WTL Conversations S2E15 [video]: Half of White Evangelicals, Republicans Say God Intended America to be a Promised Land for European Christians

Findings from the release of PRRI's 13th annual American Values Survey, conducted in partnership with the Brookings Institution

Oct 29, 2022

Dear White Too Long readers,

This was a big week at PRRI. For the first time since 2019, we were back in person at the Brookings Institution for the release of our 13th annual American Values Survey, conducted in partnership with the Brookings Institution. We had more than 80 people attend the event in person, and over 800 joined online.

Back in person at the Brookings Institution on a beautiful fall morning.

PRRI’s signature survey takes the pulse of Americans each fall on a range of issues at the intersection of religion, culture, and politics. This year we covered attitudes about white Christian nationalism, systemic racism, abortion, gender and gender identity, QAnon, and critical issues for voting among others. You can read the full AVS report on PRRI’s website here.

I’ve included below links to watch the live stream of the event, along with two key findings related to white Christian nationalism and systemic racism.

Please consider sharing and inviting two or three friends to join the community here at #WhiteTooLong on substack.

Thanks,
Robby

Live Stream of the 2022 American Values Survey Release Event

ICYMI live, here’s the link to live stream of the event. In addition to our longstanding partners at Brookings, E.J. Dionne, Jr. and Bill Galston, we were joined by an all-star panel:

Mona Charen, Policy Editor at the Bulwark;
Eugene Scott, national political reporter from the Washington Post; and
Janelle Wong, PRRI board member and Professor of American studies and government and politics at University of Maryland.

You can watch my powerpoint presentation summarizing the key findings, along with the full panel discussion, by clicking here or on the image below:

Two Key Findings on White Christian Nationalism and Systemic Racism from the 2022 AVS

The American Values Survey report covers A LOT of ground (70+ pages and dozens of charts). For this newsletter, I wanted to highlight two important findings.

First, we continue to find that Americans overall, by a margin of two to one, reject the idea that “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that would be an example to the rest of the world.” However, that still leaves nearly one third of the country affirming this core tenet of white Christian nationalism.

Moreover, white Christian nationalist beliefs are now affirmed by half of Republicans and half of white evangelical Christians. There is also clear evidence that these views are being driven by conservative television news. Those who most trust far right television media outlets like One American News/Newsmax (66%) or Fox News (54%) are much more likely than those who do not watch television news (29%) or most trust mainstream media sources (24%) to agree that God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians.

Belief in this tenet of white Christian nationalism is positively and strongly correlated with belief in conspiracy theories like “the Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump and the QAnon belief that the government and other areas of society are being controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles (yes, we actually asked that in a survey question, an indication of the unhinged nature of our current political and cultural climate).

Most concerning, those who believe God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians are more than twice as likely as those who disagree to say true American patriots may have to resort to violence; among white Americans, those affirming this tenet of white Christian nationalism are four times as likely as those who disagree to believe that our political differences may need to be solved not at the ballot box but by violence.

The 2022 American Values Survey also confirmed that a denial of the existence of structural racism has become a defining feature of the Republican Party, consistent with findings from the Structural Racism Index developed in White Too Long. As the chart below demonstrates, by a margin of two to one, Republicans deny that white supremacy is still a major problem and do not believe there is racial inequity in our criminal justice system.

Additionally, two thirds of Republicans believe that white people are as likely as people of color to be victims of discrimination today, and overwhelming numbers of Republicans reject the idea that past discrimination has an impact on racial inequalities in the present.

While white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants and white Catholics are more divided on these questions, white evangelicals—who comprise about one third of the GOP—are closely aligned with Republican attitudes here.

So what’s the big picture? Here’s my take after analyzing the results of the 2022 American Values Survey, viewed against the backdrop of more than a decade of annual AVS research.

On questions related to American identity, we are increasingly divided by the powerful forces of party, religion, and race. These divisions have moved far beyond differences over public policy or the role of government. Increasingly, political partisans—animated particularly on the right by the defense of an ethno-religious identity as the criteria for being truly American—defend different histories, live in different realities, and promote two essentially incompatible views of America’s future.

The trends over the last decade chart the opening of an asymmetrical partisan divide, driven by a hardening, rightward stance among Republicans and their white evangelical base. Republicans and conservative white Christians are steadily showing a willingness to embrace dangerous and frankly unhinged ideas, along with a political agenda that is increasingly out of step not only with core democratic values but with the values of most of their fellow Americans.