Connecting the Dots: Christian Nationalism, Conservative Media, and Climate Inaction

We answer the call for a “social” approach in Christian nationalism research by exploring connections between Christian nationalism and conservative media. Conservative broadcasters frequently cover the territory of the Christian nationalism scale, and conservative media’s involvement would resolve numerous unexplained features of Christian nationalism. To demonstrate the conceptual payoff of this approach, we show how it illuminates the politics underlying the United States’ recent shift toward climate inaction. We then use data from the Pew American Trends Panel (2021) and from an author-administered survey (2021–2022) to explore how conservative media, Christian nationalism, and climate attitudes are connected. Identifying six Christian nationalism classes via Latent Class Analysis, we find that net of controls, strong and weak Christian nationalists were the most skeptical toward climate change and that out of the six classes, only those two were entangled with conservative media (strong Christian nationalists most of all). We conclude that appreciating Christian nationalism’s entanglement with conservative media sharpens our understanding of its mutability and reach across traditions and has significant implications for the climate movement.