Christian Nationalism Increases Support for Religious Reasoning on the Supreme Court

Why This Study Matters

This paper by Miles T. Armaly, Jonathan King, Elizabeth Lane, and Jessica Schoenherr investigates how Christian nationalism—a worldview that fuses Christian identity with political authority—influences public attitudes toward the U.S. Supreme Court. The question is timely: as the Court issues rulings seen as favorable to religious conservatives, do supporters of Christian nationalism become more accepting of religious or nonlegal reasoning in judicial decisions and more supportive of decisions that roll back abortion rights?

Two-Part National Study

The authors combine observational analysis and an experiment using two large, nationally representative survey samples. The observational component tests whether measures of Christian nationalism correlate with (a) support for the Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights and (b) agreement with using nonlegal or explicitly religious logic in Court decisions. The experimental component exposes respondents to a vignette about a Justice (presented as Justice Alito) flying a Christian nationalist flag and tests whether that exposure increases respondents’ willingness to accept religious decision-making logic.

Key Findings

• Christian nationalism is positively associated with support for the Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights in observational data.
• Higher levels of Christian nationalist sentiment predict greater agreement with the use of nonlegal or religious reasoning in Supreme Court decisions.
• In the experiment, exposure to a story linking a justice to Christian nationalist symbolism increases respondents’ tolerance for religious decision-making logic, suggesting a legitimating effect.

What This Implies for the Court

The findings show that the Court’s recent jurisprudential turn has measurable consequences for its supporters’ attitudes and for perceptions of judicial legitimacy. If symbolic signals and rulings align with Christian nationalist cues, that alignment can normalize religious reasoning among sympathetic publics—potentially shaping expectations about acceptable judicial behavior going forward.