Who Belongs: White Christian Nationalism and the Roberts Court

Examines how Roberts Court decisions have reshaped ＂We the People＂ to favor a narrow vision of belonging rooted in white Christian nationalism and minority rule

Who belongs to ＂We the People＂? Are ＂the People＂ exclusive, inegalitarian, and hierarchical, or inclusive and egalitarian? For much of American history, an exclusionary and inegalitarian republican democracy predominated, but in the 1930s, political forces lifted an egalitarian and participatory pluralist democracy to ascendance. Although a conservative Supreme Court initially resisted this change, the Court acquiesced in 1937 and then subsequently deepened the nation’s commitment to pluralist democracy by invigorating constitutional protections for individual rights--religious freedom, free expression, and equal protection. Protection of individual rights facilitated the acceptance of diverse values and the expression of those values in the pluralist democratic arena. Disgruntled with these constitutional developments, conservatives eventually denounced the 1937 transition and urged the Court to restore the original Constitution.

In Who Belongs, Stephen M. Feldman assesses how the conservative justices of the Roberts Court seem intent on undoing the 1937 constitutional transformation. Yet, Feldman reveals, they are not returning the nation to pre-1937 republican democratic constitutional principles. Instead, the justices reinterpret the post-1937 rights of religious freedom, free speech, and equal protection to privilege a narrow segment of the American people--white, Christian, heterosexual men. The Roberts Court is limiting who fully belongs to ＂We the People,＂ narrowing the rights of non-Christians, people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Ultimately, the conservative justices are interpreting individuals’ rights to serve minority rule--in harmony with the political agenda of white Christian nationalism.

Providing a powerful assessment of white Christian nationalism in American constitutionalism, Who Belongs reminds us that a healthy democracy depends on not only what rights exist but also who enjoys them.

Stephen M. Feldman is the Jerry W. Housel/Carl F. Arnold Distinguished Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Wyoming. He is the author of Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas: A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State, Free Expression and Democracy in America: A History, and Pack the Court! A Defense of Supreme Court Expansion among other titles.