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One Leader Under God: The Connection Between Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism in America
PRRI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research and driving conversations at the intersection of religion, culture, and politics.
It should be no surprise to anyone that the followers of a man who constantly threatens violence would be more likely to commit violence themselves.
January 6 demonstrated they are willing to go so far as to overthrow our democracy.
The two recent assassins were lone wolves. The Trump cult acts as a mob, and mobs are notoriously easy to incite to violence, as seen on January 6.
Relying on two classic approaches to measure authoritarianism, PRRI finds that most Americans do not hold highly authoritarian views.
PRRI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research and driving conversations at the intersection of religion, culture, and politics.
It should be no surprise to anyone that the followers of a man who constantly threatens violence would be more likely to commit violence themselves.
January 6 demonstrated they are willing to go so far as to overthrow our democracy.
The two recent assassins were lone wolves. The Trump cult acts as a mob, and mobs are notoriously easy to incite to violence, as seen on January 6.
Relying on two classic approaches to measure authoritarianism, PRRI finds that most Americans do not hold highly authoritarian views.
- Revisiting work first developed in The Authoritarian Personality (1950) and later adapted into the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWAS), PRRI finds that 43% of Americans score high on the RWAS, compared with 37% who score low; two in ten Americans qualify as having mixed opinions (20%).
- Around four in ten Americans (41%) score high on an alternative measure of authoritarianism (CRAS) that relies on child-rearing preferences and is less closely associated with conservative political ideology. This is a drop from 57% of Americans who scored high on the CRAS in a previous 2016 PRRI national survey.
- Two-thirds of Republicans score high on the RWAS (67%), compared with 35% of independents, and 28% of Democrats.
- Republicans who hold favorable views of Trump are 36 percentage points more likely than those with unfavorable views of Trump to score high on the RWAS (75% vs. 39%).
- White evangelical Protestants (64%) are the religious group most likely to score high on the RWAS, followed by slim majorities of other Protestants of color (55%), Hispanic Protestants (54%), and white Catholics (54%). A majority of weekly churchgoers (55%) score high on the RWAS, compared with 44% of Americans who attend church a few times a year and 38% of those who never attend church services.
- Republicans are more likely than independents and Democrats to agree that patriots may have to resort to violence (27%, 15%, and 8%, respectively); Americans need to ensure the rightful leader takes office, even with violence (24%, 15%, and 10%, respectively); and that armed citizens are needed as poll watchers (24%, 10%, and 10%, respectively). Republicans with favorable views of Trump are more likely to agree with all three statements (32%, 27%, and 28%, respectively).
- Christian nationalism supporters are slightly more likely than Americans who score high on the RWAS or CRAS to agree that true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country (33%, 28%, and 21%, respectively) or to ensure that the rightful leader takes office (30%, 26%, and 20%, respectively), and that armed citizens are needed as poll watchers (29%, 25%, and 20%, respectively).