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Lower Cognitive Ability Linked to Stronger Christian Nationalism — Here's the Part the Headline Leaves Out

A new peer-reviewed study links lower cognitive ability to stronger Christian nationalist belief, and it holds up even after controlling for education. Don Jackson and Daysha Voss take the finding seriously, then surface what the viral version leaves out: the pattern disappears completely among people who never finished high school, and the researcher's own conclusion is that intelligence doesn't protect anyone from ideology — it just makes people better at defending whatever their side already believes. Including ours.

Don Jackson 10/3/2026Read original story
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Story Anchor

A new study says people who score lower on a cognitive test are more likely to hold Christian nationalist beliefs. That's true, and it's also only half the finding. The pattern disappears completely among people who never finished high school. And the researcher's real conclusion isn't "they're dumb" — it's that intelligence doesn't protect anyone from ideology. It just makes the defense of it more convincing, in every direction, including ours. Notice the pattern. Interrupt it.

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The Pattern

The Tool Doesn't Choose Sides — It Just Gets Sharper at Defending Whichever One Holds It

Surface story: Episode 34 takes apart a viral-shaped headline before it finishes going viral. Sociologist Samuel Perry, one of the most-cited researchers studying Christian nationalism, published a study using decades of General Social Survey data and a validated vocabulary test as a stand-in for cognitive ability. The finding: lower scores correlate with stronger Christian nationalist belief, holding up even after controlling for education, income, race, age, region, and political ideology. Deeper pattern: the headline version stops there, but the study doesn't. The relationship vanishes completely for people who never finished high school — it only shows up among people with at least some formal education, meaning whatever is happening is tangled up inside the system of schooling itself, not a simple product of having less of it. Perry himself won't commit to a direction of causality; a fundamentalist worldview adopted early could just as easily be what narrows someone's later engagement with open-ended reasoning, rather than low reasoning ability producing the worldview. And the sentence that actually matters isn't about Christian nationalists at all — Perry's own interpretation is that cognitive sophistication doesn't protect anyone from ideology, it just makes people more effective at defending whatever their in-group already believes, and he's explicit that this pattern holds across ideologies, not just this one. The episode's turn is to refuse the comfortable version of the finding — "they're dumb" — in favor of the harder one: intelligence is a tool without a built-in conscience, and the sharper it is, the more convincingly it gets used in service of whatever side already holds it. That includes the people making this show.

The Unfolding — the core mechanism: cognitive sophistication doesn't reduce tribal loyalty, it arms it, making sharper reasoners more effective defenders of their in-group's existing position rather than more open to revising itThe Unfolding — the methodological detail that changes the finding's meaning: the pattern disappears for people without a high school diploma, meaning this isn't simply about less education producing more extreme beliefPersonal Transformation — the symmetry the episode insists on: this isn't a story about one side having worse reasoning, it's a story about reasoning itself getting rented out to whichever identity a person is already defending, in every direction at oncePersonal Transformation — the show's own self-implication: the closing argument turns the question back on the audience and the hosts themselves, asking where each of us is defending our own side with more sophistication than the position has actually earned
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Consciousness Questions

These questions are meant to be sat with, not answered quickly. The method is always the same: notice the pattern, interrupt it — not the headline, the pattern underneath it, and not just in the group the headline points at.

  1. If cognitive sophistication makes people better at defending their in-group rather than more open to revising their views, what does that mean for the value of 'just being smarter' as a fix for polarization?
  2. The pattern in this study disappears for people without a high school diploma and only appears among people with at least some formal education. What does that detail do to the simple story of 'more schooling equals less extreme belief'?
  3. Where in your own life are you currently using sophistication — a well-built argument, a credential, a clever reframe — to defend a position more fiercely than the evidence for it actually earns?
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Community Context

Community voices gathering.

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Academy Pathways

Pathways being curated.

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Transformation Practice

Notice the Argument You're Best At — Then Ask Who It's Actually Serving

Journaling

Write down one belief you hold that you could defend extremely well if challenged right now — one where you've got the facts, the framing, the comeback ready. Then ask honestly: is it this well-defended because the evidence is this strong, or because you've had the most practice defending it?

Reflection Ritual

Once a week, pick one headline you agreed with instantly and reread past the first two paragraphs. Notice whether the nuance that would complicate your agreement shows up later in the piece — and whether you'd have kept reading if you didn't already agree with the headline.

Community Conversation

Bring this into your community: ask the room to name one position — political, religious, personal — that they've gotten really good at defending. Then ask together what it would look like to hold that same position with curiosity instead of readiness to argue.

Embodied Practice

Next time you feel the quick, satisfying certainty of being right in an argument, pause before responding. Notice whether that certainty is coming from the strength of the evidence in front of you, or from how much practice you've had defending this particular side. Say the difference out loud if you can.

This is the practice itself, distilled from Episode 34's closing meditation — consciousness differentiating into eight billion points of view, each one certain it stands alone, each one defending its own borders like the border is the whole truth. The method is always the same: notice the pattern, interrupt it. Starting with the one in your own hands.

Open the Transformation Hub
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Campaign Opportunity

Go Find the Actual Study

What's happening: Samuel Perry's paper is published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (DOI: 10.1111/jssr.70101), and PsyPost's coverage includes direct quotes from the researcher that most viral shares will never include.

Why it matters: The single most effective interruption of a viral misreading is reading the primary source yourself, once, before sharing a secondhand version of it in either direction.

What you can do: Read the PsyPost summary (or the paper itself, if you have journal access) before you share or argue about this finding anywhere, and if you see the stripped-down viral version circulating, share the fuller picture instead of just the stat.

Audit One of Your Own Well-Defended Positions

What's happening: Perry's finding generalizes past Christian nationalism: more sophisticated reasoners across ideologies tend to defend their side more fiercely, not more skeptically.

Why it matters: If sophistication arms tribal defense rather than correcting it, then feeling confident in an argument is not, by itself, evidence that the argument is right.

What you can do: Pick one belief this week that you could defend fluently without hesitation, and spend ten honest minutes looking for the strongest version of the opposing case before you argue it with anyone else.

The campaign for this episode is internal before it's external: read the actual study instead of the stripped-down version of it, and before defending your best-practiced position in your next real conversation, ask whether you're defending it because it's right or because you're good at defending it. Notice the pattern. Interrupt it. Starting with the one in your own hands.

Open the Campaign Dashboard
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Continue Your Journey

Four pathways forward. Which one calls to you?

Substack — Lower Cognitive Ability Linked to Stronger Christian Nationalism (Episode 34)

Episode 34 of Prodigal — The Podcast on Substack.

Prodigal Breaking News — Lower Cognitive Ability Linked to Stronger Christian Nationalism

The Prodigal Breaking News companion article for Episode 34.

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Credits & Transparency

Methodology

This is a companion guide to Episode 34 of Prodigal — The Podcast. The episode examines a new peer-reviewed study by sociologist Samuel Perry, one of the most-cited researchers studying Christian nationalism, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Using decades of General Social Survey data and a validated ten-word vocabulary test as a proxy for cognitive ability, Perry found that lower scores correlate with stronger Christian nationalist beliefs — the belief that American identity requires Christian identity, and support for state-mandated religious practice — holding up even after controlling for education, religious affiliation, political ideology, income, race, age, and region. The episode takes that finding seriously, then surfaces what gets lost in the viral version: the relationship disappears completely for people who never finished high school, appearing only among those with at least some formal education, which complicates any simple "less schooling, more extreme belief" reading. Perry is explicit that causality isn't settled — a fundamentalist worldview adopted early could itself narrow someone's later engagement with the kind of reasoning the vocabulary test measures, rather than the reverse. The episode's central turn is Perry's own interpretation: cognitive sophistication doesn't protect anyone from ideology, it just makes people more effective at defending whatever their in-group already believes, a pattern he says holds across ideologies, not only this one. Don Jackson and Daysha Voss close by turning the question back on the audience and on themselves, asking where each person is defending their own side's position with more sophistication than it has actually earned. We are Source. Notice the pattern. Interrupt it.

Sources referenced

Last updated: 10/3/2026 Evolving