“Our Christian nation”: the role of Christian religiosity in explaining opposition to Muslim expressive rights

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate to what extent the relationship between endorsing a Christian representation of Dutch national identity and opposition to Muslim expressive rights can be explained by perceived ethnocultural incompatibility (between the Dutch and Muslim ways of life), and to what extent these relationships depend on individuals’ level of Christian religiosity. We hypothesized that for nominal Christians – but not for religious Christians – higher levels of perceived ethnocultural incompatibility could explain the positive relationship between Christian representation endorsement and opposition to Muslim expressive rights. To test this hypothesis, an online survey was conducted among native Dutch adults (N = 275). The results showed that perceived ethnocultural incompatibility fully mediated the relationship between Christian representation endorsement and opposition to Muslim rights for nominal, religious and non-Christians. This illustrates that perceiving the Netherlands as Christian can translate into more opposition to Muslim expressive rights via stronger perceptions of ethnocultural incompatibility.