Feb 11, 2010
Are Devoutly Religious Congregations More Racist?
Apparently so, according to Wendy Wood, a professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California. Wood and her colleagues looked at 55 studies over the last 45 years involving more than 20,000 people (mostly Christians) and found a strong correlation between religious beliefs and racism. The studies show there’s significantly less racism among people who don’t have strong religious beliefs, while highly devout religious communities exhibit more prejudice against people of other races (with seminaries showing the highest degree of racism). The researchers found barely any difference between the amount of racism among religious fundamentalists and more moderate Christians. “Only religious agnostics were racially tolerant,” they write in their paper.
We shouldn’t be shocked, Wood explains:
Religious groups distinguish between believers and nonbelievers and moral people and immoral ones. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the strongly religious people in our research, who were mostly white Christians, discriminated against others who were different from them—blacks and minorities.
She also points out that people who are religious because they value tradition and social convention were especially likely to be racist, noting:
The effect stays significant even in recent years. For people who are religious for conservative reasons, they have become less racist in recent years as racism has become less socially acceptable. But even they are still significantly racist, just that the effect has reduced in magnitude.
Having come from a devout southern baptist background I am not at all surprised at these findings. My atheist friends are far less prejudiced. Ironical that the followers of Jesus fail epically in this regard.
Yes,
How do you explain Hitler, Mao and Stalin. All athesists and killed millions of their own people.
People need to understand the difference between religion and a relationship with the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was not white. When one truly follows his teachings one is not a white racist because he was not a racist.
Now how about looking at racism in the hundreds of Christian and Catholic charities and hospitals, food banks, orphanages, and homeless shelters.
In the USA, I believe that people choose where they want to worship. Since there are 200 million whites and 100 million non whites you’ll visibly see more whites in places of worship. From my observations, many Blacks have preferred to worship with their own and non-English speakers prefer to worship where their native language is spoken.
this must be absolute proof that we rid ourselves of christianity! the 1st international institution to ever ban slavery. though atheists have been around for 1000s of years and never cared to ban slavery.
& yes i’m glad the professor was able to pick 55 ’studies’ to find this out, as opposed to the other 1000s upon 1000s of studies! phoooh, thanks for the genius!
i like how christianity states ‘kill the other races’ and ‘kill blacks n minorities’ cuz blacks n minorities are all atheists or something. thank god!
I would bet that the results are highly dependent on how you define both “racism” and “highly devout”/”strong religious beliefs.” I wonder what sort of data was used for such an indication as both of the above terms are highly subjective and manifest in various ways. Too bad I can’t access the whole article to find out.
It would be interesting to know whether devoutly religious black congregations could also be racists.
What a piece of crap bigoted study. And look at the stupid reporting that does not even take issue with the bigotry of the study. And why is the study itself bigoted? Because there are a presumed unexplained set of values that are purported to be “norm” and racist free. Any study not forthrightly explaining what standards are used and what the test target samples are taken from isn’t worth the paper cost for cleaning oneself after defecating.
[...] Science and Religion Today, where I found the study, asks the question “Are Devoutly Religious Congregations More Racist?” and answers: [...]
Deeply religious Christians are color blind…we see others not through the lens of color but as children of God born of sin but redeemed equally by our Savior Jesus. This study is yet another way to fractionalize us.
SaraB
yep,devoutly religious are so racist that we try to stop abortions of all races. ever hear of margaret sanger? planned parenthood still thinks like her and guess what race they target?
It doesn’t matter what race you are, you are taught them/us dicotomies. Yes, blacks display intollerance of gay marriage and don’t see the irony. The KKK was endorsed and supported by many churches.
BTW, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were not atheists. http://stupac2.blogspot.com/2006/10/hitler-stalin-and-mao-were-not-atheists.html
One has to be racist themselves to call someone else racist. racism is a subjective term, where I might believe a person to be a racist they may very well not be based upon someone else’s criteria. It is to easy to point fingers at any one or group and single them out for SOB, SON OBAMA which I think this study is doing, racism needs a fall guy and the Christians have always been in the cross hairs of SOB’s rifle, let us face it why else would a dark skinned white man be playing a race card and trying to fool people into thinking he is a light skinned black man, the truth is in a DNA TEST!
I would like to suggest that what this professor is doing is done every day in hundreds of so called institutions of higher learning throughout the United States. If you think this type of self serving slander of Christians is dispicable then I suggest all of us start using our rights as consumers to demand that if we are being asked to pay $35,000/year for these private colleges to slander our culture they should at least hire honest and unbiased instructors to educate our children. This type of PROGRESSIVE/DEMOCRAT propaganda is what goes on every day in all too many classrooms all across America. If you are offended do something about it. Take your children out of these colleges and get involved in understanding what you and your children are paying for in their education. You might well be shocked. Send a PROGRESSIVE Democrat to the unemployment line today. It is what they do best.
This is pretty…not shocking. Every white supremacist I’ve known (and I know a lot, living in a largely southern, Republican town) always talks about how holy they are and how much better they are than people of other races, religions and sexual preferences.
I think racism and religion go together because fear and ignorance go together.
Yep, Black Liberation Theology is as racist as you can get.
How did the good doctor define “racism” and “discrimination”? Without knowing that, this study is bogus.
I find a great deal of double talk in the results.
And this is coming from an observant Jewish USC graduate!
Without the support of Christian Zionists, Israel would not have the support in Congress that it has.
I don’t know if this changes anything with regard to the black/white divide, but it certainly blows a hole in this ‘theory’ regarding ‘minorities.’
If you believe this study.. you need your head examined.
Which studies did they pick? Was there a demographic involved? Did they separate the races in order to obtain the answer they want? Since the report itself does not say “white” or “black” how do we know there was a balanced grouping? (Wood even states it was imbalanced in her explanation) Was their some sort of control group? Where the studies picked primarily from the decades ago, how many were recent studies? What were the questions asked? Were the same questions asked through the years? Was there any statistical sampling done? Who defined the sampling?
Seriously – this is the worst study I have ever seen and I’ve seen, analyzed and studied many.
Really? So is this article racist because it singles out a sect of the culture? It also defines a certain people based on colour, religion, and the like…you see where this kind of thinking goes down hill and cannot stand in a rational argument? From the authors own words: “So perhaps it’s no surprise that the strongly religious people in our research, who were mostly white Christians, discriminated against others who were different from them”…wow really? Hmmm, who sounds racist? Just cut the crap everyone, if you cannot go out without your “feelings” being hurt (awww)just stay home till you grow up and can take it like an adult
People,
You don’t choose to “believe” findings. Results are results. the only real debate is over interpretations. This study reflects the consensus of 50 years of research consisting of hundreds of studies including different methodolgies from surveys to experiments with behavioral observations. More devoutly religious people are more racist than non-religious people. Get over it. Its a fact. If this review isn’t enough to convince you (not that that would be possible apparently using standards of evidence) find a psychology of religion textbook and look it up. Or better yet, read some of these comments on this threat. Let’s just say it once again: More devoutly religious people are more racist.
I think Christians are the most prejudiced, unaccepting, holier-than-thou,narrow-minded people I have ever come across. Their attitude to now fairly normal things like abortion, homosexuals and immorality is ridiculous. Yes, you follow Jesus’ teachings, but that was thousands of years ago! Things have changed! Now, men and women have rights to choose their sexual preferences, and if they want this baby or not. You don’t *have* to follow a strict code of morals anymore, you can do what you like! And it doesn’t matter who or what you worship, we’re all equal.
America has a huge majority of Christians, who supposedly are true Christians. Yet they have racial problems between Black Americans and White Americans, who are mostly Christians. If they were true Christians, they would put aside their differences and accept them.
BTW Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et al were atheists. Atheism is the professed belief of scientific Marxism. While their monstrous crimes against humanity do not in themselves mean that all atheists are evil, it should give give them something to think about instead of trying to gloss over this simple fact of history as Dawkins and the website sited above do.
This is especially true since some atheists claims the misdeeds of some Christians a reason for unbelief, even while saying that true Christians do not behave badly. There is no reason for true atheists not to behave badly.
Hitler was clearly an egomaniac. His crimes against the Jews were not religiously inspired, but inspired by his racist ideology that included superiority over all “non-Aryan” peoples.
When faced with defeat Hitler turned against the nation and people who had followed and supported him, rather than admit his responsibility for the disaster that he inflicted on Germany and the world.
Luke, don’t be so dense. One cannot follow Christ’s teachings and be a racist. It is logically impossible. As a social psychologist who has done several research projects I would need to know their methods in detail, how they defined their terms (i.e. “devout”, “religous”, etc.) To be sure, there are those who claim to be “religious” or “Christian”, but pay little attention to Christ’s teachings. If the researchers’ definition of “religious” is simply being willing to claim the title, then their study is worthless. They need to properly define and explain the criteria they are using before conclusions can be drawn.
This woman and her colleagues should be fired for educational misconduct. They claim to analyze data that is mostly from one viewpoint, mostly Christians, and then they draw conclusions based upon their own personal biases and prejudices of Christians. The data being analyzed was garbage data and so the conclusions these supposed educated professors reached is also garbage. It just shows how the baby boomer generation produced lots of politically motivated scumbags who have little academic ability and no moral sense of honesty.
not all religious people are prejudiced it depends on an individuals religious orientation i.e. what religion means to you and how you follow your religion, do you question it or no?? people who are more devout and onformist towards their religion are the ones who are more likely to be prejdiced that those who are not .
Hitler wasn’t an atheist. He was Catholic, and referenced God in some of his speeches.
lol what a joke of a study. The only problems with this study is that it’s based off America only (one of the most religious countries) and that it’s based off data from nearly 50 years ago when racism was more acceptable in society.
In modern times the most racist countries are the countries with the highest atheist populations like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, etc….
People just have to realize that basically all atheists are racists, except for non-white atheists and atheists living in areas with high Theist populations.