Dimitra Mareta-Catherine Tebaldi.Wall builders: Christian nationalism in theory and practice
Channel: GIRES-Global Research Institute
Date: 2021-08-09

Dimitra Mareta holds a PhD in Political Science from the Panteion
University of Social and Political Sciences. She is currently an adjunct lecturer in Political Sciences at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and she was a Visiting Research Fellow in Political Science at the University of Peloponnese for the academic year 2018-2019. Her research and teaching interests include state theory, counterrevolution, political theology, state- church relationships and right-wing politics.

Catherine Tebaldi is a PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the Institute for Research Male Supremacism/ Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. Her dissertation focuses on homeschooling, popular education and media as public pedagogy on the far-right. Her other research explores the use of affect and sexuality in right wing women’s media.


ABSTRACT
Trump, the growing visibility of white nationalists, and the capitol insurrection have fueled interest in religious nationalism. While both American religiosity and American nationalism have been well studied, Christian Nationalism has until recently been peripheral to discussions in political and social sciences. Christian nationalism is both widespread, Whitehead & Perry (2020) note that only 28 percent of Americans reject all religious nationalism, and highly predictive of rightist political attitudes as high support for Christian nationalism also predicts support for Trump and opposition to immigration. This paper, written in collaboration between an American ethnographer and a Greek political scientist, explores the specific impact of religion on the formation of American nationalism in two ways: first, it makes a theoretical argument, tracing the evolution of religious nationalism; second, it looks empirically at how this religious nationalism is taught and performed in contemporary America. The first part will explore how fundamentalism and Christian religion has affected the formation of national identity and the sense of belonging, situating the contemporary moment and the capitol insurrection within a review of the shifting types of Christian Nationalism in the United States from 1950-the present. In the second part, this nationalism is presented in social context, drawing on both ethnographic fieldwork in Southeastern Louisiana and media analysis of “patriot bibles” to teach students that “Jesus is their god and Trump is their president.


CONFERENCE INFORMATION
"Religion and Politics in the United States"
Organizer: GIRES-Global Institute for Research Education & Scholarship  
Date: 17-18 July 2021
Place: Amsterdam (Virtual)
More information: https://www.gires.org/activities/conferences/religion-and-politics-in-the-united-states/