White Christian Nationalism is one of the most important and least understood strands of the MAGA movement that has returned Donald Trump to the White House.  In this lecture, Philip Gorski explains what WCN is, when it arose, who supports it, and why it has become a mortal threat to liberal democracy in the United States.

Philip Gorski is the Frederick and Laura Goff Professor at Yale University. His research focuses on religion and politics in early modern and modern Europe and North America. His most recent book (w. Samuel Perry) is The Flag and the Cross (Oxford, 2022). He is currently a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies where he is completing a book entitled “The Fragmentation of the Sacred: An Alternative Narrative of Western Modernity.”

The mission of the Yves Oltramare Chair for Religion and Politics in the Contemporary World is to provide a major scientific contribution to the analysis of the impact of the relationship between religion and politics, on the evolution of societies and the international system.