One-third of Americans believe that the United States is or should be a Christian nation, according to a new report by the Public Religion Research Institute –– and women were just as likely as men to believe in Christian nationalism.
To reach the conclusion, the Public Religion Research Institute conducted more than 20,000 interviews with adults around the nation and asked them about how much they agreed with statements such as: “U.S. laws should be based on Christian values,” “If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore,” and “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.” From there, respondents were grouped into either being adherents, sympathizers, skeptics or rejectors of Christian nationalism.
“If you completely agree with those statements, by and large, you’re a Christian nationalist adherent,” Melissa Deckman, the chief executive of PRRI, told HuffPost.
Though most Americans are skeptical or outright reject Christian nationalism, the number of people who do believe in it is still a powerful force in U.S. politics. A majority of Republicans ― 56% ― were either Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers in the PRRI report, and people who held these beliefs were likely to support President Donald Trump and see him as a strong leader.
For the number of Americans who do strictly adhere to Christian nationalist views, a significant number of them are women who are committed to its hard-line theology.
“Plenty of American women are conservative, and they hold strong theologically conservative positions, and they have found a home in this movement,” Deckman said.
From the outside, it might be confusing about why women want to be part of a movement that seeks to restrict their agency. The Rev. Doug Wilson, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist, has said the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote “was a bad idea” and prefers heads of households like the husband and the father to vote. Notably, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is part of Wilson’s same denomination and has repeated the church’s motto, “All of Christ for All of Life,” on social media.
Deckman said Christian nationalists, including many women who support this, are willing to remove a lot of rights for women, in part “because they see society changing. They see younger women who are less religious, who are opting out of marriage, and it’s alarming to them.”
“To understand the Christian nationalist worldview is that it’s one that’s deeply steeped in militant masculinity with very patriarchal views,” Deckman added. “And so the role of women in society is really to be mothers, preferably of lots of children, and to be wives that are submissive to their husbands.”
How Christian Nationalism Shows Up In Women Is Similar To How It Shows Up In Men
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Women who strongly believe in Christian nationalism hold the same hard-line views on the necessity of political violence and immigration as men. Strong believers of Christian nationalism were the most likely group to believe that true American patriots “may have to resort to violence to save the country.”
Both Christian nationalist men and women also held similar beliefs that undocumented immigrants should be deported without due process and agreed with the Great Replacement theory, the idea that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background,” according to PRRI.
This PRRI finding does not surprise Katie Gaddini, a sociologist and an associate professor at University College London who studies Christian women in U.S. politics. “The idea of wanting to keep outsiders out of the country has stayed the same. The particular outsiders that they are targeting has changed,” Gaddini said.
“In 2016, the women I interviewed were much more concerned with Muslims coming into the country,” she said. “And in 2020, there was starting to see a shift towards Latinos. And that was really strong in the 2024 election.”
But for people who are Christian nationalist adherents — the strictest group — women are not quite as extreme as their male counterparts on certain gender issues. In a 2025 PRRI survey on American values, Christian nationalist women (26%) were significantly less likely than men (43%) to agree with the statement: “The gains that women have made in recent years have come at the expense of men.” This group of women was also slightly less likely to believe that society was “too soft and feminine” compared to their male counterparts.
For these Christian nationalist women, gender equality doesn’t conflict with their faith.
“Within the MAGA coalition, there are prominent women and everyday women who would call themselves conservative feminists, and they believe in women’s equality,” Gaddini said.
Overall, Gaddini said there might be a difference in how Christian nationalist women approach issues or a style of politics, but “the fervency of beliefs and the commitment to the cause is not any different from men.”
And this belief is having repercussions for the rest of Americans.
“The harm is the exclusion it causes to a lot of people, trans people, immigrants, gender, sexual, racial minorities,” Gaddini said. “There’s documented harm that can be caused by those rigid, exclusionary beliefs.”
