Inside the “Christian Alternative to Amazon”
Q&A with Mahesh Somashekhar on Public Square and the new front in the culture wars.
Like many of you, I spend a lot of time reading excellent research and reporting about Christian nationalism. I even study and write about it myself. So it’s rare for me to come across a genuinely new angle on the phenomenon. That’s what happened when I saw a new article published in the scholarly journal Sociology of Religion, by the sociologists Mahesh Somashekhar and Ian Kennedy.
The article acknowledges that Christian nationalism is a multifaceted ideology that people confront at their churches and at political rallies, and also work to put into practice through politics. But they argue this is only one way that people enact their Christian nationalist values. It turns out that conservative Christians in the US are also increasingly encouraged to restore the Christian nation…. by shopping. The (far) Right way, of course.
What follows is a Q&A with the study’s lead author, Mahesh Somashekhar, about a conservative Christian parallel economy, why it matters, and how it is part of a broader movement to “shop your values.” You will never think about shopping the same way again.
Ruth Braunstein: You write about a "conservative Christian alternative to Amazon.” I don’t know if most people even know something like this exists. What is it, and why was it created?
Mahesh Somashekhar: My study is about PublicSquare.com, an e-commerce website that positions itself as the leading conservative Christian alternative to Amazon.com and Yelp.com. The intention of the website is to sell products and catalog local businesses in the United States that consumers can be sure support conservative Christian values.
To ensure that local businesses and online vendors listed on the website support conservative Christian values, all participating businesses must sign a pledge stating that they, among other things, “believe in the greatness of this Nation and will always fight to defend it,” “will always protect the family unit and celebrate the sanctity of every life,” and agree that “Our Constitution is non-negotiable – government isn’t the source of our rights, so it can’t take them away.”
PublicSquare was started in 2021, but the website’s usership grew exponentially during the mid-2023 conservative boycott of Bud Light, which had recently sponsored a trans social media personality named Dylan Mulvaney. At that moment in history, anti-DEI attitudes in the United States were at a fever pitch, and the Bud Light boycott became emblematic of a conservative backlash that wanted to take money away from large corporations such as Bud Light or Target and put that money toward supporting anti-DEI, anti-ESG economic causes.
PublicSquare was well-positioned to take advantage of the moment. Its parent company became publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in July of 2023, and at one point its market value was estimated to be over $250 million.
Since its inception, PublicSquare has created a subsidiary called EveryLife, which sells diapers and donates part of its proceeds to pro-life causes. PublicSquare has also acquired Credova, a payments processing company that is like PayPal but claims to be “cancel-proof,” meaning it provides payment processing services to retailers who may have been banned by other payment processing companies for violating their hate speech policies.
Ruth Braunstein: How did you become interested in studying PublicSquare?
Mahesh Somashekhar: I first heard about PublicSquare in a New York Times article about businesses that make it a selling point to be free of anything “woke.” This piqued my interest because part of my research agenda is to study ethnic economies, collections of businesses in places like a Chinatown or Little Italy. Ethnic economies reveal how some immigrants with very little education can pool their resources together, start a collection of ethnically oriented businesses, and become economically successful in ways that circumvent the hierarchy of traditional labor markets.
Although I have studied ethnic economies for years, it has long bothered me that much of the academic literature in the United States starts from the presumption that ethnic economies only belong to marginalized groups. According to this literature, due to shared ethnicity or religion, immigrants who are non-White or non-Christian move to the United States and work as a group to create businesses that are distinct from the mainstream economy. And unlike ethnic economies, the mainstream economy is not marked by any racial or religious identity.
The existence of websites such as PublicSquare show that mainstream groups can also band together over shared political or religious identity to create businesses oriented toward their own communities. It is naïve to only look for ethnic economies among non-White, non-Christian communities. As scholars such as Christian Smith have shown, groups like evangelicals, who comprise the majority in some U.S. states, claim to be marginalized in the mainstream economy. According to these groups, discrimination in mainstream society forces them to create collections of businesses similar to ethnic economies.
While my previous comment mentions “shared political or religious identity,” I should note that preliminary research I am doing with Ian Kennedy shows that local businesses listed on PublicSquare tend to cluster in highly White communities. While this finding may be unsurprising to some, its implications are profound, considering that little to no existing research argues that communities rally around certain businesses because they align with values frequently found in White communities.
Ruth Braunstein: Scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the ideas associated with Christian nationalism, and how they translate into public policies. But you refocus our attention on how it can shape everyday consumption, and how this consumption can advance broader goals of the movement. What does this teach us about Christian Nationalism that we would not know otherwise?
Mahesh Somashekhar: This is a great question, and an important one to answer.
Before answering, one should recognize that not all businesses on PublicSquare explicitly support Christian Nationalism, the notion that the United States is and has always been a Christian nation. Some retailers simply want to spread the gospel through their product offerings, and others want to stimulate more production of goods in the United States rather than overseas.
But, according to our study, six percent of retailers on PublicSquare explicitly invoked Christian nationalist themes in their marketing material. Furthermore, it is safe to argue that PublicSquare creates an infrastructure that helps Christian nationalist retailers and consumers find one another.
Up until now, most research has focused on the influence of Christian nationalism on politics, culture, or religion. Few studies have examined its influence on economics, and even fewer have examined its influence on consumption.
By studying how Christian nationalism is invoked by retailers and the products they sell, we see how the Christian nationalist movement manifests itself in everyday objects. For example, products included in our study ranged from t-shirts that interpreted the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as “Freedom of Religion, Not Freedom from Religion” to bars of soap that displayed the U.S. flag and the Christian cross.
Products like these are a way for consumers to proclaim their belief in Christian nationalism. But, on a larger level, they reinforce the notion that the U.S. is a battleground for ideological supremacy rather than a land that celebrates ideological diversity. Everyday consumption of Christian nationalist products – and the ability to find businesses on PublicSquare that may cater to Christian nationalists – emboldens consumers and facilitates their ability to engage in what they see as a culture war against those with whom they disagree.
Ruth Braunstein: Where else might we see evidence of this economic side of the Christian Nationalist movement?
Mahesh Somashekhar: PublicSquare is part of a larger movement called the “parallel economy” movement. Sometimes this movement is referred to as the “patriot economy,” the “anti-woke economy,” or in some cases, the “Christian economy.” No matter how it is called, its philosophy is that, in order to support conservative Christian values, adherents must create economic institutions that parallel and ultimately replace the problematic ones found in the mainstream economy. In the same way that PublicSquare aims to be the conservative Christian version of Amazon.com, RedBalloon.work aims to replace Monster.com, Credova aims to replace PayPal…the list goes on.
Since the re-election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, the parallel economy is increasingly allying itself with the movement to replace fiat money with cryptocurrencies. Along with Ryan Calder and Ian Kennedy, I am currently working on a project to understand how Christian nationalist identity is becoming financialized. Sadly, I don’t yet have findings to report from that project, but stay tuned.
On a final note, I should mention that PublicSquare and the parallel economy movement are part of a larger phenomenon in which people are “shopping their values.” Although shopping one’s values has long been common in the U.S., more people feel that recent changes in political representation have left them without a voice in politics. Consequently, more people are seeing their consumer purchases as a way to influence politics. There are now websites that help you shop at stores that support politically liberal values, and other websites that help you shop at stores that support Catholic values. I expect more of this kind of economic activity to occur in the future, especially if even more political power gets concentrated into the hands of elites.
This summer, Democracy is Hard is focusing on longer form essays and interviews with interesting thinkers. We will plan to bring the full newsletter back this Fall. Let us know what you think!
I checked this out and it’s a long way from being an alternative to Amazon. Too bad. I might have used it, even though I’m not Catholic. I’ll keep the app on my phone and check how it develops.