From 2016 to 2023, Latin American conservative politicians mobilized a new form of religious discourse that closely resembled the White Christian Nationalism (WCN) rhetoric employed by US President Donald Trump in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, leading to both political victories and significant vote shares in Latin American elections. Using content analysis of political speeches, campaign communications, and policy proposals across Latin American countries, this paper studies how these politicians adapted WCN into a distinct Latin American Christian Nationalism (LCN) by: (i) advancing a historically rooted, divinely sanctioned Latin American “deep story” of what Latin American nations were, (ii) arguing for a “political vision” in which Latin American countries must be governed by laws and leaders protecting their “Christian identity,” (iii) framing their opposition to progressive social policies as the defense of “Christian nations” from “un-Christian foreign interference,” and (iv) allowing them to align their political identities with Trump’s brand.
I have three main goals with this paper. My first goal is to show that the religious discourse used in Latin American political campaigns underwent a significant transformation in 2016. Before 2016, Latin American conservative politicians mainly employed “pro-family” rhetoric to oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage and “pro-life” rhetoric against reproductive rights. However, after 2016, their rhetoric began incorporating nationalistic arguments stating the need to defend the “Christian identity” of Latin American “Christian nations” from national and international threats. Although many assume these similarities result from direct US influence, I contend that Latin American conservative politicians strategically adopted this new religious rhetoric to align with Trump’s brand, allowing them to embed themselves in a larger narrative of “holy wars” for the “Christian identity” of the American continent.
My second goal is to show how the conceptualizations of “deep story” and “political vision” developed by US sociologists Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry (2022) to study WCN could be used as frameworks to analyze the advance of Christian nationalistic religious discourse in other countries, provided that we account for the historical, social, and political similarities and differences between the US and other nations. For instance, the LCN “deep story” asserts that Latin American countries have a distinct “Christian identity” rooted in the Catholic Church’s influence since Spanish colonization, which is reinforced by the state-sanctioned presence of Christian and/or Catholic references in the public space. Although many references and symbols are connected to Catholicism, Latin American evangelicals also embrace this “deep story” because politicians use general references to Christianity without distinguishing between Catholicism and Protestantism. The WCN and LCN “deep stories” are similar in proclaiming that the preservation of such “Christian identity” requires upholding “traditional Christian values” through “pro-life” and “pro-family” laws while opposing gender equality education in public schools, reproductive rights, and same-sex marriage. However, they differ slightly in how they integrate race. Gorski and Perry (2022) argue that, in the US, “Christian nation” and “Christian values” should be understood as “racialized terms” (2022, p. 27) and “Christian” works as “a dog whistle that calls out to an aggrieved [white American] tribe” (2022, p. 24). However, for LCN, these words are not seen as racialized terms/racist dog whistles, probably because whites are a minority in the countries where LCN has appeared. Therefore, the LCN “deep story” race only intertwines with racial prejudice with respect to Indigenous religions, particularly in Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia.
Likewise, the LCN “political vision” is similar to that of WCN in that it includes: (i) the belief that Latin American countries should be “Christian nations” governed by “Christian laws” and leaders who defend “Christian values,” (ii) the depiction of public officers and politicians advancing progressive social policies as “caviars” (i.e., caviar-eating ungodly elites detached from the actual interests of the masses) bent on destroying the “Christian identity” of these countries, and (iii) support for political violence as demonstrated in the Brazilian “Capitol Riots” of 2022.
My third goal is to show that Christian Nationalism is becoming a regional social movement because of the advance of WCN rhetoric in the US. Although Latin American conservative politicians like Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil) and Rafael López Aliaga (Peru) have been very successful at adapting WCN rhetoric, they have focused on adapting US religious discourse rather than creating their own. I claim that this decision is intentional since their main objective is to align their political identities with Trump’s brand. This is supported by the fact that these Latin American politicians not only adopted WCN arguments that resonate with Latin America but also embraced others that seemed disconnected from the Latin American context during their political campaigns. For instance, former President Trump repeatedly pledged to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (Liebermann, 2016). Following Trump’s proposal, certain Latin American conservative politicians began advocating for relocating their countries’ embassies in Israel to Jerusalem. For instance, former Colombian president Duque proposed such a move during his campaign but later retracted the offer (Caracol Radio, 2018). Similarly, former Brazilian President Bolsonaro promised to move Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem but ultimately abandoned the plan (Landau and Reuters, 2019). In Peru, former Congressman Julio Rosas asked the government to relocate the Peruvian embassy (El Comercio, 2017).
I argue that understanding Christian Nationalism as a regional social movement is necessary to understand how LCN rhetoric has become so prevalent in Latin American politics that some politicians feel compelled to state that they “do not want the state to be Evangelical Christian” (Enríquez, 2021).
As Latin American conservative politicians coordinate through regional Latin American movements and US conservative politicians increasingly embrace the “Christian Nationalist” label (Tyler, 2022), LCN rhetoric’s presence is likely to grow in Latin American politics.
From 2016 to 2023, Latin American conservative politicians mobilized a new form of religious discourse that resembled the White Christian Nationalism (WCN) rhetoric employed by US President Donald Trump in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, leading to both political victories and significant vote shares in Latin American elections. Using content analysis of political speeches, campaign communications, and policy proposals across Latin American countries, this paper studies how these politicians adapted WCN into a distinct Latin American Christian Nationalism (LCN) by: (i) advancing a historically rooted, divinely sanctioned Latin American “deep story” of what Latin American nations were, (ii) arguing for a “political vision” in which Latin American countries must be governed by laws and leaders protecting their “Christian identity,” (iii) framing their opposition to progressive social policies as the defense of “Christian nations” from “un-Christian foreign interference,” and (iv) allowing them to align their political identities with Trump’s brand.