RIGHT TO LIFE

With three prisoners scheduled for execution, southern churches toll their bells

(RNS) — Faith-based anti-death penalty activists have used the bell-tolling tactic throughout the country in various waves.

Kristen Hansen, minister of music, rings a bell in opposition to the death penalty outside First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in downtown Nashville.        (Photo courtesy of Death Penalty Action)

Aleja Hertzler-McCain

August 13, 2026 

RNS

(RNS) — On the first day in 16 years that three death row inmates were scheduled to be executed on the same day, faith groups in Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Iowa tolled their bells as part of a campaign led by the Death Penalty Action advocacy group. In Tennessee, they rang for two minutes at 10 a.m. CT that coincided with a scheduled execution in the state.

“ We have to be together in our opposition to executions and in our statement that this is not in alignment with the teachings of our faiths,” Abraham Bonowitz, the executive director of Death Penalty Action and co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty, told RNS. “ There should never be an execution without protest.”

On Thursday morning (Aug. 13), Tennessee executed Anthony Darrell Hines and Oklahoma executed Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez. Alabama is scheduled to execute Jeremy Williams Thursday evening. All three were convicted of murder.

Last year saw a surge in executions, with 47 people put to death, more than any year since 2009.

The faith-based effort to toll church bells is a revival of a campaign originally inspired by Filipino Cardinal Jaime Sin’s 1983 order that Catholic churches ring their bells to call for an investigation into the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr., which opposition leaders claimed was ordered by President Ferdinand Marcos.

In 1999, Catholic Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Virginia, asked churches in his diocese to toll bells on the evening of an execution.

Abraham Bonowitz, of the group Death Penalty Action, leads a demonstration outside the Capitol in Montgomery, Ala., on Monday, June 8, 2026, to oppose an upcoming execution in Alabama. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)

Faith-based anti-death penalty activists have since used the tactic throughout the country in various waves, but today is the first widespread bell tolling since Death Penalty Action took up the campaign, Bonowitz said.

In the 50 years since a Supreme Court decision reignited the modern era of the death penalty in the United States, faith-based opposition has been a cornerstone of successful abolition and commutation campaigns — even as religious Americans as a whole tend to support the death penalty, data suggests. 

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RELATED: ‘God commands us not to kill’: Faith leaders protest 50 years of executions

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In addition to the bell-ringing campaign, called For Whom the Bells Toll, Death Penalty Action hosted a virtual vigil, which included recordings of “El Malei Rachamim,” a Jewish prayer for the dead, and Psalm 23 by Cantor Michael Zoosman, an anti-death penalty activist.

Last weekend, activists with Death Penalty Action marched from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where Tennessee’s men’s death row is housed, to the state Capitol to call for the abolition of the death penalty.

In downtown Nashville on Thursday, First Evangelical Lutheran Church rang a bell provided by Death Penalty Action because the church does not have its own bell. That bell, created by Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty, tolled outside as Delaware prisoners were executed in the 1990s and 2000s, until the state ended executions. Since then, it has been rung in opposition to the death penalty in more than a dozen states, according to Death Penalty Action.

Demonstrators stand in the area reserved for people opposed to the death penalty as guards on horseback are positioned nearby outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Anthony Darrell Hines, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

The Rev. Travis Meier, the church’s pastor, told RNS the decision to toll the bell was inspired by 1 Corinthians  15:26,  ”The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Meier said the death penalty is another way “ we have mechanized death as a society.”

Meier entrusted his music director to ring the bell as he went to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution to attend a prayer vigil that local activists hold outside executions.

On Wednesday, Dan Mann, a Christian who regularly visits a man on death row there, told RNS that he planned to be present for that vigil. Mann said that he regularly talks to other men in the visitation room and that he met Hines once.

Of the men he sees more often, he said, “ We tell them about our life and what we have going on. They tell us about theirs. And in all of that, we’ve become very close,” Mann said.

Inspired by Matthew 25, Mann and his wife, Bethany, have been visiting death row since 2010. In years when there are many executions, the prisoners become especially “somber” and reflective about their childhoods, he said. 

Growing up a fundamentalist Christian, Mann said he was taught that “ if you killed somebody, you deserved to die.” But he now believes that people on death row “are not the people that were put in there 40 years ago,” leading him to conclude that “there is nobody out of the reach of God’s mercy.”

Now, Mann attends Christ Church Cathedral, an Episcopal church that joined other downtown Nashville churches in asking Gov. Bill Lee to stay Hines’ execution. The governor declined to intervene earlier this week. 

Christ Church Cathedral also committed to toll its bells. The five pastors who signed a letter about it wrote, “The bells will toll for mercy, remembering the words of Scripture: ‘Mercy triumphs over judgment.’”

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RELATED: ‘Israel’s new death penalty law sparks outcry from liberal Jewish groups

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At the vigil outside the prison, after an opening prayer and reading scripture together, the group of a couple dozen waited for news that Hines had been executed, Meier said.

During that time, “ I pray, and I walk because I can’t sit still,” Meier said. His prayers are for Hines, his victim and her family, the prison staff and for a change of heart among legislators.

On Thursday, Meier said, the somber gathering also grappled with “frustration” over Tennessee’s most recent botched execution attempt, during which a doctor spent over an hour trying to insert an IV line to execute Tony Carruthers. Witnesses say the attempt created excruciating pain for Carruthers, who has now been spared execution for a year.

Unlike that last vigil, this time, faith leaders received news that Hines had been successfully executed. The faith leaders sang “Amazing Grace” and prayed the Commendation of the Dying, Meier said.

Meier lamented “the system of death” in the U.S. “ That three executions can happen in the same day, and a majority of the population have no clue that it’s happening — it’s just so commonplace that nobody bats an eye,” he said.

A Hindu soldier and a Muslim poet show how religious identities overlapped in 19th-century India

(The Conversation) — A scholar of India explores how two 19th-century memoirs portray a land where different religious identities coexist.

When India became independent in 1947, its constitution affirmed a commitment to religious diversity and pluralism. (Photo by Indranil MukherjeeI/AFP via Getty Images)

Aishwarya Lakshmi

August 20, 2026 

(The Conversation) — The growing assertion of a majority Hindu identity is fueling debates about religious pluralism in India. A 2025 Washington-based research group report documented a steady, incremental increase in hate speech since 2023 targeting religious minorities in India, while Human Rights Watch reported a rise in religious and communal violence in 2024. Much of this rhetoric and violence has been justified as defending religious identity.

When India became independent in 1947, its constitution affirmed a commitment to religious diversity and pluralism as a national ideal.

India is one of the world’s most religiously diverse countries. While a majority of its population is Hindu, it is home to the world’s third-largest Muslim population – nearly 172 million. Christians, Sikhs, Jains and many indigenous traditions also form part of its rich religious landscape.

As a scholar of late 18th- and 19th-century India, I have studied everyday writings, military records and diaries from the period. They reveal that India was imagined as a sacred land in different ways. Two accounts illuminate this way of being – the memoirs of a Hindu soldier, born in a small village, and those of an elite Muslim poet from Delhi. Despite their different backgrounds, they describe a region where religious identities coexist with multiple forms of belonging.

Memoir of a Hindu soldier

Sitaram Pande, a soldier in the Bengal Army of the British East India Company, wrote a memoir about his travels and time in military service.

His experiences span the years leading up to and after the revolt of 1857. That year, Indian soldiers serving the British East India Company rebelled against the British commanding officers, killing many of them and sparking an uprising that spread rapidly across much of northern India. After a prolonged siege and fighting, the British recaptured Delhi and brutally suppressed the rebellion. In its aftermath, India was brought under direct control of the British Crown.

Pande served in the East India Company army in the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1838. He uses the term “Hindustan,” commonly used in writings of the time, to refer to the land east of the river Indus.

For Pande, Hindustan, which includes territories taken over by the British, is a space of beauty, romance and adventure. “Home” is the village he grew up in in north India and leaves to join the army; everything outside it in Hindustan is the “world.” As he notes, “It was 10 October 1812, and at six o’clock in the morning I … left my home to enter what for me was an unknown world.”

He describes cities he travels through in Hindustan in romantic terms, borrowing from the paradise-like landscapes, where land is depicted in the lush, idyllic ways of Sanskrit poetry. Thus, in the city of Jaipur: “Cuckoos were singing on the mango trees, and peacocks strutted about in shady places.”

Pande is a Brahmin and practices Hindu dietary and ritual practices, such as traveling with his own pots and cookware, in order to draw water from the well and cook his food. At the time Brahmins, traditionally, could accept only food cooked by another Brahmin. When he returns from Afghanistan, he has to perform a prayer to be allowed to return to his village, as he has ventured beyond the sacred geography of Hindustan.

Yet, during his travels he rescues a Hindu woman forced to be the mistress of an Arab mercenary and marries her. He goes against prevailing norms of sexual and religious purity. The woman is not a Brahmin and is considered sexually “impure” – because she is not a virgin – as per prevailing norms.

In a chapter titled “The Lovely Thakurin,” Pande describes how he rescues the woman from her captor and places her in the care of the regiment. Gradually, his “heart became inflamed with love,” and though he is warned she will bring “disgrace,” he decides to marry her.

His account reveals a sacred landscape that borrows descriptions from and echoes the ethos of sacred Sanskrit texts. At the same time, it shows that his life and sense of belonging extend far beyond that religious identity.

A Muslim poet’s vision

A bust depicts the poet Mirza Ghalib.
Banswalhemant via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The poet Mirza Ghalib’s memoir, “Dastanbuy” – loosely translated as a “bouquet of flowers” – is an account of his years in Delhi during the revolt of 1857. The city was the site of prolonged fighting between rebel Indian forces and the British East India Company army. The Mughal empire – the Islamic dynasty that had ruled much of northern India since the 16th century – was in its final years. After British forces recaptured Delhi, much of the city was destroyed and the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was exiled.

For Ghalib, Delhi was a cosmopolitan city where Hindus, Muslims and the British lived and worked side by side. As he notes, here “we composed our verses and compiled our diwans (collection of poems).” Ghalib was a devout Muslim yet drank wine despite Islam’s prohibition on alcohol. In his poetry and in his letters, he expresses a belief in the “peaceful coexistence” for all faiths.

Ghalib describes Delhi as a “garden” underneath the “stars” of the “Lord, the Emperor,” Bahadur Shah Zafar. In the Quran, paradise is described as an ideal garden. In practice, the Mughals in India, from the 15th century onward, had a rich tradition of landscaping and building waterfront and palace gardens, modeling themselves after heavenly authority and their cities after the heavenly garden. Delhi, with its palaces, forts and gardens, echoed this ethos. Ghalib describes the city, prior to its destruction by the British in 1857, in idyllic terms as “filled with tulips and the scent of roses.”

Ghalib’s memoir presents an Islamic vision of the garden through Delhi. At the same time, his identity as a cosmopolitan elite went beyond religious boundaries.

The historical look back shows that religious identities are rarely pure and that India’s sacredness has rested in religious imaginations of multiple faiths.

I believe present-day arguments that justify anti-minority violence and rhetoric in the name of defending “pure” religious identities ignore that historical sacredness.

(Aishwarya Lakshmi, Executive Director, Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Birmingham church bombing wasn’t an isolated act of terrorism – there were dozens of attacks on Black houses of worship during the Civil Rights Movement

(The Conversation) — More than 100 Black churches across the South were targeted from the 1950s-70s. Another wave of violence followed in the ‘90s – and there have been attacks in recent years, too.

Members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee pray beside the ruins of a burned church near Dawson, Ga., in 1962. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Jason Wollschleger

August 20, 2026 

(The Conversation) — Sept. 15 marks the anniversary of an infamous terror attack: the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. On that Sunday morning, members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group, planted dynamite on the east side of the brown brick building.

The bomb went off in the midst of Sunday school, at 10:22 a.m., murdering four girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, who were all 14 years old, and Denise McNair, who was 11. The blast injured 22 other churchgoers, including a 12-year-old girl, Sarah Jean Collins, who was blinded in one eye.

Sixteenth Street Baptist was the oldest Black congregation in the city of Birmingham. Just on the edge of downtown, the building had been the main hub of organizing for civil rights demonstrations that spring, known as the Children’s Crusade. More than 1,000 Black children marched together protesting segregation, famously facing down police dogs, fire hoses and jail. Months later, this church at the center of it all became the target of white supremacists.

The bombing of churchgoers in their own house of worship shocked the world. The ensuing public outrage is often credited as one of the factors that drove support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. Yet it was not the only such attack on Black churches during the civil rights era.

Mourners at a funeral for victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., in September 1963.
Burton McNeely/Getty Images

I first realized the connection between attacks on Black churches and civil rights organizing the first time I taught a class about U.S. social movements, 15 years ago. As a sociologist who studies religion, social movements and race, I was shocked that I had never heard of how widespread bombings and burnings were. From that day on I have documented and studied scores of examples.

Faith and justice

To date, my research team has created a map of about 145 cases across the South, ranging from around 1954 to 1970. As with the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, many of the attacks coincided with local civil rights activism and protest.

As sociologist Aldon Morris documented in his groundbreaking book from 1986, “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement,” Black churches were the backbone of local organizing. Social movements need resources, such as leadership, fundraising, volunteers and participants, as well as safe places to meet in order to strategize and coordinate. At the time, all of these were found in local churches, the heart of the Black community.

A rally by civil rights activists Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King Jr. at a church in Birmingham, Ala., in October 1963.
Frank Rockstroh/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

These factors and the churches’ public visibility, however, made them standout targets to the white supremacists willing to use violence and terror to try to stop the movement.

Targets for violence

For example, Bethel Baptist Church and its parsonage in Birmingham, Alabama, were bombed three times. On one occasion a Black laborer in the area saw a paint can filled with lit dynamite, ran to it and tossed it into the street, where it exploded – shattering windows instead of buildings.

The first of these attacks took place on Christmas 1956, when a bomb damaged both the church and the adjoining parsonage where the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was sleeping. The minister was the leading figure in the Birmingham fight for civil rights. He was the head of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, the local organizing arm of the Black churches, and a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Shuttlesworth was a constant thorn in the side of local authorities, on account of his efforts to integrate the city’s public spaces, including its public schools.

Other examples abound. For instance, in 1961-62, one of the main civil rights organizations, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, engaged in a long battle with local authorities to protest segregation in Albany, Georgia. Over 1,000 protesters were arrested and jailed, and the campaign failed to achieve its goals. But in the moment it was significant, prolonged and highly contested.

During this period, four nearby Black churches associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee were burned to the ground, including Shady Grove Baptist and High Hope Baptist churches.

Past and present

Unfortunately, violence against Black places of worship is not relegated to America’s history.

Investigators work the crime scene of the burned ruins of the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, one of three that had recently burned down in Louisiana’s St. Landry Parish, in April 2019.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

A wave of burnings in the 1990s targeted about 200 Black churches across the Southeast, as historian Christopher B. Strain documents in his 2008 book “Burning Faith.”

More recently, a Black church in Memphis, Tennessee, was a target for arson in 2025: Clayborn Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church, which played a leading role in the Civil Rights Movement. The congregation was the organizing place for the sanitation workers’ strike that brought King to town in March 1968, weeks before he was assassinated there. Strikers’ signs created at the church that said “I AM A MAN” have become famous as a symbol of human dignity.

When radical white supremacists want to strike at the heart of the Black community, they still attack Black churches – such as the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina, which killed nine churchgoers during a Bible study.

In some cases, the memory of earlier attacks has been lost to history – and that is something my team is trying to change through our research at the Black Church Burning Project.

(Jason Wollschleger, Professor of Sociology, Whitworth University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

 Opinion

A Muslim educator and a rabbi: One ideology threatens us both

(RNS) — White supremacy does not distinguish between the communities it seeks to intimidate. Our resistance shouldn’t distinguish between them, either.

Imam Taha Hassane, center, embraces another person as they attend a vigil the day after a shooting, outside of the Islamic Center of San Diego, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Sharon Kleinbaum and Debbie Almontaser

August 21, 2026 

RNS

(RNS) — On Aug. 14, a man barged into New York City’s Central Synagogue during Shabbat services, striking a congregant, damaging religious property and headbutting a guard — leaving many Jewish Americans feeling vulnerable once again. The next day, an Islamic center under construction on Long Island was defaced with graffiti. “F— Islam” was written over a banner, which previously read, “NEW MOSQUE COMING SOON! Where Faith and Community Come Together!” 

We — a rabbi and a Muslim educator — learned of the synagogue attack while attending a five-day interfaith retreat. We had spent days praying, studying our sacred texts and speaking honestly about grief, fear,  hope and responsibility — not as representatives of competing communities but as faith leaders committed to the dignity of every human being.  When we heard about the anti-Muslim vandalism after the retreat, it underscored the urgency of those conversations. The hate from these incidents was a brutal reminder of how much work we need to do.   

Only months earlier, on May 18, worshippers at the Islamic Center of San Diego and its day school were targeted in a shooting that left three dead and shook Muslim communities across the country. A few weeks before that, on March 12, a vehicle-ramming and shooting attack occurred at Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan.  
 
Different houses of worship, different victims, the same message of hate and intimidation.  

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RELATED: New York rabbi: Antisemitism is real. I’m not afraid

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For too many American Jews and Muslims today, ordinary acts of faith have become calculations of risk. Is it safe for our children to visibly identify with their people? Should I wear my kippah walking to shul? Should I wear my hijab on the subway? Is it safe to send my child to Hebrew school or my daughter to Friday prayers? Will my synagogue need armed security? Will our mosque receive another bomb threat? These aren’t hypothetical questions — they’re daily realities.  

America has seen one of the sharpest increases in both antisemitism and Islamophobia in modern history. Jewish institutions have faced violence, harassment, vandalism and threats. Muslim communities have endured deadly attacks, mosque vandalism and unprecedented levels of discrimination. National organizations that track hate have documented record or near-record numbers of incidents targeting both. Fear has become a common language for both.  

Law enforcement escort families with children away from the Temple Israel synagogue Thursday, March 12, 2026, in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

The trauma following Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, political polarization and increasingly inflammatory public rhetoric have fed a climate where people confuse individuals with governments, faith with geopolitics, neighbors with enemies. That confusion is dangerous.   

American Jews are not responsible for every action of the Israeli government.  American Muslims are not responsible for Hamas or any other armed group.  

Yet both communities are increasingly judged through those lenses, and both are asking the same questions: Is it safe to gather for worship? Is it safe for our children to visibly identify with their people and practice their faith? Is it safe simply to be who we are?  

In both communities, the fear is real, as is the pain. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that this fear is so often carried alone, when it should be confronted together. As faith leaders, we know our communities don’t agree on every political issue. We have different histories, different narratives and often different views on the Middle East. Yet we also know this: No disagreement justifies hatred, no political conflict justifies the intimidation of American Jews or American Muslims and no child should grow up believing that their synagogue or mosque needs armed protection simply because of who they are.  

There’s another truth our country too often overlooks. The ideology that threatens Jewish communities and the one that threatens Muslim communities are same. For generations, white supremacist movements have targeted Jews with conspiracy theories about power and control while portraying Muslims as dangerous outsiders with a hidden agenda — people who don’t belong in America.   

That same ideology has fueled attacks on Black churches, Sikh gurdwaras, immigrant communities and many others. It rejects the pluralistic democracy that both of our faiths depend on. White supremacy does not distinguish between the communities it seeks to intimidate. Our resistance shouldn’t distinguish between them, either.

Jewish and Muslim organizations have stood together  after attacks on houses of worship. Rabbis have visited mosques after acts of anti-Muslim hatred; imams have stood beside Jewish congregations after antisemitic violence. Together, our communities have partnered on feeding the hungry, welcoming refugees, advocating for civil rights and strengthening our democracy.   

Too much of our public conversation today rewards outrage over relationships. Social media amplifies the loudest voices. Political rhetoric often deepens suspicion instead of understanding. Every act of hate is met with more anger, feeding a cycle in which fear becomes normalized. It doesn’t have to be this way. 

This moment calls for people of faith to have moral courage. Jewish leaders should continue speaking out unequivocally against Islamophobia — not because it’s politically convenient but because justice demands consistency. Muslim leaders should continue speaking out against antisemitism with equal clarity — not because every political disagreement has been resolved but because hatred toward Jews has no place in any movement for justice. And members of both communities must resist those who profit from keeping us divided, including news networks and nefarious interest groups.  

We can mourn Palestinian lives and Israeli lives. We can condemn all forms of political violence — including violence committed by states, armed groups and extremists — and oppose the suffering of civilians. We can advocate for peace while rejecting hatred against our neighbors. Most importantly, we can refuse to let our grief become someone else’s weapon. Our interfaith retreat reminded us of our shared humanity. Because our faiths teach that every human being is created with inherent dignity.  

Our call today is simple: Let us lower the temperature. Let us reject the politics of fear. Let us refuse the false choice that one community’s safety must come at another’s expense. And let us unite — Jews, Muslims, Christians and all people of conscience — to confront white supremacy and every ideology that seeks to divide Americans by race, religion or ethnicity.

The future of our communities won’t be secured by louder accusations. It will be secured by deeper relationships. The antidote to hate has never been silence — it has always been solidarity. If we defend one another with the same urgency we defend ourselves, we will not only make our synagogues and mosques safer. We will strengthen the promise of America itself.  

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, left, and Debbie Almontaser. (Courtesy photo)

Debbie Almontaser is the founder and chief executive officer of Bridging Cultures Group and was the founding principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn. Sharon Kleinbaum is senior rabbi emerita of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York and co-founder and board member of New York Jewish Agenda.   

Christian nationalists’ professed support for religious pluralism is often drowned out by perceptions that Christians are under threat

(The Conversation) — Two political scientists explain why Christian nationalist beliefs endure.

A sense of threat can fuel Christian nationalism. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Brooklyn Walker and Paul Djupe

August 21, 2026 

RNS

(The Conversation) — Christian nationalism, a worldview that sees the United States as a Christian nation and believes that Christianity should have a privileged role in American civic life, has been shown to be related to a host of social attitudes.

Research shows that people who hold Christian nationalistic beliefs tend to, on average, also show antipathy toward religious minorities and racial and ethnic minorities, as well as have sexist and anti-democratic attitudes.

Our research found that many Christian nationalists endorse religious pluralism, meaning that they value religious diversity – in principle. But we also found that this support for religious pluralism is often drowned out by perceptions of threats to Christians.

How we did the research

For our new research, published in the academic journal Politics & Religion in March 2026, we surveyed 1,500 American Christians in January 2024.

In healthy democracies, most citizens respect the civil liberties of others, including members of social groups they dislike. We asked our respondents which social group they liked the least, such as Christian fundamentalists, environmental activists, President Donald Trump supporters or atheists. We then asked them if they thought members of that group should be able to make public speeches, teach in public schools or run for political office, among others. The responses, taken together, showed respondents’ political tolerance for people who they dislike.

We also asked respondents how much they agreed with a series of statements commonly used to measure support for Christian nationalism, such as whether the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation. On a scale of 0 to 1, the average Christian nationalism score was 0.64, indicating that American Christians tend to support the idea of a Christian America.

To capture ideas that run directly counter to Christian nationalism, we then asked about their support for religious pluralism. Respondents agreed or disagreed with statements such as “nations should not favor one religion over another,” and “we need to advocate the Christian values of loving your neighbor as yourself.” Together, these made up our anti-Christian nationalism measure.

On average, participants rated their agreement with these statements as 0.74, higher than the agreement with Christian nationalist ideas – suggesting that anti-Christian nationalist views were more widely supported by American Christians.

What the research found

Some of the survey questions measuring Christian nationalism and anti-Christian nationalism captured opposite ideas.

Without assigning respondents to any categories, we asked them if they agreed with statements like “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation” or “Nations should not favor one religion over another.” We found that people who agreed with one were likely to agree with the other. In other words, respondents who advocated for a Christian nation also affirmed religious freedom for all.

While this might seem surprising, social scientists have long known that people hold lots of conflicting arguments in their heads. American Christians have likely heard both Christian nationalist and anti-Christian nationalist messages through their congregations, media and social networks.

Our statistical models show that religious pluralism is related to tolerance differently depending on views on Christian nationalism. We isolated strong supporters and strong opponents of Christian nationalism. Predictably, among strong opponents of Christian nationalism, anti-Christian nationalism views were associated with increased tolerance. But, surprisingly, strong supporters of Christian nationalism maintained the same level of tolerance.

According to our data, people who agree with anti-Christian nationalist ideas, yet also embrace Christian nationalist ones, tend to have a fear of persecution. We asked respondents if their least-liked social group posed a threat to the American way of life and people’s freedom. Both groups had similar perceptions that the “American way of life” and everyday freedom were threatened.

This perception of threat was lower only among respondents who both strongly rejected Christian nationalism and embraced anti-Christian nationalism. In other words, support for religious pluralism, on its own, isn’t sufficient to reduce the sense of threat among those who hold Christian nationalist views.

Why it matters

Christian nationalism has emerged as a significant challenge to religious pluralism. Efforts to counter it can often be more credible if they came from other Christians. But for those efforts to work, they need to tackle Christian nationalism at its root.

Many American Christians prioritize religious pluralism and love of neighbor.
Benjamin Hanson/Middle East Images via AFP via Getty images

Our findings indicate that the root of the problem is not a lack of support for religious pluralism or insufficient willingness to love thy neighbor. It is perceptions of threats posed by disliked groups.

We have observed that the Christian media ecosystem is saturated with messages that American Christians are excluded from public life – ostracized from social institutions like higher education, discriminated against in everyday life and only one election away from losing their Bibles or being jailed for their faith. This sense of threat can trigger authoritarian tendencies, including support for taking away civil liberties like the ability to give public speeches or run for political office from disliked others.

What still isn’t known

Political scientists need to know more about the contours of threat: By whom and what do some Christians feel threatened? Social scientists also do not fully understand how that sense of threat can be dialed down, not just in a lab experiment but also in Christians’ experiences.

Improving our understanding of threat could guide the work of faith leaders striving for a more tolerant, pro-democratic role of faith in the public sphere.

This research was funded by a Jack Shand Research Grant from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

(Brooklyn Walker, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Tennessee. Paul Djupe, Director of the Data for Political Research Program, Denison University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)