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Attitudes toward Christian nationalism don’t just boil down to views on race, religion and history − research suggests ‘moral foundations’ play a critical role

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theconversation.com – Kerby Goff, Associate Director of Research at the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University – 2025-01-22 07:43:00

Christian nationalism is the belief that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation.
Douglas Sacha/moment via Getty Images

Kerby Goff, Rice University; Eric Silver, Penn State, and John Iceland, Penn State

The concept of Christian nationalism has taken center stage in many Americans’ minds as either the greatest threat to democracy or its only savior.

Political scientist Eric McDaniel defines Christian nationalism as the belief that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation. “In this view,” according to McDaniel, “America can be governed only by Christians, and the country’s mission is directed by a divine hand.” Why does the idea resonate with some but alarm others?

Scholars often portray Christian nationalism as rooted in a deep-seated desire to exclude non-Christians and people of color from American society. Historians point to a persistent link between racism and Christian nationalism among white Americans throughout U.S. history.

White Christians, however, are not the only ones sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas. Nearly 40% of Black Protestants and 55% of Hispanic Protestants agree with statements such as “being Christian is an important part of being truly American.” Interestingly, over one-third of Muslims agree that the U.S. government should promote Christian moral values but not make it the official religion.

Many who reject Christian nationalism do so because it seems to privilege those white Christian Americans who would like to make conservative Christianity the United States’ official religion. Conversely, supporters argue that the future of the U.S. depends upon loyalty to God and to staying true to the country’s Christian past. They contend that since the nation’s founding, a Christian influence in government and societal institutions such as education and health care has been and remains essential to sustaining religious, political and economic stability.

While racial, religious and political tribalism appear to influence who supports and who rejects Christian nationalism, our own research suggests there are other factors at play, specifically moral differences. We set out to understand the role that different moral values play in shaping support for and opposition to Christian nationalism.

Our study drew on the most influential social science approach to understanding moral values: moral foundations theory.

Moral differences

Moral foundations theory states that humans evolved to possess six primary moral intuitions that shape moral judgments – care for the vulnerable, fairness in how people are treated, loyalty to in-groups, respect for authority, reverence for the sacred, and the safeguarding of individual liberty.

A vast amount of research finds that liberals endorse the first two foundations, care and fairness, but score lower on the rest.

Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to score equally on all six foundations. This suggests their moral judgments often involve balancing a desire to be compassionate with a desire to safeguard the stability of the social order.

Moral foundations theory has been used extensively by social scientists to study hot-button issues such as crime control, policing, vaccine resistance, immigration, same-sex marriage, abortion and more.

For example, research finds that prioritizing care for the vulnerable, which is most pronounced among liberals, is linked to reduced acceptance of police use of force. Conservatives, who also value respect for authority, often favor “law and order” even when it involves use of force.

What our research found

A human hand inserting the Bible into a locked ballot box, placed in front of the American flag.
Researchers found that support for Christian nationalism was strongly associated with the moral foundations of loyalty, sanctity and liberty.
selimaksan/E+ via Getty images.

With moral foundations theory as our guide, we analyzed Christian nationalism using a 2021 national survey of 1,125 U.S. adults conducted by YouGov, a global opinion research organization. We measured respondents’ moral foundations with the moral foundations questionnaire, which has been used extensively by researchers across numerous academic disciplines.

To measure Christian nationalism, we asked respondents whether they agreed with six questions, such as whether the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation, advocate Christian values, allow prayer in public schools and allow religious symbols in public spaces, to list a few.

What we found surprised us.

Support for Christian nationalism was most strongly linked to the moral foundations of loyalty, sanctity and liberty, but not to the authority foundation. We expected Christian nationalism to appeal to individuals who are enamored of authority, providing a rationale to their support for authoritarian leaders. But in our study, respect for authority did not distinguish those who supported Christian nationalism from those who opposed it.

We also found that support for Christian nationalism was linked to having a weaker fairness foundation. But it was not related to the strength of one’s care foundation.

We conclude that differences over Christian nationalism emerge not because some people care about the harm Christian nationalism could bring to non-Christian Americans, while others don’t. Rather, our findings suggest that those who support Christian nationalism do so because they are more sensitive to violations of loyalty, sanctity and liberty, and less sensitive to violations of fairness.

Our findings also revealed that support for Christian nationalism isn’t merely about racism or being ultrareligious, as critics often suggest. We accounted for endorsements of anti-Black stereotypes and religiosity. Yet, moral foundations remained the best predictors of Christian nationalist beliefs, even after taking into account these critical variables.

2 moral approaches to Christianity in the US

The Christian nationalism scale we and others have used combines several different beliefs about Christianity’s role in society. So we also examined how each of the six items in our Christian nationalism scale related to each of the six moral foundations. We found two important patterns.

A large campaign poster that says, 'Vote The Bible! Take a Stand for Morality.
Researchers found different moral values playing a role in shaping support or opposition for Christian nationalism.
Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

First, we found that the Christian nationalist desire to bring church and state closer together was most prominent among those with strong loyalty and sanctity foundations and a weak fairness foundation. This means that people who advocate for a Christian state largely do so out of loyalty – specifically, loyalty to God – and out of a desire to adhere to God’s requirements for society, as they understand them.

In line with this, support is also linked to a desire to protect the sanctity of the nation’s Christian heritage. Those who oppose bringing church and state closer together do so out of a sense that such a union would be unfair.

Second, we found that the desire to allow prayer in schools and religious symbols in public spaces was strongest among those with pronounced liberty and sanctity moral foundations. This likely means that people who favor public religious expression, but not a union of church and state, do so because they see individual religious expression as a sacred national ideal.

All in all, our study shows that support for or opposition to Christian nationalism is not merely due to religious, political or racial identities and prejudices, as many believe, but is rather due to entrenched moral differences between the two camps.

Building solidarity through diverse moral concerns

Moral divides are not necessarily impassable. It’s possible that understanding these diverging moral concerns may help build bridges between those who are sympathetic to and those who are skeptical toward Christian nationalism.

America’s founders conceived of fairness and liberty as central to a democratic society. And these values have fueled loyalty to a robust national identity ever since.

Our research suggests that the controversy surrounding Christian nationalism is driven not by a lack of moral concern by sympathizers or critics but by their different moral priorities. We believe that understanding such differences as morally rooted can open the door for mutual understanding and productive debate.The Conversation

Kerby Goff, Associate Director of Research at the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University; Eric Silver, Professor of Sociology & Criminology, Penn State, and John Iceland, Professor of Sociology and Demography, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Conversation

Legal fight against AI-generated child pornography is complicated – a legal scholar explains why, and how the law could catch up

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theconversation.com – Wayne Unger, Assistant Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University – 2025-02-11 07:46:00

Legal fight against AI-generated child pornography is complicated – a legal scholar explains why, and how the law could catch up

Child pornography laws may be clear, but AI makes enforcement more difficult.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Wayne Unger, Quinnipiac University

The city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was shaken by revelations in December 2023 that two local teenage boys shared hundreds of nude images of girls in their community over a private chat on the social chat platform Discord. Witnesses said the photos easily could have been mistaken for real ones, but they were fake. The boys had used an artificial intelligence tool to superimpose real photos of girls’ faces onto sexually explicit images.

With troves of real photos available on social media platforms, and AI tools becoming more accessible across the web, similar incidents have played out across the country, from California to Texas and Wisconsin. A recent survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit, found that 15% of students and 11% of teachers knew of at least one deepfake that depicted someone associated with their school in a sexually explicit or intimate manner.

The Supreme Court has implicitly concluded that computer-generated pornographic images that are based on images of real children are illegal. The use of generative AI technologies to make deepfake pornographic images of minors almost certainly falls under the scope of that ruling. As a legal scholar who studies the intersection of constitutional law and emerging technologies, I see an emerging challenge to the status quo: AI-generated images that are fully fake but indistinguishable from real photos.

Policing child sexual abuse material

While the internet’s architecture has always made it difficult to control what is shared online, there are a few kinds of content that most regulatory authorities across the globe agree should be censored. Child pornography is at the top of that list.

For decades, law enforcement agencies have worked with major tech companies to identify and remove this kind of material from the web, and to prosecute those who create or circulate it. But the advent of generative artificial intelligence and easy-to-access tools like the ones used in the Pennsylvania case present a vexing new challenge for such efforts.

In the legal field, child pornography is generally referred to as child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, because the term better reflects the abuse that is depicted in the images and videos and the resulting trauma to the children involved. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that child pornography is not protected under the First Amendment because safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor is a compelling government interest that justifies laws that prohibit child sexual abuse material.

That case, New York v. Ferber, effectively allowed the federal government and all 50 states to criminalize traditional child sexual abuse material. But a subsequent case, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition from 2002, might complicate efforts to criminalize AI-generated child sexual abuse material. In that case, the court struck down a law that prohibited computer-generated child pornography, effectively rendering it legal.

The government’s interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of children, the court found, was not implicated when such obscene material is computer generated. “Virtual child pornography is not ‘intrinsically related’ to the sexual abuse of children,” the court wrote.

States move to criminalize AI-generated CSAM

According to the child advocacy organization Enough Abuse, 37 states have criminalized AI-generated or AI-modified CSAM, either by amending existing child sexual abuse material laws or enacting new ones. More than half of those 37 states enacted new laws or amended their existing ones within the past year.

California, for example, enacted Assembly Bill 1831 on Sept. 29, 2024, which amended its penal code to prohibit the creation, sale, possession and distribution of any “digitally altered or artificial-intelligence-generated matter” that depicts a person under 18 engaging in or simulating sexual conduct.

YouTube video
Deepfake child pornography is a growing problem.

While some of these state laws target the use of photos of real people to generate these deep fakes, others go further, defining child sexual abuse material as “any image of a person who appears to be a minor under 18 involved in sexual activity,” according to Enough Abuse. Laws like these that encompass images produced without depictions of real minors might run counter to the Supreme Court’s Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition ruling.

Real vs. fake, and telling the difference

Perhaps the most important part of the Ashcroft decision for emerging issues around AI-generated child sexual abuse material was part of the statute that the Supreme Court did not strike down. That provision of the law prohibited “more common and lower tech means of creating virtual (child sexual abuse material), known as computer morphing,” which involves taking pictures of real minors and morphing them into sexually explicit depictions.

The court’s decision stated that these digitally altered sexually explicit depictions of minors “implicate the interests of real children and are in that sense closer to the images in Ferber.” The decision referenced the 1982 case, New York v. Ferber, in which the Supreme Court upheld a New York criminal statute that prohibited persons from knowingly promoting sexual performances by children under the age of 16.

The court’s decisions in Ferber and Ashcroft could be used to argue that any AI-generated sexually explicit image of real minors should not be protected as free speech given the psychological harms inflicted on the real minors. But that argument has yet to be made before the court. The court’s ruling in Ashcroft may permit AI-generated sexually explicit images of fake minors.

But Justice Clarence Thomas, who concurred in Ashcroft, cautioned that “if technological advances thwart prosecution of ‘unlawful speech,’ the Government may well have a compelling interest in barring or otherwise regulating some narrow category of ‘lawful speech’ in order to enforce effectively laws against pornography made through the abuse of real children.”

With the recent significant advances in AI, it can be difficult if not impossible for law enforcement officials to distinguish between images of real and fake children. It’s possible that we’ve reached the point where computer-generated child sexual abuse material will need to be banned so that federal and state governments can effectively enforce laws aimed at protecting real children – the point that Thomas warned about over 20 years ago.

If so, easy access to generative AI tools is likely to force the courts to grapple with the issue.The Conversation

Wayne Unger, Assistant Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University

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Rural Americans don’t live as long as those in cities − new research

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theconversation.com – Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and Professor of Public Policy, University of Southern California – 2025-02-11 07:45:00

Rural Americans don’t live as long as those in cities − new research

Part of the problem is that people living in rural areas don’t always have easy access to health care.
cstar55/iStock via Getty Images

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, University of Southern California; Bryan Tysinger, University of Southern California, and Jack Chapel, University of Southern California

Rural Americans – particularly men – are expected to live significantly shorter, less healthy lives than their urban counterparts, according to our research, recently published in the Journal of Rural Health.

We found that a 60-year-old man living in a rural area is expected on average to live two fewer years than an urban man. For women, the rural-urban gap is six months.

A key reason is worse rates among rural people for smoking, obesity and chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and heart disease. These conditions are condemning millions to disability and shortened lives.

What’s more, these same people live in areas where medical care is evaporating. Living in rural areas, with their relatively sparse populations, often means a shortage of doctors, longer travel distances for medical care and inadequate investments in public health, driven partly by declines in economic opportunities.

Our team arrived at these findings by using a simulation called the Future Elderly Model. With that, we were able to simulate the future life course of Americans currently age 60 living in either an urban or rural area.

The model is based on relationships observed in 20 years of data from the Health and Retirement Study, an ongoing survey that follows people from age 51 through the rest of their lives. Specifically, the model showed how long these Americans might live, the expected quality of their future years, and how certain changes in lifestyle would affect the results.

We describe the conditions that drive our results as “diseases of despair,” building off the landmark work of pioneering researchers who coined the now widely used term “deaths of despair.” They documented rising mortality among Americans without a college degree and related these deaths to declines in social and economic prospects.

The main causes of deaths of despair – drug overdoses, liver disease and suicide – have also been called “diseases of despair.” But the conditions we study, such as heart disease, could similarly be influenced by social and economic prospects. And they can profoundly reduce quality of life.

We also found that if rural education levels were as high as in urban areas, this would eliminate almost half of the rural-urban life-expectancy gap. Our data shows 65% of urban 60-year-olds were educated beyond high school, compared with 53% of rural residents the same age.

One possible reason for the difference is that getting a bachelor’s degree may make a person more able or willing to follow scientific recommendations – and more likely to work out for 150 minutes a week or eat their veggies as their doctor advises them to.

YouTube video
Rural communities are increasingly hampered by their lack of access to health care.

Why it matters

The gap between urban and rural health outcomes has widened over recent decades. Yet the problem goes beyond disparities between urban and rural health: It also splits down some of the party lines and social divides that separate U.S. citizens, such as education and lifestyle.

Scholarship on the decline of rural America suggests that people living outside larger cities are resentful of the economic forces that may have eroded their economic power. The interplay between these forces and the health conditions we study are less appreciated.

Economic circumstances can contribute to health outcomes. For example, increased stress and sedentary lifestyle due to joblessness can contribute to chronic health issues such as cardiovascular disease. Declines in economic prospects due to automation and trade liberalization are linked to increases in mortality.

But health can also have a strong influence on economic outcomes. Hospitalizations cause high medical costs, loss of work and earnings, and increases in bankruptcy. The onset of chronic disease and disability can lead to long-lasting declines in income. Even health events experienced early in childhood can have economic consequences decades later.

In tandem, these health and economic trends might reinforce each other and help fuel inequality between rural and urban areas that produces a profoundly different quality of life.

What still isn’t known

It should be noted that our results, like many studies, are describing outcomes on average; the rural population is not a monolith. In fact, some of the most physically active and healthy people we know live in rural areas.

Just how much your location affects your health is an ongoing area of research. But as researchers begin to understand more, we can come up with strategies to promote health among all Americans, regardless of where they live.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.The Conversation

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and Professor of Public Policy, University of Southern California; Bryan Tysinger, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management, University of Southern California, and Jack Chapel, Postdoctoral Scholar in Economics, University of Southern California

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If FEMA didn’t exist, could states handle the disaster response alone?

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theconversation.com – Ming Xie, Assistant Professor of Emergency Management and Public Health, University of Maryland, Baltimore County – 2025-02-10 07:45:00

If FEMA didn’t exist, could states handle the disaster response alone?

Hurricane Ian caused widespread damage in Florida in 2022, estimated at over $112 billion. This scene was once a shopping center.
Giorgio Veira/AFP via Getty Images

Ming Xie, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Imagine a world in which a hurricane devastates the Gulf Coast, and the U.S. has no federal agency prepared to quickly send supplies, financial aid and temporary housing assistance.

Could the states manage this catastrophic event on their own?

Normally, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, is prepared to marshal supplies within hours of a disaster and begin distributing financial aid to residents who need help.

However, with President Donald Trump questioning FEMA’s future and suggesting states take over recovery instead, and climate change causing more frequent and severe disasters, it’s worth asking how prepared states are to face these growing challenges without help.

What FEMA does

FEMA was created in 1979 with the job of coordinating national responses to disasters, but the federal government has played important roles in disaster relief since the 1800s.

During a disaster, FEMA’s assistance can begin only after a state requests an emergency declaration and the U.S. president approves it. The request has to show that the disaster is so severe that the state can’t handle the response on its own.

FEMA’s role is to support state and local governments by coordinating federal agencies and providing financial aid and recovery assistance that states would otherwise struggle to supply on their own. FEMA doesn’t “take over,” as a misinformation campaign launched during Hurricane Helene claimed. Instead, it pools federal resources to allow states to recover faster from expensive disasters.

During a disaster, FEMA:

  • Coordinates federal resources. For example, during Hurricane Ian in 2022, FEMA coordinated with the U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of Defense and search-and-rescue teams to conduct rescue operations, organized utility crews to begin restoring power and also delivered water and millions of meals.

  • Provides financial assistance. FEMA distributes billions of dollars in disaster relief funds to help individuals, businesses and local governments recover. As of Feb. 3, 2025, FEMA aid from 2024 storms included US$1.04 billion related to Hurricane Milton, $416.1 million for Hurricane Helene and $112.6 million for Hurricane Debby.

  • Provides logistical support. FEMA coordinates with state and local governments, nonprofits such as the American Red Cross and federal agencies to supply cots, blankets and hygiene supplies for emergency shelters. It also works with state and local partners to distribute critical supplies such as food, water and medical aid.

The agency also manages the National Flood Insurance Program, offers disaster preparedness training and helps states develop response plans to improve their overall responses systems.

What FEMA aid looks like in a disaster

When wildfires swept through Maui, Hawaii, in August 2023, FEMA provided emergency grants to cover immediate needs such as food, clothing and essential supplies for survivors.

The agency arranged hotel rooms, rental assistance and financial aid for residents who lost homes or belongings. Its Direct Housing Program has spent $295 million to lease homes for more than 1,200 households. This comprehensive support helped thousands of people begin rebuilding their lives after losing almost everything.

FEMA also helped fund construction of a temporary school to ensure that students whose schools burned could continue their classes. Hawaii, with its relatively small population and limited emergency funds, would have struggled to mount a comparable response on its own.

A man wearing a T-shirt with the state seal of Hawaii speaks with reporters, standing next to a woman with 'FEMA' on her cap and shirt with ocean and burned properties behind them.
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, center, and then-FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell speak to reporters in Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 12, 2023, while assessing the wildfire damage there.
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

Larger states often need help, too. When a 2021 winter storm overwhelmed Texas’ power grid and water infrastructure, FEMA coordinated the delivery of essential supplies, including water, fuel, generators and blankets, following the disaster declaration on Feb. 19, 2021. Within days, it awarded more than $2.8 million in grants to help people with temporary housing and home repairs.

Which states would suffer most without FEMA?

Without FEMA or other federal support, states would have to manage the disaster response and recovery on their own.

States prone to frequent disasters, such as Louisiana and Florida, would face expensive recurring challenges that would likely exacerbate recovery delays and reduce their overall resilience.

Smaller, more rural and less wealthy states that lack the financial resources and logistical capabilities to respond effectively would be disproportionately affected.

“States don’t have that capability built to handle a disaster every single year,” Lynn Budd, director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, told Stateline in an interview. Access to FEMA avoids the need for expensive disaster response infrastructure in each state.

States might be able to arrange regional cooperation. But state-led responses and regional models have limitations. The National Guard could assist with supply distribution, but it isn’t designed to provide fast financial aid, housing or long-term recovery options, and the supplies and the recovery effort still come at a cost.

A National Guard member walks in front of search and rescue vehicles.
Members of the National Guard and a FEMA search-and-rescue team work together in the disaster response after Hurricane Florence pounded Wilmington, N.C., in September 2018.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Wealthier states might be better equipped to manage on their own, but poorer states would likely struggle. States with less funding and infrastructure would be left relying on nonprofits and community-based efforts. But these organizations are not capable of providing the scope of services FEMA can.

Any federal funding would also be slow if Congress had to approve aid after each disaster, rather than having FEMA already prepared to respond. States would be at the mercy of congressional infighting.

In the absence of a federal response and coordinating role, recovery would be uneven, with wealthier areas recovering faster and poorer areas likely seeing more prolonged hardships.

What does this mean?

Coordinating disaster response is complex, the paperwork for federal assistance can be frustrating, and the agency does draw criticism. However, it also fills an important role.

As the frequency of natural disasters continues to rise due to climate change, ask yourself: How prepared is your state for a disaster, and could it get by without federal aid?The Conversation

Ming Xie, Assistant Professor of Emergency Management and Public Health, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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