Visualizing Faith and Firearms: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Christian Nationalist Images

Herbert Blumer’s approach to collective action has inspired the study of collective identity in social or political movements. Collective identity is achieved, in part, through the use of symbols that unite people who interpret them in similar ways. Blumer’s symbolic interactionist approach to meaning-making, negotiated interpretation, and collective action can help us understand how powerful symbols connected to Christianity, guns, and patriotism have become intertwined in American gun culture and are associated with resistance to gun control. This chapter uses a qualitative content analysis of Christian Nationalist-associated images to explore meanings created from the juxtaposition of guns with patriotic and religious symbols, with the effect of sacralizing firearms, signaling righteous opposition to gun control, and cementing a political alliance between three disparate conservative groups.