The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide by Pamela Cooper-White is a challenging and thought-provoking book. I have wrestled with it more than I have with many other books I have read, for reasons I will discuss in this review.

Cooper-White sets the table in the Introduction when she asserts that:

“…the research in this book will demonstrate the very term Christian Nationalism really means white nationalism and stands opposed to virtually everything Jesus taught, as embodied in the gospel vision of justice and compassion.” (p. 4).

She then goes on to make an argument which is very well-sourced and extensively footnoted, but in my opinion not entirely persuasive.

My main issue with Cooper-White is the imprecise way she defines Christian Nationalism, which is a struggle for her due to the smudged lens of her political liberalism. It seems that she sees Christian nationalists as the scary white people in rural America and the South who voted for Trump. The problem is that this is too broad. Wikipedia defines Christian Nationalists in America as follows:

Christian nationalism asserts that the United States is a country founded by and for Christians. Christian nationalists in the United States advocate a fusion of identitarian Christian identity and cultural conservatism with American civic belonging.  It has been noted to bear overlap with Christian fundamentalism, white supremacy, Christian supremacy, the Seven Mountain Mandate movement, and dominionism…¹Christian nationalism in the United States, Wikipedia

You can see the problem right away. To the secular left, all this stuff runs together. However, astute MCOI readers understand that there are non-trivial distinctions to be made between “Christian fundamentalism, white supremacy, Christian supremacy, the Seven Mountain Mandate movement, and dominionism.” Moreover, there are likely people—even within the Christian nationalist movement—who have a more sophisticated view of the American founding than the reductionist assertion that America was founded by Christians. Readers of this publication understand that many of America’s founders were Deists, deeply influenced by the Enlightenment. Certainly, they were culturally informed by Christian civilization, but many of them did not have orthodox Christian beliefs—though some did. John Adams ended his life as a Unitarian, though I digress.

Getting back to The Psychology of Christian Nationalism, Cooper-White opens in Chapter 1, “Unholy Alliances: Christian Nationalism, White Supremacy, and the Pursuit of Power,” by discussing the shocking Capitol riot and attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021. She gives examples of the rioters carrying overtly Christian symbols. She then goes on to discuss a study by sociologists of religion, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, which she interprets as suggesting that a significant majority of southern, white, evangelical Christians are Christian nationalists, and that other mainstream Catholics and Protestants often lean in that direction. I can see how she gets there given the way that she interprets the Whitehead and Perry study, but I see it as being less black-and-white than she (and the study’s authors) did. To their—and her—credit, Cooper-White notes that “The authors are careful to point out that ‘evangelicalism’ and white conservative Protestantism” are not synonymous with Christian nationalism.” (p. 15). However, she goes on to say that “…fully two thirds of all Christian groups taken together agree with Christian nationalist ideas.” (p. 15).

To fairly evaluate this assertion, one must look at the statements in the Whitehead and Perry study that were used to label someone as a Christian nationalist if they agreed with them. One of the statements was, “The federal government should advocate Christian values.” But what if by that you mean, as Cooper-White has already mentioned, “the gospel vision of justice and compassion?” Do people who want their government to reflect those values, including Cooper-White, have Christian nationalist tendencies? Another one of the statements was, “The success of the United States is part of God’s plan,” but there are different ways to interpret that statement. Some Christians believe that the success of the United States is part of God’s plan simply because it occurred under a sovereign God. America’s success is part of God’s plan, and if America fails tomorrow, that will be part of God’s plan, as well.

I do not mean to gainsay Cooper-White, because she does have a point about the damage to our country done by some (but not all) Christians’ uncritical entanglement with right-wing politics, and especially their slavish devotion to the undeniably controversial figure of Donald Trump. In a section of Chapter 1 headlined “How Christian is Christian Nationalism?” she again quotes Whitehead and Perry, who observe that, “Christian nationalism is rarely concerned with instituting explicitly ‘Christ-like’ policies, or even policies reflecting New Testament ethics at all.” (p. 16). Quite so, but I am hesitant to go as far as Whitehead and Perry (and Cooper-White) go in lumping Evangelicalism, white nationalism, and Christian nationalism all together. Part of my hesitation is because I grew up in the milieu of white, southern, Evangelical religion myself, though my current religious views as an Episcopalian are probably closer to Pamela Cooper-White’s, who is an Episcopal priest. Therefore, I look at Evangelical subculture as someone who is familiar with it from the inside, while Cooper-White writes as an outsider looking in, attempting to understand. Nevertheless, she is correct in her critique of Christian nationalism being more about right-wing politics (which Whitehead and Perry mislabel as political conservatism) than it is about motivating Christian believers toward greater religious devotion. Whitehead and Perry cite Phillip S. Gorski from American Babylon: Christianity and Democracy Before and After Trump, when they say that Christian Nationalism is “political idolatry dressed up as religious orthodoxy.” (p. 36). I agree with that characterization of Christian nationalism, but I am more conscious of Evangelical resistance to Christian nationalism and white supremacism than Cooper-White seems to be. Cooper-White also seems to be unaware of the evidence that Christian Nationalism has actually been on the decline since 2004.

Moving on to Chapter 2, “Why Are People Drawn In by Extremist Beliefs?: Conscious Needs and Unconscious Lures,” Cooper White does an excellent job explaining the psychodynamic processes that are occurring as people get drawn into extremist movements. Spoiler alert: these are substantially the same things that occur with people who are recruited into cults, indoctrinated, and eventually made into deployable agents for the group. In fact, much of this chapter is spent quoting Margaret Singer and Robert Jay Lifton, who may be familiar to people reading this review.

Beginning with the recruitment process, Cooper-White says:

The need for belonging is a deep-seated human desire and certainly not unique to Christian nationalists as a group. Nevertheless, it is one of the motivating factors underlying people’s attraction to Christian nationalism as a movement. In addition to providing this social connection, which is a basic human need, the movement combines two features that can initially draw people in and hold them tight: first, a strong sense of spiritual purpose and, second, a means of acting on that sense of purpose by engaging in a battle—even a cosmic battle between good and evil. (p. 41-42).

Former cult members, including me, can relate to why people find this appealing. Who among us does not desire a sense of belonging and a life of purpose and meaning?

Of course, there is always a bait-and-switch aspect to the recruitment process in problematic groups. Cooper-White says,

“From my own observations, most people who become supporters of Christian nationalism do not begin as right-wing political activists first (although political leaders may cynically exploit Christian nationalists for their own white nationalist power campaigns). On the contrary, Christian nationalists start out as Christian first.” (p. 43).

This is analogous to what happens as people are drawn into cults. What starts out as a seemingly worthwhile and fulfilling pursuit turns into something much darker once the member is invested, but by then, it has become difficult for them to pull away.

Cooper-White writes,:

“Once invited and welcomed into fellowship in a conservative white church, the chances are great that a person will slowly but surely be immersed not only in praise for Jesus but also in praise for the United States—in sermons, symbols, and song.” (p. 50)

Faith in Jesus becomes conflated with faith in America, and specifically with the cultural strain in America that is represented by the title of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s book, God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy. Cooper-White goes on to say that:

“…once a person has become embedded in the church and made the journey from ‘seeker’ to ‘believer,’ it is extremely difficult to leave. To repudiate the ideas held by the group…means risking losing the friendships, losing the feeling of spiritual clarity and purpose, and being cast out again from the circle of belonging into aloneness and uncertainly in an inhospitable world.” (p. 50)

For our ancestors, who were hunter-gatherers living in tribes, maintaining membership in their community was absolutely a matter of survival. If you were expelled from the clan, you could not exist living by yourself in the wild—it would only be a matter of time until you were eaten by the hyenas. Therefore, the motivation to retain membership in the groups with which we identify is profoundly ingrained in human nature. We tend to rationalize what our tribe says and does rather than face the terrifying prospect of separating from them. Moreover, as Cooper-White quotes Margaret Singer, saying, “Decent, honorable people do not easily give up their commitments…” (p. 51).

Cooper-White goes on to discuss the appeal of strongman leaders as an expression of patriarchal authority and why that is appealing to many people. Those who feel they have been on the losing end of the culture wars for the past 60 years or so—since the upheavals of the 1960s—are attracted to the perceived strength of Donald Trump and are apt to see that as evidence that God is behind his Presidency. She quotes historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who has studied strongman leaders, saying,

“The strongman’s rogue nature also draws people to him. He proclaims law-and-order rule, yet enables lawlessness…The special psychological climate that strongmen create among their people—the thrill of transgression mixed with the comfort of submitting to his power—endows life with energy, purpose, and drama.” (p. 59)

Cooper-White’s interpretation of the psychodynamics of Christian nationalism is fascinating. I should mention that, in addition to being an Episcopal priest, Cooper-White is also a psychoanalyst, and she uses her training and background to good effect by going deeply into the phenomenological world of Christian nationalists. The book is worth buying for this section alone, even if the ideas are familiar to those well-read in cult literature.

The third and final section of the book is Chapter 3, “How to Talk Across the Divide: Creating Human Ties across (Extreme) Difference.” In this section Cooper-White proposes three possible choices for how to engage in a conversation across a religious and political divide and then describes when each choice would be appropriate. The three choices are:

(1) red light: STOP—talking will do no good—at least not here, not now, not by me; (2) yellow light: try but tread lightly; and (3) green light: go deeper, gently and wisely.” (p. 104)

She then does a nice job of laying out the techniques and principles of how to go deeper and engage in fruitful and meaningful dialogue. She reminds readers that giving up dearly held beliefs is difficult for people to do, and she encourages everyone to be as kind and supportive as possible to those who may find themselves adrift when they give up their Christian nationalist belief system and identity.

All told, this was an interesting, thoughtful, and well-written book, and of relevance to the readers at MCOI. From my perspective Cooper-White’s thesis was well-taken, but there were some things which left me feeling a tad unsettled. While I agree that Christian nationalism is a problem in America today, Cooper-White is harder on Evangelical Christians than is fully warranted, in my opinion. In particular, she attributes more of Evangelicals’ discomfort with the general drift of our culture to xenophobia and racism than I believe is the case. Cooper-White seems determined to make Chistian nationalism essentially the same as white nationalism, but it is more complicated than that. Perhaps it is, as I mentioned earlier, that I grew up in white, southern, Evangelical culture, and Cooper-White seems to be viewing it as something to which she is “other.” She even discusses this in one passage, where she says,

“In my own work, and in my personal life, I have tried to resist the notion of ‘two Americas’ that has become a frequent phrase in political commentary in recent years. My research for this book has changed my view. After attending a political biker rally, visiting a gun shop, and viewing televangelists on YouTube and television, I have had the disorienting experience of finding myself in a completely different world, surrounded by people living in an alternate reality.” (p.77).

I empathize with Pamela Cooper-White as she struggles to resist the notion of two Americas. I struggle to resist it too, though often from the other side of the cultural divide—conservative white southerner that I am. Nevertheless, I hope we can all continue to be one America and keep talking across the divide.Ω

Doug Duncan, MS, LPC, is a former member of a cultic, Bible-based group in Dallas, Texas. After he and his wife, Wendy, left that group, Doug returned to graduate school to earn a Master’s Degree in Counseling and became a Licensed Professional Counselor while Wendy wrote an excellent memoir of their experience in—and painful separation from—their cultic group, I Can’t Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult. Since that time, they have co-facilitated a support group for former members of cultic and spiritually abusive groups and have recently started a second support group for people looking to rebuild their relationship with God after experiencing spiritual abuse. Also, they each contributed chapters to Wounded Faith: Understanding and Healing from Spiritual Abuse, edited by Rev. Dr. Neil Damgaard. Doug also sees people recovering from abusive groups in his private counseling practice, and Wendy sees people for recovery coaching. Their website is www.dallascult.com, and you can email them at info@dallascult.com.

These days they enjoy spending time with friends and family, and worshipping at their home church, St. Matthew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Dallas, TX

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