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Belonging In a “Christian Nation”: The Explicit and Implicit Associations between Religion and National Group Membership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2013

Carly M. Jacobs  and
Elizabeth Theiss-Morse
Carly M. Jacobs*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Elizabeth Theiss-Morse*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Carly M. Jacobs, Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0328. E-mail: cjacobs@huskers.unl.edu
Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0328. E-mail: etheissmorse1@unl.edu
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Abstract

If many consider the United States to be a Christian nation, how does this affect individuals who are American citizens but not Christian? We test two major hypotheses: (1) Americans consider Christians to be more fully American than non-Christians. We examine whether Americans explicitly and implicitly connect being Christian with being a true American; and (2) Christian Americans are more likely to be patriotic and set exclusive boundaries on the national group than non-Christian Americans. Among non-Christians, however, those who want to be fully accepted as American will be more patriotic and set more exclusive boundaries to emulate prototypical Americans than non-Christians who place less emphasis on national group membership. We test these hypotheses using data from a survey and from an Implicit Association Test. We find that Americans in general associate being Christian with being a true American. For Christians, this is true both explicitly and implicitly. For non-Christians, only the implicit measure uncovers an association. We also found that non-Christians exhibit significantly more pro-national group behaviors when they desire being prototypical than when they do not.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 373 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2013 

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