Higher Education

OU professor who warns of ‘white Christian nationalism’ wins acclaim

October 4, 2024

Ray Carter

Samuel Perry, a presidential professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma whose work includes publications portraying wide swathes of American Christians as “white Christian nationalists,” has been named one of the nation’s most cited academics.

Perry and Meredith Worthen, a professor at the Department of Sociology whose research focuses on deviance, LGBTQ stigma, and feminist/queer criminology, were ranked among the top 10 Social Sciences scholars based on data from the past five years gathered by ScholarGPS. They are currently the only OU researchers recognized in the global ranking.

OU leadership hailed the ranking as a sign of the university’s value.

“We are thrilled to have two faculty from the college ranked so highly in the ScholarGPS rankings,” Randy Hewes, OU Graduate College Dean and the Interim Dean of the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, said in a release posted on the OU website. “This is a testament to the quality and impact of the research, scholarship, and creative work of our faculty. These rankings also highlight the rich opportunities provided at OU for students to learn from and work with true leaders in their fields.”

Perry’s research, public statements attack Christians

Perry’s biography describes him as an “award-winning scholar and teacher” who is “among the nation’s leading experts on conservative Christianity and American politics, race, families, and sexual behavior.”

Perry is co-author of The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, a book focused on largely undefined “white Christian nationalism.”

In his public pronouncements, Perry has often lumped many Christians into that category as well as various Republicans.

On Sept. 14, Perry wrote on X (the site formerly known as Twitter), “I’m more & more convinced we shouldn’t talk about contemporary ‘evangelicalism’ as a religious movement as much as a sociological category meaning ‘white reactionary politics.’ Theological orientation is not remotely the core of this movement. Maybe never was. Certainly not now.”

On Sept. 18, Perry wrote, “The link between wanting a Christian nation & wanting a White majority nation is undeniable.”

In a 2022 Wall Street Journal review of Perry’s book, D.G. Hart, an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who teaches at Hillsdale College, noted that the methodology used by Perry and his co-author identified both white evangelicals and black conservative Protestants as being “very” Christian nationalist, writing that “the authors do not seem to notice how widespread Christian nationalism is—by their own analysis.”

Hart noted that Perry and his co-author’s methodology would have identified six of eight ethno-religious traditions surveyed as at least “somewhat” Christian nationalist despite the supposed white nationalists being racial minorities.

In a 2022 interview, Perry tried to explain away the fact that many black and white individuals both give the same answers on survey questions that supposedly identify white Christian nationalists, claiming that when black individuals say the United States is a Christian nation, it is because black individuals think “aspirationally,” but when white individuals give the same answer they do so because “for them, it is powerfully associated with things like nostalgia and authoritarianism.”

That’s not the only instance in which Perry, who is white, has made comments that appear to either disregard the opinions of, or dismiss the intellectual understanding of, minorities.

On Sept. 17, Perry wrote that the Electoral College, the system in which 50 state elections determine the winner of U.S. presidential races, “magnifies the power of white voters. That’s never been a coincidence.”

But black civil-rights leaders opposed abolishing the Electoral College when repeal was promoted in the 1970s. Vernon Jordan, executive director of the National Urban League, wrote at that time, “Take away the Electoral College and the importance of being black melts away. Blacks, instead of being crucial to victory in major states, simply become 10 percent of the electorate, with reduced impact.”

In 1979, as chairman of the Black Leadership Forum, Jordan testified before Congress in favor of maintaining the Electoral College, telling lawmakers, “The precious, though limited, political influence of black Americans would be curtailed under direct elections.”

Jordan testified that the Electoral College “prevents the dilution of political representation for minorities.” He predicted that should the Electoral College be replaced with a direct-election system, there would be a “disastrous impact of direct elections on black people” because minorities would lose the political advantage provided to them by the Electoral College.

Furthermore, some 1950s advocates of replacing the Electoral College with direct elections explicitly stated that they supported the change because it would reduce the political power of black citizens or thwart desegregation efforts.

Similarly, on Sept. 7, Perry attacked school-choice programs, writing that Oklahoma is “the nation’s laboratory for Christian nationalism as ideological and rhetorical weapon in the service of this scam.”

However, Oklahoma’s school-choice program benefits students of all races and incomes. Notably, officials at private schools whose students are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic advocated for passage of Oklahoma’s Parental Choice Tax Credit program.

When he’s not suggesting many Christians are “white nationalists,” Perry often makes that claim about Republicans.

The Wall Street Journal review noted “that white Christian nationalists remain an abstraction throughout the book,” but that Perry and his co-author named figures such as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, southern California pastor John MacArthur, former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and radio host Rush Limbaugh.

When asked in a 2022 interview to name political figures “entangled with the holy trinity of racial order, Christian freedom, and male violence,” Perry cited current Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, all Republicans.

The OU release stated that Perry is “the highest-ranked sociologist in the world for the second consecutive year,” noting he has authored 129 peer-reviewed publications and has more than 4,700 citations.

Perry said the ScholarGPS recognition “means a lot because the ranking was done by an independent party by means of a predetermined set of metrics rather than a group of peers who know me. This means the results are more objective and this ranking wasn’t a situation where my colleagues or friends in the academy were hooking me up with some honor. I think the ranking is also special to me because the outcome includes citations in addition to personal productivity. It would be easier to publish a bunch of papers nobody reads or uses in their own research. But this ranking tells me that other scholars have found the work I’ve done important and worth citing. People are actually using and building on my work! That’s a tremendous honor.”

OU lacks staff diversity but ranks high for surging cost

A recent review conducted by The College Fix looked up professors’ political party affiliations using the public Oklahoma Election Data Warehouse. The Fix identified the affiliations of 134 of 209 OU professors across 13 humanities departments.

Only nine were registered Republicans.

Six of 13 humanities departments at OU had no Republican professors on staff, including the anthropology, English, psychology, philosophy, religion, and African American Studies departments.

The Wall Street Journal found that between 2002 and 2022, enrollment at OU increased 15 percent, but tuition increased by 36 percent even after adjusting for inflation. Once student fees were included, the combined rate of growth was even more dramatic and was the highest in the nation.

“At the University of Oklahoma, per-student tuition and fees rose 166%,” the Journal reported, “the most of any flagship.”

[For more stories about higher education in Oklahoma, visit AimHigherOK.com.]