This panel adopts a comparative global perspective, focusing in particular on peoples and places often excluded from studies of Christian nationalism. Our analyses of cases from the United States, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa were guided by two central questions. First, how was Christian nationalism manifested discursively, politically, theologically, socially, and/or culturally? Second, what were its origins, or what was it a response to?

The first paper examines the activism of Verna Hall, an anti-New Deal member of the Church of Christian Science. It shows how Hall recast the US as explicitly Christian and, despite coming from a denomination viewed as heterodox by most Evangelicals, inspired a cottage industry of Evangelical history textbooks in the 1960s and 70s. The second paper turns to North Africa under European colonialism. Specifically, it connects Coptic Christian nationalism in the early 20th century to the 1907 British census of Egypt, arguing that the census unleashed demographic anxieties and inspired Copts to imagine themselves as “true” Egyptians whose presence in Egypt predated that of the Arab Muslim majority. The third paper turns to Charles Malik, a Greek Orthodox Christian diplomat from Lebanon who helped to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It contends that the failure to codify human rights – including religious freedom protections – into binding international law drove Malik to align with Maronite Christian nationalists who defended a “Christian” Lebanon with paramilitary tactics. The final paper turns to El Salvador and analyzes the impact of Catholic Christian nationalism on Arab Christian migrants from historic Palestine who have often been cast as outsiders. It shows how migrants combated xenophobia by appealing to their eminently “Christian” roots and staked claims of belonging within El Salvadoran society.

Taken collectively, this panel argues that Christian nationalisms often emerge in response to wide-ranging anxieties about the status of Christians in society and rely on particular historical imaginaries to justify remedies to address those anxieties.