Alaina Cline | 2025 I.S. Symposium

Name: Alaina Cline
Title: May God Protect Us: The Effect of Perceived Existential Threat and White Christian Nationalism Among American Evangelicals
Majors: Political Science; Religious Studies
Advisors: Kent Kille; Jeremy Rapport

Evangelicals have become a major political bloc in the United States, with enormous implications for American democracy. The underlying current of perceived threat in the Christian nationalist and evangelical literatures have not been connected to political participation among evangelicals who subscribe to white Christian nationalist beliefs. This presents a major challenge to understanding the implications of political participation among evangelicals in America. This thesis seeks to fill that gap. Thus, the research question is: How does perceived existential threat and alignment to white Christian nationalism influence the type and level of political participation among American evangelicals? This thesis constructs a theory of perceived existential threat, drawing on downgrading and ontological insecurity to understand how perceived threats to the status quo and perceived victimhood are salient to evangelicals who may be susceptible to white Christian nationalist ideas. A survey of evangelicals measures perceived existential threat, alignment to white Christian nationalism, and political participation to distinguish between the political behaviors of evangelicals who engage in white Christian nationalism, and those who do not. This study found a correlation between perceived existential threat and white Christian nationalism. However, the two independent variables did not seem to impact the type and amount of political participation that evangelicals were engaged in.

Posted in Symposium 2025 on May 1, 2025.