(PDF) Enforcing Christian Nationalism:...

17.7.18

(PDF) Enforcing Christian Nationalism:...: This article examines whether the convergence of an individual's religious and national identities promotes authoritarian attitudes towards crime and deviance. Drawing on theories of social control and group conformity, as well as Christian nationalism's influence on intolerance towards out-groups, I argue that the inability to distinguish between religious and national identities increases desire for group homogeneity and therefore increases willingness to utilize formalized measures of social control. Analysis of 2007 Baylor Religion Survey data demonstrate that adherence to Christian nationalism predicts three indicators of authoritarian views toward controlling crime and deviance: support for capital punishment, stricter punishment for federal crime, and for society to "crackdown on troublemakers." These effects are robust to the inclusion of a comprehensive battery of twenty socioeconomic, political, and religious controls, and are consistent with previous research on Christian nationalism showing it is not religious commitment or traditionalism per se that leads to intolerant attitudes, but rather the conflation of one's religious identity with other social identities, in this case national. These findings indicate that, beyond socio-political and religious influences, the belief that the United