Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States
Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States
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为上帝夺回美国：美国的基督教民族主义
DOI：
10.1177/00943061211050046bb
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
G. Hart
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
G. Hart
在2020年美国大选之前，自由派媒体的大量报道集中在特朗普能否保持80%以上的白人福音派支持上，这些支持帮助他在2016年当选总统。同样的问题在选举后的分析中占据了主导地位，像以前一样，许多看似虔诚的基督徒不仅支持一个撒谎、欺骗、通奸的骗子，而且往往是忠诚的，这让人感到惊讶。对于相对少数的分析人士来说，这些问题是错位的：重点应该放在基督教民族主义上，而不是白人福音派，这被理解为一项将基督教的反动形式强加于公共领域的政治项目——或者像菲利普·戈尔斯基（Philip Gorski, 2019:3）尖刻地指出的那样，是“伪装成宗教正统的政治偶像崇拜”。在《为上帝夺回美国：美国的基督教民族主义》一书中，安德鲁·怀特黑德和塞缪尔·佩里对后一种观点做出了贡献，他们将其描述为对美国当代基督教民族主义的首次实证研究。他们通过分析大规模调查数据（主要是2017年贝勒宗教调查或BRS），结合50次深度访谈和对基督教民族主义明确展示的大型活动的参与者观察来做到这一点。他们主要但不完全以BRS数据为基础，试图将基督教民族主义描绘成一个多维文化框架，“理想化并倡导基督教与美国公民生活的融合”（第10页）。他们的策略包括：(a)根据受访者对关于美国是否应该成为一个基督教国家的六个独立但相关的陈述的同意程度，构建一个综合量表；(b)使用这个量表来确定基督教民族主义的四种主要倾向，他们称之为大使，容纳者，拒绝者和抵抗者；(c)应用回归分析来检验对基督教民族主义的坚持与一系列其他指标之间的相关性。他们还比较了2007年和2017年BRS的数据，发现在过去十年中，“拒绝者”和“抵抗者”的比例上升（从40.6%上升到48.1%），而“迁就者”和“大使”的比例下降（从59.3%下降到51.9%）——但他们警告说，在动荡时期，反动领导人和运动可能会煽动基督教民族主义的火焰。他们的分析尖锐地质疑了被广泛认为理所当然的说法，即白人福音派把特朗普推上了白宫。相反，对基督教民族主义的倾向“解释了几乎所有对特朗普的‘宗教投票’”（第62页）——即使在控制了种族和宗教信仰的影响之后。此外，当白人福音派按他们对基督教民族主义的坚持程度进行分类时，特朗普的选票来自大使和妥协派，而不是拒绝派和抵抗派。尽管基督教民族主义在白人福音派中最为普遍，但这两者并不是同义词。事实上，一旦考虑到基督教民族主义，个人的宗教信仰与更进步的政治立场呈正相关。简而言之，作者坚持认为宗教虔诚必须与基督教民族主义严格区分开来，后者“采用基督教语言和图像，以道德和宗教象征来掩盖特定的政治或社会目的”（第153页）。基督教民族主义和宗教虔诚之间的区别也涉及到种族和宗教界限的划定。毫不奇怪，基督教民族主义与白人至上主义、反移民情绪、对穆斯林的恐惧以及对大多数其他宗教的反感呈正相关。然而，当基督教民族主义是评论525
In the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. election, huge swaths of liberal media coverage focused on whether or not Trump could retain the more than 80 percent of white evangelical support that helped shoehorn him into the presidency in 2016. The same question dominated electoral postmortems, tinged as before with wonderment at how many seemingly devout Christians could offer not just support for but often devotion to a lying, cheating, adulterous grifter. For a relatively small minority of analysts, such questions are misplaced: rather than white evangelicals, the focus should be on Christian nationalism, understood as a political project to impose a reactionary form of Christianity on the public sphere— or ‘‘political idolatry dressed up as religious orthodoxy,’’ as Philip Gorski (2019:3) acerbically puts it. In Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry contribute to this latter position in the form of what they characterize as the first empirical examination of contemporary Christian nationalism in the United States. They do so by analyzing large-scale survey data (mainly the 2017 Baylor Religion Survey or BRS), combined with 50 in-depth interviews and participant observation at large events where Christian nationalism was explicitly on display. Drawing primarily but not exclusively on the BRS data, they seek to paint a picture of Christian nationalism as a multidimensional cultural framework ‘‘that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life’’ (p. 10). Their strategy entails (a) constructing a composite scale based on respondents’ level of agreement with six separate, though related, statements about whether the United States should be a Christian nation; (b) using this scale to identify four main orientations toward Christian nationalism that they dub Ambassadors, Accommodators, Rejecters, and Resisters; and (c) applying regression analysis to examine correlations between adherence to Christian nationalism and a wide array of other indicators. They also compare the 2007 and 2017 BRS data to show that the proportion of Rejecters and Resisters rose (from 40.6 percent to 48.1 percent) over the decade while that of Accommodators and Ambassadors fell (from 59.3 percent to 51.9 percent)— but warn that, in times of unrest, reactionary leaders and movements could fan the flames of Christian nationalism. Their analysis calls sharply into question the widely taken-for-granted claim that white evangelicals put Trump in the White House. Instead, orientation to Christian nationalism ‘‘explained almost all of the ‘religious vote’ for Trump’’ (p. 62)—even after controlling for the effects of race and religious affiliation. In addition, when white evangelicals are sorted by their adherence to Christian nationalism, Trump votes came from Ambassadors and Accommodators, but not from Rejecters and Resisters. Although Christian nationalism is most prevalent among white evangelicals, the two are not synonymous. Indeed, once Christian nationalism is taken into account, personal religiosity is positively associated with more progressive political stances. In short, the authors insist that religious piety must be rigorously distinguished from Christian nationalism, which ‘‘co-opts Christian language and iconography to cloak particular political or social ends in moral and religious symbolism’’ (p. 153). The distinction between Christian nationalism and religiosity pertains as well to the drawing of racial and religious boundaries. Not surprisingly, Christian nationalism correlates positively with measures of white supremacy, anti-immigration sentiment, fear of Muslims, and antipathy to most other religions. Yet when Christian nationalism is Reviews 525