ABSTRACT This article examines post-2016 Calvinist Christian nationalism, focusing on cultural memory and the Protestant Reformation’s legacy. It analyzes how certain Christian Nationalists appropriate historical narratives to define and justify a conservative evangelical identity and how other Calvinists contest these interpretations. The Reformation and Puritanism are central to Calvinist Christian Nationalist self-fashioning. Intramural debates over the meaning of the Reformation—what is remembered and who is deemed Reformed—show the symbolic struggle within evangelicalism over its identity. Ultimately, the article demonstrates that a battle exists within conservative Calvinism over whether to embrace or reject Christian Nationalism. Calvinist evangelicals appropriate different visions of Protestantism, from theocratic libertarianism to liberalism, in order to respond to modernity and secularism.
Micah Oosterhoff (Fri,) studied this question.