Trying to divine why certain people gravitate toward a particular political orientation can be a fool’s errand, with so many factors influencing ideology that it can make your head spin.
However, one sociology researcher wanted to understand why Christian nationalists think the way they do, and the results of his work aren’t particularly flattering for right wing evangelicals.
The study, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, looked at cognitive factors while stripping out variables like demographics and education. It found that in the US, those who subscribe to the doctrine of Christian nationalism — characterized as a belief in strict social order, blurring of religion with a sense of civic belonging, and promotion of European-style Christianity — tend to correspond to a low level of cognitive ability.
To arrive at that bold conclusion, University of Oklahoma professor of sociology Samuel Perry tested for correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and scores on the General Social Survey, a widely used and long-running dataset for American social research.
