The 100-Year-Old Vision Shaping Americas Future: Inside the Legacy of White Christian Nationalism

Picture a summer night in 1915. A former Methodist minister named William J. Simmons stares out a window and sees something extraordinary: a band of airborne horsemen galloping across the sky, with the rough outline of the United States forming behind them. That vision, as he described it, wasnt just a passing dream. It became the blueprint for a movement that would reshape American politics, law, and identity for generations.

Simmons believed the country had turned its back on its Christian heritage. Political violence was surging. Traditional Christianity felt under siege. And waves of immigrants—many with olive skin, many not considered “fully White” by the standards of the day—were arriving from distant shores. His response was to build an organization that preached “America first” and promised to restore a lost nation. That group grew to more than 5 million members by 1920, helped pass some of the most explicitly racist immigration laws in American history, and even counted a future Supreme Court justice in its ranks.

You know this group by its symbols: the white robe, the pointed hood, the burning cross. The Ku Klux Klan.

But heres what often gets lost in the conversation: the Klans ideology didnt die when its political power faded. It morphed, adapted, and survived. Today, historians call its ideological descendants “White Christian nationalists.” And understanding them requires looking back much further than January 6, 2021.

More Than Just a January 6 Story

Five years ago, many Americans heard the term “White Christian nationalism” for the first time as commentators described the insurrection at the US Capitol, where rioters carried crosses and portraits of Jesus. Since then, the phrase has become one of the most fiercely debated topics in the country.

Critics call it “imposter Christianity” that peddles a false story about Americas founding. Defenders say the label has become a smear, a way to bundle White supremacy with ordinary conservative views on family and history.

But the biggest myth might be the one both sides sometimes share: that this ideology is new—a product of Trump, a symptom of January 6.

“The 1920s Klan preached an earlier version of what we now call White Christian nationalism,” says Kelly J. Baker, author of Gospel According to the Klan. “It was their understanding of what they called 100 percent Americanism. They had a racial hierarchy in which White Protestant Christians came out on top and everyone else was underneath them. They only wanted a nation for White Christians.”

Christian nationalism in America is as old as the cherry tree story about George Washington. It tends to surge during times of crisis. And you cant really grasp the threat it poses unless you understand why its so durable—and why it keeps appealing to so many people.

Its Not Just White Republicans

Heres a fact that surprises many: not every Christian nationalist is White. Not every one is a Republican. Some are Democrats. Some are independents. Its an ideology that exists on a spectrum, from casual sympathizers to hardcore believers.

That nuance gets lost when the term “White Christian nationalism” is paired almost exclusively with images of the Capitol under siege. Most Americans dont know the fuller picture. A March 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 54% of US adults had heard or read “nothing at all” about Christian nationalism.

Whats also lost is how the movement has adapted. The KKK once despised Catholics. Most contemporary White Christian nationalists have dropped that bigotry because its no longer acceptable. Many dont promote violence against racial minorities. At least one prominent leader denounces racism outright.

Yet the core goal remains strikingly similar to the Klan of the early 20th century: what Baker describes as “a homogenous, White, Protestant nation, free from the corrupting influences of political, religious, and racial diversity.”

“Theres something about the movement that certain White Christians in America find deeply appealing,” Baker says. “It showcases a version of America that they want to get back to. And that vision keeps popping up again and again.”

The Argument for a Christian Nation

Douglas Wilson, a theologian and pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, argues that the vision endures because its rooted in historical truth. From the founding of the 13 colonies until World War II, he says, the population was far more homogenous, and virtually all Americans assumed they lived in a Christian nation.

“We had not had the major waves of immigration that weve had in the last few decades from non-Christian parts of the world, so we were overwhelmingly Christian and we understood ourselves to be as such,” Wilson tells CNN. He believes the US was founded as a Christian nation—a claim disputed by most historians—and argues it should become one again.

Wilson and others envision an America where laws are rooted in Scripture, where same-sex marriage is outlawed, and where women are largely subordinate. At least one Christian nationalist leader supports repealing the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. In much of their literature, White Christian men are portrayed as victims of a hostile new America.

Defenders push back on the idea that they want a Christian-fascist state. “The word nationalism sets them off,” Wilson says. “They think of dictatorships, missile parades or making all the women wear red dresses. But Christian nationalism, implemented, would actually constitute a massive reduction of the size of the state.”

The Bloody History They Ignore

What Christian nationalists often skip in their public pronouncements is the violent history of their ideology. An earlier version of White Christian nationalism justified the conquest and near-genocide of Native Americans. As far back as the 17th century, White Christian settlers in New York invoked their faith to murder Indigenous people and take their land. Later versions were used to defend slavery, imperialism, and Jim Crow segregation.

During the Civil War, Confederate leaders boasted that they were a Christian nation—and criticized the Union for lacking Christian language in its Constitution. Abraham Lincoln refused requests from ministers to designate the US as a Christian nation, notes Randall Balmer, a historian of religion at Dartmouth College.

That racial hierarchy persists today. A 2023 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 87% of Christian nationalists believe God wanted America to be a promised land for European Christians, while 81% believe “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”

This is why scholars insist on the “White” modifier. They call it a “religion of Whiteness”—an ideology inseparable from White identity. Theres also a separate tradition called Black Christian nationalism, which scholars distinguish from the White variety.

Wilson doesnt deny the KKK practiced an earlier form of White Christian nationalism. But he calls it an abuse of the belief system. He says he denounces “ethnic vainglory and ethnic enmity” and that God hates “ethnic sin.” “There have been some unsavory types who have used the phrase Christian nationalism,” he says. “But there have been unsavory types who have used the word America. You dont judge someones position by what someone else did to abuse it.”

What the Founders Actually Intended

All who say America should become a Christian nation again face a tricky question: which Christianity? Colonial America was a patchwork of competing versions—Puritans in New England, Dutch Reformed in New York, Catholics in Maryland—and some of these groups despised one another.

Though virtually every colonial constitution mentioned God, the Founding Fathers deliberately avoided that model. They established the First Amendments separation of church and state because they remembered how religious wars had devastated Europe.

“The Founding Fathers said we really cant designate one religion as the establishment church because theres too much diversity in the colonies,” Balmer says.

He points to the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by a Senate still half-filled with signers of the Constitution. It declared: “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on Christian religion.”

Most of the Founders wouldnt fit todays White Christian nationalist definition of Christian anyway. They were atheists, Unitarians, Deists, and liberal Protestants. Thomas Jefferson famously went through the New Testament and cut out every mention of miracles or Jesuss divinity.

An Anti-Democratic Faith?

Some religious scholars and pastors argue White Christian nationalism doesnt just get history wrong—it gets Christianity wrong.

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” notes historian Jonathan P. Walton. “If someone says to me theyre a Christian nationalist, they are confessing to me that they are not a follower of Jesus.”

Theres also the problem of Americas “civil religion.” The most revered American documents and speeches—the Declaration of Independence, Lincolns Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King Jr.s “I Have a Dream”—dont describe a Christian nation. They describe a country where people of all races and beliefs can sit together “at the table of brotherhood.”

That vision commands majority support. A recent survey found two-thirds of Americans want more ethnic, religious, and racial diversity—not less.

So can America be both a Christian nation and a democracy? Critics say no. Philip Gorski, a historian, argues White Christian nationalism is fundamentally anti-democratic because it defines “we the people” in a way that excludes millions.

“The United States cannot be both a truly multiracial democracy—a people of people and a nation of nations—and a white Christian nation at the same time,” he wrote in The Flag and the Cross. “This is why white Christian nationalism has become a serious threat to American democracy, perhaps the most serious threat it now faces.”

Thats the question the KKK never bothered to answer. And its one many White Christian nationalists still struggle with today.