Christian Nationalism and Opposition to Reallocating Police Funding to Other Social Services

Abstract

Abstract In the wake of several high-profile cases of police use of excessive force, renewed critiques of policing have emerged from the Defund the Police movement. Yet, the movement has faced fierce opposition from Americans who subscribe to a color-blind logic that racial inequality in policing and society as a whole reflect differences in merit. In assessing Americans’ use of color-blind racism, support for public spending on social services, and support for punitive social control, scholars have recently emphasized the role of Christian nationalist ideology. Building on this recent work, we use data from the 2021 General Social Survey (GSS), a nationally representative survey of Americans, to test the relationship between adherence to Christian nationalist ideology and opposition to reducing funding for police departments and moving those funds to mental health, housing, and other social services. We find that respondents who score higher on an index of Christian nationalism hold greater odds of opposing shifting funding from police departments, independent of other measures of political and religious orientations. We also consider interactions between Christian nationalist ideology, race, and color-blind racial ideology.