The Presbyterian Foundation hosted a breakfast on Sunday morning for PC(USA) mid council leaders as a precursor to 227th General Assembly plenary sessions, which began Sunday afternoon. The event’s featured speaker was Robert P. Jones, who gave a talk titled “Christian Nationalism, Democracy, and America’s Identity Crisis.” In it, he offered both formal data and personal anecdotes encouraging attendees to confront Christian nationalism with urgency and hope.

Jones is president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and author of several books, including his upcoming “Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy” (September 2026) and his most recent book, “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future,” which provided the basis for much of his talk.

Presbyterian Foundation President and CEO the Rev. Dr. Tom Taylor noted that the breakfast has become a tradition in recent years, bringing in a featured speaker typically from outside the denomination to “bring messages about the intersections of culture and Christianity.”

“Even as we’re all trying to lead in the church, and we’re trying to do things to support our churches, we recognize that the ground is shifting in many ways under us,” Taylor said, “and we want to understand what that means and how to operate in that kind of context.”

To that end, Christian nationalism is an especially timely topic, amid intense political and religious polarization. The General Assembly will consider two overtures, RUS-01 and RUS-07, that address Christian nationalism directly through an amendment to the Book of Order and an official social witness policy.

Jones began his talk with a lighthearted reference to a scene from the 1985 film “The Sure Thing,” in which John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga debate whether the storm — both literal and figurative — that they find themselves in warrants use of Zuniga’s emergency credit card. While the film reference evoked laughter, Jones noted that it’s also an apt description of where we find ourselves regarding Christian nationalism in the United States. He noted that we do so much work to prepare for emergencies that demand our response, but we have to be able to recognize when the moment demands the emergency response.

“It’s raining, so hopefully we’ll use the credit card,” Jones said.

Jones acknowledged his own family history in the South as he described the ways that Christianity in the United States has always been entangled with racism and white supremacy, with chattel slavery and the displacement and genocide of Native Americans.

Quoting his own book, Jones said, “We would like to hold these truths to be self-evident: that we bear no responsibility for the actions of our ancestors, nor for the effects of their actions on the present. … We want our children to know that America is good, just like us.”

Moving on to an explanation of “where we are and how we got here,” Jones offered up data from PRRI, illustrating the sharp decline of liberal democracy in the U.S. in 2025, with American democracy considered to be at its worst in 60 years.

Notably, his data showed that the largest demographic decline among American Christians is not white mainline Protestants but rather white Evangelical Protestants. Still, each of those groups constitutes only 13% of people in the U.S., with white Christian groups as a whole making up only 40% of the population. Jones referred to the existential angst generated by this demographic decline as “the Great White Christian Freak Out.”

Overall, Jones’ data portrayed a narrative wherein “our two political parties have increasingly sorted themselves along lines of race and religion” with two-thirds of white Evangelical Christians sympathizing with Christian nationalist ideas, along with 56% of Republicans and only 17% of Democrats.

PRRI identified five statements associated with Christian nationalist ideology, including a belief that God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society, a belief in U.S. government declaration of America as a Christian nation, and a fear that if the U.S. moves away from its Christian foundation, it won’t be a country anymore. These ideas were also shown to correlate with anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic attitudes, denials of systemic racism toward African Americans, and a belief in hierarchical gender roles.

Ultimately, Jones said the problem of Christian nationalism poses a question about what kind of country the U.S. is: “a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians” or “a multi-racial pluralistic democracy.” He ended his talk with the “good news” that PRRI data shows a majority of Americans want the U.S. to be the latter. However, he said, “passive majorities are not enough to save our democracy.”

“Will we find the present courage to save ourselves from that future regret?” he asked.

In a short Q&A, Jones affirmed that ideological and identity polarization between Democrats and Republicans has become significantly more pronounced in recent decades. He also addressed disconnects between pastors’ own political views and their congregations, noting that such a “worldview gap” has been a longstanding reality that can only be overcome through relationship and connection. He challenged churches looking to thrive and grow to live out their values through public action and engagement.

Finally, when asked what word he might have for commissioners about to go into four days of plenary and decision-making for the denomination, he reiterated his earlier warning.

“It’s raining.”