Pew Study Finds Rate of Religious Nationalists in U.S. Relatively Low

A team at Pew Research recently published a study comparing levels of religious nationalism worldwide. Although Christian nationalism in the United States has received significant media attention in recent years, the rate of religious nationalists in the U.S. is relatively low compared to other countries.

Without a widely agreed-upon definition of religious nationalism, Pew created a survey tool to establish a baseline understanding. The tool asked questions about the importance of the country’s dominant religion to national identity, whether the country’s leader should practice that religion, and whether the sacred texts of that religion should shape public policy and override popular opinion.

Among countries where Christianity is the prominent religion, Kenya, at 32%, is the only country with more than a quarter of its residents who are considered “Christian nationalists” under Pew’s definition. At 6%, the U.S. is tied with Chile for 12th place.

The highest rates of religious nationalists come from predominantly Muslim countries, with 46% of Indonesians, 45% of Bangladeshis, and 38% of Malaysians falling into the category. Conversely, predominantly Buddhist countries have relatively low rates of religious nationalists, with Thailand (9%) and Sri Lanka (7%) the only countries registering about 1% on Pew’s scale.

The Pew analysis came to numerous other conclusions, such as the finding that residents in “middle-income countries” are more likely to be religious nationalists and that the U.S. has higher rates of religious nationalists than other high-income countries.

It is important to note that the study measured rates of religious nationalists in individual countries, not the influence of religious nationalism over those countries. Though the rates of Christian nationalists in the U.S. (6%) and Jewish nationalists in Israel (9%) are relatively low, it could be argued that the religious nationalists in those countries have an outsized influence over those who do not fall into Pew’s description of the category.

More findings from the Pew analysis can be accessed here.