Christian Nationalism, Religious Pluralism, and the 2024 Election

Robert P. Jones
Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) 聽
Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Time:聽5 - 6:30pm
Location: Gasson 100 in-person /
Co-sponsored with the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning.
Is America a pluralistic democracy, or is it a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians? These competing visions of the nation have divided us throughout our history. Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, will discuss his New York Times bestselling book,聽The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, which returns to the fateful year when a little-known church doctrine emerged that shaped the way five centuries of European Christians would understand the 鈥渄iscovered鈥 world and the people who populated it. This reframing of American origins exposes the deep historical roots of white Christian nationalism--a hierarchical worldview of God-ordained dominance that is correlated with antisemitic, anti-immigrant, and Islamophobic attitudes, along with denials of systemic racism and an insistence on patriarchal gender roles. Jones explores how the rise of white Christian nationalism today is not just about our partisan divides, but about the future of a pluralistic democracy in the U.S.