Green Christian Nationalists? How Issue Framing Moderates the Link Between Christian Nationalism and Environmental Protection

Despite the growing attention to Christian nationalism’s influence on Americans’ views regarding politics and science, its influence on environmental attitudes in particular remains under-examined. This gap is surprising given Christian nationalism’s documented associations with anti-science attitudes, conspiracy beliefs, “end times” theology, and right-wing partisanship, each of which track closely with environmental attitudes. Building on research showing the contingent relationship between conservative Christianity and views on the environment, we theorize the link between Christian nationalism and beliefs about protecting the environment will be contingent on framing the issue in secular or religious terms. Drawing on data from a large, nationally representative sample, initial analyses show Christian nationalism is among the strongest predictors of minimizing environmental protection and greater climate skepticism. However, leveraging a question-wording experiment in the survey, we find that when environmental protection is phrased as “our God given role as stewards to take care of the earth” rather than in secular terms, Christian nationalism strongly corresponds to viewing environmental protection as more important. Findings affirm that issue framing matters greatly in helping Americans with even the most right-wing Christian views (who for numerous ideological, theological, and partisan reasons tend to deprioritize the environment) see the importance of environmental protection.