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What fuels both enthusiasm for increasing "American" birth rates and fears about their decline? Citing the prevalence of fertility campaigns in authoritarian regimes characterized by ethno‐nationalist Christianity, we theorize that, in addition to patriarchal attitudes, perceived ethno‐cultural threat and desire for ethno‐cultural dominance substantially drive "nationalist pronatalism" (promoting fertility to strengthen "the nation" and avoid national decline). We expect pronatalist ideology focused on American births is associated with (1) belief that dominant cultural group members (Whites, Christians, men) are threatened and (2) White Christian nationalism—an ideology that looks to conform American identity and values to those of a traditionalist, ethnicized Christianity. Recent, nationally representative data reveal Christian nationalist ideology is the second strongest predictor of support for nationalist pronatalism, second only behind patriarchal attitudes. This association is stronger for men and virtually non‐existent among Blacks. The belief that Whites or Christians face "the most discrimination" as opposed to various minorities also predicts nationalist pronatalism. Contemporary support for pronatalist ideology focused on American births is thus undergirded not only by attitudes that subordinate women but also (1) an ethno‐racially contingent ideology that insists the United States should reflect and institutionalize traditionalist Christian culture and (2) perceptions that Christians and Whites are persecuted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 symbols, values, and policies enshrined as the established religion of the United States—is a strong and consistent predictor of Americans' attitudes about science above and beyond other religious and political characteristics. Further, a majority of the overall effect of political ideology on skepticism about the moral authority of science is mediated through Christian nationalism, indicating that political conservatives are more likely to be concerned with particular aspects of science primarily because they are more likely to be Christian nationalists. Likewise, substantial proportions of the well‐documented associations between religiosity and biblical "literalism" with views of science are mediated through Christian nationalism. Because Christian nationalism seeks to establish a particular and exclusivist vision of Christianity as the dominant moral order, adherents feel threatened by challenges to the epistemic authority undergirding that order, including by aspects of science perceived as challenging the supremacy of biblicist authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Race too often is used as the explanatory variable for understanding immigration exclusion, marginalizing the significance of race making, ethnic differentiation, and gender construction in particular. This article explores these processes by examining exclusionary policies implemented against Chinese and Japanese immigrants from the mid-1870s to 1924, the year the National Origins Act was passed. Politicians, intellectuals, and moral reformers used a gendered logic—the construction of idealized gender norms, roles, and sexual propriety and the attachment of these meanings to male and female bodies—to distinguish Japanese immigrants from the Chinese immigrants they followed, allowing for ethnic differentiation and dissimilar policies. The convergence toward exclusion rested on a racialized logic—the construction and attachment of inferior status and meanings to immigrant groups through discourse, formal and informal categorization, or social closure—which claimed that the Japanese were unassimilable and racially undesirable like the Chinese. Exclusionists focused on the immigrant women, decrying their sexual and gender impropriety as evidence of the groups’ threats to the sanctity of white families, which imperiled the nation. Gender and race both mattered in these logics and their meanings were constructed as their salience interconnected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the formation of Americans' perceptions about their country, their rights, and their nationalism and what entities shape these perceptions. The author looks at Paul Starr's "The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications" and offers a theory about the media's role in shaping the American public sphere. Starr asserts that the U.S. government, in its early years, subsidized and encouraged newspapers, postal service, and public education to give the population the ability to communicate and participate in the government. Starr also provides a history of the development and shaping of the media as we know it today.