Is Christian Nationalism a Serious Problem for Christian College Students? Likely Not, Although Other Identity Ideologies May Be

One of the exercises that I often have both classroom students and survey respondents do is to prioritize their identities. I first ask them to consider the range of identities they might apply to themselves, and then I ask them to rank their top three. I find the answers produce significant clarity about my audience, and I encourage you to try it in your own classes. You will likely learn something important about your students.

The exercise can also help us collectively contemplate how institutions and larger cultures shape students’ prioritization of identities. For example, we recently undertook qualitative interviews with 178 students at eight diverse types of institutions. We were interested in three groups of students. The first group included Christians involved with Christian Study Centers at five secular universities (n=59). The second included students at three Christian universities (n=72), and the final group was a general collective of students from two different secular universities (n=47). During the interviews, we asked them to do this identity ranking exercise. The results can be found in Table 1 below.

Table 1. What are your top three identities?

What we found interesting in light of recent controversies on Christian social media was that political identities—those related to a nation or political party—were never placed in the top three except in a minority of cases (5% or less). Moreover, some of those students were either immigrants or international students, so they placed their origin/home country identity in the top three (Guatemalan, Taiwanese, Chinese). When one of my dissertation students did this exercise among a group of faith-based (n=75) and public students (n=39), he found the same low percentage of faith-based students finding their identity in political sources (3%).¹ Now, I recognize students could lack self-awareness, but I doubt any student feels significant subconscious moral pressure to keep identities such as “American” or “citizen” off their top three. 

In the absence of political identity prioritization, we found what we expected from students at Christian Study Centers or Christian colleges: These students placed their Christian identity in the top three. However, we were a bit surprised by the low percentages that did so, particularly amongst students at Christian institutions (only 60%). We wondered if some students simply took their Christian identity for granted at these institutions, assuming a shared or implicit understanding of how their Christian identity might inform other identities.

The next three top identities were not at all surprising: family member, student, and friend. General students at secular universities were most especially likely to prioritize family, friend, or student. In fact, 60% prioritized being a friend as one of their three top identities. Only 42% of students at CHEs and 27% of Christians at secular universities did.

If there is another competing identity among students beyond these identities it is not their political identity but their gender identity or sexual orientation (See Table 2). We found that 36% of the general students from secular universities placed it in their top three. Interestingly, 12 females and 5 sexual minorities prioritized these identities while not even one male did.

Although not as high, the same pattern is true of students at Christian institutions. We found that 24% of student interviewees at Christian universities placed sexual or gender identity in their top three identities with fifteen of the seventeen being women and one respondent identifying as transgender. Only the Christian students at Study Centers appeared to have some gender balance in this area. Five of the nine students who placed it in the top three were men.

Table 2. Sexual or Gender Identity Prioritization

We found this same phenomenon when it came to men and how the family member identity was described. For instance, “brother” only made the top three identities for 8% of males. In contrast, “daughter” made it into 18% of female lists. Son made it into 22% of male lists while daughter made 29%.

Now, I do not claim these findings are generalizable without additional quantitative research, but they raise some interesting likelihoods. First, we must recognize that if one understands Christian nationalism as placing one’s national identity among one’s top identities (what I believe is a much better definition than most of those offered in the current literature), it is clearly not a problem for the Christian students we interviewed. I would hypothesize that this will likely be true of most Christian college students. That is not to say that Christian professors and student life staff who are addicted to watching Fox or MSNBC or debating the latest political controversy on X do not need to read about the dangers of Christian nationalism, but our Christian students have different challenges.

Instead, as I have written elsewhere, students at Christian institutions need a helpful general education course that discusses what it means to be an excellent Christian citizen beyond just the five seconds one spends voting for president every four years. Indeed, in another research project a few years ago, I asked students what makes an excellent Christian citizen and their answers boiled down to voting in presidential elections.

Second, if there is any evidence of a possibly dangerous prioritization of an identity, it comes from the usual sources (family, friends, and the identity bestowed by the academic institution itself–student). For example, Christian institutions likely need to make sure their students are not problematically prioritizing their academic identity. Our survey responses indicate that Christian Study Centers near secular universities may be helping students do a better job of this. At one of the Christian universities where we interviewed students, we found only one of 23 students found their worth and value in God. Half found it in their accomplishments. In contrast, at one Christian Study Center, 16 of 24 students found their worth in God. Christian universities need to do more to address this possible form of identity idolatry.

Finally, we should explore further the reasons behind the uneven sexual/gender ID emphasis. Is it a problem or a good thing? Is there a relationship between the college women in our sample rating their female identity highly and the historically odd overall trend of college-aged women becoming less religious than men? Are the problems we’re seeing with the decline of college men related to the lack of prioritizing male identity?

One possible reason for this uneven emphasis that I have presented in writing elsewhere is that we have abandoned the old positive, equally-emphasized gender-based identities that institutions used in the 1800s, gentleman and lady.² I should note these identities were often elevated too high within colleges, replacing even the Christian emphasis, and had problematic associations with them (i.e., a focus on outward and superficial manners), so the abandonment was both understandable and likely necessary.

Still, the abandonment has created one major problem. It appears females have replaced this old feminine moral identity with some positive prioritization of their gender identity, but males have not. Indeed, the primary identity labels for modern college men are only negative. Take, for instance, the term “toxic masculinity” or books critiquing the replacements Christian men have tried. Except in rare cases, men have not been provided a positive moral identity associated with their gender that they can embrace.

Overall, if Christian institutions are going to fret about the idolatry of identity, they likely need to look at the identities they promote (i.e., an excellent student). If they are looking to provide a positive Christian understanding of a neglected one, they may need to focus on what a positive Christian vision of citizenship and masculinity entails instead of simply offering negative critiques by the dozens (particularly about Christian nationalism). The contemporary identity temptations and challenges of Christian adults inordinately absorbed with the American political story do not appear to be the identity temptations of our students.

1. Ted Cockle, The Importance of What Students Care About: A Grounded Theory Exploration of Student Preferences and Pathways (Ph.D. diss., Baylor University, 2021).
2. See chapter 4 of Perry L. Glanzer, The Dismantling of Moral Education: How Higher Education Reduced the Human Identity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).