or policymaking that's not happening. That's the movement.

But Christian nationalism is also an ideology, which is largely how I study it. I'm a public opinion scholar, so I largely look at Christian nationalism in terms of how people attach themselves to these particular beliefs that Christianity should essentially be the centerpiece of American governance.

And finally, Christian nationalism can be a label. You can call yourself a Christian nationalist. Not many do, because it's wildly unpopular. The ideology is arguably popular. It is anywhere from 30 to 33% of Americans could be labeled Christian nationalists in terms of their adherence to this ideology, whereas the Christian nationalist label — about five to 10% of Americans might hold the label, but five to 10% thinks it's positive as well. So we don't see a lot of leverage from the actual term or phrase Christian nationalism. The label is wildly unpopular. It can really sink somebody's wishes of running for office and actually attaining office if they use it.

But those are essentially the three manifestations that we study in academia, at least. Are you a social movement scholar? Are you an ideology scholar? And then the label — since it's wildly unpopular, we don't study it as much, but it's still super interesting that it is so unpopular, given how powerful this movement and the ideology has been in reshaping our democracy today.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:05:04]**
Okay, so that's a useful breakdown, and I definitely want to ask you about the movement side of things, the more organized side of things. But I'm really curious about the ideology — both what constitutes Christian nationalism as an idea, and where does this come from?

**Allyson Shortle [00:05:21]**
Well, it comes from our very own government, in my opinion. And so I, with Eric McDaniel and Irfan Nooruddin, I wrote a book on Christian nationalism, *The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics*, and we are political scientists, so we situate everything in the world of politics and American democracy.

And so whereas you'll see a lot of these fantastic sociological takes on Christian nationalism — and I work with Sam Perry at the University of Oklahoma, so I would really advise anyone to look at his work for an understanding that's coming out of religious organizations, which certainly, these are the powerful groups that are pushing the Christian nationalist movement forward with politicians. I'm more interested in the politicians. So we view this as part and parcel of American democracy.

There has always been this fuzzy gray area of the model of mixing governance with religion in American government, and the founders — I mean, I hate talking about the founders. This is something I absolutely — okay, let's get in the mind of the founders.

**Allyson Shortle [00:06:37]**
But realistically, why we developed the model that we do — and this is from Soper and Fetzer's book on religions and nationalisms, who look at a variety of different nations, and they label the United States as a civil-religious nationalist society. And that is because we are not promoting religion within the government, but religion remains very valuable to American democracy, and it has always been promoted for private use and personal use.

And the reason why is because we had so many dueling religions, right? There was so much of what we call sectarian strife occurring in our country, where people were dying, because religion is so palpable. It is such an experience for so many Americans who, when they first got to the U.S., were fighting over which religion is going to take center stage in this country. So it was a purposeful decision to stop the violence and stop the religious fighting — specifically within Protestant sects is really what was driving it. We weren't seeing a large amount of Catholics, or we're not seeing a large amount of Muslims in the country, who, by the way, did exist at the time. They were not driving the force there, but certainly the larger amount of Protestant sects were fighting.

So the decision to promote religion and allow people the free marketplace of religion really worked for a long time in American politics. Right, keeping that balance — almost the same way that we see crisscrossing factions of any sort being able to eliminate one becoming the majority — became a way that people could still be religious, but just not have to worry about being discriminated against by their government favoring a certain religious sect over another.

So, again, I think the crux of it is that we have all of the ingredients in our country to then have a religious right takeover, using this language of promoting private use and protecting private expression of religion. But that language gets repackaged in a way by the religious right to make it seem like religious values should be dominating, and a particular set of religious values should be protected over others. It's a clever reframing. It's certainly something that was not working, say, in the 80s and 90s, but has gotten a foothold as Americans sort of have thought, "Well, who owns values?" Apparently the religious right. And our values in this country apparently are Christian, and beyond that, Protestant Christian — which of course is not the truth, and not entirely the truth, but is that same impulse of sectarian strife that did, in fact, inform the decision to try and create a civil-religious nation.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:09:40]**
Yeah, the point about civil religion I find very compelling. I had the Roman historian Bret Devereaux on this podcast one time, and he talked about how if you brought an ancient Roman to the National Mall and you had them look up at the Lincoln Memorial, they would know instantly what it was — that it was a temple to a venerated cult figure, and that everybody there was making their pilgrimage to the temple. They'd be surprised that there wasn't more animal sacrifice, but they would recognize that this was a religious structure. And it even says so. I mean, on the top of it, it says that it is a temple: "In this temple, as in the hearts of his countrymen, for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever."

And it's interesting to me because it calls back to — it's not laid out like a Christian temple, right? It's laid out like a Roman temple. But if you look inside, the speeches there, the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address in particular, are suffused with Christian imagery. Right, he talks about the Civil War as the punishment of the Lord upon this nation for its sins. But it's not sectarian, right? It's like, there's a Christian God, he likes American values, right? So there's this aspect of it that is drawing on a Christian tradition, but not necessarily in a sectarian way, and in a way that's meant to be blended with the new American patriotism. So I think you're right to say there's always been that Christian strain in the civic religion.

So I guess my question for you is — and I guess you kind of hinted at this — is how do they start winning, right? You say, oh, it wasn't working for a while. There are clearly other strains in the American tradition, but now we're living in a time that seems really suffused with Christian nationalism. What happened?

**Allyson Shortle [00:11:51]**
Hmm. Well, I view it — if you look at the history of it, and I'll recommend Anne Nelson's *Shadow Network* for anyone who's really interested in the beginning of where these strategies came from — it realistically starts during the civil rights movement, where Republican strategists sneak into the Democrats' organizing sessions, where they're talking about how to essentially win rights for people. A very positive conversation, and how they do that largely among African Americans in the South, right? So they organize buses, they organize their boycotts.

And what they learn from that is a lot of strategy, but a lot of interlinking with faith-based communities is useful, because Americans, again, have always been encouraged to seek out religion and to practice it privately. But this can be an enormous organizational opportunity. People are already going places, and in civic engagement, the first rule of it is don't reinvent the wheel. So they didn't reinvent the wheel.

But this was sort of Paul Weyrich back in the 60s, right, coming up with these ideas, and he links up with some religious right movement leaders at the time, and they start actually talking about, well, what would it look like for us to sort of take this strategy and run with it? What they really needed was a leader to champion their causes. And when I say leader — certainly throughout local politics, which they have done throughout decades, to build up support either silently or vocally for their causes. But their big get was the presidency. So I think, from their vantage point, they at first made some missteps.

**Allyson Shortle [00:13:50]**
They were like, Jimmy Carter was no good, right? This is the moment he got into office — not getting rid of the Department of Education. No, not for them, right? So they're shifting a lot.

But if you sort of look at the patterns, it's always the religious right working with Republican strategists, trying to get a leader on board in a clever way. But what tended to happen was — and you could see this even with Reagan. Reagan should have been their guy. He should have been the one for them. And a lot of the research that you'll read will make it seem like they were so compatible, and he was just doing the bidding of the religious right. That is not exactly the case. The religious right does not feel that Reagan goes far enough, and certainly it's not what we're seeing now.

Right, Trump is the get. He was the leader who would just say, "I will blindly fight for you." There's no concern about the constituency. We're in a very polarized environment. We have the constituency on lockdown, right? The Republicans will win any religious right voter, and then they can also depend on those religious right voters being highly mobilized, going to the polls — and not only to national federal elections. They're going to go to the local elections, which are historically low voter turnout elections. So they have a tremendous power locally and nationally.

But it really is Donald Trump fighting so hard on the part of religious right agenda items. That is the powerful aspect of the movement, and where we see this hope of, wow, this is our dream fulfilled. He's doing exactly what we say, without this spurning of us after he gets elected. Which arguably — and again, I'm going to point you to Anne Nelson's *Shadow Network* — this does happen in other Republican presidencies that seem to be so linked up with a religious right movement. Not quite as much as Trump, who is just their blind crusader for them.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:15:58]**
So I gotta ask a question. I'm sure everybody asks this question all the time. It's very basic, but there's a reason everybody asks it.

On the one hand, you mentioned Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter — personally religious, right? A devout evangelical, seems like in his person to live out these religious precepts. Arguably, they don't like him. Donald Trump is the opposite of that, right? Everything about him screams that he is irreligious, that he barely knows what a Bible is, that he has absolutely no personal attachment to any of the values or the principles of any Christian sect, really. And yet he's their guy. And people will often say, well, it's just tactical, right?

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:16:45]**
Oh, he's just giving them wins of one kind or another, and that's all they care about. I'm a little bit dubious about that. I think if you look at how they relate to, say, John Roberts, who's been a very effective figure at advancing far right interests — they don't love John Roberts, right? The way that they love Trump. I mean, you could see these goofy videos of some kind of worship service or prayer service where there's a woman doing a speed painting of Donald Trump kneeling before a cross while everyone sings various Christian songs. They're not doing that for John Roberts, right?

How does a guy like Trump become this object — I think, anyways, maybe you'll correct me — of genuine emotional attachment, that they see him not just as effective but as their avatar in Washington? Yeah.

**Allyson Shortle [00:17:42]**
Oh yeah, yeah, almost like a parasocial relationship going on there, right?

Well, I think something that — the non-starter here is he came in famous. This is not just regular famous. This is household name over generations. Every bit of pop culture that you could mention. He was in *Home Alone 2*, right? He was on the — what is it? Oh God, the *Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous*, the reality show back in the 90s, before reality shows were actually a thing. He's in *Gossip Girl*. Any sort of cultural attachment throughout the decades, Donald Trump played a role, and he was out in the ether. Right, this is an entertainer, first and foremost. And I think people gravitate towards that.

So before he even came into politics, people knew his name, they had great affection for him, and he had this image already of a tough guy — especially after coming from *The Apprentice*, right? This wildly popular reality show in the 2000s where he fired people. He tried to — I think he tried to copyright "You're fired." That was his, right? And people are greatly entertained by this.

So before we even start to unpack, well, here's one political leader versus another — he's not just a political leader. He's a household name. He's someone who, according to evangelicals, also, he's very prosperous. And according to the prosperity gospel, this means that God has done this to him, because apparently he has done things right in his life, and he's being rewarded with great wealth and fame, right?

So this is a guy who then all of a sudden says, "I'm going to fight for you." Hero worship becomes very easy, because people view him both as a celebrity and as their leader, especially Republicans. Now, of course, it's not all Republicans, but the ones who are in Trump's camp love Trump. He can do no wrong. He's the image of masculinity in their eyes, which is very interesting. We could unpack that for hours. I'm sure there are some really good thought pieces on it.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:20:01]**
I mean, I do. I actually do kind of want to ask you about that. Right, that there's one — again, I am not a Christian, this isn't my background — but there's one tradition in Christianity that emphasizes, right, Christ was very poor. He tended to the poor. He dies on the cross. He doesn't punch out the Roman guards and fly away on a dragon. Right, that's kind of central to the myth.

But it seems like a lot of Christian nationalist evangelicals, they're much more in love with Buff Christ, right? Like a shirtless Christ with big pecs and an AR-15. That they see him — they see Christ in particular as this kind of avatar of masculinity, of wealth — and wealth in particular. So, what's up with that?

**Allyson Shortle [00:20:48]**
Well, I think it's fundamentally American.

**Allyson Shortle [00:20:51]**
Like, I think one thing about evangelicalism is it was bred in America, and it contains these American ethos that are some of the most capitalistic. What really resonates within evangelical Protestantism is this sense of capitalism, and there is a sink-or-swim mentality, and you are supposed to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. But there is this rewarding of masculinity that, quite honestly, doesn't always exist in every religion.

And I'd say Christianity overall does prize masculinity, even though many different sects do not as much as, I'd say, evangelical Protestantism. But it is very hierarchical. It is male-dominated. It is certainly one of the most masculine-adoring religions that you can find.

And I'll just give you sort of a juxtaposition, because there's probably a lot of people thinking, all religions are that way. If you go up to the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, which is wonderful, you can read about the different tribes and what the spirituality of Native Americans happens to be. And a big part of the lessons they impart about gender in that particular museum is that Europeans viewed women as property, and many of the tribes in the United States before any Europeans came very much could be matriarchal societies, or completely divided societies where they respected both men and women as equals, but they maybe still had different roles to play.

Regardless, there is an ethos coming from Europe in particular that does prize masculinity and prizes male leadership above all else. So it's sort of taking these ideas, but building upon them and narrowing them, and really maintaining the tradition of the patriarchy that evangelicalism is really invested in, in ways that other religions, even if they started at that point, have sort of progressed and become more progressive on gender issues in particular.

Not all. Again, it's a very — it's always a shifting target. You can't say that all religions are going to be the same or operate under the same culture any decade, let alone a year. But we can depend on evangelical Protestantism being very much in favor of the patriarchy, I'm guessing, for the next 50 years or so. So that's my hunch. You can quote me on that.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:23:16]**
Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna — I'm not gonna take that bet.

**Allyson Shortle [00:23:20]**
Yeah, I wouldn't. But the betting market will handle anything. So have at it.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:23:26]**
Yeah, no, that's right. This podcast is sponsored by Kalshi. That's — that's not actually — that's not true.

**Allyson Shortle [00:23:34]**
I thought that was a cereal, by the way. So that's — someone recently corrected me. I thought that was — I was like, "Oh, Kashi GoLean — is that where you're getting protein in the mornings?" Oh no, you're betting on everything. Because — okay. This is where we've landed as a society. Great.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:23:54]**
Don't get those two confused. You could, yeah. Anyways, this podcast is sponsored by Kalshi — this room would probably not be quite so messy.

Where was I? So, from what I understand, right, you've done a lot of what I'm going to call high-level survey work — big national surveys, instruments to try and measure Christian nationalism in the population over time. And I believe you've also done ethnographic work, right? Like actually getting out into these communities and participating in their lifeways, as they say. What's it like out there these days for people in these communities?

**Allyson Shortle [00:24:42]**
Oh, I'd say — rough. I just got back from a few weeks of field research in rural communities across the U.S. And the purpose of my study was not actually to discuss politics or religion, but of course that's what I'm listening for, 24/7.

But they are in a really tough economic position, I'll say. Anything that happens on the national level does trickle down in a way that just affects people in these communities where we will see the highest levels of Christian nationalism. It affects them gravely. So they're not necessarily talking a lot about religion outwardly, or this is not something they're wearing on their sleeve. But they are looking for any solutions to their very real problems.

And these aren't people who are unproud of where they live. They love where they live. This is not like, oh, look at them in their poor lifestyles. No, no, no. They have beautiful places that they're living — not in terms of their square footage, right, but in terms of the landscape and the purposeful nature of living in these wonderful communities in America. They just lack opportunity. That doesn't mean that they want to move, right? This is a part of life that they'll get through no matter what. These are really gritty people, and they don't view things as a problem.

But you will step into their communities and say, "Wow, you are really being neglected here." I get the sense that there is a lack of help. And I even had some people say to me, "Help. Send help. Send jobs."

**Allyson Shortle [00:26:50]**
And the answer is never like, "Do you want more workers coming in?" No, no, no. We don't want more people coming into the communities. We want help.

So I get the sense that there's a lot of self-reliant persons out there who are struggling to ask for help, and are so accustomed to being ignored — largely by local or state governments, but also certainly the federal government as well. But sometimes it's the state leaders rejecting federal dollars that could help these communities, out of a symbolic statement against maybe a Democratic administration, for instance. Or this idea that we don't ask for help because we're not lazy, right? These narratives pervade these sort of states where I'm seeing a lot of this stuff happening.

So for me it was both the realization of, oh, here are people who have purposely chosen a certain lifestyle and they love where they're from, they are part of the faith-based community — but it wasn't as I expected it.

I thought — we saw a lot of Trump signs, of course. Jesus saves. Jesus saves. One place I went to — I'm from, you know, I'm in Oklahoma here, this is not new to me — but when I'm going to many of these locations, it's overwhelming how many Jesus signs I'm seeing everywhere. Jesus saves. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It's to the point where, I mean, 20 signs in a yard. We understand, sir. That's — this is your life. But it's just — it's not quite as it appears in politics. It's very subtle, besides the signs.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:28:41]**
Yeah. Yeah, I mean — subtle, except for that one. Yeah, that one.

**Allyson Shortle [00:28:46]**
And people who are — that's what I mean, you'll have like pockets, right, where you're like, oh yes, there it is. But most people agree with those ideas, right? And they're just not expressing them out loud all the time.

But when they do hear about anything — which is really uncommon in this informational environment, they just don't have access to great information — when they do hear something, it largely is the sort of Trump statements that get filtered through either Fox News or through religious AM radio. And they are understanding, yeah, oh, anyone is claiming to help us. And that's the narrative they hear, and that's largely why the right is winning, I'd say, in those areas.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:29:42]**
So. So that's interesting. I want to ask you about the information environment question from the Discord — the Liberal Currents Discord, which you can join if you want to subscribe to Liberal Currents. You can get access to our lovely Discord and sock puppet me and get me to ask questions on this show.

But anyways, information environment. I'm curious about how much of the religious work today, Christian nationalists today — is this a movement or an ideology that's being driven by organizations, institutions, pastors with actual flocks and congregations? Or is it being driven by influencers and commentators and people who might have a YouTube show but don't have that kind of organizational capacity behind them?

**Allyson Shortle [00:30:29]**
Oh, I think there's a lot of influence from these social media influencers these days, but I don't think they're disorganized. Or — I think it's very easy to pay a social media influencer to say whatever you want. So it's not that they are organized, but the movement is organized to be able to afford to use these social media influencers however they want. And that's largely on the right. I'm not going to say that — I met plenty of social media influencers on the left, who — I don't see the counter-movement, so I can't really speak to that, but I don't see as organized of a pull on the left as the right.

But certainly, these are all interconnected in a way. And while I know there are certain elites who would say, like, absolutely not those — and of course there's a lot of ageism here too, like, those young people don't have any pull — and it's like, yeah, they do. They really, they really, really do. Those young people are eating your lunch, is what's happening.

But there's these old school people who are like, no, we're still in control. And it's like, that's probably still true, but it can rapidly change as influencers start something and realize, I can get so many more followers if I go alt right. Right? They really can become their own sort of spokesperson that no longer needs to take money. They can find other opportunities and they can start changing the message themselves. And this happens a lot in politics, where you can start any sort of organized movement, but you don't have control over what independent actors do within that movement. So you never know in what direction it's going to go. Nor do we know down the line if it's going to be regulated in a certain way.

**Allyson Shortle [00:32:15]**
And I hope it will be regulated sometime in the future, in any sort of way. But free speech is great, don't get me wrong. Let's just have less violence, though.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:32:24]**
Yeah.

**Allyson Shortle [00:32:26]**
But yeah, I think right now, for me, I'm shocked at the level of influence, and I'm also shocked at the absolute rejection of some people to admit it — that this is a thing and it's not going away. It's only increasing in power. So I'm not quite sure what that means for the movement right now. It's not hurting the movement, unfortunately, but I could see it being the thing that cannibalizes it moving forward, if it goes against the grain of what those powerful organizers really want to happen.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:33:03]**
Yeah, I mean, I really — I would, I'd love to hear more about this. Like, you talked about it in terms of a generational transition, or a transition between existing organizers and influencers. What are the battle lines here? Who are these people, and what are they fighting about? What's going on?

**Allyson Shortle [00:33:23]**
Well, I would say that there's the old school, which comes from sort of what used to be the Council for National Policy funding a lot of these Christian right movements. And there's so many other foundations out there that are global in nature — not only trying to spread evangelicalism, but actually a lot of Christian nationalism throughout the world, but really focusing on the U.S. specifically, and trying to exclude anybody who's not a white Christian from receiving the rights and privileges of citizenship, right? That's what's going on.

But the influencers — I can't tell you who they are. Due to mental health protections of my own making, I'm not going to do a deep dive on who those influencers are. You probably know some of them.

But in terms of the organizers, they're spread all over. It's very difficult to point out exactly who they are. You can find out — follow the money, and try and figure out who the organizations, who the organizers are, in terms of just those organizations that are on the books. They're going to all be some semblance of an educational nonprofit, so they will not pay taxes, and but they will sometimes have things like professor watch lists, or other fun things that religious right organizations are not paying taxes on, that look a lot like hit lists for people who are liberal — or not even, people who go against the religious right's agenda in the country and speak out against it.

So I can't answer that question, because they do such a great job of covering who exactly is in charge. They don't have to file anything with the IRS. So it becomes even more difficult to understand how you would potentially keep tabs on an organization that was engaging in any sort of malicious behavior organizationally.

But yeah, the young people — it tends, this tends to happen with alt-right groups in general. So I've had some students who studied the alt-right who I've sent off to other PhD advisors and other organizations who are comfortable doing that work. I am not. I'm not comfortable getting embedded into an alt right. Nor would I be invited, to be honest. Let's be very clear about that.

But what tends to happen is, when you have this ideology driving your organization that is about domination and excluding other people, everyone in that organization starts fighting for power within the organization. So you see tremendous turnover from all these alt-right groups. So they'll go from one group to the other group, and we know this because there have been leaks before of the intercommunications of these groups, where they're talking about the gigantic turnover problems, and talking about how one member ends up fleeing and going to another group because they really wanted their ideas supported.

So just think about the implications of wanting to dominate everyone, but then getting into a group and then realizing, I want to be the leader of the group. No, I do. You could see it, right? The mechanism is very clear here, of these groups already primed to cannibalize one another and really try to fight for leadership within that group whose entire motivation is to dominate. They want to dominate both each other and the rest of the world. So this is just the normal tension that you'll see with an alt-right organization.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:36:52]**
Well, let's talk about Biden. So I kind of have to ask you here, because a moment ago I asked you about your ethnographic work. You talked about this sense of being left behind, of needing help, of being abandoned, right? Real problems, real economic problems. And now you're talking about, well, it's mostly about domination, right? It's about dominance of men, dominance of white people, just interpersonal dominance that you see in these stupid catfights within these organizations. And I'm curious how you square those two narratives.

**Allyson Shortle [00:37:38]**
Yeah, I view it as the organizers.

**Allyson Shortle [00:37:41]**
In politics, we often break it down by elites versus the masses, and I think at the elite level, we're seeing the clear goals that are to dominate, to exclude, to privilege Christianity and white Christians above all else. But that's not the message that they package to the masses, even though the outcomes will be the same. But there's a nicer story that they tell to everyday Americans.

This is about patriotism and tradition, which sounds lovely. You're like, it's all about love, right? We love our country, and also we're good Christians, right? Which to a lot of people means a lot of good things. You can't say that religion is either good or bad, and yet we do all the time, right?

So they will ramp up the parts that sound really good to the everyday American, right, who's going to be like, "Hey, yeah, that sounds pretty nice. I want to take care of my community, and I want to be part of this nice social group. I want to take care of my neighbors, maybe." So they'll latch onto this idea of the positive aspects of the Christian religion mixed with the positive aspects of being an American. Everything is packaged in such a nice little perfect message for someone who is struggling, to say, "Hey, that sounds better than politics. If I just attach myself to this person who's talking my language, right? I want to do nice things, and I want positivity in my life."

And then this is crafted talk, because what's actually happening is you're going to internalize these messages and vote for the candidates who are doing just about the opposite. They're going to make things more divisive. They're going to take away rights. They're going to take away services, and they're going to leave these people behind even more than they already have been.

So it's complicated, but it's also just the normal story of how elites and the masses disconnect from one another in the times where we need really good leadership, and we're seeing a lot of bad leadership. This is what you can do.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:39:50]**
So this is interesting to me. One way to put the point on the question — right, Joseph Biden is a devout Catholic. Seems to be just a genuinely Christian man in a pretty deep way. He loves America. Was very, very forward in his patriotism, and promised in a lot of ways that he was going to help out people — the ordinary American, Americans in rural areas, etc. That message doesn't really penetrate well to people in these Christian nationalist communities, as compared to what you're saying is the fake message of wrapping yourself in Christ and the flag, and then actually just delivering more economic pain. How'd that work?

**Allyson Shortle [00:40:37]**
Well, I can't say that Democrats have done much to help the situation. There's a failure of — there's no message, really. I didn't hear, "I'm going to save you," really. Not in any sort of specific way.

I think the way that Trump resonated with a lot of these communities is just by focusing on economics and saying, "Drill, baby, drill." That sounds bad, right? Most liberals would say, "Oh, that's really bad for the environment." And yeah, it is. You're not wrong. But a lot of these communities, they stay in these communities to do dangerous labor. And so whereas they are losing jobs, right, they hear "drill, baby, drill," and it's at least someone who's thinking about them, or thinking about their economic livelihood.

Biden doesn't provide much of anything. Like, why don't you fight for — I don't know — some sort of worker protections? Why don't you fight for any sort of pro-labor sort of method? I don't know the last time I've heard of really a true pro-labor candidate, absent maybe Bernie Sanders, and then Mamdani, maybe. But I don't think the message is there, because they felt like they've lost the white working class already, so they've given up.

Sort of — I feel like a failure to really reevaluate and reflect on, well, what is our platform, and how are we going to share that, and how are we legitimately going to go into communities and help them. I think Democrats are really worried about it, and they keep talking about it and spinning their wheels, but they're not willing to fight for something maybe that has been taken away. So, labor unions — how about fight for that? Let's fight for that. I don't hear that, and I think that would resonate with these communities. I think it's not necessarily wise to back off of a lot of the social issues that they tend to back off of at the same time, in order to displease the white working class. So I think they've got it backwards.

**Allyson Shortle [00:42:55]**
It's sort of like, lean into what you're good at. You can go labor, you can go education, you can go healthcare. You can go social justice. You can do all those things, but do them. You're wavering in at exactly the right times to cause people to question whether you're an ally.

And I think Biden in particular — a lot of black voters just did not understand him by the end, and a lot of working class voters did not. And if you are not appealing to the black voters and the white working class, what are you doing as a Democrat? You have lost the thread.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:43:36]**
Okay. Yeah, I could talk a lot more about this, but I kind of want to circle back to some of these more religious questions.

One thing that's been kind of niggling at me, has come up now and again, is how does this tradition, this Christian nationalist tradition, relate to other parts of the American religious landscape — and in particular Catholics, right? Where do — right, like J.D. Vance is a Catholic; he's a Catholic convert. There are certain high-profile illiberal Catholics. But you've also talked about this as a very specifically evangelical Protestant movement. So how does that tension play out in this movement? And just in terms of raw numbers, how are the Christian nationalists doing in this country? Right? Are their numbers going up or going down, and what's responsible for that?

**Allyson Shortle [00:44:33]**
I think currently it's becoming quite a powerful coalition, with some exceptions. Like Hegseth certainly rubbed Catholics the wrong way a little bit. But overall, we have a lot of fundamentalist Catholics, a lot of Orthodox Catholics, who very much like the message of Christian nationalism and have attached themselves to it.

And I think if you look at the Supreme Court — the Catholicism we're seeing on the Supreme Court, right, that is often guiding the conversations and the decision making happening. They're Christian nationalists. They're right in line with the Christian nationalist aims, but they come from a Catholic, Orthodox, sort of fundamentalist position, which is unique — or it used to be unique.

I think Catholicism has changed a lot. We've seen a lot of declining numbers of Catholics, as all Christian attendance in church has been way down over the last few years, or last 20, 30 years. But Catholics, specifically white Catholics, very much are in line now with what Christian nationalism is offering. We couldn't have said that 10 years ago. So there's been enough of a shakeup where we are seeing more in common with those groups of white Protestants, white Catholics, than we have before.

There's some holdouts, but largely that has to be regional affiliations, less so than the religious base. Which, we see more conservatism and more support for religious right outcomes amongst American Catholics than we have in previous years. I'm not saying it's as much as evangelical Protestants, but it's certainly a surprise, in terms of — at some point, Catholics were a bit more liberal. It's now seeming like this is more of a conservative American public in terms of how they're connecting Catholicism to their politics.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:46:36]**
Okay, I guess maybe a related question is — you said pretty early on that Christian nationalism has this very distinctly American flavor, but that it's become a worldwide movement. How'd that work? What's up with that?

**Allyson Shortle [00:46:53]**
Well, there are missionaries. There's been decades upon decades of really a lot of groundwork of foundations sending people to try and proselytize evangelicalism, which has resulted in more Christian nationalism as well.

And you can sort of see religious nationalism in general being very, very popular in different countries — India's Hindu nationalists, for instance, and certainly, certainly Israel. We see a lot of different types of religious nationalism, but the Christian nationalism is highly linked with evangelicalism. And so when we already see people across the globe sort of in place, ready to proselytize their religion, that is also proselytizing the ideas that are inherent in Christian nationalism, right?

I doubt they're going to say to someone, to try and convert them to Protestantism, "America is the best nation in the world." I can't tell you if that's happening or not. I doubt that's happening. But certainly this idea of the ideology of Christian nationalism getting into the heads of certain people proselytizing across the world, and that sort of making the mindset of domination and power, hierarchy — those ideas are very much being proselytized throughout the world. And a lot of people who feel powerless are going to — they're going to latch onto that, and that's going to be a really powerful narrative for them to sort of internalize, to attract them to a religion when they feel at their most vulnerable.

So it's something that has happened for decades. But I always get academics who are like, there are no evangelicals in Denmark or something, or all of these other countries. And I'm like, there are. There's actually — I could show you really good percentages, because the groundwork, the ground game of evangelicals in America going overseas is tremendous, and I think it hasn't been discussed enough. Especially when I talk to other researchers who are completely unaware that this is more global than they realize.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:49:12]**
So it's interesting that you bring up ground game, missionary work, conversions, because you've also mentioned a little bit declining religiosity.

**Allyson Shortle [00:49:22]**
Well. Well, there are numbers. It depends on how you label them, or how you categorize. But since it's an ideology, it's much better — it's got greater proportions than people who go to church, for instance.

So on average, you're going to find the staunchest Christian nationalists — like a third of Americans, you could probably label as consistent Christian nationalists — but we get up to, like, sometimes just around half of Americans believing in this Christian nationalist ideology. It specifically goes up when Trump gets elected, right? Like, there's some — the same forces driving Trump to get elected are driving Christian nationalism to be supported by more Americans. Now it's declined a little bit, but overall it remains steady. It remains pretty steady around that third of Americans, with fluctuations up and down.

But I don't think I have the numbers on church attendance, but I do know that it takes a lot more effort to go out and behave, right? To act in any way, to participate. So it takes very little effort to say you believe in something, and that is also some of the appeal. Like, you can be relatively non-committal and be a Christian nationalist. You don't have to go — there's no Christian nationalist church. I mean, there certainly are, but it's not going to say that. But to actually get out, go to church, go to worship, interact with people, right? That takes work, and that takes a bit of capital, right? And that's something that people are opting out of, but then they're opting into fringe ideologies because it's easy. We say we kind of believe in God. We know it's not going to be my place. We can do the things.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:51:12]**
Yeah, so there's a book that I've just started reading by Anton Jäger called *Hyperpolitics*, and he talks about this concept of America becoming more politicized, more partisan, more energy in investing your identity in various forms of politics. And at the same time, there's been this withering away of organizations and institutions like unions, or structured political parties, or various kinds of civic organizations that used to connect that mass of energy with political outcomes. So you have energy, but it's unstructured energy.

And it sounds a little bit like that is a similar story for what's going on with Christian nationalists, right? You've talked a little bit about influencers who can just kind of show up and attract lots of followers, and people listen to them. And can they turn those people out into the streets? Can they get them into a church? Maybe. But can they get them to listen and embrace some kind of idea or another? Yes.

**Allyson Shortle [00:52:05]**
And most frighteningly, they can get them to vote. Christian nationalists are highly participatory when it comes to voting and participating in everything. Quite honestly, they are the participants. There's a lot of maybe lackluster Christian nationalists, but it is a very heavy participatory group in politics.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:52:22]**
Yeah, one thing I've kind of been meaning to ask you about is what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that participation. From what I understand, right, you mentioned earlier the professor watch list, which I believe that you are on. The movement you study has studied you back, so to speak. How'd that happen? What's that like?

**Allyson Shortle [00:52:49]**
Yes, that is correct. I'm not exactly sure, but what I suspect is that I wrote a book on Christian nationalism, and doing that, as well as talking to the press — because I'm a public scholar. I find it important to do things like this, talk on podcasts, or I'll talk to journalists. I have a really strong relationship with the journalists in the state of Oklahoma, as well as national, international news journalists, because I care. I view that as a strict connection to democracy and freedom of expression, and protecting those rights for all American citizens as well as people around the world.

They don't like that. That's a little too much. If you are out there saying Christian nationalism is bad for democracy, you're going to end up on the list — specifically if you're at a public university, and more specifically if you're at a Southern public university, you are going to be a target. I know my colleague Sam is also on that list. Eric McDaniel, my co-author, is on that list. And that was quite simply just for writing on Christian nationalism and also talking about it in the public sphere. We'll get you on that list.

What does it feel like? I am built differently than others, I think. I don't mind it. Obviously, if people were harassing me constantly, yes, I would mind it. I would say this is awful — and it is awful. I don't think it should exist. I don't think your name should ever be on a list somewhere, for people who are, one, not getting taxed for to do so. But also in general, we don't want people feeling uncomfortable that you're going to be targeted at any point, especially when you've done nothing illegal and nothing wrong.

And I will tell you, from my own personal experience, I have students in my classes who are in the Turning Point student organization, and they have emailed me and said, "I don't know what they're talking about, because you don't discriminate against conservatives. You are obsessed with data." That's what they say.

**Allyson Shortle [00:55:24]**
"You are just a data head, and you don't appear to have a dog in the fight." And I was like, "That's — yeah, thank you." I appreciate my students. I'm an educator.

But yeah, I think, oddly, it's just another way to get the message out there. I'm like, look at this. This is what happens when you try to speak truth to power. You will end up on a list, and it will be the alt right that does it. I'm like, they aren't playing a fair game. They're playing a violent game, and one where they are targeting people and they're targeting institutions.

And for me, it's just more proof of — you can live a very objective, neutral life, and you can try to do what's good for democracy, and if you interfere with a power monger, you're going to end up on a list, and they're going to show their whole self. So for me, it's just more proof of what I'm fighting against. It's a vicious alt-right organization that wants to make people's lives uncomfortable when they disagree with them. Well, guess what? This is a democracy. So feel free — feel free to rant, and I will also do the same.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:56:55]**
All right. I think that is a great note to end on, Allyson. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a pleasure.

**Allyson Shortle [00:57:08]**
Thanks for having me. Yeah, this is fun.