Christian no more: Christian Americans are threatened by their impending minority status

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Abstract

Christian Americans are on track to become a minority of the U.S. population by mid-century. Research on racial demographic shifts shows majority-group members experience status threat when reminded of similar demographic changes. Public debate about religious freedom and the role of Christianity in America suggest that fast-changing religious demographics similarly elicit threat, and trigger defensive political stances, among Christian Americans. In two preregistered experiments (total N = 766 Christian Americans), reminders of religious demographic shifts evoked perceived threat to religious rights and freedoms, which in turn accounted for increases in Christian nationalism, conservative political ideology, and support for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Results illustrate how America's fast-changing religious landscape can evoke threat for Christians and how this threat may influence political reasoning.

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Theoretical contributions

The present research is grounded in social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), which posits that individuals have a motivation to maintain a positive group image, and that threats to one's group, such as those posed by a perceived decline in status, can evoke defensive reactions. Prior research on social identity threat and status threat has focused on racial identity, leaving open questions about whether religious identity is similarly vulnerable to threat from demographic decline. By

Changing religious demographics

To illustrate changing religious demographics in the U.S., consider the following. In 2007, 77% of the U.S. population identified as Christian. Today, that number has fallen to 69% (Pew Research Center, 2019; Public Religion Research Institute, 2021). Underlying this shift are two complementary forces: the rise of religious “nones” and, to a lesser extent, increasing religious diversity. The term religious “nones” refers to religiously unaffiliated Americans, including atheists, agnostics, and

Demographic threat

Religious identities, like racial identities, should be sensitive to demographic threat. Religion is an important social identity because it simultaneously serves as a binding social group membership, a system of beliefs that guides moral behavior, and a culture (Ysseldyk et al., 2010). Because religion provides distinctive sources of meaning and security, some research suggests that threats to religious identity might even exert a stronger influence on ingroup identification and civic

Demographic shifts, threat, and Christian nationalism

Our interest in Christian nationalism is driven, in large part, by the possibility that changing religious demographics may help to explain some of the broader political movements occurring in the U.S. To the degree that demographic shifts evoke prototypicality threat (Danbold & Huo, 2015), it follows that Christians aware of such shifts may attempt to project their ingroups' religion onto the superordinate American identity (Wenzel, Mummendey, & Waldzus, 2008). For example, in “The End of

The present research

We address four primary aims in two preregistered studies. First, we experimentally test whether religious demographic shifts lead Christian Americans to feel as if their religion and religious beliefs are under threat. We hypothesized that it would. Second, we experimentally test whether making American Christians aware of changing religious demographics promotes Christian nationalism. We hypothesized that it would. Third, we test whether measured religious threat perceptions are positively

Study 1

Data were drawn from a larger project that also investigated Christian nationalism and anti-immigrant attitudes (see also Al-Kire et al., 2021). Two preregistered hypotheses from this larger project directly pertain to the present research (see on OSF at https://osf.io/7umaq/?view_only=beb2a95f7ca24e0aa38ce687305680cd). The Study 1 preregistration also includes separate research questions that relate to anti-immigrant attitudes, which are not addressed here and relate to interests published in

Study 2

Study 2 was a preregistered replication of core findings from Study 1. Based on limitations discussed in the Study 1 Discussion, we made four key modifications to strengthen our study procedure. First, we disguised our religious threat items with items assessing attitudes about other rights, freedoms, and identities, which also used to tease apart whether our manipulation uniquely threatened religious (as opposed to other domains of) threat (Chester & Lasko, 2021). Second, we only included

Pooled analyses

Given inconsistent findings across studies with respect to the effect of religious demographic changes on Christian nationalism, and the potential that we may have been underpowered to observe experimental effects in Study 2 due to larger than expected exclusions, we conducted a series of pooled analyses. Combining data from both studies allowed us to test whether reminders of religious demographic changes reliably elicited perceptions of threat, religious threat, and Christian nationalism, and

Results

To conduct pooled analyses, we included interaction terms between study (contrast-coded: −0.5 = Study 1, 0.5 = Study 2) and condition. For mediational models, we tested whether study moderated indirect paths and collapsed across simple indirect paths for each study obtain overall effects. Codes for subgroup analyses are described below.

Collapsed across studies, compared to participants in the control condition, those in the religious demographic change condition reported greater religious

General discussion

In two studies of Christian Americans, we tested whether the salience of a religious demographic shift would evoke religious threat and Christian nationalism. In both studies, participants who were primed with information that Christians would become a minority were more likely to believe that their religion and religious freedoms were under attack. Additionally, participants who reported feeling their religion and religious freedoms were threatened also reported stronger endorsement of

Conclusion

Two studies show that making Christian Americans aware of the fact that their religious group represents a declining share of the U.S. population led Christians to perceive their religion and religious freedom as being under attack and increased Christian Americans' endorsement of Christian nationalism. Changes in Christian nationalism were also explained by increases in religious threat, providing a psychological window into potential drivers of Christian nationalist ideology. Exploratory

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    These authors contributed equally to this work.

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