Reviewed by:

• The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry
• David M. Krueger

The concept of Christian nationalism has long been used by scholars to analyze the intersection of religion and politics, but, in the last few years, the term has surged in public use. In 2022, some U.S. politicians such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green openly declared themselves to be Christian nationalists. In their book, Gorski and Perry argue that Christian nationalism was largely invisible both to conservative Christians because it was simply “in the air they breathe” and to secular progressives because they viewed the beliefs to be fringe. The Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, and its distinct Christian imagery are what brought Christian nationalism into mainstream consciousness. There has been a flood of scholarship on the topic in recent years. Gorski and Perry’s book has synthesized this material in a compelling and succinct manner, while also illuminating the grave threats that Christian nationalism poses to a religiously and racially diverse democracy.

The authors offer their book as “a primer on white Christian nationalism,” with its chapters organized around the questions of what it is, when it emerged, how it works, and where it is headed. At its core, white Christian nationalism is framed by a “deep story” asserting that the United States was founded by white [End Page 131] Christian men guided by Christian principles, who saw the nation as chosen by God for a special purpose, but ever at risk due to “un-American influences both inside and outside our borders.”

Drawing on their own sociological research, Gorski and Perry identify “seven indicators of Christian nationalism,” such as believing the nation’s founding documents were divinely inspired and that the federal government should advocate Christian values, allow prayer in public schools, and mandate a strict separation between church and state. While many white and Black Christians score high on their assessment, the data show that the higher the level of adherence to Christian nationalism, the higher the tendency for whites to claim they are discriminated against, to mistrust experts and mainstream media outlets, to support the use of violence to maintain order, and to uphold personal liberty and economic prosperity—even if the vulnerable in society suffer. The same correlations were not present for Black respondents. Many academic and popular treatments of Christian nationalism do not include “white” as an adjective, but the authors craft a persuasive genealogy that centers on race.

Gorski and Perry craft a historical narrative to demonstrate that white Christian nationalism is not new but is “one of the oldest and most powerful currents in American politics.” The authors begin their genealogy, not in 1619 with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia, but in 1690 when religion and nationalism became fused with the concepts of whiteness and order. They identify other key inflection points such as the nation’s turn toward empire in 1898 and the embrace of libertarianism as a subtler way to encode race in social policies. Along the way, the authors emphasize the contingencies of each moment and the ways that various actors exerted their agency.

The final chapter offers a warning that the January 6th insurrection was not an isolated incident but was the product of “subterranean forces that had been building for some time.” As such, the event ought to be seen as a harbinger of a potentially larger and more violent event that could imperil the future of American democracy. The authors offer a dire warning about what the future may hold, asserting that a “Trumpist America” would not necessarily become “Hitler’s Germany” but could share a resemblance to “Putin’s Russia.”

This is an entirely fair claim and perhaps a wake-up call for some readers, but the book’s brief three pages on “what can be done” is insufficient to meet the challenge. In summary, Gorski and Perry call on the...

审核人：

• 旗帜和十字架：白人基督教民族主义和对美国民主的威胁菲利普·S·戈尔斯基和塞缪尔·L·佩里
• 大卫·克鲁格

长期以来，学者们一直使用基督教民族主义的概念来分析宗教与政治的交集，但在过去几年中，这个词在公众中的使用激增。2022年，美国众议员马乔里·泰勒·格林等政客公开宣称自己是基督教民族主义者。在他们的书中，戈尔斯基和佩里认为，基督教民族主义在很大程度上对保守派基督徒来说是不可见的，因为它只是“在他们呼吸的空气中”，对世俗进步派来说，因为他们认为这些信仰是边缘的。2021 年 1 月 6 日的国会大厦起义及其独特的基督教意象将基督教民族主义带入了主流意识。近年来，关于这个话题的学术研究如潮水般涌来。Gorski 和 Perry 的书以令人信服和简洁的方式综合了这些材料，

作者将他们的书作为“白人基督教民族主义的入门读物”，其章节围绕着它是什么、它何时出现、它如何运作以及它的发展方向等问题进行组织。白人基督教民族主义的核心是一个“深层故事”，它声称美国是由白人[结束第 131 页]基督徒在基督教原则的指导下建立的，他们认为这个国家是上帝为特殊目的而选择的，但是由于“我们境内外的非美国影响”而处于危险之中。

戈尔斯基和佩里根据自己的社会学研究确定了“基督教民族主义的七个指标”，例如相信国家的建国文件是受到神圣启发的，联邦政府应该提倡基督教价值观，允许在公立学校祈祷，并强制实行严格的分离教会与国家之间。虽然许多白人和黑人基督徒在他们的评估中得分很高，但数据显示，对基督教民族主义的坚持程度越高，白人声称自己受到歧视、不信任专家和主流媒体、支持使用暴力来维持秩序，维护个人自由和经济繁荣——即使社会中的弱势群体受到伤害。黑人受访者不存在相同的相关性。

戈尔斯基 (Gorski) 和佩里 (Perry) 精心编造了一个历史叙事，以证明白人基督教民族主义并不新鲜，而是“美国政治中最古老、最强大的潮流之一”。作者开始他们的家谱，不是在 1619 年第一批被奴役的非洲人到达弗吉尼亚时，而是在 1690 年宗教和民族主义与白人和秩序的概念融合在一起时。他们确定了其他关键的转折点，例如国家在 1898 年转向帝国主义，以及接受自由意志主义作为在社会政策中对种族进行编码的一种更微妙的方式。在此过程中，作者强调了每个时刻的偶然性以及不同参与者发挥作用的方式。

最后一章警告说，1 月 6 日的起义不是孤立事件，而是“已经建立了一段时间的地下势力”的产物。因此，该事件应被视为可能危及美国民主未来的更大、更暴力事件的预兆。作者对未来可能会发生什么提出了可怕的警告，断言“特朗普主义的美国”不一定会成为“希特勒的德国”，但可能与“普京的俄罗斯”有相似之处。

这是一个完全公平的说法，也许是对一些读者的警钟，但是这本书关于“可以做什么”的短短三页不足以迎接挑战。总之，Gorski 和 Perry 呼吁……