
Andrew L. WhiteheadIndiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis | IUPUI · Department of Sociology
Andrew L. Whitehead
PhD
About
93
Publications
56,233
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3,158
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
June 2013 - June 2014
Presbyterian Church (USA)
Position
- Research Associate
May 2012 - June 2013
August 2007 - May 2012
Publications
Publications (93)
This study sheds light on the paradox of the American Christian Right historically emphasizing “character” in political leadership while reporting greater relative support for leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. We do this by re-conceptualizing views on the relationship between Christianity and state (Christian nationalism) as reflecting...
Recent research demonstrates strong connections between Americans' embrace of Christian nationalism and their beliefs and attitudes towards a host of salient social and cultural issues. Implicit in these explanations is that a stronger embrace of Christian nationalism signals an underlying fear of changes to the broader culture, which are perceived...
This document is the expert testimony requested by the United States House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The authors provide an analysis of national survey data to demonstrate how the Christian nationalism on display at the January 6th Capitol Attack represents broader trends...
Building on the insight that American religion is fundamentally “raced” and “complex,” we theorize American religion is so deeply racialized that seemingly “race-neutral” religious claims about national identity are ultimately more oriented toward racial rather than religious considerations. Drawing on recent, nationally representative data, we tes...
Though the persistence of voter suppression and disenfranchisement in the US is well-documented, we still know little about their contemporary ideological underpinnings beyond partisanship and racial resentment. Highlighting the Christian Right’s influence in driving anti-democratic sentiment in the post-Civil Rights era, we propose contemporary id...
An abundance of research examines Americans’ attitudes toward abortion legality and morality with particular attention to polarization around this issue and the influence of social movements, religious organizations, the media, and political leaders. There is a relative dearth, however, of research focusing on attitudes toward the public funding of...
Sociologists have long identified a “perception gap” between Black and White Americans regarding racial injustice, often emphasizing either “epistemologies of ignorance” or “religio-cultural” mechanisms. Integrating and extending these insights, we theorize that conceptions of America’s religio-cultural heritage and identity are racially coded and...
Though the persistence of voter suppression and disenfranchisement in the US is well-documented, we still know little about their contemporary ideological underpinnings beyond partisanship and racial resentment. Highlighting the Christian Right’s influence in driving anti-democratic sentiment in the post-Civil Rights era, we propose contemporary id...
Christian nationalist ideology was among the strongest predictors of Americans voting for Trump in 2016 and remained a strong predictor of intent to vote for him prior to the 2020 election. This study uses national data to examine whether Christian nationalism could potentially convert the previously-unconverted to supporting Trump or, conversely,...
Numerous studies document the connection between American evangelicalism and male insecurity stemming from essentialist, phallocentric conceptions of masculinity. Yet data have often been confined to individuals’ responses in surveys or qualitative interviews. This limits our understanding because individuals may lie about the most personal sources...
We propose contemporary support for sweeping anti-pornography legislation is driven, in large part, by Christian nationalism-an ideology seeking to politically enforce a mythic Christian sexual order, but not one's own sexual behavior. We show Christian nationalism strongly predicts a desire to outlaw pornography, but not actual pornography use. Mo...
During the COVID-19 crisis in March/April of 2020, far-right American political leaders and pundits proffered xenophobic explanations for the pandemic while ignoring that poorer, Black Americans and prison populations were being disproportionately infected. We propose such xenophobic and racist evaluations of COVID-19 drew from and appealed to a pe...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, state and local governments implemented lockdown restrictions that were tremendously polarizing. Those on the cultural and political left supported restrictions hoping to protect the vulnerable, while those on the cultural and political right challenged restrictions citing threats to the economy and liberty. We theoriz...
Prior research demonstrates that a number of cultural factors-including politics and religion-are significantly associated with anti-vaccine attitudes. This is consequential because herd immunity is compromised when large portions of a population resist vaccination. Using a nationally representative sample of American adults that contains a battery...
America's judicial system is both exceptionally punitive and demonstrably unjust toward racial minorities. While these dual realities are structured into America's institutions, we propose they are also partially sustained by the intersection of ideologies that are both racialized and sacralized. Using multiple waves of the General Social Surveys a...
In this brief note written during a global pandemic, we consider some of the important ways this historical moment is altering the religious landscape, aiming our investigative lens at how religious institutions, congregations, and individuals are affected by the social changes produced by COVID-19. This unprecedented time prompts scholars of relig...
Numerous studies show biblicist Christianity, religiosity, and conservative political identity are strong predictors of Americans holding skeptical attitudes toward publicly controversial aspects of science, such as human evolution. We show that Christian nationalism—meaning the desire to see particularistic and exclusivist versions of Christian sy...
During the COVID‐19 pandemic, Americans’ behavioral responses were quickly politicized. Those on the left stressed precautionary behaviors, while those on the (religious) right were more likely to disregard recommended precautions. We propose the far right response was driven less by partisanship or religiosity per se, but rather by an ideology tha...
Some of the strongest predictors of voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election were Christian nationalism and antipathy toward Muslims and immigrants. We examine the interrelated influence of these three factors on Americans’ intentions to vote for Trump in 2020. Consistent with previous research, Christian nationalism and Islamophob...
This chapter explores how Christian nationalism helps explain Americans’ responses toward a host of sociocultural issues. It examines how and why Ambassadors, Accommodators, Resisters, and Rejecters respond differently to disputes over immigration, the refugee crisis, gun control, and arguments over “respecting the flag,” to name a few. It also exp...
In this chapter we explore how Christian nationalism erects and sustains symbolic boundaries concerning race and ethnicity, nativism, citizenship, and religious diversity. Focusing first on racial and ethnic diversity, we show how Christian nationalism actually implies the necessity of maintaining distinct racial boundaries. Ambassadors and Accommo...
This chapter introduces the four categories that encompass the orientations of all Americans toward Christian nationalism. The remaining chapters of the book draw on each of these four categories. This chapter provides empirical descriptions of each group: Ambassadors, Accommodators, Resisters, and Rejecters. The demographics of each group are expl...
This chapter introduces Christian nationalism. It is defined as a conceptual framework—a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems—that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life. The chapter also introduces the authors’ measurement of this concept and compares it to other possible measur...
Taking America Back for God conclusively reveals that understanding the current cultural and political climate in the United States requires reckoning with Christian nationalism. Christian ideals and symbols have long played an important role in public life in the United States, but Christian nationalism demands far more than a recognition of relig...
The conclusion provides an overview of the four responses to the Christian nation narrative and the key patterns outlined throughout the book. It rearticulates the main arguments that Christian nationalism is vital to understanding our current social and political context, that it is not synonymous with or a byproduct of other ideologies, and that...
In this chapter we demonstrate how Christian nationalists are deeply invested in ensuring family life in the United States reflects a particular order prioritizing patriarchy, heterosexuality, and cisgender identification. The family is viewed as the building block of society and the ultimate litmus test for any moral decay within a society. Using...
Some of the strongest predictors of voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election were Christian nationalism and antipathy toward Muslims and immigrants. We examine the interrelated influence of these three factors on Americans’ intentions to vote for Trump in 2020. Consistent with previous research, Christian nationalism and Islamophob...
Numerous studies show biblicist Christianity, religiosity, and conservative political identity are strong predictors of Americans holding skeptical attitudes toward publicly controversial aspects of science, such as human evolution. We show that Christian nationalism—meaning the desire to see particularistic and exclusivist versions of Christian sy...
Recent studies have found that state-level religious and political conservatism is positively associated with various aggregate indicators of interest in pornography. Such studies have been limited, however, in that they either did not include data measuring actual consumption patterns and/or did not include data on individuals (risking the ecologi...
Recent research shows that Americans who adhere to Christian nationalism-an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity and American civic life-tend to hold authoritarian and exclusionary attitudes, particularly regarding ethno-racial minorities and nontraditional family forms. Such findings suggest a fundamental connection betwe...
Prior research demonstrates that multiple dimensions of religiosity significantly predict punitive attitudes and militarism. This study highlights the importance of believing in a masculine God, an aspect of religiosity with a robust and consistent relationship to punitiveness and militarism, but which has previously been unexamined. After accounti...
Prior research suggests that church-goers are more civically engaged than their non-church-going counterparts. Little is known, however, about how the popular phenomenon of small groups factors into this equation. In the present study, we examine relationships between small group participation at individual and congregation levels and civic engagem...
Recent research suggests that, for white Americans, conflating national and religious group identities is strongly associated with racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, prompting some to argue that claims about Christianity being central to American identity are essentially about reinforcing white supremacy. Prior work has not considered, however,...
This article examines the relative impact of religious factors on Americans’ attitudes toward adoption by same-sex couples. Drawing upon national survey data, we fit logistic regression models and compute standardized logistic regression coefficients to estimate the relative net effects of religious tradition, practices, and beliefs about the Bible...
Recent research shows that Americans who adhere to Christian nationalism―an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity and American civic life―tend to hold authoritarian and exclusionary attitudes, particularly regarding ethno-racial minorities and non-traditional family forms. Such findings suggest a fundamental connection betw...
The participation of gays and lesbians in all aspects of society is continually disputed in the United States. Religion is one of the key battlegrounds. The extent to which religious congregations include lesbians and gays in congregational life is vital to the wider debate over homosexuality because congregations consistently influence more Americ...
How does the convergence of national and religious identities potentially fortify white racial boundaries in the United States? Focusing on openness to racial exogamy as an indicator of racial boundaries, we examine the link between Christian nationalism and white Americans’ views toward their hypothetical daughter marrying an African American, Lat...
Objective: The relationship between beliefs about the cause of homosexuality, political and religious ideology, and attitudes toward same-sex unions in the United States is unclear. This study aims to examine the mediating influence and socially embedded nature of attribution beliefs at a time when attitudes toward same-sex unions are undergoing su...
How do overlapping social identities shape Americans’ views toward contemporary social and moral issues? Drawing upon national-level data and employing the theoretical construct of social identity complexity, we examine the link between Christian nationalism–representing a convergence of national and religious identities–and Americans’ views toward...
A number of recent studies explore predictors of gender ideology due to its consistent influence on a range of outcomes. Another growing body of research investigates the effects of images of God on an assortment of attitudes. This study unites these two strands of research to provide an account of the association between religious belief and gende...
Recent research suggests that, for white Americans, conflating national and religious group identities is strongly associated with racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, prompting some to argue that claims about Christianity being central to American identity are essentially about reinforcing white supremacy. Prior work has not considered, however,...
Research shows that Americans who hold strongly to a myth about America's Christian heritage-what we call "Christian nationalism"-tend to draw rigid boundaries around ethnic and national group membership. Incorporating theories connecting ethnic boundaries, prejudice, and perceived threat with a tendency to justify harsher penalties, bias, or exces...
Research shows that Americans who hold strongly to a myth about America’s Christian heritage―what we call “Christian nationalism”―tend to draw rigid boundaries around ethnic and national group membership. Incorporating theories connecting ethnic boundaries, prejudice, and perceived threat with a tendency to justify harsher penalties, bias, or exces...
Despite increasingly frequent mass shootings and a growing dissatisfaction with current gun laws, American opposition to federal gun legislation remains strong. We show that opposition to stricter gun control is closely linked to Christian nationalism, a religious cultural framework that mandates a symbiotic relationship between Christianity and ci...
Prior research consistently demonstrates greater religious involvement is associated with improved health outcomes for those with chronic health conditions. Fewer studies focus on how chronic health conditions influence religious service attendance rates and most focus on older Americans. Using three waves of a nationally representative sample of c...
Prior research consistently demonstrates greater religious involvement is associated with improved health outcomes for those with chronic health conditions. Fewer studies focus on how chronic health conditions influence religious service attendance rates and most focus on older Americans. Using three waves of a nationally representative sample of c...
Despite increasingly frequent mass shootings and a growing dissatisfaction with current gun laws, American opposition to federal gun legislation remains strong. We show that opposition to stricter gun control is closely linked to Christian nationalism, a religious cultural framework that mandates a symbiotic relationship between Christianity and ci...
Religious identity, and specifically Christian identity, has long been a dominant symbolic boundary marker for inclusion into American society. But how has the salience of this boundary marker changed in recent years and in comparison to other boundary markers? Using multiple waves of the General Social Survey (1996, 2004, and 2014), we investigate...
Research has often demonstrated a negative association between pornography use and various intrapersonal and relationship outcomes, particularly for men. Several recent studies, however, have suggested that the negative association between pornography use and these indicators is stronger among more religious Americans, suggesting that moral incongr...
Why did Americans vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election? Social scientists have proposed a variety of explanations, including economic dissatisfaction, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. The current study establishes that, independent of these influences, voting for Trump was, at least for many Americans, a symbolic def...
Why did Americans vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election? Social scientists have proposed a variety of explanations, including economic dissatisfaction, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. The current study establishes that, independent of these influences, voting for Trump was, at least for many Americans, a symbolic def...
Congregations vary widely in their responses to homosexuality. Prior research tends to focus on determining which congregations are most likely to be inclusive of lesbians and gays. One puzzle still remains, however. Among those inclusive congregations that integrate gays and lesbians into congregational life, why do some adopt a formal organizatio...
While a growing body of research focuses on Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex couples as parents, very few include measures of religion and those that do fail to capture its multidimensional nature. Furthermore, many past studies rely on convenience samples of college students, or samples gathered outside the United States. Multivariate analyses...
Prior research demonstrates that religion and gender traditionalism are associated with less favorable attitudes toward same-sex unions because of its deviation from customary religious doctrine and traditional patterns of gender behavior. Using a national random sample of American adults, this study examines the link between religion, gender tradi...
While the link between individual religious characteristics and pornography consumption is well established, relatively little research has considered how the wider religious context may influence pornography use. Exceptions in the literature to date have relied on relatively broad, subjective measures of religious commitment, largely ignoring issu...
Congregations vary widely in their responses to homosexuality. Prior research tends to focus on determining which congregations are most likely to be inclusive of lesbians and gays. One puzzle still remains, however. Among those inclusive congregations that integrate gays and lesbians into congregational life, why do some adopt a formal organizatio...
Religious identity, and specifically Christian identity, has long been a dominant symbolic boundary marker for inclusion into American society. But how has the salience of this boundary marker changed in recent years and in comparison to other boundary markers? Using multiple waves of the General Social Survey (1996, 2004, and 2014), we investigate...
While a growing body of research focuses on Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex couples as parents, very few include measures of religion and those that do fail to capture its multidimensional nature. Furthermore, many past studies rely on convenience samples of college students, or samples gathered outside the United States. Multivariate analyses...
While the link between individual religious characteristics and pornography consumption is well established, relatively little research has considered how the wider religious context may influence pornography use. Exceptions in the literature to date have relied on relatively broad, subjective measures of religious commitment, largely ignoring issu...
Few studies have considered how religion moderates the ways gender ideology influences heterosexual relationship outcomes. Drawing on a national random sample of American adults who report being married or living as married, we focus on the extent to which religious commitment moderates the link between gender ideology and reported relationship sat...
Mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) typically report lower overall family functioning and worse mental health. Neighborhood conditions are found to positively influence family functioning and mental health in the general population. Employing a process-person-context model, this study extends these literatures to examine whethe...
Mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) typically report lower overall family functioning and worse mental health. Neighborhood conditions are found to positively influence family functioning and mental health in the general population. Employing a process-person-context model, this study extends these literatures to examine whethe...
Gender gaps in religiosity among Western populations, such that women are more religious than men, are well documented. Previous explanations for these differences range from biological predispositions of risk aversion to patriarchal gender socialization, but all largely overlook the intersection of social statuses. Drawing on theories of intersect...
Family forms that have historically been considered "nontraditional" and even "transgressive" are becoming increasingly accepted in the United States, bringing the United States into greater conformity with other western nations. The United States is still unique, however, in that religion continues to play an exceptionally powerful role in shaping...
This article examines the relative impact of religious factors on Americans’
attitudes toward adoption by same-sex couples. Drawing upon national
survey data, we fit logistic regression models and compute standardized
logistic regression coefficients to estimate the relative net effects of religious
tradition, practices, and beliefs about the Bible...
This study examines how religion's impact on Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex practices varies by the type of practice being considered. We theorize that same-sex romantic and family practices such as sexual relations, marriage, and adoption represent distinct practice types, differing in degrees of legality, cultural legitimacy, and in their i...
Despite the growing literature focusing on the ways gender ideology influences heterosexual relationship outcomes, few of these studies have considered the moderating role of religion. Drawing on a national random sample of American adults who report being married or living as married we focus on relationship satisfaction. Specifically, we examine...
Gender gaps in religiosity among Western populations, such that women are more religious than men, are well documented. Previous
explanations for these differences range from biological predispositions of risk aversion to patriarchal gender socialization,
but all largely overlook the intersection of social statuses. Drawing on theories of intersect...
While attribution theory expects that beliefs about the origins of homosexuality are directly related to beliefs about the moral acceptability of homosexual behavior, we use content analysis of the popular evangelical magazine Christianity Today to show that evangelical elites have developed a series of anti-homosexuality narratives that allow them...
Despite conservatives' long-term opposition to gay and lesbian parenting, scholars theorize that a strong commitment to neoliberalism may influence conservative Americans to become more tolerant of same-sex adoption as a way to relieve the government from subsidizing poor families. Drawing upon national survey data (2010 Baylor Religion Survey), we...
Christian nationalism seeks the preservation or
restoration of a supposed religio-national purity. We argue
that, within the racialized social system of the United
States, this idealized religio-national purity is inextricably
linked with notions of ethno-racial purity. Focusing on
interracial families as a violation of ethno-racial purity, we
theo...
How do overlapping social identities shape Americans’ views toward contemporary social and moral issues? Drawing upon national-level data and employing the theoretical construct of social identity complexity, we examine the link between Christian nationalism–representing a convergence of national and religious identities–and Americans’ views toward...
How does the convergence of national and religious identities potentially fortify white racial boundaries in the USA? Focusing on openness to racial exogamy as an indicator of racial boundaries, we examine the link between Christian nationalism and white Americans’ views towards their hypothetical daughter marrying an African American, Latino, or A...
Prior research demonstrates that religion and gender traditionalism are associated with less favorable attitudes toward same-sex unions because of its deviation from customary religious doctrine and traditional patterns of gender behavior. This study examines the link between religion, gender traditionalism, and attitudes toward same-sex unions by...
Objective
The relationship between beliefs about the cause of homosexuality, political and religious ideology, and attitudes toward same-sex unions in the United States is unclear. This study aims to examine the mediating influence and socially embedded nature of attribution beliefs at a time when attitudes toward same-sex unions are undergoing sub...
Building upon Acker's (. Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender and Society 4(2):139–58; 2006. Inequality regimes: Gender, class, and race in organizations. Gender and Society 20(4):441–64) theory of gendered organizations and inequality regimes, this study investigates the extent to which inequality in gender and sex...
The liberalization of attitudes toward homosexuality in the United States over the past 30 years is well documented. Despite these changes, substantial resistance to equality for gay men and lesbians remains. Previous studies indicate that beliefs about the etiology of homosexuality are central to this discussion. Those who believe homosexuality is...
The participation of gays and lesbians in all aspects of society is continually disputed in the United States. Religion is one of the key battlegrounds. The extent to which religious congregations include lesbians and gays in congregational life is vital to the wider debate over homosexuality because congregations consistently influence more Americ...
A number of recent studies explore predictors of gender ideology due to its consistent influence on a range of outcomes. Another growing body of research investigates the effects of images of God on an assortment of attitudes. This study unites these two strands of research to provide an account of the association between religious belief and gende...
Although prior studies have documented a positive association between religiosity and sense of meaning in life, the role of specific religious beliefs is currently unclear. Past research on images of God suggests that loving images of God will positively correlate with a sense of meaning and purpose. Mechanisms for this hypothesized relationship ar...
Large congregations are commonly criticized as efaiting less involvement from adherents than smaller congregations. Small groups have been heralded as a remedy to drawbacks of increasing congregation size. This study tests the relevance of small groups to individuals' commitment and participation y particularly in large congregations. Analysis feat...
According to available research, congregations with strict rules and dense social networks are better able to screen out free-riders (“selection”) and encourage greater levels of commitment among members (“production”). Both selection and production raise levels of individual giving. Research testing these processes generally utilizes a measure of...
Objective. Past research reveals how religion and opinions about the cause of homosexuality influence attitudes concerning same-sex unions. No study to date contains a comprehensive collection of religion measures while also accounting for views of the cause of homosexuality. Therefore, this study investigates the extent to which religion predicts...